preparation for it, maintains, at the command of despots, three or four millions of men at arms in a time of profound peace. Then, if interest requires it, war at once, and then, the war once raging, everything in heaven and on earth, religion, morality, law, justice, freedom, charity, the Sabbath, the Decalogue, the conscience, must be put aside for it. Genuine liberty is at an end, or must consent, as a submissive patriot, to be manacled and muzzled, and to put the fetters and the gag on others, under pretence of a zeal for the glory and salvation of the common country. The very impulses and sentiments of freedom that belong to nature, and cannot be renounced without utter debasement, and that ought to be most carefully protected and trained in all their majesty and fervor, must be stifled with anodynes, while tyranny wakes; just as a child is put to sleep with laudanum in the cradle, that the unnatural parents may enjoy their fashionable midnight gaieties and revels. In our own country this process is going on. The temptation is mighty, and will soon become irresistible, for a party and a President to rush into war in support of their own administration, and for the renewal of its lease of power. Beyond all question, if a war could be precipitated against Spain for the possession of Cuba, as a slaveocratic preserve for human cattle, the administration that succeeded in launching and manning that public crime, would be the object of public adoration, and would be carried, by an infatuated country, clean through the conflict. Next to slavery, war is the game of our American despots, and war for its support. This game has been already played with pre-eminent success, and the people, whenever it is renewed, seem perfectly blinded as to the cost of it, and regardless of the inevitable reaction and retribution.

Judge Jay deplored this infatuation; he noted its progress, and the frightful destruction of piety and morality in its train; and he deeply felt the necessity of the efforts of this Society, and of every other possible influence and agency against such ruin. His voice was lifted, his pen was employed, with admirable earnestness and vigor in the work of warning and reproving his countrymen, and endeavoring to arouse the Christian conscience of the nation. He was always eminent for his faithfulness in rebuking, on the spot, the treason against God and man, committed by the people, whenever they sanction the detestable com

pact between tyranny and war. In the city of Boston, at the 25th Anniversary of this Society, he appealed to a then recent crime and disgrace, the memory of which is still a memory of sorrow and shame, and the mention of which makes the ears of every lover of liberty tingle; he referred to it as a proof, that "the very profession of a soldier, even when temporarily assumed by the militia, is adverse to the spirit of liberty. Instant and unlimited obedience suspends, for the time, reason, and conscience, and humanity. The streets of Boston lately witnessed a formidable array of dragoons, artillery and infantry, all armed for deadly conflict, and ready at command to shed American blood on American soil; yes, the blood of such of their fellowcitizens as were known to be zealous friends of liberty, and the inalienable rights of man. Ah! these republican soldiers had been converted into the body guard of a slave-catcher, and were aiding him to surrender an innocent native-born American to an unmitigated despotism." "False alike is the patriotism," added this true patriot, "that rejects the obligations of religion, and the statesmanship which confides the prosperity and liberty of a nation to the guardianship of the sword." "The love of personal freedom is a passion, shared alike by the good and the vile; while a disinterested regard for the rights and liberties of others. is not the product of the battle-field, but the fruit of a heart purified by influences from above."

On another occasion, Judge Jay remarked, "We hear much of late as to the importance of Conservatism, as it is called. Is it true conservatism to obliterate, in the masses, the sense of justice, the feelings of humanity, the distinction between right and wrong? The only conservatism to which I look for the protection of my rights and my property, is the inculcation of that HIGHER LAW, which, with the authority of Deity, and the sanctions of the invisible world, says to each individual, high or low, rich or poor, Do JUSTLY, LOVE MERCY, DO TO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD THEY SHOULD DO TO YOU. But alas! this law is sneered at by men whose all depends on its observance. Well may we tremble lest God should apply to our nation the maxim of his moral government towards individuals, wHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH, THAT SHALL HE ALSO REAP."

The uncompromising spirit and principles of Judge Jay are those on which alone the Peace Society can constitute an agency of dignity and power. We cannot, for the sake of peace,

compromise a single principle of righteousness. It would be madness, it would be the suicide of our cause; it would be a provision for our destruction in the very foundations on which we erect our building. It would be like opening our own veins, and drinking our own life-blood, in the vain imagination of thus renewing the nourishment by which the vital fluid may be kept in circulation. It would be an expediency of which Coleridge.so admirably portrayed the madness, in the illustration of digging down the charcoal foundations of the temple at Ephesus, to provide fuel for the fires upon its altars. A Peace Society is nothing, but by the righteousness and truth of God applied with inexorable firmness to the conduct of nations as of individuals.

It was Judge Jay's inflexible integrity of principle, and steadfast adherence to his conscientious convictions of the immorality of war, and the iniquity of the war-spirit, that dictated his admirable letter on the military enthusiasm excited in this country by the visit and speeches of the eloquent Hungarian chieftain, Kossuth. This letter was addressed by Judge Jay, in 1852, while President of the American Peace Society, to Rev. Dr. Beckwith, its well known Secretary. As peace men and as patriotic citizens, Judge Jay thought we were called upon to resist the warpolicy of foreign intervention with the sword, in behalf of human freedom. But the great power of this letter was in the terrible sarcasm with.which the facts of our own history were brought to bear upon the inconsistency, the hypocrisy of intervention in behalf of liberty abroad, while we war against the rights and liberties of millions at home. "Is it decent, is it compatible with truth and candor, for a republic like ours, which tramples in the dust THREE MILLIONS of its own people, annihilating all their rights, civil and religious, reducing them to the condition of beasts of burden, and enacting that every good citizen is a slave-catcher, — is it decent, I ask, for such a republic to affect a zeal for human rights so ardent, as to make war upon every foreign nation that denies to a portion of its subjects an elective government or universal suffrage? Surely, I need not allude to our slave-hunts, and our treason trials, to prove that we are not precisely qualifi ed by our own practice to assume among the nations of the earth the part of champion of the rights of man. Kossuth is not probably aware that the United States have claimed the same right of intervention for the suppression of human liberty, which Russia has exercised, and for which he invokes upon her the execrations

of the civilized world. Let me call your attention to some historical facts." Judge Jay then recapitulates the illustrative events of our history in reference to St. Domingo, Hayti, Mexico and Cuba. Thus was this Christian patriot always vigilant and faithful in rebuking and warning his countrymen.

He was equally faithful in regard to the church and the ministry. "Many of the clergy," said he, "have acted as the tools of politicians. The church in this country, taken as a whole, is the mighty buttress of WAR AND SLAVERY, and if it is not also of the rum-traffic, it is because the latter is ceasing to be popular and genteel. I remember when a bishop of my own church proclaimed to the public, under his own signature, that the triumph of temperance societies would be the triumph of infidelity! He would not say so now; but slavery is still popular, and he is now its avowed champion."

"It is understood that a minister is at full liberty to preach morality in the abstract, but it is none of his business to apply gospel principles to the ordinary affairs of life, when such application would interfere with the political or pecuniary interests of his hearers, or with their prejudices or pleasures. He may enforce the general duty of justice, but not in relation to the treatment of colored men. He may tell us that God is love, and that we ought to love all men; but he may not denounce the WARSPIRIT as contrary to the law of love, nor may he condemn a profession which consists in human slaughter. Thus great sins find a most comfortable lodging-place in the very temple of God."

Here we see the fundamental grounds of Judge Jay's claim to the character of a great practical Christian philanthropist. His policy, as well as his piety, was rooted and grounded in the Word of God. His piety was not one thing, and his policy another, his piety angelic, his policy that of the Jesuit; but the same principles that directed, and the impulses that inspired him as a Christian, also guided his determinations as a Statesman. He took the highest comprehensive view of our national and moral responsibilities, and threw himself, with great power of argument, intensity of feeling, and perseverance of effort, into the battle of Christian truth and righteousness against slavery and war. The cause of Peace he knew to be most intimately allied with the cause of human freedom against slavery. The worst wars that ever desolated our globe have been wars of oppression, wars of conquest, for the very purposes of bondage.

And the oppressor sanctifies his slavery as a system by the very first war he succeeds in provoking against it, because he assumes to be the injured defender of his vested rights. In our own country's history, even within the short period of fifty years, more than one war has been undertaken and maintained for the consolidation and defence of this wickedness. In the purposes and progress of the Florida and Mexican wars, Judge Jay has traced, with a fine and masterly hand, our nation's peculiar guilt. The facts, as he unveils them, are revolting every step of the way. Perhaps the embrace of war and slavery never was witnessed on earth in more disgraceful, hideous, tragic forms than in the prosecution of the Florida atrocities. The brave and unoffending Indians were massacred by the United States government, as a sacrifice for the Moloch of slavery. It would scarcely be possible for a Christian nation to commit a greater, more detestable wickedness, than the waging of that wholesale, diabolical, exterminating murder, under the name of war. Mr. Giddings, as well as Judge Jay, has made this palpable, with proof that amazes and horrifies the mind, that such transactions, as of the malice of the infernal world, so fiend-like, and with such malignant object and end, could be endured and adopted in a nation not only not pagan, nor savage, but civilized, and enlightened by the Word of God. He has drawn aside the veil of obscurity and falsehood, and opened up to view the realities of this vast and dreadful crime.

As the advocate of Peace, Judge Jay relied wholly on the gospel. He believed that in giving us the gospel, God has bestowed all that is necessary to secure peace, all the power for this object that we need, if we will be faithful with it. The thorough legitimate use of the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, will prevent the necessity of any recurrence to any other sword. The true and faithful application of the fire of God's Word, will prevent the necessity of any other fire, any other musketry. But the Word of God has never yet, except at brief intervals, been tried. Its power has never, a hundredth part, been put forth, not even with such restraint as that which blasted and drove out of heaven the rebel angels, but without annihilating them. With the angels of its lightnings once loosed, and its vials poured forth, there would be no more possibility of questioning its divine omnipotence or its plenary inspiration.