system, our policy was to cheer and cherish them, and lead them in the way to that liberty which we had established, and of which we had set the example. Now we find ourselves in a state of war with one of these republics. We, that should naturally be looked up to as the protector of them all. These generous dispositions are all vanished, and war and bloodshed have taken their place. It is not in the amount of precious blood that has been shed, that the importance of this event consists. No, it is the great political consequences, the evil example to liberty in every place. The hand of one republic is stretched out in hostility against another! And I deprecate it the more when I reflect, that the one is feeble and impotent, that anarchy and revolutions have consumed her strength, and that she needs the force of our example and aid to sustain her, lest she fall back again into that monarchy from which we saw her with pleasure arise. The course that has been pursued cannot have been that generous and forbearing policy which ought to be exercised by this great republic. We

are so much mightier than they are, that our condescension would be noble."

In the war which we have examined, we see all these principles entirely disregarded. Impelled by a lust of conquest, the United States have exhibited in it a spirit of injustice, aggression and violence. The war which they have waged has been for the redress of no wrong, for the vindication of no human right. No principle of humanity is claimed to have been maintained by its victories. Nor are we entitled to any respect for the peace which followed. The same remorseless selfishness inspired alike its beginning, its continuance and its end.

Without a cause worthy of a civilized nation, or an object the hope of whose attainment could inspire devotion, its history does not present a single circumstance which can excuse or palliate its unmitigated wrong. Possessing no pretence of any moral aim, utterly at variance with every object for which the heart of this age has sympathy, men must gaze upon it only in sorrow, unillumined by a ray of faith or hope.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE Influence of this War upon our national character, and on the cause of Liberty and of Christianity at home and abroad. It has introduced crime and vice among us. It has awakened a spirit of conquest. It has lowered the standard of public morality in our country.

THE evil impulses of our nature constitute a law of selfishness, which prompts man to seek his own interest or gratification, regardless of the happiness or rights of others, and of hatred which impels him to seek the positive evil of his fellow men. Of all the unhappy consequences which attend the exercise of selfish or hateful passions, the most certain and terrible are those which revert upon the character of their possessor. These seem to follow their indulgence by a fixed and eternal moral law, in the same manner that certain effects follow certain causes in the material world; by a necessity of the same nature as that by which the felled tree falls to the

ground, or the parts of a revolving body tend from their center. They are the parents of fear, of suspicion, of envy and unsatisfied desires. As the mind passes under their subjection, every generous voice is hushed, every noble prompting is stilled within it, its faculty of distinguishing right and wrong becomes deadened and distorted, and it looses the capacity for participating in the happiness of vir

tue.

We would expect to find the evil consequences of this great national wrong which revert upon the character of our people, on the cause of free governments, and on the interests of morality and religion, insidious in their nature, to be far more unhappy, as they are more enduring, than any others which can attend or follow it. So indeed they are.

This war has introduced crime and vice among us. A camp is the notorious home of unbridled passions. Soldiers in a foreign country feel that they are removed from all the restraints of civil law, and whenever the barrier of military discipline can be passed, unrestrained indulgence is sure to be sought. No one can know, until he has witnessed it,

the hardening influence of war upon the characters of those who are engaged in it. He, who under the name of glory can coolly blow out the brains of his fellow man, or urge a bayonet into his bosom, has taken a lesson in blood, the effects of which he has rarely the ability or disposition to shake off. When the heart has become regardless of human misery, when it is steeled against the cry of agony and the prayer for life, it is also proof against the entrance of most noble sentiments and elevating impulses. Soldiers are commonly drawn from that class of society who most need the checks of civil law. Having been removed from its authority for a time, it is difficult for them to assume again the character of peaceable citizens. Martial law no longer holding them in restraint, they are too apt to feel a spirit of reckless defiance. And this inhumanity and lawlessness are scattered over the land. Its breath is infection, its touch is contagion. It breeds a moral miasma in every community which comes within its influence.

This war has excited and encouraged among our people the spirit of conquest in which it had its origin. It is difficult for a people, as