Through the liberality of two individuals, "The American Penes Bociety" are permitted to increase the premium, offered, to FIVE HUNDRED Dollars, for the best and ONE HUNDRED for the second best Dissertation on the subject of "a CONGRESS or NATIONS for the ami sable adjustment of national disputes and for the promotion of univer eal peace without recourse to arms," to be sent free of expense, on ac before the first day of April next, to D. E. Wheeler Esq. 33 Nassau street, New-York, accompanied with a sealed paper, containing the Soitatio ame of the author, and superscribed with the signature or motte, upe jod boj sie j the Dissertation. L. D. DEWEY, Rec. Sec'y. e logpol are 10. B. The judges of the dissertations will be among the frat jurie caped civilians of our country. THE CALUMET VOL. 1. JANUARY AND FEBRUARY, 1832. NO. 5. ORATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE PEACE SOCIETY, IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, ANDOVER, June 22d, 1831. BY JOSEPH CLARK Within the preswept from the If angels ever weep over human wo, their tears have fallen over the desolations that war has made in our world. The first death that occured in the human family was a violent death-by the hand of a brother! From that time to this, men have proyed apon each other with more than brutal ferocity. It is impossible to estimate the number slain in battles since this horrid work began, though from authentic data we may be sure that it far exceeds the whole number now living on the globe! sent generation more than 5,000,000 of our fellow beings have been field of battle into eternity! But the battle-field is not the only place where the soldier finds a grave. War has means of destruction more formidable than the cannon and the sword. Could we take the sum of those who have "languished in tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefaction; pale, torpid, helpless; and were at last whelmed in pits, or heaved into the ocean without notice and without remembrance," how would it swell the numbers of this fell destroyer! "By incommodious encampments," says Dr. Johnson, "and unwholesome stations, where courage is useless, and enterprise impracticable, fleets are silently dispeopled and armies sluggishly melt away." Including all who have vanished from existence in this manner, together with those who have sunk broken-hearted into an early grave, under an insupportable burden of sorrow for the dead, a distinguished philosopher and christian supposes that war has destroyed more than fourteen thousand millions of human beings since the world began :- which is about eighteen times the present number of earth's inhabitants ! Nor is this incredible havoc of human life the only evil connected with war. The picture is incomplete till we have pencilled the innumerable congregation of surviving but forsaken widows, fatherless children and childless parents that war has made. Very few depart this life and leave no one behind to mourn their loss. And there is another feature still in this horrible system, even more revolting than death and be reavement. A military camp is a seminary of vice. Here profanity, falsehood, theft, intemperance, and lewdness, spring up and luxuriate. Here it is that robbers and pirates learn their accursed trade :-infidels too are trained in this school: so that those VOL. I.—9, who escape the sword and the bullet, and return to their country and kindred, generally carry with them a moral pestilence, more to be deplored than the untimely fate of their laughtered comrades. Such are some of the true features of war. My limits forbid the filling up of this dark picture with famishing cities sacked and burnt, fertile districts laid waste, commerce embarrassed, education neglected, and all the noble pursuits of peace interrupted. These, and such as these, are the legitimate and necessary products of that system, which Peace Societies are labouring to abolish. It is in such a cause that they earnestly solicit and expect our co-operation. Have they not a right to expect it? Yet should we bestow our sneers instead of our support, as many others have, whose professions encouraged the hope of better things, still the friends of peace will go unblushingly forward. They have taken a noble stand, on elevated ground, and have pledged themselves never to desert it. Why should they desert? They stand on the sure promises of the Eternal God. In all their doings they are animated, not with the hope merely, but with the assurance, that "the sword shall not devour forever, that the time will come when men shall learn war no more." Stimulated by these precious promises, the friends of peace in this and other countries have long been maturing a plan by which a Congress of Nations shall be assembled to establish by treaty some way of settling international difficulties without appealing to arms. Every body must see at once that if such a tribunal can be established, and decisions enforced, war with all its attendant evils must cease. The only question about it, respects the practicability of such a scheme. My limits, of course, will not allow a full discussion of this subject. I shall only offer two or three considerations in favor of its practicability. Many things which once seemed as impracticable as this now does have been accomplished by human instrumentality. The first that I shall mention, is one that bears a near resemblance to the case in hand. I allude to the institution of Trial by Jury. It is known to every one here, that our Saxon ancestors were wholly unacquainted with this mode of trial, till the time of Alfred the Great When that prince had expelled the Danes from his dominions, and had leisure to look about him, he found his subjects little other than a community of robbers. He who was plundered to-day, gained satisfaction by plundering to-morrow. Individuals settled their own difficulties then, very much as nations do now-by mere physical force. In such a state of society, nothing could appear more impracticable than the institution of Trial by Jury. How could any one know before hand that his rights would be duly respected in a court of justice ? "What!" he might say, "throw away my dagger, and submit implicitly to the decisions of twelve fallible men, no better than myself who know nothing about the cause except by the testimony of others? There was at that time in the minds of those inexperienced people, a real difficulty in the way, which exceedingly embarrassed Alfred in the execution of his wise purpose. Even after he had finally established the trial by Jury,it was a long time before its verdict was decisive in all cases, as it is now. If the affair was an important one, the accused person might appeal to Heaven by the ordeal of fire or water; and under the Norman Government of England he might challenge his accuser or the witness, or even the judge, and decide the case by what was called the Judicial Combat. The person challenged was obliged to fight, and God was supposed to give victory to the innocent. Thus the most abandoned villain might acquire glory by adding to his crime-just as it is now in the affairs of war. Indeed, there is not an argument for the present system of war, which will not favor the old Judicial Combat of our Norman ancestors; nor can a reason be assigned for the present system of Trial by Jury, which does not favor the contempla |