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to elevate the power and promote the enjoyment of nations, "agreeable to the nature of man," and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And that our system of national law may not appear to be impracticable, we shall call the history of the world to witness, that nations that have risen by force and injustice have all fallen by the same; and that though the penalties of the moral law of nations may be slow and gradual, reaching over many centuries, they attach at last to the offending nation.

We shall also exhibit the slow but gradual progress of the world in the arts and sciences, and especially in ethics and national law, prior to the Chirstian era, and even down to the invention of printing, and the diffusion of the Gospel by the printing press.

We shall endeavor to prove that Christianity and the printing press, are the true causes of modern improvement, or rather that Christianity aided in diffusion by the press, appealing to the mind and soul, has been the basis of modern improvement, and that so far as the Gospel in simplicity has been really influential, and no further, has modern civilization advanced in different nations.

We shall illustrate the effect of the holy alliance of Christianity and the printing press, of religion and intellect, by reference to the history of the European nations, as well as of our republic.

Having shown by the example of the United States, the great antional advantage and rapid advancement of a people devoted to peace, equity and humanity, upon the celestial principle of doing to other nations as they would that others should do unto them, we shall exhibit the mode by which our population acquire a moral and religious education, and a comfortable amount of property. We shall explain how other nations, without any violent changes in their constitutional polity may adopt our peaceful system of industry and prosperity. Having proved by the experience of nations, ancient and modern, the truth and practicability of the code of international law, which the King of kings has prescribed for the government of nations, we shall in an elementary form set forth the principles of that law as we read them in the Mene Tekel, written on the tomb of departed empires, and in Revelation.

The law of nations, as we shall set it forth, will form the first part of American polity, the internal jurisdiction and duties of our national government, will compose the second part.

Our preliminary chapters, as we have suggested, will present the moral and intellectual condition of the world prior to the Christian era,

and make known its trifling improvement in civilization during the iron reign of war and brute force. Next in order will follow a critical review of national history from the days of Abraham to the fall of Napoleon; and the last preliminary chapter will portray the progress and effect of Christianity, with a practical illustration of its permanent civilizing power, aided by its great mental lever, the printing press, drawn from our Republic. In this chapter we shall explain a practical plan or system of pacific improvement by which the nations of Europe may attain the same happy condition with our Republic. These will precede our exposition of American law, international and internal.

CHAPTER I.

ANTIQUITY CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THE ARTS AND SCIENCES, AND ITS TRIFLING PROGRESS IN MUNICIPAL LAW, MORALS, ETHICS, AND INTERNATIONAL LAW.

THE history of the past, from the period when the morning stars first shone upon our first parents, exhibits a slow and gradual improvement in the condition of man. The physical and moral laws, impressed by God on matter and mind, have been discovered by degrees by the human understanding, at least so far as they are now developed. This law of progression, though clearly applicable to Physical Science as well as Mental, must, of necessity, unfold the laws of mind at a later erȧ than those of material and observable bodies. In conformity with this obvious truth, Mental Science, Ethics, and International Law are numbered among the discoveries of the last four centuries. Antiquity had little knowledge of these subjects. From the great length of time required to bring mankind up to their present state of moral and

intellectual acquisition, many and great discoveries may reasonably be looked for in the department of Ethical Science and National Law. Our examination of the writings of Moses and of the history of the world from his day to the present, will confirm this view of the subject.

Civil Polity, Ethics, and International Law, made little progress prior to the Christian era, and since that period their principles have been slowly, partially, and imperfectly developed. Antiquity considered with reference to the Arts, Sciences, Civil Polity, Ethics and Morals, is our first subject of investigation.

The dawn of human society is our point of departure. The first, primeval government of mankind is found in the patriarchal family, over which its natural head presided, whose decisions, dictated by inherent convictions of equity and native moral sense, were the laws of the little community. A union by intermarriage, or aggregation of many families of the same kindred, formed nations of sympathetic feeling or origin, acknowledging some venerable patriarch as chief, lawgiver, judge, and ruler. The invention of the useful arts of the husbandman and mechanic, being most needed by these new inhabitants of the earth, and being most essential to their daily wants, first attracted, and must for a long period have occupied the primi

tive population of the globe. Articles of domestic use in preparing food and clothing, and weapons for the capture or destruction of animals, must, for many generations, have employed the rude, uncultivated minds of men. As the pressing

necessities of these rude nomadic tribes were provided for, ambitious chiefs arose with conquests and warlike inventions. This nomadic warlike state continued for many ages, and by degrees the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the Chinese, the Etruscans, the Greeks, the Jews, the Persians, the Romans, and some other nations prior to the Christian era, acquired fixed habitations, and made considerable improvements in the useful and industrial arts of life. Different nations

obtained a permanent and improved social condition by slow degrees and at different eras, so that at the advent of Christ the nations of the earth presented an endless variety of intellectual and moral culture. In one respect they were alike. They all acted upon the avowed principle that a State or Empire may lawfully seize, by superior power, the jurisdiction, the persons, and the property of foreigners. This ancient and universal principle of war, laid waste all the cities and fields of the old world, destroying the fruits of industry, and filling the earth with cruelty and wrong. The sword, which devastated property and life, claim

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