HON. WILLIAM JAY, PRESIDENT. VICE PRESIDENTS. Hon. T. Frelinghuysen, LL.D. New Hon. Thos. W. Williams, N.London, Ct. Brunswick, N. J. Rev. A. P. Peabody, D. D., Ports mouth, N. H. Jos. E. Worcester, LL. D., Cambridge, Wm. B. Crosby, Esq., New York. Mass. Rev. C. E. Stowe, D.D., Andover, Ms. Hon. Robert Rantoul, Beverly, Mass. "S. C. Phillips, Salem, 66 S. V. S. Wilder, Esq., 66 Henry Dwight, Esq., Geneva, N. Y. Hon. Gerritt Smith, Peterboro, Isaac Collins, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. "A. Walker, N. Brookfield, Mass. Wm. H. Allen, M.D., LL. D. “ "S.Fessenden, LL.D,Portland, Me. Rev. H. Malcom, D. D., Lewisburg, Rev. T.C.Upham, D.D., Brunswick,Me. N. Y. 66 DIRECTORS. Rev. J. B. Waterbury, D. D., Boston, Hon. Julius A. Palmer, Boston, Mass. Timothy Gilbert, Esq., Jacob Bancroft, Esq., 66 L. T. Stoddard, Esq., William Jenks, D.D., " 66 66 John Field, Esq., Franklin Rand, Esq., James Tolman, Esq., Hon. S. Willard, Cambridge, Benj. Greenleaf, Esq., Bradford, 66 66 A. L. Stone, Alpheus Crosby, W. C. Brown, Esq., ADVOCATE OF PEACE. AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER, 1856. THE EVILS OF WAR INCREASING. THE impression is very common, that the evils of war are slowly yet surely diminishing. This we take to be true in one respect, but false in others— true, that actual war is much less frequent now than formerly, but entirely false, that, when it does come, it is less wicked or less mischievous. Previous to the overthrow of Napoleon at Waterloo, Europe had seldom been for centuries free from actual war more than ten or fifteen years at at a time, while she has enjoyed since that period nearly forty years of general peace, not indeed between her rulers and their subjects, but between her different nations; a longer cessation than ever before from international strife. When war, however, does occur, it is easy to see how the general progress of the age must serve to increase alike its guilt and its evils. Two ministers of the gospel could not fight a duel without a much worse excitement of bad passions than ordinarily attends a renconter between professed duelists. It is possible to suppose a combat between the latter with only a slight tinge of malice; but the former could not so far forget the sacred proprieties of their office as to engage in such a contest without a degree of anger, rage and vengeance that must surcharge the soul with guilt before God. So the nations of Christendom, enlightened as they now are on this subject, and improved in their general character, cannot be goaded into the death-grapples of actual war without a much deeper and stronger excitement of their bad passions than would once have sufficed for the purpose. If they fight at all, it must be under impulses that would make them for the time a sort of human hyenas, all the more fierce and desperate from the better general character of the combatants. You may partially regulate such contests, but you can no more change their nature than you can that of robbery or murder. They must remain essentially the same always and everywhere. A Waterloo or a Sebastopol in the millennium, or on the very plains of hea |