ON WAR.

So much has been well said against war, that it has the air of a plagiarism when any of its unavoidable evils are alluded to.

Yet there is a short passage, in Dr. Aikin's Life of Howard the philanthropist, placing one of them in so striking a light, that it must excite the most painful reflections in a reader of common humanity.

In one of his benevolent journeys, he writes from Moscow, that "no less than 70,000 recruits for the

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army and navy have died in the Russian hospitals "during a single year."

He was an accurate man, incapable of saying any thing but the truth, and therefore this horrible fact cannot but heighten our detestation both of war and of despotism. It has, however, been scarcely spoken of in Europe; while other hateful crimes, though affecting only individuals, have justly become the perpetual objects of pity and indignation. For instance, the cruel murders of the Princesse de Lamballe and of Louis the Sixteenth.

The truth is, that despotism is ever destroying its millions silently and unnoticed; while sedition is generally tumultuous, and always dreaded and detested. So many are interested in painting exaggerated pictures of its mischiefs, that the world is kept in perpetual alarm, and even the writers themselves become unable to judge impartially between oppression and resistance; as an artist is said to have drawn the devil so hideous that he lost his senses by looking at his own colours.

There are few riots without some grievance. "Jupiter," says Lucian, "seldom has recourse to his thunder, but "when he is in the wrong;" and, at the close of a long military life, Monsieur de Vendôme owned that, "in the eternal disputes between the mules and the "muleteers, the mules were generally in the right.”

All our praiseworthy toil and expense, in building infirmaries and asylums, cannot save a hundredth part of the lives, nor alleviate a hundredth part of the afflictions brought upon the human race by one unnecessary war. "Next to the calamity of losing a battle is that of gaining

a victory," is reported to have been said by our great commander, on the evening of the bloody day of Waterloo.

It is, therefore, much to be lamented that so many

persons of influence are benefited by war, as the tolls at Cork are raised by the slaughtering season. Alas! "Multis utile bellum!"

Great conquerors are curses on mankind while they live; and, when they die, they leave no relics like the skins of their predecessors, I had almost said their ancestors, the wolves and bears.

How easily are the silly victims deluded! What a humiliating picture of human life is exhibited in the handbills usually stuck up all over London!" All aspiring "heroes, who wish to serve their king and country, "defend the protestant religion, and live for ever, may "receive ten shillings and sixpence by applying at the "Britannia public-house in Wapping." Such temptations, who can withstand? Fame, future happiness, and half-a-guinea!

Since statesmen complain so much of what they call "Declamation," why will they render it so easy and so unanswerable?

In one of Foote's Farces, Dr. Last asks boastingly, "Have you heard of my black powder?" As if he had been the discoverer of so famous a medicine, though all the state-quacks, since the invention of artillery, have been as fond and as proud too of the doctor's prescription.

G

ON INTOLERANCE AND BIGOTRY.

THE crime of Intolerance is not only hateful, but so ridiculous, that many of its absurdities are scarcely credible.

The Chancelier de l'Hôpital was called an atheist, because he refused to be a persecutor: Galileo for thinking the earth turns round: Descartes for saying there are innate ideas: Gassendi and Locke for denying them. Father Hardouin proved, very much to his own satisfaction, that Malebranche, Pascal, Arnaud and Nicole, (the most pious of men,) would certainly be damned. The mother of Louis XIV. was shocked by the notion that Jansenists might be saved, and cried out, "Ah! fi! fi! de la Grace." In Hispaniola, some Spaniards made a vow to sacrifice every day twelve Indians in honour of the twelve Apostles. When Savoy and Geneva exchanged a village or two, Geneva engaged to tolerate the Catholic inhabitants for twentyfive years! If the Mahometans conclude a treaty of peace with Christians, they forthwith proceed to the mosque, and ask pardon of God Almighty for discon

tinuing to cut the throats of his children, on whom they imprecate calamities. Now it is unfortunately, or fortunately true, that curses are seldom quite ineffectual,, inasmuch as they have a tendency to bring down wellmerited punishments on the heads of those who pray that evils may fall on others. But there would be no end of enumerating these weak and wicked creeds and practices.

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It has been asked by a great author-" What does it signify, whether you deny a God or speak ill of him?” A question well answered by another sage, when he declares, "I would rather men should say, that there

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never was such a man as Plutarch, than that "Plutarch was an ill-natured, mischievous fellow."

A most affecting instance of a contrary way of thinking is found in the pious poet Cowper's belief that "some" where in infinite space there is a world beyond the "province of mercy," and that he himself had been selected as an example of the Almighty's sovereign power and indisputable right "to do what he pleased with his "creatures" in dooming him to everlasting misery, though not the very worst of human beings. Perhaps there is not another known case of so heart-rending an illusion.