are made to feel the depressing and destructive influences of war. Without dwelling upon this topic, it will be sufficient to indicate a single view. We have reference to the well-known fact, that armies take no cognizance of the Sabbath. Fortifications are erected on the Sabbath; soldiers are paraded on the same holy day; in Europe the Sabbath is said to be more frequently selected than any other day for great military musters; armies are marched from place to place without any regard to the Sabbath; battles, as was the case at Waterloo, have been frequently fought on that day, probably more frequently than on any other; and both officers and soldiers are taught to regard the strict observance of the Sabbath, as not only inconsistent with the necessities of war, but not unfrequently as a mere Protestant prejudice, which ought to have no place in minds of a more liberal turn. In this country for more than a century the Sabbath was observed by our conscientious forefathers with a great degree of strictness, and unquestionably with the most favorable results; but the French war, about the middle of the last century, and the Revolutionary war, which followed soon afterwards, caused a great change in this respect. Since those wars, there has been a great relaxation in the observance of the Lord's day, which is acknowledged and lamented, but which it is not easy to recover from.

VI,-All Civil and Political institutions, as well as social and religious, are unfavorably affected by a state of war. War always has been, and so long as it continues to be practised, always will be, the bane of freedom. The liberty of Rome was overthrown by a skilful warrior; it was the power, which military command and influence gave him, that enabled Cromwell to dissolve the the parliament of England, and seize the reins of government; it was military power, centered in the person

of Napoleon, which enabled him successfully to subdue and to hold in subjection the liberty of France; and it is the evil influences of a military life, which at this very moment disturbs, and perplexes, and casts a deep shadow over the cause of freedom in the Republics of South America. When do we find the fundamental Laws and Constitutions of a State invaded? When do we find prisons filled with persons, guilty of nothing which in the ordinary condition of the community would be considered a crime? When do we hear of proclamations of martial' law, a measure oftentimes bearing more severely upon the citizen, than upon the enemy? When do we hear of suspensions of the trial by jury, and of suspensions of the writ of Habeas Corpus? All these things, bearing directly and most injuriously upon the cause of liberty, are the results, and almost the necessary results of war.

Plutarch says of Philopomen, "Nature, indeed, gave him such talents for command, that he knew not only how to govern according to the laws, but he knew how to govern the laws themselves;" a species of knowledge, with which many other military leaders, of less talent and less principle than the Achæan commander, seem to have been familiar. It is the testimony of Plutarch also, that' the bloodthirsty Marius, who makes such a figure in Ro man history, studied to raise new commotions in the Roman commonwealth, because he perceived, that all his greatness arose from war. It was a saying of his, Inter armá silent leges.-Civil and political liberty is perhaps more perfectly enjoyed in this country, than in any other. But ask any intelligent American citizen, whether our liberties would long continue, if we were obliged to support a standing army of an hundred, or even of fifty thousand men, and he will promptly answer, it would be a hopeless experiment. Nor is this mere republican jealousy. Enlightened men of other nations have ex

pressed sentiments of similar import.

It is the remark

of a man no less distinguished than Sir James Mackintosh, that “an army with the sentiments and habits, which it is the system of Modern Europe to inspire, is not only hostile to freedom, but incompatible with it."*

VII,-An enlightened Humanity is to be regarded, as one of the elements, and we may add, one of the marked and prominent elements, of high CIVILIZATION. will avail but little, that the arts and literature are cultivated, and that civil institutions are erected on just and liberal principles, if the heart is at the same time to be infected with strife and cruelty. Can that be regarded as truly a civilized state, where men disregard the ties of nature, resist the appeals of suffering, and learn to sneer at scenes and situations, over which unbiassed nature would weep! But war always sooner or later leads to this; it tends, beyond all question, to restrict and to crush the operation of all the kindly sensibilities. It is said of Frederic the great, that during the war, which he made against the queen of Hungary, he one night gave orders that every light in his camp should be extinguished by eight o'clock. Walking out at that time, in order to see for himself if all were dark, he noticed a light in the tent of a captain Zeitern. He entered the tent, just as that officer was folding up a letter. "Zeitern knew him and instantly fell on his knees to entreat his mercy. The king asked him to whom he had been writing. He answered that it was a letter to his wife, in order to finish which he had retained the candle a few moments. Frederic coolly ordered him to rise and write one line more, which he would dictate. This line was to inform his wife, without any explanation, that, by such an hour the next day, he should be executed. The letter was then sealed, and Frederic himself took charge of

* Vindicia Gallicæ, 2d Lond. Ed. p. 286.

having it conveyed; and the next day the Captain was shot."*

Is this civilization, or rather utter and unmitigated barbarism? It will be said perhaps, that war has its necessities. We grant it. But the question here is, not whether there are necessities in war, but what are the results of those necessities? Do these necessities tend to promote or to depress civilization; to render men humane and benevolent, or hard-hearted and cruel in the highest degree?

Look again at the conduct of one, with whom this same Frederic was impiously associated in the dismemberment of Poland, the empress Catherine of Russia. "The cruelties, the massacres, executed by the Russian Commanders, under the express orders of their ruthless and blood-stained sovereign, the female Tiberius of modern times, make humanity shudder. Not content with the torrents of blood shed by her own semi-barbarous armies, she also incited the Zaporavians, a tribe of the most atrocious banditti, who dwelt among the cataracts of the Borysthenes, to massacre the Poles in the Ukraine. These wretches, who lived by blood and rapine, were too happy, with the prospect of impunity, to execute the wishes of the empress. The Ukraine was entirely laid waste, and the inhabitants put to death by means of the most inhuman and revolting tortures. The lowest calculation of the number of human beings, who lost their lives in this indiscriminate massacre, is 50,000; the highest, 200,000."†

If a person wishes to know, whether war is, or is not destructive of those feelings of humanity and benevo

*Ladd's Essays on Peace and War, No. 15. Foster's Essay on Decision of Character, Let. V.—† Dover's Frederic, Bk. V. who refers here for his

authority to Ruhliere's Anarchie de la Pologne.

lence, which constitute so prominent an element of civilization, let him read the history of the wars, occasioned by the efforts of the Netherlands to secure their independence. Such was the complete demoralization atattendant upon this war, that the Spaniards in often repeated instances threw their Dutch prisoners overboard, who were so unfortunate as to fall into their hands at sea. This greatly exasperated the Dutch; so much so that the State's General gave orders to Hautain, one of their naval commanders, to retaliate in the same cruel manner. It was not long before this officer took some Spanish soldiers, whom he found on board of certain English and German vessels; and in obedience to his orders, five companies of them were tied together in pairs, and at a given signal were thrown alive into the ocean. *

It is needless to multiply instances further, or to add any thing more on this general topic. As war in its very nature involves that hostility and violence, which are characteristic of barbarism, so it effectually tends to make men barbarians; it tends to eradicate all the kindly and generous sensibilities; it throws men back in the scale of civilization; and reduces them to a condition of recklessness, stupidity, and cruelty, characteristic of the lowest and vilest brute animals. Nor are we sure that this language is strong enough. It is here, in this melancholy view of men's conduct, that we find ourselves not disposed to object to one of the aphoristic sayings of Coleridge. "If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.”

* Roman's Annals of the Troubles in the Netherlands, Vol. II. P. 54.