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wrong, and God himself an Almighty tyrant for not letting the devi and his allies have their own way with impunity. Our rulers may not be wise in every measure; but, constituted as all governments now are, they could not do essentially otherwise than they have done, without betraying their trust. The question was, whether the government, or the rebels banded for its overthrow, should rule; and on this issue, our rulers were allowed no choice, but were compelled, if not arrant knaves, or equally arrant cowards, to meet and crush the rebellion, or perish in the attempt.

Here, then, is our conclusion. War in every form we abhor as unchristian; but our principles of peace were never meant to smother our sense of justice, or tempt us either to apologize for crime, or refuse assent to its condign punishment. Peace with us does not mean covert rebellion; nor can government, in our view of its legitimate province and functions, ever lead to any violence except what may be necessarily involved in a proper, indispensable execution of its laws. Such enforcement of law ought not to be called war, nor be allowed to share any of the moral elements that belong to war.

IS NOW NO TIME TO WORK FOR PEACE?

At a time like the present, we must of course expect the cause of Peace, always the most difficult of reforms, to be environed with peculiar difficulties. It is not that we feel the slightest distrust of its merits, but that we cannot get the community to look at them in earnest and aright. At all times undervalued, just now it is in danger of being thrown quite into the shade, or trampled in the mire under the iron heel of war. Like the Prince of Peace himself, it is expected to stand before the public like a sheep dumb before her shearers, and not open its mouth in vindicating its own claims. Shall we at such a crisis abandon or suspend it? For ourselves we can see no reason at all for relaxing our efforts, but a great deal for prosecuting them with tenfold more zeal and energy. Retrace our steps! Pause in our work! What have we to retract or essentially modify? Our object, our principles, our measures, our arguments, are all the same, and rendered only the more important by the developments of the passing hour. They were designed for just such an emergency as the present; and all we ask in proof of their excellence and efficacy, is merely a right application of them to the case.

Here is surely a fair test; for nobody expects medicine to cure till it is taken.

On the question of Peace, however, the community seem strangely to lack their usual fairness and good sense. We remember, as quite in point, a story of William Ladd, the founder of our Society. On one of his journeys, he reached the house of a friend, and found it uncovered in the midst of a drenching rain. Why, my good friend,' exclaimed the man of peace, why don't you shingle your house?' What!' re. torted his easy, improvident friend, shingle it in such a storm as So he did; but Mr. Ladd, on

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this! Wait till the weather is fair.' his return one sunny day, found the house of his good-natured, slip-shod friend, still in the same condition. Well, my friend, I see you've not shingled your house yet. What does all this mean?' 'Oh!' said he, there's no need of it in such fine weather as this.' So in sunshine he would not, and in storm he could not, shingle his house.

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Precisely thus fares the cause of Peace. Press its claims at the near approach of war, or during its progress; and you are confronted with the plea, it is out of place now; wait till peace returns.' At length peace does return; and how are you met now? Do even good Christian men, followers of the Prince of Peace, respond promptly, spontaneously to the claims of this cause, and set themselves about its great work in earnest? No; they sing the old lullaby, in such a time of profound peace, there surely can be no need of labor in this cause. Wait till we sce some occasion for it in the approach of actual war. Everybody is for peace now, as much so as you are yourself; and no argument or influence can make them more so. Why waste effort where it is so unnecessary?'

This strange logic we have met, in one form or another, at almost every turn. When we seemed, in 1840, on the eve of a war with England respecting our North-Eastern boundary, and our society. made special and successful efforts to avert the gathering storm, not a few good men, all of them quite as much of course in favor of peace as ourselves, and some of them at the head of Christian presses, scouted such efforts as entirely superfluous. The age,' said they, has outgrown the barbarism of war. True, we retain the sword still for our security; but we shall keep it in its scabbard to rust there forever. These efforts in the cause of peace are entirely superfluous. We have waged our last war, have fought our last battle. There may indeed be bluster and menace on both sides; but they will take good heed not to rush into actual conflict. No; the age is too civilized, too Christian

ever to tolerate war again; and all efforts in the cause of Peace we must regard as a grand superfluity.'

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Thus reasoned such men down to the very hour when our country plunged into its piratical crusade against Mexico; but what did they say then? Why, they changed entirely their tone; and from representing everybody as so much in favor of peace as to render any efforts in this cause quite superfluous, they leaped at once to the conclusion, that the evil is really incurable. We verily thought,' said they, "that the people were almost cured of war; but we find them in truth as full of its spirit as ever, and there is no use in trying to restrain them. They will fight; and no efforts of ours can ever prevent it of what avail have been all the labors of the Peace Society? Nations will go to war whenever they choose; and, however suicidal the folly, we cannot restrain them, but must let them take their own course. We may deplore the fact, but cannot alter it, and must patiently wait God's good time, the glorious era of universal peace promised in his word, to see nations ceasing from the work of mutual mischief and slaughter for the settlement of their disputes.'

We have no sympathy or respect for such logic as this. No time now to plead or work for peace! Tell us, then, when we shall have. While a huge, terrible evil is staring us full in the face, is that no time to arrest it, or prevent its recurrence? While the plague or the cholera is raging all around us, shall we deem this no time to check its ravages, and devise means to prevent their return in future? The argument is fairly applicable to the evil now upon us; yet how many professed, sincere friends of peace would fain have us give no heed to its claims just now. Why not? In such a crisis as this, are not its arguments, its appeals, its healing influences, most needed? You may indeed say it is too late to realize its full benefits, since ours is chiefly a work of prevention, more an antidote than a specific remedy; but if the evil has gone in this case beyond our control, we certainly ought to gather up its dear-bought lessons of wisdom and warning for future use in our cause. It will teem with such lessons. Well and truly has it been said, that every day is our country now writing history fast; and with equal rapidity must this contest accumulate a vast amount of materials to be used hereafter in pushing our cause onward at length to a signal and glorious triumph.

CLASSIFICATION OF PEACE-MEN:

OR DIFFERENT MODES OF REASONING ON PEACE.

No two minds are cast in exactly the same mould; and hence every enterprise, requiring extended union of efforts, must allow room for a free and full play of individual peculiarities. There must of course be a perfect unity of aim in the object sought; but in reaching it, there may, perhaps must, be conceded a wide diversity of arguments suited to individual temperaments, training and circumstances. So it has been in all kindred enterprises; and in like manner must the friends of Peace be left to plead for their common object each in the way that influences himself most effectually in its behalf.

1. Now, there are four different modes of reasoning on this subject. There are the extreme radicals in peace. They discard, as contrary to the spirit and genius of the gospel, all use of physical force, every kind and degree of violence. They would allow only argument, persuasion, moral influence, and deny all right of one man to punish, coerce or rule another. The kingdom of God among men, the reign of Christianity on earth, they conceive to be an empire of truth, and love, and beneficence, with only moral resistance to wrong. All idea of retaliation, retribution, or penalty for offences by one man against another in society, they deem unchristian. Such are the strict NonResistants; men whom William Ladd characterized as "ultra beyond ultra," whose extreme conclusions even the Quakers have publicly disclaimed, and whose principles are clearly incompatible with the existence and legitimate operations of civil government. We are not aware that any Peace Society ever committed itself to principles so radical as these; and our own has from the first disclaimed responsibility for them as foreign from its single aim of doing away the prac tice of war. Such men are a fortori friends of peace; and hence, while objecting to their logic, we must of course welcome their cooperation in behalf of our great object.

2. There is another class of peace-men less extreme, who look upon the life of man as strictly inviolable, and oppose war chiefly as a wholesale violation of this principle. The taking of one man's life by another they regard as always wrong. Hence all self-defence, all penalties, all operations of government, whether in peace or in war, that threaten the shedding of human blood, they condemn as unchristian. They make no discrimination, but forbid the taking of human life in any case for any reason. Here is the pivot of their chief

arguments for peace; and it certainly is a very kind and amiable logic, but has never been recognized as the basis of our cause. Not a few of its best friends do indeed reason in this way, but only on their own individual responsibility. The Peace Society, while freely allowing them to urge at pleasure such arguments in behalf of its great object, does not itself inculcate or endorse the principle of the strict inviolability of human life. It does of course oppose all taking of life in war, but deems it not within its province to say whether it may or should be taken in any other case.

We confess, however, that for ourselves we find it impossible to reconcile civil government, in its legitimate and indispensable operations, with either of the foregoing theories. We respect the believers in them as staunch friends of peace, but cannot acquiesce in their logic. If we are restricted, as the extreme non-resistants insist, to moral influence alone, or, as the advocates for the inviolability of human life contend, to such a degree only of force as shall spare in any event the effusion of blood, how is it possible to make sure of executing the laws, and supporting government, in cases of violent, desperate resistance? If an offender were sentenced to imprisonment or mere fine, but would neither submit to the one, nor pay the other, what could you do with him? If you may not use all the force requisite to put the law in execution by inflicting its penalty, you make government a sham, a mere bugbear, a practical nullity. Should a gang of villains fire a city, or commit wholesale robbery and murder, by what means, if life must never be taken, can you bring the offenders to condign punishment, or prevent the continuance of their outrages at pleasure and without end? They laugh at all argument, all moral influence; and, if you threaten only such force as shall spare their life, they will reckon on perpetual impunity in their crimes. Suppose they defy the government, what can you do with them, if you may neither take nor endanger life? The right to use all the force requisite for upholding its authority, and executing its laws against wrong-doers, would seem to be inseparable from the very idea of civil government; and, without such a right, none ever did, if any ever can, exist in a world like

ours.

3. A third class of peace-men, more numerous than both the foregoing, look upon all war as contrary to the gospel. This belief they found not upon any necessary unlawfulness of physical force, nor upon the strict inviolability of human life, but upon the general spirit, aims and principles of the gospel. They say there is nothing in any part of it that breathes of war. It is all a system of peace;

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