PROGRESS ALREADY MADE IN THE CAUSE OF PEACE. THERE can be no doubt that progress has been made in the cause of Peace; but precisely how much, it is impossible to say with entire confidence. The common, popular tests of success are not fully applicable to the case. It tells not, as in kindred enterprises, of so many missionaries sent forth, of so many churches gathered, or of so many Bibles or tracts put in circulation. Such indices of progress we cannot expect in a cause like this. Like leaven, it vanishes from view in the very act of gaining its purpose by absorption in the general mind; and if we would learn how much has actually been accomplished, we must trace, with patient care, the change that has been gradually, almost imperceptibly, taking place in men's minds on the subject through a series of years, and observe the agencies set permanently at work to recast, in a new, more Christian mould, the general sentiments and practices of the civilized world.

There is, indeed, no small gain involved in the simple fact, that the question has been brought distinctly before the public mind. Such a fact draws a great deal after it. It teems with far-reaching, world-wide results. It sets the ball in motion. It starts inquiry, and puts men upon asking why a custom, fraught with such a multitude of acknowledged evils, is still continued. It loosens the hold which war has so long had upon the support of mankind, and thus compels an examination of its claims. For more than fifty centuries had these claims been admitted without serious protest or question; and a great deal has been won for this reform by merely bringing and keeping the subject before the public. It is the first step and entering wedge for the overthrow of all hoary, deep-rooted, inveterate abuses. It is John the Baptist pioneering the way for the promised Messiah.

Few are fully aware how much has already been gained in this respect. Time was, not very long ago, when warriors received, with little challenge of their claims, the admiration of the world; when the idea of abolishing war was scouted as the wildest of Utopian dreams; when no press, hardly a pulpit, denounced this trade of blood as at all incompatible with our religion of peace; when the sword, as arbitor of disputes between nations, was considered no less necessary and proper than courts of law between individuals; and when ministers of the gospel, otherwise excellent, preached in favor of war as zealously as any now do in support of civil government, and, like the pious and eloquent Davies, urged their hearers to cherish a war-spirit as derived from God, as a sacred, heaven-born fire.' Such used to be the general tone; but how much is it already altered for the better! The evidences of such change meet us on every hand. Pass over this land, or any other in Christendom; converse with any and every class of men; listen to the utterances of the pulpit, or read the issues of the press; and at every turn will you find views far more pacific than formerly prevailed. How wide the response now to Jeremy Bentham, when he said, "Nothing can be worse than the general feeling on the

subject of war. The church, tne state, the ruling few, the subject many, all seem in this case to have combined to patronize vice and crime in their widest sphere. The period will assuredly arrive when better instructed generations will require all the evidence of history to credit, that in times deeming themselves enlightened human beings should have been honored in the very proportion of the misery they caused, and the mischiefs they perpetrated; that men there were, men deemed worthy of popular recompense, who, for some pecuniary retribution, hired themselves out to do any deeds of pillage, devastation and murder which might be demanded of them, and that such men-destroyers were marked out as the eminent and illustrious, as the worthy of laurels and monuments, of eloquence and poetry." So said Lord Brougham, "I abominate war as unchristian. I hold it to be the greatest of all crimes. I deem it to include all others-violence, blood, rapine, fraud, everything that can deform the character, and debase the name of man."

Such views as these, once so rare, are now becoming common, and must in time undermine the whole war-system. It cannot live long under the general frown of mankind; and it is certain that the current of popular opinion is setting strongly against it, and even now tolerates it only as an alleged necessity. War is clearly at a large discount; and national competition is fast passing from the field of battle to those departments of science, art and industry which procure wealth, and promote social refinement and happiness. It is a doomed institution; its overthrow, sooner or later, is inevitable; and the only question is, when and how?

This depends of course on public opinion; and many are the agencies already at work to recast that opinion in the right mould. Good men, in various countries, have been since 1815 combining in this work; and these associations, embracing some of the purest and most gifted minds in Christendom, have begun to put in operation a variety of simple yet effective means. They employ the living voice, and are sending forth popular lecturers. They wield the press, and are circulating far and wide periodicals, pamphlets and tracts. They have also published thousands and tens of thousands of volumes on the subject; and some of these, written with singular ability, have gone to the libraries of the learned, to the halls of legislation, and the palaces of kings. Millions of pages have been, from year to year, scattered over the most enlightened portions of Christendom, and sent occasionally into the four quarters of the globe. The power of the press is proverbial; and, if continued thus in behalf of this cause, must it not in time work out the change of public opinion requisite for our purpose ?

There are other agencies, scarcely less powerful, conspiring to the same result. The pulpit is at length awaked somewhat to its duty on this subject; and, though most ministers may still sleep over it, yet not a few are now preaching peace as no less a part of the gospel than repentance or faith. The periodical press, that engine of such ubiquitous power over public opinion, is beginning to discuss in earnest this grand question of

the age and the world. It is stirring more and more the conscience of the Christian community; and not only individual churches, but ecclesiastical bodies representing almost every considerable denomination, have passed strong resolves in favor of its claims. The subject has likewise been brought before not a few seminaries of learning; and in these great nurseries of opinion and character, it is attracting attention, calling forth discussion, and thus raising up youthful friends destined one day to become its powerful and triumphant champions.

Still mo e, we have gone to the very seat of political power, appealed to the men who decide every question of peace or war, and remonstrated with them, in some cases with success, against a threatened resort to arms. In the name of religion, humanity and common sense, we have protested against such a brutal, insane, suicidal method of settling national disputes. We have shown them a far more excellent way. We have demonstrated the possibility of superseding war by rational, peaceful means, and urged them to adopt such substitutes in place of the cannon and the sword. Especially have we petitioned them to obviate all necessity for war, either by incorporating in treaties a pledge to settle their disputes in the last resort by reference to umpires mutually chosen, or by calling a congress of nations to frame an authoritative code of international law, and establish an international tribunal for the interpretation of such law, and for the peaceful adjustment of all difficulties between nations as now between individuals.

Thus is the leaven slowly yet surely working; and already does public opinion begin to prevent the return of actual war, and to put the system itself under ban. Step by step, it is yielding to the will of the people, as the real ruler under every form of government. It is in truth their voice that even now decides virtually every question of peace or war; nor is there in all Christendom a despot that would venture to draw the sword without first feeling in some way the popular pulse. Here is a most salutary check, a great safety-valve; and just as fast as the people become enlightened on the subject, will rulers find it difficult, and ultimately impossible, to play this fearful game of blood. Such light the people are slowly yet surely obtaining. The question is coming more and more before them; and already is it discussed by high and low, by old and young, by the farmer, the mechanic and the merchant, in the pulpit, the senate and the forum, in literary societies, popular lyceums, and seminaries of learning, in volumes and pamphlets, in quarterlies and monthlies, in weekly and daily newspapers.

What, then, is the natural result of all this? Peace is becoming a paramount, stereotyped demand. Public opinion is calling louder than ever for other means than the sword for the settlement of all national disputes. Such substitutes are clearly possible; and already are difficulties which would once have plunged nations in fierce, protracted wars, coming to be adjusted with scarce a thought of appealing to arms. Negotiation, arbitration, and other pacific measures, are actually taking the place of the sword

in nine cases out of ten where it was formerly used. War is ceasing to be regarded as the only abiter of national disputes; the leading cabinets of Christendom are gradually adopting for this purpose pacific expedients as their established policy; and should this policy continue, it will ere long suffice, far better than fleets and armies, to keep its nations in assured, permanent peace.

Is here no progress? It is impossible to say precisely how much has been accomplished by such means; but we may with confidence refer to some results of vast importance about which nobody can doubt. From 1815 to 1854, from the battle of Waterloo to the war in the Crimea, Europe for a wonder remained in general peace, in all, nearly forty years; a longer period of rest from war than Christendom had ever known before. So with our own country on a smaller scale. Besides our exposure to war with France in 1835, we have, in not less than three marked instances, been on the very brink of a war with England, and in each case our escape was owing very much to the altered tone of popular sentiment created by special efforts in the cause of peace. Provocations not half as great, had often led to long and bloody wars; and had public opinion been what it was fifty years before, nothing could have averted that most deplorable of all calamities.

Here we might, if we chose, rest our argument. If such facts do not prove, beyond cavil or doubt, actual, though not full success in this cause, we should like to know what can ever prove it. On any other subject such proof would be deemed ample and decisive. Had no duel been fought in all our Southern States for a quarter of a century, would not this alone, in contrast with their previous history, have shown a steady and sure decline of that practice? . Had there been no case of actual intoxication in our whole country for forty years, would not that single fact have proved the cause of temperance signally successful? Why then should we not regard the general peace of Christendom for forty years, as equally decisive of the success of the Peace Cause?

But we have done more than merely prevent actual war; we have begun the process of abolishing the custom itself. Here is the surest and most hopeful index of progress in this reform. We are gradually reaching the very hinges on which the whole thing turns. We might stop a hundred duels, or save a thousand drunkards from a fit of intoxication, without making any perceptible or effective impression on the general practice of duelling or of intemperance. We must break up the usage or custom; for nothing short of this will suffice. Just so on the subject of peace. We must change the general, permanent habits, and train nations, like individ. uals, to settle their disputes, and regulate their whole intercourse, without resort to arms. All this we are doing, not indeed at once, for that would be impossible, but faster than could have been reasonably expected.

Observe how far the sword is coming in fact to be superseded by peaceful expedients. A dispute between ourselves and Great Britain was refer

red in 1822, to the Emperor in Russia, a similar one between the same parties to the King of the Netherlands in 1827, and matters in controversy between us and Mexico, to the King of Prussia in 1838, in each case preventing thereby a resort to arms. This practice is widely extending; and the friends of peace have been making special efforts, with fair prospects of full success in time, to bring nations into the habit of setting all their disputes by reference to umpires, instead of an appeal to the sword. The principle is received with marked favor. So long ago as 1849, Richard Cobden, at the call of more than 200,000 petitioners in England, moved in the House of Commons a resolution in favor of this scheme, and obtained for it more votes than had ever been given by that body to any new measure at its start. In our own country, quite a number of our State legislatures have passed unanimous resolutions in its favor; and in Congress it was recommended, "that our government, whenever practicable, should secure, in its treaties with other nations, a provision for referring to the decision of umpires all future misunderstandings that cannot be satifactorily adjusted by amicable negotiations." Already have we begun to form treaties on this principle; and the Paris Congress, which in April, 1856, terminated the Crimean war, gave it their full and decided endorsement. Here was in effect the voice of all Europe; and "the Plenipotentiaries did not hesitate to express, in the name of their governments, the wish that states, between which any serious misunderstanding may arise, should have recourse to the good offices of a friendly power." Thus is arbitration gradually taking the place of the sword; nor is the hope at all unreasonable, that it may in time render war as unnecessary between nations as duels are between individuals.

Such a result, however, is not to be reached at once; and meanwhile the influences, set at work chiefly by the friends of peace, are mitigating in many ways the evils of war. When we began our labors, privateering was everywhere recognized as no less a part of the custom than its seiges or its battles; but the Crimean war opened with a proclamation, that no letters of marque would be issued to privateers, and at its close the Paris Congress, April, 1856, unanimously decreed its perpetual abolition. Such a degree of success the friends of peace could hardly have expected so soon; and had they never done anything more, this alone would have compensated them, a thousand times over, for all their efforts. Yet this is only one of the meliorations secured by their influence in the law of nations; for the same Congress decided, that there should be no blockade without a fleet sufficient to enforce it, that all neutrals shall pass unmolested in war as in peace, that the flag of every country shall protect whatever it covers, and that nothing shall be liable to capture but articles strictly contraband of war.

Now, we are far from supposing that all these proofs of progress in the direction of peace can insure any part of Christendom against the occasional return of war; but they certainly do prove that this great reform is already started with fair prospects of success, and is even now doing not a