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ON EARTH PEACE. . . .

NATION SHALL NOT LIFT UP SWORD AGAINST NATION, NEITHER SHALL THEY LEARN WAR ANY MORE.

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DANIEL WEBSTER, THE GREAT STATESMAN OF PEACE.

I have from the pen of Mr. Webster a testimony to the influence of Christianity and of the peace of nations. I had obtained, in my Book of Peace, near one hundred of the most distinguished names in America to the value of the Christian peace of nations. Last of all I handed the book to Mr. Web

ster. He wrote thus:

"I concur in sentiment with all those who think that improvement in arts, the diffusion of knowledge, and above all the influence of the Christian religion, tend strongly to render war more and more an object of dread and dislike. The peace of the world must be the wish of every good man in it.-DANIEL WEBSTER."

Certainly, Mr. Webster has been the advocate of peacenever of war, no, never. He has had but one opportunity in Congress to cast his vote for peace or war, and he cast that one vote for peace with Mexico. Yes, there is one other war. Was he not always in opposition to the war with the Florida Indians? He first came into Congress after the war of 1812 had commenced, and his first and one of his most earnest Congressional speeches was made in opposition to that war.

The act of all his acts, the very ablest, the one in which I felt and feel now more gladness of heart than any other, was the Ashburton treaty. It was, and is a treaty of peace, without war, before war, and saving war. Such treaties have been

the rich and rare acts of nations. I believed at the time, and still believe in common with a great many others, that no other man in our nation could have surmounted the difficulties and secured that treaty, and the peace and friendship between these nations which have followed, and are likely to continue. I gave God thanks that he retained the office of Secretary of State till that treaty was made. I wondered that every friend of the country did not encourage him to continue Secretary of State so long as Tyler was President. If he could have continued to the end of the term, would it not have been a rich blessing to our nation, that the extension of the slavery policy, and the war with Mexico should have been prevented? Mr Webster never held the office, or received the rewards or the honors of war. No, never in any case. Of all the honors now being bestowed on him, not one of them is in any way giving glory to war. Every one of his acts that has made him great, is a deed of peace. Every word, or vote, or thought of his, which has advanced the interest or glory of the nation, has given it progress on the highway of peace, at home and abroad. His renown is not at all, like that of Wellington, in deeds of war, the good results of which have already disappeared from Europe. Nor has his eloquence any of the element of Demosthenes, awakening his countrymen to unequal and unavailing war. But his were the acts, the feelings, the pursuits, the eloquence of peace.

The honors conferred on Webster are not given to acts that are lost and dead to the nation, for deeds that have loaded the nation with debts which they have nothing to show, for deeds that have trodden down millions of able men, sons, brothers, husbands, into the soil of Europe enriched with their blood, and whitened with their bones; and there is no good thing to show for all these slain. Such fearful and vanishing glories are now being bestowed on the grave of Wellington.

But surely the institutions of our country are the fresher and more prosperous for the hand and the voice and the heart of Daniel Webster, our great citizen, in them, for the last forty years.

Let the inscription on his monument be,

war.

He was a man of peace;
His counsels and his treaty
Saved his country from wars.

-Rev. Aaron Foster in 1853.

PEACE ON EARTH.

BY REV. PHEBE A. HANAFORD.

(Written for Mothers' Day, 1875, and read at the Peace Festival, in Jersey
City, New Jersey.)

There is peace within the summer woods,
When all the air is still,

Save i heard at times the song of birds,
Or ripple of the rill

There's peace upon the ocean, when
The waves have sunk to rest,
And midnight stars are beaming,
Reflected from its breast.

There's peace within the quiet home,
Where love its shelter finds,
And Christ's great golden precept,
Each inmate sweetly binds.
There's peace within the student-halls,
Where wisdom hath her seat,
And every pupil sits with love,
And wonder at her feet.

Sweet peace enthroned reigns in each heart
Which hears the Master's voice,
And of the upward pathway makes
Its free and gladsome choice.
And evermore to such a soul,

Across life's stormy sea,

Is borne the cadence that was heard
In far-off Galilee.

The promise waits, the moments haste,
God's purpose cannot fail;

And soon the voice of Christ must sound,
O'er every hill and dale.
The angel anthem echo find

On every sea and shore-

'Til peace on earth, good will to men,
Is law forevermore.

THE WOMAN'S PEACE FESTIVAL-MRS.

HOWE'S ADDRESS.

It has seemed to me, in the brilliant days of which we have lately counted so many, that the beautiful weather must soon be interrupted, and that this interruption would be very likely to come on the day of this, our Peace Festival. Yet my heart has borne up even under this discouraging anticipation. God's designs, I thought, are not fair weather plans. Their success is sure, though all the elements should waste and fail. And we, who have put our hand to this work of peace, have joined the army which has in view the slowest and surest of the divine victories, the reconciliation of human interests and the unification of human affections in one great love reaching up to God, our Father, and reaching out to all mankind.

HOW QUEEN VICTORIA PREVENTED WAR BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. Thurlow Weed, in a recent letter to the New York Tribune, says, "on trustworthy information": That on three occasions during the first year of the rebellion, Queen Victoria contributed essentially to the preservation of peace between this country and England. On two occasions her majesty discountenanced suggestions from the French government, which meant The first was a proposition for joint intervention of France and England, the object being a recognition of the Confederate government. The second was the introduction into parliament, after an interview by the mover with the French You will remember that the apostle Paul, in one of his subemperor, of a resolution repudiating our blockade. The populime statements, avers that he and his fellows war not against lar feeling in England was so strongly in favor of the Confed individuals, but against institutions and tendencies. erate states, that our friends in parliament and in the cabinet, but for the conviction that their course was totally approved by their sovereign, would have found themselves unable to successfully resist those hostile measures. When the despatch demanding the surrender of Mason and Slidell was read by Lord Palmerston to the queen, and the consequences of a refusal were explained, her majesty was startled and distressed at the idea of a war with America. Taking the dispatch to the prince consort, then in his last illness, the queen asked him to read it, saying she thought the language and spirit harsh and peremptory. The prince, concurring in her opinion, subjected the dispatch to erasures and interlineations, in which amended form it was returned to the premier. In relating this to Sir Henry Holland the queen added: "That was the last time the prince used his pen.'

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Oh! this slow, hard warfare! Eighteen hundred years have passed and have seen it advancing indeed, but very far from completion. It is a fight which every generation renews, since all the selfish human tendencies are born anew into the world with every set of children who are born into it. But it is a warfare in which we inherit not only the victories, but also the weapons of those who have gone before us. Nay, the crystal armor of our chief is bequeathed to us. He who first breathed this brave battle-cry of peace and good will against the raging passions of the multitude has left us every secret of his plan and of his power. The victory of which we shall speak to-day dates back to the birth star of Bethlehem, and forward into the blessed eternity.

It was by a sudden act of perception, five years ago, that I saw the great part which women are to play in the pacification of the world. The element of struggle and of contest is planted

It is but one step from companionship to slavery when one most strongly in the man, to whom the roughest tasks of socieassociates with vice.-Hosea Ballou.

ty are entrusted. It is through a beneficent provision of the

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Great Creator that he whose office it is to subdue the savage pacific ideal will never be established and perpetuated without earth should delight in his hard work. The leap of the the direct intervention of Woman in the administration of the Hers is that opposite organization which is horseman, the pursuit of the huntsman, the swinging axe of human estate. the woodman, all these exercise with pleasurable sensation the constrained to hold life sacred, knowing its bitter cost, which muscles of the masculine body, overflowing with strength, and is impelled and trained to long suffering, to patience, to disinclamoring for use. But self goes further than this, and sug- terested endurance and affection, by every instinct, whose gests to the man first an emulation, a contest with other men, opposite renders man violent and self-asserting. Under the and then, the wrestling from them advantages which the twofold pressure of these necessities, I think that I at last disThe sense of cern a way in which we women may plant upon the centennial weaker arm cannot keep against the stronger. We may bind the New Testament of justice now comes in, to show that might does not make right, graves a tree whose growth may shelter all the nations of the and that all which really belongs to the weak man is as truly earth in perpetuity. Peace beside the Old Testament of War, but so that the and inalienably his as what belongs to the strong man. Nations have never adopted this rule in their relations with authority of the one shall forever transcend that of the other. each other. Neither have races adopted it, but the failure to Peace is the outcome of all the promises, of all the prophecies. And we women, even on the do so is a blot upon Civilization. Even among individuals, Peace will never be had until the peaceable class shall bear its It is a bloodless legitimate rule and sway. law has still much of a military character. warfare, in which as in war, all is counted fair which can be Fourth of July, 1876, when the drums shall roll, and the trumpets sound, and the fiery troops march forth as if to battle, made to succeed. we can marshal our forces under the white banner of peace. We can say with word and song and sacred emblem, "Peace is to reign on earth-and under its sway all nations, all classes and both sexes are to be free and equal.”

Now where do we find provided in Nature a counter-influence, a passion and power which shall be as conservative of human life as masculine influence is destructive of it?

In an organization which gives this life through months of weariness, through hours of anguish, and through years of labor-an organization in which suffering is the parent of love, and all that is endured receives its final crown in the life and well being of something other than self. woman cries out when her hour is come,

Christ says that a

INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.

In the midst of the absorbing excitement which attends but when she is deliv-naturally enough the numerous centennial celebrations comered she remembereth her pains no more, for joy that a memorative of the Revolutionary era, there is some danger that So a woman is led by nature the quiet and unobstrusive efforts which are being made to renman is born into the world. itself, nature the source of all selfishness, into a disinterested der unnecessary destructive warfare will be pretty much lost It is one of the certain tokens of an adand unselfish affection, on whose integrity rests the very foun- sight of. Peace bath her victories as well as War, and even dation of human society. So much for nature, in its blind greater than War. But nature too, intellectual and moral, vancing civilization, that the policy of peaceful arbitration for instinctive aspect. generates ideals, types of character compounded out of what is the seulement of international difficulties is commanding at best in man and woman, which grow to be accepted of men the present time the attention of nearly all nations, and that it and of women, and so come in time to govern the race. So the has received the formal approval of the Congress of the United savage individual, the collective type gives way before the States, and of the Governments of Great Britain, Holland and To this is added the mother Belgium. father-ideal, just and noble. It may not be generally known to our readers that an Interideal, tender and merciful. The office of the stronger is seen to be the protection and nurture of the weaker. The war- national Peace Conference, to which representatives of all ideal, with its rules of loyalty and honor, is better than the nations are invited, has been summoned to be held in Septem But it is partial and masculine, ter next, at the Hague in Holland, to consider the subject of savagery of primitive man. and father and mother together bring in the blessed peace-establishing an International Court of Arbitration for the equiThe American ideal, whose glory is rising more and more to fill the horizon table settlement of all difficulties which may hereafter arise between nations, without a resort to arms. of our day. Ideals do not die, but one gives place to its superior, and so Secretary of the International Association, under the auspices Christ was the first, I of which the Conference has been called, is the Rev. J. B. they continue in ever ascending series. truly believe, to see the beautiful peace ideal to which this day Miles, D. D., of Boston. The United States, we understand, We to-day can analyze his thought, and see will be well represented, and it is expected that most of the is consecrated. what separate elements made up his view of human kind. The European nations, through delegated representatives, will pardivine omnipotence of love-the inexhaustible love of the ticipate in its deliberations. We hail this international gathand ering as one of profound importance. divine Father for his human children -the eternal absolute character of spiritual good, and man's power of These make up the peace possibility which attaining it. Christ saw in the world. Those who doubt any one of these points, have not the faith of Christ. They do not believe as he believed

As the duel has ceased to be generally recognized as a rasional method of adjusting personal differences, so, in the light of an advancing civilization, the impolicy of resorting to arms, and of relying upon mere brute force for the settlement of international troubles must ere long become fully apparent. As a necessary condition of what it was bound to accomMany years ago Franklin raised the pertinent inquiry: plish, Christianity insisted upon a recognition of equality where men before had delighted to insist upon inequality-When will mankind be convinced that all wars are follies, "neither Greek nor Jew, neither male nor female, neither very expensive, and very mischievous, and agree to settle bond nor free." Christianity could only work upon this basis their differences by arbitration? " and all that founds itself upon the inherent superiority of one which constitutes the only, or class of human beings to another, is not Christianity.

Let us return to what I was saying about ideals. We crown and celebrate them, and, in this centenary year, men are doing honor to the ideals of one hundred years ago. I have been puzzled, in looking back to those times of a bloody and momentous struggle, to determine exactly how we It is a great good thing should recognize and revere them. for all the world that our ancestors were immovable in their determination to possess representative government in its puriI am glad on the one hand to bow to the ty and entireness. simple majesty of their faith and will. On the other hand, I do not wish to see the military ideal recognized as the highest, I think, too, that the and so perpetuated and handed down.

Nor is it actual warfare even the chief objectionWars are acute, but are of able feature of the war system. tempora y duration; the great and exhaustive incubus of standing armies which the war system necessitates, is perpetual, a continual obstacle in the pathway of progress and of a higher civilization. Of this great burden we know comparatively little in this country.

It will be remembered that to this beneficent reform, which the September Conference is called to promote, the late Senator SUMNER gave largely his valuable co-operation, and his warmest sympathy. It merits a like recognition from all good We trust the Conference at the Hague may do much citizens. for the extension of the humane principle and method of arbitration among the nations.-Northampton Journal.

THE ADVOCATE OF PEACE.

BOSTON, JULY, 1875.

EXTRACTS FROM THE ANNUAL REPORT OF
THE LONDON PEACE SOCIETY, 1875.

GENERAL OPERATIONS.

The Society during the past year has pursued its usual course of operations at home, endeavoring to engage the attention and to enlist the sympathies of the public in favor of its principles and objects, by means of meetings and lectures and a diligent use of the press.

THE LADIES' PEACE AUXILIARY.

tinent of Europe, in the hope that a similar opinion might be created there, which could in like manner be brought to bear through the Legislatures on their respective governments.

The Committee cherish a confident hope that in the new National Assembly which must, ere long, be elected in France, there will be some men who will see that the question is at least faily brought for consideration before that body, and they have reason to believe that even in the German Parliament there are gentlemen of eminence and influence ready to associate themselves with this movement, if happily the illfeeling which the military class is perpetually fomenting between their own country and France, were allowed to subside. CUI BONO?

It may be asked, and has been asked by that sceptical and cynical generation which waits upon this enterprise, as Shimei waited upon David, What advantage is there of this movement in favor of arbitration? The answer is, "Much every way." It is surely an advantage that the conscience of Christian nations should be so far educated as to pronounce distinctDuring the year the Committee have received useful aid ly on the side of reason and justice against the reign of ter from the Ladies' Peace Auxiliary Society, under the active ror and brute force. It is surely an advantage that, in counHonorary Secretaryship of Mrs. Southey. This organization tries, the aggregate population of which amounts to 112 MIL(whose annual report is about to be issued) has held a regular LIONS of souls, the peoples, through their respective represenseries of meetings of its members and others. It has also car-tative assemblies, have already expressed their conviction that ried on a correspondence with ladies interested in the question, there is a more excellent way of adjusting international differin various parts of the kingdom and on the Continent. Con-ences than by the wholesale and mutual murder of war. It is sidering the great influence which women have it in their power surely an advantage that the governments who hold the destito exert in forming or modifying public opinion, it is of the nies of the millions in their hands, should be thus significantly utmost importance that their co-operation on behalf of peace reminded that those suffering millions are not satisfied with the should be, as far as possible, enlisted and increased. present system of regulating the relations and intercourse of States. And it is an immense advantage that, when the time comes, as come it will before long, when this question must be pressed upon the attention of those governments in a direct and practical form, those doing so will be able to back and fortify their case by pointing to the fact that the nations themselves have emphatically declared in favor of law against violence, and that the responsibility therefore of perpetuating the present state of anarchy and barbarism must rest distinctly on the rulers and not on the people.

WORKMEN'S PEACE ASSOCIATION.

The Workmen's Peace Association, entirely under the direction of a body of intelligent working men, has also been carrying on its operations during the year with constancy and zeal. The Committee desire to renew the expression of their sense of the extreme value of the co-operation of this Society. They can gain access to a class (and of all others, perhaps on this subject, the most important class, both from their numbers and from their being the greatest victims of, and sufferers by war) which can in no other way be so effectually reached and influenced.

GENERAL SURVEY.

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But we are frequently told that arbitration is only fitted to deal with one class of questions of a comparatively unimIn taking a general survey of the question of Peace and portant nature, which touch the material interests of nations, War at the present moment, it is impossible not to be struck but that it is not applicable to those in which points of honor with two classes of facts of a different and, indeed, of a total- and national susceptibility are involved. The answer is that ly opposite character, which meet the eye. One class of facts this is a perfectly gratuitous assumption, which is contradicted indicate the rapid growth of a sentiment in favor of peace by the notorious fact that questions in which national susceptiamong the nations of the civilized world. In proof of this the bilities were involved in a high degree, have been settled by Committee think they are fairly entitled to point to the increas- arbitration, of which the Alabama difficulty itself is a pregnant ing favor with which the principle of arbitration, as a substi- illustration. Everybody knows, who is acquainted with the tute for war, is regarded in so many quarters. Three years state of feeling that existed between England and the United ago the Committee of the Peace Society, in an appeal they is-States, especially on the part of the latter, that the question sued to their friends, indicated two modes of operation, which they thought might be undertaken with great advantage at that

time.

1. The first was, to bring the public opinion of our own country to bear upon the government, with a view that it should take the initiative in a movement for the establishment of a permanent system of international arbitration.

2. The other was to endeavor, to a larger extent than had hitherto been done, to promulgate peace principles on the con

was infinitely more one of national susceptibility than of pecuniary compensation. Precisely the same objection was for generations raised against submitting matters in dispute between individuals to the authority of law rather than to the strong arm. It was said that questions of honor could not be brought before courts, and hence the foolish and wicked usage of duelling was perpetuated almost to our own day. But happily we have lived to see the time in our own country at least, when all men regard with equal horror and scorn the idea that

it is more honorable to imbrue your hands in your neighbor's blood than to bring your case against him to the arbitration of reason and justice before the established tribunals of your country.

THE DARK SIDE.

They affirm that all They point to the very

you propose to do?" But, unhappily, the objectors have no answer at hand. One of our poets has graphically described a character which is the type of a large number of characters whom those who are trying to serve their generation have to encounter in their course :

war

"He is rich

In nothing else but difficulties and doubts.
You shall be told the evil of your scheme,
But not the scheme that's better. He is wise

In negatives-is skilful at erasures-
Expert in stepping backwards-an adept

At auguring eclipses. But admit

His apprehensions, and demand,' What then?'

And you shall find you've turned the blank leaf over."

undisguised or ill-disguised contempt. our efforts are impotent and abortive magnitude of the evil as the reason why it is useless to make any effort to arrest or alleviate it. We are not insensible to the difficulty of the work in which we are engaged, or the forBut we must now turn to look at the other, the less favora-midable obstacles which beset our path; but, in answer to ble side of the question. While the nations are thus every-those who object to or deride our efforts, we venture to ask, where, in their collective capacity, proclaiming their hatred of "If what we are doing is impracticable or insufficient, what do war and their intense longing for peace, and demanding of their governments that they should adopt practical means to avert the one and to establish the other, we find those in authority, led by the sinister example of two or three great powers, plunging deeper and deeper into that insane rivalry in armaments which is converting all Europe into one huge camp. Undoubtedly the reason for this is, that the people have suffered the supreme control of their affairs to fall into the hands of the military class, who, instead of being the servants have become the masters of the nations. Everywherein courts, in councils, in parliaments-their influence is predominant. Their fixed idea seems to be that the great end of human life is to fight; that God's rational creatures have been called into existence that they may be delivered into their hands to be drilled and manipulated for purposes of war; that all the interests of human society, all its industry and commerce, all its science and art, nay, all its education and religion, are important mainly as they can be made to serve the objects and feed the requirements of war. The consequence is that they bid fair to convert the whole population of Europe into two classes which may be described as beasts of prey and beasts of burden. They lay their hands on all the young men, just as they are rising into life, and, dragging them away from their homes, their callings and their opening prospects, compel them to enter the military service and to learn the art of homicide The burden is becoming so intolerable that tens of thousands of the rising youth of various European countries, especially of Germany, are escaping from it by expatriation, while thought-mock and make mouths at those who are trying to do something. ful men are anxiously asking what may be ultimately the result on the internal peace and order of these nations, when they find all the men of all classes in society, including the needy, the vicious, the discontented, 'rained to the use of: rms. It is, however, satisfactory to find that there is now a universal recognition of the fact, that the existence of these enormous armaments is a standing menace to the peace of the world. The old preposterous fallacy—that if you wish for peace you must prepare for war-has to be abandoned in presence of the flagrant fact, that Europe is kept in a state of perpetual disquietude and alarm just because it is filled with the inflammable materials supplied by the presence of these armed hosts and all the warlike appliances which are being multiplied on all hands.

THE REMEDY.

For the general evil which afflicts Europe there seems no remedy except that the people in all countries should insist upon wresting the control of their destinies out of the hands of the military class, who are becoming more and more the tyrants of the nations. The cry must be raised from one end of Europe to another, and that in a voice so universal and emphatic that the governments shall not dare to disregard it—the cry of "Disarm, disarm, disarm!" as the only thing that can save the nations from bankruptcy and barbarism.

And thus it is with those who find fault with our object or our mode of seeking to attain it. We say to them, "You cannot deny that the world is groaning beneath the curse of -that it is a custom which outrages justice, which dishonors religion, which blights human virtue and happiness. You cannot deny that the system of armed rivalry which exists in Europe is a system pregnant with innumerable evils-wasting the resources of nations, embarrassing the finances of States, jeopardizing the continuance of peace, oppressing the peoples with burdens of taxation and military service which are becoming more and more intolerable, and deluging all countries with a black flood of immorality and vice; and what do you do, or intend to do?" And the answer is, "Nothing." Yes, they attempt to do nothing but to stand by-to flout and

Well, we prefer being classed with the workers rather than the mockers! The workers may accomplish something, the mockers can accomplish nothing. And we believe we are accomplishing something, and shall accomplish something; for though we have opposed to us the forces of tradition, custom, interest, prejudice and passion, yet we believe we have on our side the eternal principles of righteousness, the yearning hopes of humanity, the obvious tendencies of civilization and the declared purpose of Heaven; for it has been proclaimed of old, through the mouth of Him who cannot lie, that the time shall come when "wars shall cease to the ends of the earth," and when there shall be abundance of peace so long as the sun and moon endure."

PROGRESS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. ABSTRACT OF PAPER BY PRESIDENT ANGELL OF MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY.

The object of this paper is to state succinc ly the gains which have been made in international law since the time of Grotius, to glance at the main obstacles which oppose its further progress, to call to mind the encouraging facts in its present state, and to inquire what is indicated by the present apparent drift of thought among statesmen and publicis's concerning change in the law.

I. In reviewing the two centuries subsequent to the publicaself-tion of Grotius' great work on Peace and War, I at once avail myself of the aid furnished to me by the summary which that high authority, Henry Wheaton, gives in his history of

The Committee are perfectly aware that there are many styled practical men who look upon the peace movement with

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