destruction of the species, it is impossible to deny that it appears at first sight no less than a devastating scourge.

"Philosophers and philanthropists accordingly have concurred from the earliest times in regarding it in this light,-in deprecating mutual hostility and national passions as the most dreadful scourge of humanity. Sanguine hopes were

entertained at the commencement of the French Revolution that a new era in this important particular had opened upon the species: that former wars, stimulated by the ambition of kings and the rivalry of ministers, would cease; and that, by the accession to power of the class who were the principal sufferers by hostilities, the disposition to wage them would at once be terminated. It had come to pass as a general axiom, that war was the consequence of monarchical and aristocratic governments, and would disappear with their removal; and general applause followed the humane sentiment of the poet,

'War is a game which, were their subjects wise,

Kings would not play at.'

"But when the matter was put to the test, experience soon demonstrated-what had long been known to the few observers of historical

facts-that these expectations were entirely illusory, and that not only was the tendency to war no way diminished, but it was fearfully increased by the augmentation of popular power. Angry passions it was now found came to agitate, not only the rulers, but the masses of men: the interests of whole classes in one community came to be arrayed against those of the corresponding interests in another; and the "multis utile bellum” was found to meet with innumerable advocates in a period of revolutionary excitement and distress. Accordingly, the warlike passions never appeared so strong as in the newly-emancipated French people; and the longest, the bloodiest, and the most devastating war recorded in modern annals was the immediate consequence of the French Revolution.Alison, vol. x., p. 985.

ALLEGED COMPENSATION FOR WAR.

"Whilst the subtle poison of human corruption spreads with fatal rapidity during the tranquillity and enjoyment of peace, the manly feelings, the generous affections, are nursed amidst the tumults and horrors of war; and though the actual agents in it may

become habituated to bloodshed and rapine, a compensation, and more than a compensation, arises in the noble and disinterested feelings. which are generally drawn forth in the community. Perpetual war would transform men into beasts of prey; perpetual peace would reduce them to beasts of burden. The alternation of both is indispensable to the mixed tendencies to good and evil which exist in mankind, and mutual slaughter may be dispensed with when the seeds of corruption are extirpated from the human breast, but not till then "!!!-Alison, vol. x., p.

992.

WAR AND TAXES FROM 1660 TO 1843.

The first national debt was contracted in 1660, to pay for war. Successive wars have created successive loans, so that we have now contracted debts of 803 millions in loans, and raised 635 millions in direct taxes, making a total of 1438 millions for war, which have destroyed 3,950,000 men, 1,400,000 in those against Napoleon.

Our present interest to pay for our 803 millions of national debt and life annuities is nearly 29 millions and a half.

NAPOLEON'S WARS GREAT CRIMES.

"The comparison of Napoleon's wars to the judicial murders of Paris may seem unjust towards the former. But although the glory of war encircles its horrible atrocities with a false glare, which deceives us as to its bloodguiltiness, in what does the crime of Napoleon, when he sacrificed thousands of lives to his lust of foreign conquest, differ from that of Robespierre, when he sought domestic power by slaying hundreds of his fellow citizens? In one particular there is more atrocity in the crimes of the latter-they were perpetrated under the name and form of justice, whose sanctity they cruelly profaned: but, on the other hand, far more blood was spilt, far more wide-spreading and lengthened misery occasioned to unoffending provinces by the invasion of Spain, and Switzerland, and Russia, than by all the acts of the Committee, the Convention, and the Revolutionary Tribunal. Nor will mankind ever be free from the scourge of war until they learn to call things by their proper names; to give crimes the same epithets, whatever outward forms they may assume; and to regard with equal abhorrence the conqueror who slakes his

thirst of dominion with the blood of his fellow creatures, and the more vulgar criminal who is executed for taking the life of a wayfaring man that he may seize upon his purse."-Ld. Brougham's Life of Carnot.—(Statesmen of Geo. III. vol. ii., p. 269.)

WAR IN CHINA.

To the usual horrors of war in northern China was added the fierce desperation of the Mantcheu Tartars, who could not bear to appear dishonoured by defeat in the midst of a nation over which they had established the ascendency of conquest. These desperate men would take no quarter, and when driven from their posts invariably proceeded to massacre their wives and children. Many such scenes of horror are described by Lieutenant Ouchterlony in his account of the Chinese war.

RELIGIOUS WARFARE.

The spirit of Mahometanism is that of war against all who do not believe its doctrine; and he who loses his life in fulfilling this duty (if