Peace. It can, with ease and certainty, be made so; and we are glad to see it lending its aid more and more to this great Christian reform. Juster views on this subject are coming to prevail in the general education of the young; works less tinctured with the war-spirit, are now issued for their instruction or amusement; and we find in this respect a marked and very auspicious improvement in most of the text-books prepared for our seminaries of learning. True, the progress is slow, yet sure and very hopeful. We cannot expect society to throw off at once the exuviæ of its old war-habits, and form in their place those required by the gospel in its purity and strictness.

We feel, moreover, a special anxiety to enlist in this cause the permanent influence of our higher seminaries. We cannot forego their aid. The future leaders of society, gathered in these nurseries of knowledge and character at the very seed-time of life, must, if possible, be won to right views on this subject; and hence we have formed the plan of establishing in all our colleges and professional seminaries, premiums for essays on some important topics connected with the cause of Peace. In every one of these institutions, several hundred in all, we propose, and have to some extent, arrangements already in progress for the purpose, to offer a prize of some twenty or thirty dollars often enough to keep the subject in this way before every generation of students. The process may be slow; but it is pretty sure in time to gain our object.

Still more ought the Pulpit to become everywhere an ally and champion of this cause as a part of its mission. The ministers of Christ ought all to be leaders in such a reform. We should expect this, as a matter of course; and, if they were, how easily, and in how many ways, could they advance it. Touching the great mainsprings of moral power in every community, they might, if they would, prevent at once all actual war in Christendom, and put an end at length to her whole war-system. It could not live long under their united frowns; and in no slight degree are they as a body responsible for the continuance of its enormous evils. Often and earnestly have we reminded them of this high responsibility, urged them to exert their utmost power in behalf of a cause so peculiarly their own, and furnished them with our helps in pleading its claims. Our Periodical, as its organ, we send gratuitously to every one that preaches regularly on the subject once a year, and gives his people an opportunity of contributing to the object. We have brought the subject before the ecclesiastical bodies of nearly every denomination in the land, and repeatedly procured from them resolves 'commending the cause as eminently entitled to the cordial co-operation and support of all Christians.' We cannot doubt the sincerity of such resolves; and though we have so much reason to deplore the strange, inexcusable apathy of most Christian ministers, there are, in the aggregate, not a few impressed with its great importance, and inclined to press its claims upon their people. To this service we would fain urge them all; and, if true to their trust as ambassadors of the Prince of Peace, how much could the 40,000 preachers of his gospel in our own land do for its perpetu

al peace! That gospel, rightly applied, would put an end to all war; and such an application they are bound everywhere to make. Let them all do their whole duty on the subject; and the custom would ere long cease from the land.

There is another engine of still more ubiquitous power to be permanently enlisted in this cause the Periodical Press. Of newspapers alone there are said to be in our country more than 4,000, not a few of them dailies, with an aggregate of more than 400 million sheets a year. What an array of moral power! and all this we hope yet to see at work everywhere for the great cause we plead. It cannot be at once, or very soon; but it may and will be in time. With this view we induce as many as possible of our friends to write on the subject for the periodical press; and we furnish all our religious newspapers, and the most widely circulated of our secular ones, with our own periodical, and some of our other publications, as helps in bringing the subject before their readers. How many minds we may thus reach, or how much light we diffuse, it is of course impossible to say; but it is certainly an easy and very hopeful way of sifting the subject into the community, keeps attention awake more or less to its importance, and can hardly fail to work in time a general, decisive change for the better. In no other way could we do so much with so small an outlay. It is drop by drop that wears away the rock; and by such silent, ubiquitous influences on the public mind we may hope in time to create a popular sentiment that shall at length make war, like snow beneath a vernal sun, melt away from every land blessed with the light of the gospel.

Such are some of the incidental agencies or influences we are setting at work in this cause; but, besides all these, we ourselves directly employ the press and the pulpit much more than could have been expected from the slender means at our command. With funds that would seldom have met one half the current expenses of an ordinary church in New York or Boston, we have from the start sustained a regular and generally increasing scale of operations. For more than forty successive years we have issued, as the organ of our cause, a periodical devoted exclusively to its advocacy, with a circulation at times of more than ten thousand copies, and now sent to all our higher seminaries of learning, and to all the leading periodicals, religious and secular, in our country. We have stereotyped nearly a hundred tracts, and published a number of volumes, part of them quite large, that have in some cases been scattered by thousands and tens of thousands throughout the land. For nearly twenty-five years we have had in our service a Secretary whose whole time and energies have been devoted to the cause, and have also kept in our employ from two to five or six lecturing agents in different parts of the country. All this, indeed is a mere fraction of what needs to be done; but it is certainly more than could have been expected in a cause so strangely neglected, and compelled from its start to force its way through almost every conceivable obstruction and discouragement.

However full the past year may have been of events and alarms seemingly ill-boding to our cause, we think, after all, that its general prospects have seldom been more hopeful than they are at this moment. We have had most appalling glimpses of what war is beneath the meridian blaze of the nineteenth century in the very heart of Christendom; and this startling experience of its evils, with the general frown of the world upon its suicidal folly, and the fact that public opinion virtually compelled its abrupt termination after two or three months, is clearly reacting in favor of a policy that shall supersede the sword by rational, peaceful methods of adjusting national disputes. Already are light, order and hope emerging out of the recent chaos; and from the events of the past year there is likely to arise a surer and more permanent peace among the nations of Europe. Men seldom learn much practical wisdom except from bitter experience; and the terrible lessons crowded into a single month upon such battle-fields as Magenta and Solferino, cannot, in an age like ours, be entirely lost upon either people or rulers. They can hardly help seeing, as the two Emperors practically confessed in their treaty so hastily concocted at Villafranca to prevent the further effusion of blood, that all such sacrifices of life and treasure are a wanton, suicidal waste, leaving every point in dispute to be settled after all by other means than mutual slaughter-either by agreement between themselves, or by reference to umpires. A lesson, so patent to common sense, ought surely to have been learned at much less expense; but, if it could not be, it may have been worth, at the rate usually paid by nations for such bitter experience, all the more than five hundred millions of money, and the one or two hundred thousand lives, sacrificed in working out that fearful problem of mischief, folly and crime.

The year has teemed with events of unusual interest on the question of Peace the close of England's struggles with her subjects in India; the rise of new difficulties, so foolishly raised between her and China, boding another war; the friendly adjustment of our long-pending controversy with Paraguay; the prompt arrest of our incipient troubles with England in Oregon; the suspension, for the time, of fillibustering by our citizens against Cuba, Mexico and the feeble States in South America; the silly, quixotic raid of Spain into Morocco; the annexation of Central Italy to Sardinia by a simple vote of the people, the herald of changes that may peacefully revolutionize in time all Europe in the interest of freedom and popular rights; one of the most hopeful political omens of the year, if not of the age. Such are some of the leading events of the year, but to which we can make only these passing allusions.

The course and scale of our Society's operations have been the past very much as in preceding years. From the legacy of William Ladd, though awarded to us by the court more than a year ago, we have as yet received nothing; and when the expenses of management and litigation are all deducted, the sum total secured in the end to our cause, is likely to be much less than its friends have been led to expect. What still remains is now

in trustworthy hands; and in the course of this year we shall probably ascertain the net proceeds of the noble liberality of our Founder.

FINANCIES.-The balance-sheet of the Society, for the year is Receipts $3,431,30; expenses, including investment of legacy, $3,223,02; leaving in the treasury $208,28.

AGENCIES.-The Secretary, who had been compelled for more than four years to suspend speaking in public, has at length re-entered the field where he used to spend his chief strength in lecturing from three to eight times a week. He hopes with due caution to renew in full the labors of former years in this department. Besides his services, and those of eight or ten local agents acting gratuitously for the cause in their immediate vicinity, we have had under commission, though laboring for us only a part of the time, a General Agent, and four other Lecturing Agents, chiefly at the West. We hope our General Agent, Rev. C. S. MACREADING, of the Methodist Church, will ere long devote his whole time and strength in our service. He has long been inclined to do so, and the friends of peace will be inexcusable if they allow so ardent and so able a servant of our cause lack the means of support in a field where he is so much needed.

PUBLICATIONS.-The press, as our chief instrument, we have kept at work to the full extent of our means. We have during the year stereotyped only two new tracts, making Nos. 72 and 73 of our duodecimo series; but we have issued new editions of quite a number, and of one of our stereotyped volumes. Of our periodical, the Advocate of Peace, we have published, during most of the year, a larger number than usual, and are now sending it regularly to our higher seminaries of learning, and to all our religious, and the most widely circulated of our secular newspapers. It is, also, furnished, partly by contributions for this specific purpose, to an increasing number of Christian ministers, in particular to all the missionaries, both home and foreign, in the service of the American Missionary Association. It ought indeed to be to all our home and foreign missionaries; and, if our friends will provide the means, we shall very gladly send it to them all.

LONDON PEACE SOCIETY.-This Society is the great champion of our cause for Europe; and from the monthly reports in its organ, The Herald of Peace, we learn with what wisdom, energy and success they are prosecuting this arduous work. They keep constantly in the field lecturers of distinguished ability; and by a wise and zealous employment of the press, the pulpit and the platform, they are doing much to set public opinion right on this subject. With them it is a great practical, all-absorbing question; and with admirable tact, courage and persistence they grapple it, and combat it at every turn. Their example is worthy of all imitation by the friends of our cause everywhere.

Near the close of last June, our Committee, learning his purpose to

visit England, commissioned one of our Vice Presidents, Hon. AMASA WALKER, to lay before the London Peace Society several resolutions of ours on the subject of Disarmament. That Society called a special meeting in London to consider the subject, when Mr. Walker was heard at length; and the following resolutions were unanimously adopted:

1. "That this meeting greets, with great satisfaction and pleasure, the presence amongst us of our honored friend, Mr. Amasa Walker, both as representative of the American Peace Society, and on account of the high esteem we cherish for him personally, and for the long and valuable services he has rendered to the cause of peace.

2. "That the meeting fully acknowledges the vital importance of the sentiments embodied in the resolutions of the American Peace Society, communicated by Mr. Walker, in relation to the system of rivalry in armaments which is weighing so heavily upon Europe; and the duty of the friends of Peace to use their utmost efforts to urge upon the attention both of governments and peoples the manifold and ruinous evils which spring from that system, and the necessity of adopting some practical means for introducing without delay the process of mutual and simultaneous reduction of armaments.

3. "That we desire our friend Mr. Walker, to convey to our fellow-laborers in America the warm expression of our sympathy and friendship, and the pleasure with which we have witnessed their faithful and persistent advocacy of the principles of peace through evil report and good report."

LONDON PEACE SOCIETY.

This noble Society held its forty-fourth anniversary in London, May 22d. "The assembly," says the British Standard, "was, as usual, very large, and strongly marked by intelligence and respectability. The excellent Chairman, HENRY PEASE, M. P., introduced the business in one of those reflective, solid, and discreet addresses which always characterize the Society of Friends. The Report, of course, dealt mainly with the events of the year, which it discussed with its customary vigor, fidelity, and eloquence. It was a masculine oration on behalf of peace on earth and good will towards men.'" We have not space to copy in full these proceedings, but give enough to show with what liberality, zeal and energy our brethren in England are prosecuting their part of this great work.

FINANCES. The receipts, including a balance of $2,722 for the last year, amount, in our currency, to $16,605, and the expenses to $9,947, leaving in the treasury, $6,658, with which to start the operations of a new year. Here are some ten thousand dollars spent during the year in the cause, and an overplus amounting to more than our friends in this country have ever contributed in any one year, and nearly twice as much as they gave last year. With such proofs before them of interest in the cause, our brethren in England may well say:

"The Committee are happy to report that their finances are in a satisfactory condition. Soon after the last annual meeting, a few friends of the Society met in conference, when its financial state and prospects were laid