and to put perpetual desolation as a barrier between him and those, against whom the faith which holds the moral elements of the world together, was no protection.

He became, at length, so confident of his force, and so collected in his might, that he made no secret whatever of his dreadful resolution. Having terminated his disputes with every enemy, he drew from every quarter whatever a savage ferocity could add to his new rudiments in the arts of destruction. Compounding all the materials of fury, havoc, and desolation into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of the mountains. While the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which blackened all the horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatic.

Then ensued a scene of woe, the like of which no eye had seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell. All the horrors of war before known or heard of, were mercy to that new havoc. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, and destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants, flying from their flaming villages, in part were slaughtered.

Others, without regard to sex, to age, to rank; fathers torn from children, husbands from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry, and amid the goading spears of drivers, and the tramping of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity, in an unknown and hostile land. Those who were able to evade this tempest, fled to the walled cities. But escaping from fire, sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine.

For eighteen months, without intermission, this destruction raged from the gates of Madras to the gates of Tanjore. So completely did these masters in their art, Hyder Ali, and his son, absolve themselves of their impious vow, that when the British armies traversed the Carnatic, hundreds of miles in all directions, they did not see one man, not one woman, not one child, not one four footed beast of any description whatever. One dead, uniform silence reigned over the whole region. FROM BURKE.

CCLXXXII.-SPEECH ON STANDING ARMIES.

WE have heard a great deal about parliamentary armies, and about an army continued from year to year. I have always been, and always shall be, against a standing army of any kind. To me it is a terrible thing, whether under that of parliamentary, or any other designation. A standing army is a body of men, distinct from the body of the people. They are governed by different laws. Blind obedience and an entire submission to the orders of their commanding officer is their only principle.

The nations around us are already enslaved, and have been enslaved by those very means. By means of their standing armies they have, every one, lost their liberties. It is indeed impossible that the liberties of the people can be preserved in any country, where a numerous standing army is kept up. Shall we then take any of our measures from the examples of our neighbors? On the contrary, from their misfortunes we ought to learn to avoid those rocks on which they have split.

It signifies nothing to tell me, that our army is commanded by such gentlemen as can not be supposed to join in any measures for enslaving their country. It may be so. I hope it is so. I have a very good opinion of many gentlemen now in the army. I believe they would not join in any such measures. But their lives are uncertain; nor can we be sure how long they may be continued in command. They may be all dismissed in a moment, and proper tools of power put in their room.

Besides, we know the passions of men. We know how dangerous it is to trust the best of men with too much power. Where was there ever a braver army than that under Julius Cæsar? Where was there ever an army that had served their country more faithfully? That army was commanded generally by the best citizens of Rome, by men of great fortune and figure in their country. Yet that army

enslaved their country.

The affections of the soldiers toward their country, the

honor and integrity of the under-officers, are not to be depended on. By the military law, the administration of justice is so quick, and the punishment so severe, that neither officer nor soldier dares offer to dispute the orders of his supreme commander. He must not consult his own inclinations. If an officer were commanded to pull his own father out of this House, he must do it. He dares not disobey. Immediate death would be the sure consequence of the least grumbling.

If an officer were sent into the Court of Requests, accompanied by a body of musketeers with screwed bayonets, and with orders to tell us what we ought to do, and how we were to vote-I know what would be the duty of this House-I know it would be our duty to order the officer to be taken and hanged up at the door of the lobby. But, I doubt much if such a spirit could be found in this House, or in any House of Commons that will ever be in England.

I talk not of imaginary things. I talk of what has happened to an English House of Commons, and from an English army; not only from an English army, but from an army that was raised by that very House of Commons, an army that was paid by them, and an army that was commanded by generals appointed by them.

Therefore, do not let us vainly imagine, that an army raised and maintained by anthority of parliament will always be submissive to them. If an army be so numerous as to have it in their power to overawe the parliament, they will be submissive, as long as the parliament does nothing to disoblige their favorite general. But, when that case happens, I am afraid, that, instead of the parliament's dismissing the army, the army will dismiss the parliament. FROM PULTNEY.

NEW EC. S.-41

CCLXXXIII.-THE SPIRIT OF PEACE.

WAR will yet cease from the earth; for God Himself has said it shall. An infidel might doubt this; but a Christian can not. If God has taught any thing in the Bible, he has taught peace. If He has promised any thing there, He has promised peace, ultimate peace, to the whole world. Unless the night of a godless skepticism should settle on my soul, I must believe on, and hope on, and work on, until the nations, from pole to pole, shall beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruninghooks, and learn war no more.

I see the dawn of that coming day. I see it in the new and better spirit of the age. I see it in the press, the pulpit, and the school. I see it in every factory, and steamship, and rail-car. I see it in every enterprise of Christian benevolence and reform. I see it in all the means of general improvement, in all the good influences. of the age, now at work over the whole earth. Yes; there is a spirit abroad that can never rest until the war-demon is hunted from the habitations of men.

This spirit is pushing its enterprises and improvements in every direction. It is unfurling the white flag of commerce on every sea, and bartering its commodities in every port. It is laying every power of nature, as well as the utmost resources of human ingenuity, under the largest contributions possible, for the general welfare of mankind. It hunts out from your cities' darkest alleys the outcasts of poverty and crime, for relief and reform. Nay, it goes down into the barred and bolted dungeons of penal vengeance, and brings up its callous, haggard victims, into the sunlight of a love that pities even while it smites.

This spirit is everywhere rearing hospitals for the sick, retreats for the insane, and schools that all but teach the dumb to speak, the deaf to hear, and the blind to see. It harnesses the fire-horse in his iron gear, and sends him panting, with hot but unwearied breath, across empires, and continents, and seas. It catches the very lightning of

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heaven, and makes it bear messages, swift, almost as thought, from city to city, from country to country, round the globe.

The spirit that subsidizes all these to the godlike work of a world's salvation, and employs them to scatter the blessed truths of the gospel, thick as leaves of autumn, or dew-drops of morning, all over the earth; the spirit that is thus weaving the sympathies and interests of our whole race into the web of one vast fraternity, and stamping upon it, in characters bright as sunbeams, those simple yet glorious truths, the fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man;-is it possible for such a spirit to rest, until it shall have swept war from the earth forever?

CCLXXXIV.-OUR REPUBLIC AN EXPERIMENT.

WE are summoned to new energy and zeal by the high nature of the experiment we are appointed in Providence to make, and the grandeur of the theater on which it is to be performed. At a moment of deep and general agitation in the old world, it pleased Heaven to open this new continent, as a last refuge of humanity. The attempt has begun, and is going on, far from foreign corruption, on the broadest scale, and under the most benignant prospects; and it certainly rests with us to solve the great problem in human society; to settle, and that forever, the momentous question, whether mankind can be trusted with a purely popular system of government?

One might almost think, without extravagance, that the departed wise and good, of all places and times, are looking down from their happy seats to witness what shall now be done by us; that they who lavished their treasures and their blood, of old, who spake and wrote, who labored, fought, and perished, in the one great cause of freedom and truth, are now hanging, from their orbs on high, over the last solemn experiment of humanity. As I have wandered over the spots once the scene of their labors, and mused among the prostrate columns of their senate-houses