intelligent, Christian men, are marvelling why the friends of peace, with this merest pittance of means, have not already put an end to the war-system, and thus saved ourselves from this gigantic rebellion! Strange lack of reflection! The friends of God and man have hardly begun as yet to furnish the means requisite to cure or seriously abate this mammoth evil.

LONDON PEACE SOCIETY.

This noble champion of our cause held its anniversary in London, May 21st, its President, JOSEPH PEASE, in the chair, who introduced the exercises with an excellent address, and was followed in a series of able and pertinent speeches by six speakers in support of the following resolutions :

1. That this meeting cordially rejoices in the pacific adjustment of the difficulty which arose between the British and American Governments on the Question of the Trent, and gratefully acknowledges the prompt and earnest efforts made by various religious bodies on this side of the Atlantic to allay the dangerous excitement provoked by that incident, and to avert the calamity of war between two great kindred and Christian nations. The meeting, however, cannot but deeply deplore the continuance of that appalling conflict now desolating the American continent, and prays earnestly that it may be brought to a speedy termination.

2. That, in the judgment of this meeting, no better proof need be desired of the value and necessity of those principles of mutual kindness and forbearance in the intercourse of nations, dictated alike by Christianity and sound policy, which the Peace Society seek to diffuse, than is presented by the endless sacrifices and embarrassments in which the nations are involved, by conducting their relations with each other on the opposite principles, exhausting their own resources, and exasperating each other's spirits, by incessant increase of their naval and military establisments, which are so far from affording any sense of security, that their mutual fears and suspicions only grow stronger in proportion to the growth of their armaments, until every year more of the wealth of Europe is being absorbed in those enormous preparations for war with which the so-called civilized and Christian nations menace and defy each other, amid loud professions of peace, friendship, and alliance.”

3. That this meeting regards with peculiar interest the opening of another Great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations, bringing together, as it does, not only the material products of the various countries of the earth, but to a large extent the people themselves, illustrating in the most forcible manner those ties of interest and mutual dependence which bind the nations into one. This meeting cannot but regard the Great Exhibition as emphatically a Peace demonstration, and they earnestly desire that its influence in this direction may be both deep and permanent.

FINANCES.-The Society began the year with a balance in hand of more that £1038, ($5,190,) received in addition £2,117, ($10,585,) and reached the close with £995, ($4,975,) in the treasury. A result very creditable indeed compared with our own meagre income, yet not a tithe of what ought to be annually expended there in our cause. Its exigenci es really demand in these two countries from one quarter to half a million a year.

EXTRACTS FROM THE REPORT.

THE WAR (REBELLION?) IN AMERICA.-Others may estimate this war differently, as they regard it from different points of view; but the Committee of the Peace Society, looking upon it in the light of that great principle which it has endeavored to hold aloft through good report and evil report, and which it has never shrunk from applying to the wars of our own country, cannot hesitate to declare its belief, that a war more appalling in itself, or more pregnant with disastrous influences on the highest interests and prospects of humanity, and emphatically on the cause of peace, is not to be found in the annals of history. Who, indeed, can look upon that land, so lately the home of liberty and order, to whom myriads of eyes in Europe, weary of the evil habits and traditions that have struck their roots so deep into the soil of the Old World, were looking with the fond gaze of hope, as to the land of promise; which was even but now rejoicing in what was deemed a special visitation of a gracious spiritual influence from on high, and see what it has now become, torn by dissension, inflamed by fierce and feverish excitement, filled with carnage and blood, without receiving a stronger impression than ever before of the unutterable folly and iniquity of war?

The present confusion and misery are the least of the evils which this war entails upon the world. Its dark shadow projects far into the time to come. It is educating the whole country to habits of military domination, and an admiration of military glory, which is full of peril to the future peace and freedom of the republic. It is laying the foundation for a permanent system of standing armaments, national debt, and oppressive taxation, with all the manfold evils, material, moral, and political, that follow in their wake. It is teaching the people to look, not as they would if they were in their right mind, with repugnance and alarm, but with infatuated exultation and delight (?) on the prospect of entering with Europe into that fatal rivalry in arms which is dragging all nations in the Old World, nearer and nearer to the abyss of insolvency and ruin, and thus become the means of still further exasperating an evil which is already monstrous and intolerable. Above all, it is corrupting and debauching the moral sense of the community, and infusing a poison of unchristian sentiment into the veins of society which will infect the blood of the nation for centuries to come. And it is surely a striking instance of the strong delusion to which men are delivered who enthrone passion in the place of conscience, that our American brethren are expecting to see the Union emerge unimpaired (?) out of that weltering chaos of discord and blood which seethes and surges around them. If union means the relation which exists between the conqueror and the conquered, the one inflamed with triumph, and the other with vengeance, then they may see their hopes realized; but if union means that oneness of sentiment and sympathy by which human minds and hearts are fused and welded into one compact community, it would be as rational to say that the explosive power of gun-powder is a good agent for the cohesion of material bodies, as that war, the very essence of which is to alienate and divide, can be an instrument in effecting such a union. May He who holdeth in His hands the hearts of all his children, mercifully interpose to allay this hot frenzy of human passion, and teach our brethren to ponder well the solemn meaning of that scriptural warning, "If ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another."

After referring to the danger of a war between England and America from the Trent affair, and the very prompt and strenuous efforts our coworkers then made to avert a calamity so deplorable, the Report dwells on

NON-INTERVENTION IN AMERICAN AFFAIRS.-While the danger connected with this particular transaction has been happily evaded, it is impossible to disguise from ourselves that, so long as the present deplorable civil war lasts, the relations of the two countries must continue so delicate and hazardous, as to test severely the good sense and the Christian temper of both. No nation can engage in a conflict so gigantic and disastrous as that in which the people of America have embarked without disturbing the whole economy of civilization, and seriously affecting the prosperity of other nations, especially of such as, like ourselves, have been so long and so closely associated with them by the ties of social and commercial intercourse. The sore distress which at this moment prevails among our great centres of industry in the North, proves how wide-spread is the baleful influence it sheds upon the earth. But it is the strong conviction of the Committee-and they have endeavored by means of their lectures and publications to diffuse that conviction as widely as possible through the country-that the policy of England in this emergency is clear as the day, namely, resolute non-intervention, a determined abstinence from all meddling in the domestic quarrels of our neighbors. If anything could add to the horrors of this unnatural strife, it would be for England to throw her sword into the scale, for by such decision she would most assuredly more embroil the fray.

The sufferings of our industrious and thrifty countrymen may well excite our sympathy, as the admirable fortitude with which those sufferings are borne should excite our admiration. And may we not indeed hope that the calm, patient, heroic attitude of the working-men of England amid bitter privations brought upon them by a struggle in which they have no part or lot, will not be without its effect in correcting the views and softening the hearts of our descendants across the Atlantic towards the mother country, whose conduct, it may be safely said, as they have looked at it through the mists of their own excited passions, they have hitherto grievously misapprehended and misjudged. But while admitting, and deeply deploring, the hard case of our suffering population in Lancashire and Yorkshire, it is impossible to doubt that, even as a matter of expediency, it would be a fatal mistake to seek for relief by plunging into complications which would be much more likely to aggravate than to mitigate the evil, while, as a matter of principle, no advantage could compensate for a departure from the salutary rule of non-intervention, which England is tardily adopting as a part of her national policy, and the violation of which in former times has entailed upon her so much of suffering and guilt."

Our friends in England quite misconceive us, if they suppose we distrust the mass of her people; but, with the fullest confidence in their friendship as a body towards us, we must, with the disclosures of the last twelve months before us, continue to regard her Government, her ruling classes, and chief organs of public opinion, as actively hostile to us, and more than willing to undermine, ruin and crush our Republic. God forbid we should charge such hostility upon her people; but the aristocrats of England, the men who despise the toiling millions, and are ever ready to deprive them of their rights, the possessors or admirers of hereditary wealth, privilege and power, the natural allies of despotism and slavery, have shown as much favor to our rebels as they deemed safe or wise for themselves.

IMPROVEMENTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW.-The danger to which the affair of the Trent exposed the peace of the world, naturally called special atten

tion to the unsatisfactory state of the law of nations, as at present existing. That heterogenous collection of doctrines, precedents, and judgments which goes under the name of international law, is, for the most part, the offspring of an age widely different from our own. It was an age when the rights of kings were deemed of far higher moment than the interests of peoples; when communications between the inhabitants of different countries were difficult and rare; when commerce, and especially international commerce, was a matter of small account; and when the pursuit of arms was deemed an occupation so supremely honorable, that all other considerations must be remorselessly sacrificed to its exigences. We need not wonder that a system which grew up under such influences, should be found full of anomalies and absurdities, when attempted to be applied to a condition of things like that which now prevails in the world, when by the invention of machinery, the discovery of steam, the wonderful development given to productive and manufacturing skill, and the unbounded freedom of commerce and navigation which the last fifty years have witnessed, the interests of all civilized nations have become intertwined together like the threads in a woven fabric. The far-seeing sagacity of Mr. Cobden first discovered and proclaimed the utter impracticability of governing the relations of modern times by the maxims of this superanuated code. For several years past he has called attention to the subject in various ways. At the beginning of the present session of Parliament, he gave notice of a motion intended to carry out into their logical results the alterations in international law which the most imperative necessity had forced upon the European Powers at the Paris Congress of 1856. This motion, which by an arrangement with Mr. Horsfall, was finally brought forward by that gentleman, proposed to give immunity to private property at sea by exempting it from capture and confiscation during war. The Committee, fully convinced that whatever tends to abridge the so-called rights of war, and to limit its operations, must also tend to the discouragement of the practice itself, were anxious to do what lay in their power to sustain the hands of those who were endeavoring to introduce this great improvement into our practical legislation. They therefore wrote to their friends through the country, suggesting that they should communicate with their representatives in Parliament, with a view to secure their support for the resolutions of Mr. Horsfall, should they be pressed to a division. For a similar reason, they felt it right to reprint the very able speech delivered by Mr. Charles Sumin the American Senate, on the affair of the Trent, because while explicity surrendering every right on the part of the American Government. as respects that transaction, he does so on such broad principles as in the judgment of the Committee it would be greatly to the advantage of all civilized states to adopt and act upon in their relations with each other. Copies of this pamphlet were sent to all members of Parliament, and to a large number of newspapers and periodicals throughout the kingdom.

ner,

More recently Mr. Cobden has written a masterly letter, contending that it is not only for the interests of justice and humanity, but emphatically for the interests of England, that the present law of blockade shall be abandoned, or at least so altered, as to bring it more into harmony with the requirements of modern civilization. This production is about to be reprinted in a separate form, and the Committee will feel it their duty to do all they can to promote its circulation.

APPEAL TO CHRISTIAN MINISTERS.-If the world is ever to be relieved of the presence of war, it must be by the extension of Christian principle among the people of the earth. But, alas! how can even this agency prove efficacious, while so many of those who are the official guardians and interpreters of Christianity, habitually throw their weight into the scale in

favor of war rather than of peace? How otherwise can we account in a manner that shall be honorable to the Gospel itself, for its apparently utter impotence to influence the sentiments and conduct of mankind on this question?

Can any one doubt, if the ministers of religion throughout Christendom, standing on the high vantage-ground they occupy, as the messengers of God to men, were habitually to labor to leaven the public mind with the pacific temper of the gospel, and be ready boldly to confront and rebuke the spirit of war, whenever it lifts up its snaky crest in the heart of nations, that a condition of sentiment and feeling would be produced, which would render war all but impossible? Surely, surely, we have strong ground for a powerful appeal to this class.

May we not, without offence, venture to address them thus:-O ye sworn ministers of the Prince of Peace, who in distant prophetic vision were seen standing "beautiful upon the mountains, bringing good tidings, and publishing peace" to the nations, we invoke your help in this arduous and emphatically Christian enterprise in which we are engaged. We are few and feeble, contending against a colossal evil, which blights the earth with its desolations, and affronts the heavens with its impieties. The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain, under the burden of this great iniquity. How is it that so many of you stand aloof, some indifferent, some actively and bitterly hostile to a cause so essentially in harmony with the avowed spirit of your message, and the professed object of your ministry? The evil we assail is one of the most formidable barriers in the way of your success. It wastes the resources that might otherwise be devoted to the promotion of the kingdom of God among men. It distracts the attention of the world by its loud and angry tumult, from the celestial message you have to proclaim. It diffuses through society a spirit utterly and intensely opposed to your objects. It hardens the heart of the heathen in prejudice, and sharpens the tongue of the infidel in scorn, against the gospel.

You are, indeed, our rightful and natural allies. We invite you, therefore, we adjure you, nay, in the name of your Master and ours, we demand, that instead of obstructing our work by your apathy or scorn, you should come forth with us to the help of the Lord against the mighty. You cannot guiltlessly be neutral on this question.

To be neutral is to be

hostile. For to no department of Christian labor is the language of the Master more applicable than to that in which we are engaged," He that is not with us, is against us; and he that gathereth not with us, scattereth abroad."

FOREIGN INTERVENTION.-Every week, if not every day, brings reports of efforts by a certain class of men in England and France to secure the interference of their governments in our quarrel. All good men must earnestly desire to see it brought to an end; but we entreat the friends of peace and humanity abroad to use their utmost influence to prevent any interference in the way of dictation or menace. No tongue can tell the mischief it would be likely to do. Just think how France, early in her first Revolution, was maddened to fight all Europe for twenty years. It would indeed be ruinous to ourselves; but no power, we fear, could restrain our people, and humanity, the world over, would carry the scars on her bosom for long ages.