The best amusement for our morning's meal.
The poor wretch who has learnt his only prayers
From curses, who knows scarce words enough
To ask a blessing from his heavenly Father,
Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute,
Technical in victories and defeat,

And all our dainty terms for fratricide;

Terms which we trundle smoothly o'er our tongues,

Like mere abstractions, empty sounds, to which
We join no feeling, and attach no form!

As if the soldier died without a wound;
As if the fibres of his godlike frame

Were gored without a pang; as if the wretch
Who fell in battle, doing bloody deeds,
Passed off to heaven, translated, not killed;
As though he had no wife to pine for him,
No God to judge him? Therefore evil days
Are coming on us, O my countrymen!
And what if all-avenging Providence,
Strong and retributive, should make us know
The meaning of our words, force us to feel
The desolation and the agony

Of our fierce doings?

DANGER OF ARMED DEFENCE.

It

Two officers in Her Majesty's service, proceeding homewards recently about midnight, in the neighborhood of London, were violently assaulted by a drunken man, who, in the scuffle was stabbed to the heart with a sword-cane by one of the officers, and was left lying dead in the road. appears by the evidence on the inquest, that the officer, Lieutenant Clavering, though apprehensive, as he said, that he might have pricked the man," had no idea of the fatal injury his assailant had sustained, and immediately on seeing a report in the papers of the finding of the dead body, he at once gave information to the police authorities, and expressed the deepest concern at what had occurred.

We notice this unhappy case, because the comments upon it which have appeared in some of the daily papers, admit of a meaning and application much more important and significant than perhaps the writers intended. The practice of carrying deadly weapons of defence is condemned in the strongest terms, and a more stringent law, if necessary, is suggested, making it a penal offence for a person to carry any such weapon as that used with such fatal effect by Lieutenant Clavering. It is argued, that the practice of carrying deadly weapons conduces far more to the danger of society than to individual security. The possible death of a wretched drunken brawler in such a fray, is held of so much moment as to call for a prohibitory law, by which every citizen shall be forbidden to arm himself in his walks with weapons of defence dangerous to the lives of others.

We rejoice to see such a position taken by our journalists; but surely the arguments thus employed to justify individual disarmament, apply with tenfold force to the necessity and duty of disarming states. Better,' thus runs the argument, that men should incur some personal danger, or be exposed to an occasional affront, than they should be entrusted with a weapon to strike their assailant dead at their feet.' By the same rule, better that nations should run some peril, or exercise mutual forbearance

under offence, than that they should seek defence at the cannon's mouth, or be always ready to do wholesale murder whenever a cry of vengeance rings through the land.

No government should be entrusted with the dangerous liberty to carry arms. The abuse of that liberty is the necessary consequence of its use. The sword may be drawn avowedly for the purpose of defence; it will speedily be wielded for purposes of aggression, of conquest or revenge. A people may rush to arms, with "Liberty" for their watchword; but in almost every war so commenced, it has been Liberty that has received its death-wound, and Despotism that has reaped the substantial fruits of the struggle.

Nations have too long dared the penalties of their great standing armaments, and those penalties attest the folly of such daring. It is time now that enlightened and Christian communities should begin to dare the policy of disarmament, to refuse to lift the sword one against another, and learn the art of war no more. The dangers of such a policy are imaginary; for it is enjoined by a lawgiver whose precepts are divine. Yet the very journals which have so judicously and powerfully argued the necessity of individual disarmament, have been the foremost to cry out for the increase of England's war establishment. More soldiers! more ships! more batteries! It never occurs to these alarmists, that increase of armament means increase of danger, increase of blood, increase of taxation; and the final result no man can pretend to foretel. In the midst of this infatuation the words of the Psalmist occur to us: "Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will remember the name of the Lord our God." — E. F. in Lond. Her. of Peace.

SCRAPS FROM CARLYLE AND SPURGEON. CARLYLE'S DEMINITION OF A BATTLE. - A terrible conjugation of the verb to kill I kill, thou killest, he kills; we kill, ye kill, they kill, all

kill."

-

SPURGEON ON PEACE. I cherish the fond hope that I may live to see the day when the monuments in Trafalgar-square, which now bear the statues of a Nelson and a Napier, great warriors though they were, shall have in their place a Whitefield and a Wesley. The day is coming when Peace shall triumph over War; and I hail the dawn of that happy time with delight.

HOW WAR EXPENSES ARE INCREASED:

OR THE USUAL PLEAS OF POLITICIANS FOR MORE EXPENDITURES ON THE ARMY AND NAVY.

THE Army and Navy, the great engines employed by despots to compass their ends, are also the chief tools of demagogues under a popular government for gaining their selfish purposes. A minute analysis of our own political history for the last fifty years would very clearly and strikingly show this; and from a late able article in the London Herald of Peace, we take some very pregnant facts and figures illustrating similar tricks of English politicians :

"The cost of our naval and military establishments for the present year is £22,520,000. In the year 1835, under the government of the Duke of Wellington, it was £11,750,000, showing an increase in the sum now expended of very nearly one-half. What sound reason can be asssigned for this enormous increase? It is not the war in India; for that is to be

defrayed out of the resources of India. So at least we are told; and it is very certain that no part of the Indian expenditure is included in the twenty-two millions mentioned above. It is not the growth of our colonial possessions; for so far as we know, no colony of any importance has been added to our empire since 1835. It is not the extension of our commerce; for in those parts of the world where it has been most extended, it requires no protection whatever from our armed forces, and receives none. How, then, has this prodigious increase taken place? Why, every two or three years within the period we have named, some convenient pretext or panic has been got up just before the voting of the annual estimates, under cover of which a considerable addition has been made to our military establishments, professedly only to meet and ride out that spe ial temporary emergency, though, when the pretended emergency is ast, the augmented war preparations, instead of being relinquished, are made perma

nent.

We will cite here a few facts illustrative of the manner in which the business is managed. In 1836, there was a great apprehension felt or feigned of a Russian invasion; an apprehension which every body now can see was utterly groundless and ridiculous. Immediately, there was an addition of 5,000 seamen to the navy. That bugbear disappeared in a few months; but the 5,000 men remained. In 1838, there was a rebellion in Canada, the result of our own gross misgovernment. That gave rise to an increase of 8,000 to our army. The rebellion has long subsided, and Canada is tranquil and happy in the enjoyment of the privileges of self-government; but the 8,000 were not reduced. In 1839, there was a Chartist insurrection at Newport; and straightway there was an addition to the army of 5,000 men rank and file. That domestic disturbance soon passed away, and the country has been for years in profound tranquility; but the 5,000 men, called out to meet that emergency, were not diminished. In 1840 and 1841, there was a quarrel with France about Syria, and with America about the affair of M'Leod; and there was an increase of 5,000 sailors made at that time. Those differences have long been settled and healed; and yet the 5,000 additional sailors remain. In 1842, we had a dispute with America, about the Maine Boundary; 4,000 men more were added to our marine. But Lord Ashburton went to America, and returned with a treaty, settling amicably the whole question about the Boundary; but the 4,000 sailors were not reduced. In 1846, there was a panic of a French war about Mr. Prichard and Tahiti, which kept the two countries in a fever for many months, and was used, of course, as an irresistible plea for augmenting our armaments. In 1845, we had another dispute with America about the Oregon Boundary. Well, in that year we had an increase in the estimates of £1,700,000 in the army, navy and ordinance. But the Oregon question was satisfactorily adjusted by Sir Rober Peel's government in 1846; still the increased armament was not reduced. In 1846, we had a diplomatic quarrel with France about the Spanish marriages, which, together with the pamphlet of Prince de Joinville, led to an increase of our armaments that year by £1,200,000. In 1849, we had a tremendous panicthe Duke of Wellington, Lord Ellismere, and Mr. Pigou, the gunpowdermaker, persuading us that Louis Phillipe and the French were going to invade us. Well, we had another increase of the army and ordnance in that year of £1,000,000. But the revolution put and end to the possibility of Louis Phillipe invading England, except as a poor homeless fugitive exile. But then the revolution itself was going to invade us, and therefore our war establishments must be kept up! Then came the elevation of Louis Napoleon to power, which was the signal for another terrible panic, which nothing but a dose of 80,000 militia men could allay. Notwithstanding, how

ever, the embodiment of this 'brave domestic force,' the panic was still kept up, so that we had in the year 1852, 5,000 sailors and 1,500 marines added at an expense of £600,000.

Now, let it be observed, that every one of these panics, about invasion of war, ended in nothing; but the prodigious armaments they called forth were still kept up, until the expenses of the army and navy have, in less than twenty-five years, been about doubled, all resulting from these successive pleas of necessity about meeting, danger that in every case vanished in smoke.

Finally came the Russian War, upon which we expended £100,000,000, and 40,000 human lives, and which was undertaken, we are told, in order, by one great effort, to win security for ourselves and for Europe, against the irruption of the northern barbarians. It was concluded by a treaty of peace, in which it was supposed we had extorted a material guarantee for that security from the power whom we professed to fear, to say nothing of solemn engagements of perpetual peace and friendship' with our late foe, and a most affectionate and eternal alliance with the other states that had fought with us in the war. And yet in spite of all these securities, covenants and friendships, bought by such fearful and costly sacrifices, when the war ended, instead of returning to our previous state, as regards our naval and military establishments, we found ourselves saddled with an increase in our estimates of between four and five millions sterling as compared with what they were before the war.

Well, but are we satisfied now? Is it felt, after all these prodigious augmentations going on from year to year, until they have been doubled in twenty-three years, that at last we are in a condition of adequate defence, and may enjoy some sense of security, as the fruit of the treasure we have lavished with so prodigal a hand? Security! So far otherwise, that if we may believe certain of our public oracles, we have never been, in the whole course of our history, in such imminent peril, in such an utterly helpless and defenceless plight! If we ask what then has become of all the money we have paid for purposes of defence, amounting, even apart from the Russian war expenditure, to some £730,000,000 since the peace of 1815, we are told that we are a set of impertinent, mean-spirited, sordidminded fellows to ask such questions."

What enormous expenses! Here we have the military establishment of England increased in little over twenty years more than $50,000,000 a year during a time of profound peace; more than the whole cost of even that aristocratic, expensive government would have been without this miserable suicidal, war-system. In forty-three years, she spent, besides the cost of her Crimean war, no less than $3,650,000,000, an average of some eighty-five millions a year! Just try to conceive this vast sum of $3,650,000,000 if you can. Why, it would take a man, at the rate of a hundred dollars a minute, ten hours a day to count it all no less than one hundred and ninety-five years! It is a marvel how England has so long borne such a load; and it proves the indomitable force and elasticity of her character, beyond that of any other people on earth.

It is more than time for us to take warning from such an example. We are going on in still more gigantic strides, considering our age; and, if our people do not hold back our politicians from their reckless schemes of expenditure chiefly for war purposes, we shall ere long equal, if we do not exceed, in this respect, even the monarchies of Europe.

CIVIL GOVERNMENT:

PAUL'S VIEW OF THE POWERS THAT BE.

IN reading the last Advocate, I find your worthy correspondent, L. C. R, laboring under what I regard an error, and a very common one; one which, as a misinterpretation of scripture, has done more perhaps than any other to keep back good men, especially the clergy. from active and efficient co-operation in the cause of peace. I speak of L. C. R. as a worthy correspondent, for he very happily expresses the views I have long entertained on his theme until you reh p. 235, sec. 3. What I regard his error is, that civil officers derive their official power directly from God, irrespective of the manner or agents of their appointment.

Now, I believe the true view, and that corroborated by scripture, is that man, as a rational being, is bound by the law of God, as well as by the law of his nature, to govern himself; that law and civil government, rightly understood and construted, is but a contribution and combination of the governmental powers of a great body of self-governing individuals to supply the lack of such among them as are too weak or too wicked to govern themselves. "The law is not made for the righteous man, but for the lawless." I regard it pertinent to a State to form its own organic law, ever keeping, however, within the purview of the Moral Law, and to require its agents to officiate in their several departments in accordance with it. An officer, in his acceptance of office, is equally bound to see that nothing is required of him in a constitution inconsistent with the Moral Law.

This, which is the prima facie view of the subject, is, I think also corroborated by scripture. See 1 Samuel, 8: 7--9. Luke 22: 25, 26, and Prov. 16:32. But as a few expressions in the section to which I am replying, are taken from Romans 13, and as that scripture is o'ten used to sanction government, abstractly considered, and clothe it with divine authority, and the power of binding men's consciences, I will give my views on the passage:

I think it was designed for a concrete case. It was addressed to a church composed of Christian Jews, and those converted from paganism to the worship of the God of the Jews. Both classes had been brought up under the full persuasion that civil government, and its laws, derived their binding force from some invisible, superhuman power. Hence their scruples about rendering obedience to the Roman power, lest they should thereby pay worship to Jupiter. The apostle, after closing the doctrinal part of his letter, as in chapter 11, proceeds to practical applications and exhortations. Among other subjects, he speaks of allegiance thus, (as I think it may be rendered without violence to the true sense), Admit e ch individual to be subject to the authorities. For there is no power, but of God, (none of Jupiter.) The present existing power is by the providential arrangement of God. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth (not Jupiter) the providential arrangement of God; and they that resist, shall receive to themselves condemnation from the ruler. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but the evil. Wouldst thou, then, not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same; for by God's arrangement, he is a minister to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; because he beareth not penal power in vain, for he is, under God's providential arrangement, an avenger executing wrath upon every one that doeth evil. So ye see, as the good is enjoined, and the evil forbidden by him, ye are laid under the necessity of being subject not only for fear of wrath, but also for conscience sake. For like reason, pay ye tribute also, (tribute-paying to Roman authority being regarded as a