naanites and other idolatrous nations. It would lead us too far from our immediate province were we to enlarge on this part of the subject. We only in general' remark, that when any government lays claim to a divine commission, received immediately from heaven, it will be time enough to examine what the Pentateuch says on this subject. The moral laws of God are perfectly consistent; and obligatory on mankind in all ages of the world; at the same time the divine Sovereignty must be acknowledged: the Almighty has the undoubted right to desolate incorrigible nations, by the pestilence, the earthquake, or the sword: although let it not for a moment be forgotten, the destruction of such nations is the peculiar work of that Being who, judging of all possible circumstances with infinite wisdom, can do nothing but what is RIGHT!

But although in the single instance we have mentioned we differ in opinion from our author, we most cordially agree with him on every other part of his subject. The following remarks will prove to our readers that he is indeed the Christian Politician, and that he has deeply imbibed the spirit of the pure, genuine christianity of the New Tes

tament.

"If any attachment should still remain to the warlike injunctions of the Jewish code, it must surely vanish before that system which was ushered in wtih the glad tidings' of peace on earth, and good-will towards men.' He -the benevolent communicator of the purest moral code ever bestowed upon human frailty-he, who when he was reviled, reviled not again'-he, who with such touching, such exquisite sensibility, prayed with his last gasp for his murderers; surely he will never be brought forward as approving, or even conniving at, the work of death inflicted on each other by his followers! Will they so far pervert the impressive injunction as to read, A new commandment I give unto you, that ye butcher one another?' or can they find amongst

the various readings, or in some wormeaten manuscript, blessed are the warmongers, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven? It requires no patient and laborious research to find but here and · there a passage in the records of his life, which when found shall prove to be cold and insipid recommendations of mutual forbearance and universal love, but the sentiment is interwoven in the very texture of his instructions and his example. 'He went about continually doing good' -his rays of benevolence shone uniformly on the evil and on the good,' he commanded that we resent not injuries

that if a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the left also'-that if it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men,'--and yet men, whose profession is human slaughter, who will even hire their bloody talents in foreign service and in foreign quarrels, shall call themselves the followers of this meek and lowly Jesus! Gracious Heaven! restrain thy just indignation---remove the delusion from their hearts, and cancel this infinitely worse than Pagan darkness!who so tenderly sympathised over the Would the pure and beneficient Spirit approaching miseries of his country, would be have exulted o'er the desolated plains of Marengo, or the ensanguined waves of Trafalger? Would he have taught the horrid refinement and boast of modern warfare, the union of carnage with humanity? Would his comprehensive mind have conceived the monstrous absurdity of fighting for the preservation of religion, for the security of social order, or for the establishment

* One of the most poetic of the monodies to the memory of Nelson, concludes with these lines-

"Great Nelson's spirit ey'd the star[ry prize, "And, 'mid a blaze of glory, pierc'd [the skies."

Here moral rectitude is entirely forgotten, and the summit of virtue made to consist in an undaunted and unfeeling heart. If the social virtues had found no place in his soul, if plunder and havoc had been his only rules of action, if he had even lived in open violation of one of the greatest of the moral duties, such conduct would have had no weight with his extravagant panegyrist; but heaven must be stormed to admit the hero of the nation's idolatry!

of universal peace?-Sublime instructor of mankind how little of thy spirit pervades thy pretended followers! how little is known of that kingdom' which though not of this world' is that to which it is their duty aud their privilege to aspire!

"It will be objected (for this is no new pretence) that the morality which Christ inculcated is too refined for common practice, and that he himself could not mean to have it understood in the sublime and expanded sense which the literal meaning of his precepts may convey-that society could not be held together with its present imperfections, on so refined a plan, and that supposing a large majority to act upon such principles, they would be trampled upon and outraged by the unprincipled few. I do not think it necessary here to vindicate christianity in a general sense-I take it as I find it but must contend for the purity of its doctrines, and the undeviating virtue which it enjoins :-To the objector I should say, make your own choice-here is no inquisition to compel you to adopt christianity; if it does not suit your principles you are at liberty to reject it, but you have no right to alter and garble it to your own depraved standard. Let the war-whoop resound from a thousand pulpits, and let such teachers endeavour to counteract the mischief by a few whining precepts of crude and accommodating morality, or by insisting on the reception of some metaphysical absurdities. Let them confound all ideas of right and wrong, let them attempt things above the powers of human atchieve

ment

"Go forge me fetters that shall bind "The rage of the tempestuous wind:"but let them not attempt to reconcile contrarieties. Give limits to infinite space, cause darkness to emanate from the sun, prove the Author of the universe to be feeble and without intelligence, and then, and not till then, may they reconcile mercy with carnage, philanthropy with hatred, and christianity

with desolation and warfare.

says

to love their enemies; the latter, to make themselves terrible even to strangers. The rules of morality will not suffer us to promote the dearest interest by falsehood; the maxims of war applaud it, when applied to the destruction of others. That a familiarity with such maxims must tend to harden the heart as well as pervert the moral sentiment, is too obvious to need illustration.* The natural consequence of their prevalence is an unfeeling and unprincipled ambition; with an idolatry of talents, and a contempt of virtue; whence the esteem of mankind is turned from the humble, the beneficent and the good, to men who are qualified by a genius fertile in expedients, a courage that is never appalled, and a heart that never pities, to become the destroyers of the earth. While the philanthropist, a fellow-worker together with God in exploring and giving effect to the benevolent tendencies of nature, is devising means to mitigate the evil, and augment the happiness of the world, the warrior is revolving in the gloomy recesses of his capacious mind, plans of future desolation, terror and ruin. Prisons crouded with captives, cities emptied of their inhabitants; fields desolate and laid waste are amongst his proudest trophies. The fabric of his fame is cemented with tears and blood; and if his name be wafted to the ends of the earth, it is in the shrill cry of suffering humanity, in the curses and imprecations of those whom his sword has reduced to despair."

Our author having laid it down as-“ An abstract principle, which no one will be found sufficiently hardy to controvert, that all wars originate in the pride, the ignorance, the folly, or the ambition of the governors of mankind;" proceeds to enquire into the causes why mankind have been so perpetually prone to indulge the fatal propensity of mutual destruction; on which he

remarks as follows:

"There is, perhaps, nothing in the whole range of human frailty, which tends so much to perpetuate this folly,

"War suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended, is in danger of being totally abrogated." BURKE.

[of war] as the slavish subserviency of literature and the arts to its support. The patient labour of the historian, the impassioned strains of the poet, the Promethean efforts of the sculptor, and the magic colouring of the canvas, are all devoted to the indiscriminate praise of the destroyers of mankind. The justice or injustice of the cause in which they have been engaged, is never for a moment considered; but the ability to harrass, to circumvent, and to inflict calamity, is the sole theme of unqualified panegyric. Find me a hero in the capacious and bloody list, whose deeds have passed unsung, or unrecorded, in strains of pompous eulogy, from Alexander to Attila, or from Tamerlane to Frederic; nor do their subordinate hirelings pass without their full share of admiration and applause. This prostitution of talent, this political felo de se, might afford some ground of hope, that amongst men of reflection, the horrid prejudice in favour of human slaughter might begin to subside the difficulty lies in drawing the line between aggression and defence, or between offensive and defensive warfare. To me it seems impossible to make a proper distinction, on the present system of governments, or perhaps on any ground, where numbers unite for the welfare of the whole. No man will morally contend for a war of aggression; but must it not inevitably be, that in all cases one of the bostile parties must be wrong? Both may indeed be wrong, but both cannot be right, and where reason is avowedly dismissed, to make the appeal to force and to passion, will not the probability be, that nine times in ten both parties have made use of provocations which ought to have been avoided? It is not always, even in school-boy quarrels, that he who strikes the first blow is the principal aggressor, and when do the contentions of cabinets exhibit more common sense, or common justice than the earliest bickerings of children?

"Besides who are the judges in these cases of such infinite importance? Who, but the very men whose prejudices or whose interests render them utterly unfit to decide, or even to form a reasonable opinion. Common experience teaches us that no person should be his own umpire, where a shilling only is at stake-but in a case where the happiness or misery of millions is concerned, the parties, mad with ideas of glory and

renown, are suffered to despoil the world at every wild suggestion of caprice or resentment.

"In a personal dispute, a man may form his own opinion; he may deliberate, combine, conciliate, or compromise; but the moment he delegates authority to others, he surrenders the power of judging, and subjects himself to all the evil passions of his representatives. In civil governments this disadvantage is counteracted by a mass of utility more than equal in the balance, but with all military authority it is exactly the reverse. Here submission must be unconditional; authority caunot admit of any plea for hesitation or neglect, and if a man has orders to thrust his bayonet into the breast of his father, the duty of his unnatural station peremptorily requires him to obev. Even in stepping forward to defend what is called the sacred cause of liberty, he is rushing on deeds of darkness with as little power to judge of the event, as he has of knowing what is going on at his Antipodes. The moment he is enrolled he becomes the slave of his commander, and of circumstances which he can nei ther foresee nor control: If his cause should triumph, experience but too of ten attests, that the leader in bis turn becomes a despot, and the inferior agents become the stepping stones of his ambition, without the possibility of resisting a torrent so opposite to their prociples and original views. This is no solitary case, but almost the universal rule. The exceptions of a Cincinnatus or of a Washington are wonders in the annals of the world, and by no means sufficiently frequent to justify the rash engagement of individual agents, and of such agents are armies composed.

a

"When Richard Cromwell was told by some of his friends that the sacrifice of a few lives would ensure him stabi lity in his high office, If," said he,' single life is requisite for the purchase, I would rather relinquish it.' A more honourable trait does not exist in the fertile page of history, yet where is the historian who is not disposed to consider it rather as a mark of weakness than of

magnanimity? Necessity, the tyrant's endless plea, will justify any violence, and varnish the most flagrant atrocity the mind of man can conceive."

After some observations on the common apologies for war, in which