be "checked and effectually repressed"? Yes; it is just as possible to abolish war as duelling. And do not "the blood of the murdered, the tears of the bereaved, and the commands of a righteous God, call upon us" to seek its abolition by every lawful means in our power? If we resist such a call, will there not "abide on us much of the guilt" inseparable from the continuance of war?

Strange that men who so justly, so eloquently condemn duelling, should still be blind to the far greater atrocities of war! The press has teemed of late with well-merited denunciations of single combat ; but nearly every paragraph, every sentence, every epithet of scorn and reprobation might be transferred to the gigantic system_of national duelling, with equal propriety, and augmented force. Put your finger, if you can, upon a single argument against duels, that might not be urged, mutatis mutandis, against war.

FRIEND OF PEACE.

INFLUENCE OF WAR ON DOMESTIC HAPPINESS.

THE following sketch of war, from the pen of Mr. Goodell, an American missionary at Constantinople, may serve to show what remorseless havoc it makes of domestic relations and hopes. I commend the picture especially to our female friends, and ask if they have no interest in the success of efforts to abolish a custom which laughs at the fond endearments of home, and has filled every age and clime with mourning mothers, and disconsolate sisters, with weeping widows, and desolate orphans:

"An order had just come from Constantinople to Mondania for a hundred Greeks; and, being designed for the sultan's navy, they were particularly sought for among the boatmen. The boatmen of course fled in every direction; and not a boat could be found to take me. The plague was raging in the place; and the miserable coffeeshop where I staid, was filled day and night with filthy, lounging Turks. The impressment of young Greeks was going on; and the mothers and sisters were assembled before the governor's house, weeping and lamenting the fate of their sons and brothers. As I passed by repeatedly, I said unto them, weep not; but my sympathy was impotent.

"At length the levy, amounting to forty, was completed; the men were put on board a small vessel for Constantinople; and, fearing there would not soon be another opportunity, I took passage in the same craft. I was on board when the impressed Greeks were brought from prison, pinioned, and chained two together. Their mothers and other female relatives rushed to the water's edge to give them the last embrace. Their cries rent the air. One mother fainted away; another tore the flesh with her teeth off her own arm; ⚫ another threw herself into the sea, and was pulled out by the soldiers. Some of the prisoners, too, sobbed and wept like children; and others"-a proof of the wildest grief-"danced and sung, while the

tears were streaming down their cheeks. I literally groaned in spirit, and was troubled. I tried to speak some words of comfort; but my voice faltered, and I wept freely.

"On reaching Constantinople, preparations were immediately made for presenting the young men before the Capudan pasha. Whether they were to be kept in the Sultan's service for life; whether they were to receive any adequate pay; whether they would ever be permitted to visit their friends, were questions which none present could answer. One of them was recently married; another was betrothed; one was the son of a priest; and one was 'the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.'"

Such is war the world over. Women of America! look at this picture, and see what war is preparing for yourselves. The parent you revere, the brother you love, the son of your pride and your hopes, the husband of your youth, and father of your little ones, it may yet tear from your fond and clinging embrace, to pine in the camp, and faint in the march, and bleed on the battle-field, and there leave his body to rot like carrion. Do you shudder at the Slave-trade? Here is a parallel to the cruelties of that accursed traffic. Do you pity the crushed and bleeding victims of Southern slavery? Here is the counterpart to its stripes and chains, to its tearing asunder of husbands and wives, of parents and children, to its tears and its blood. Look yet again at the picture, and say if the wives and mothers, the daughters and sisters of America have nothing to do with the cause of peace. PACIFICUS.

A DEFINITION OF MURDER APPLIED.

THE shrewd editor of the N. Y. Observer, examining Wise's flimsy, cold-blooded vindication of himself before his constituents against the charge of murder for the part he took in the duel, asks, "Why is it not murder? What is murder? Killing with malice aforethought.' Malice in law is not that 'animosity' which these duellists disclaimed, but an intention to kill. The highwayman who kills the traveller for his purse, has no 'animosity' against his victim; he only wants his money; but he intends to kill him, and that intention is 'malice aforethought,' and therefore the killing is murder. Mr. Cilley, therefore, was murdered."

Very good logic; but, applied to war, it would prove every death to be a murder, and every warrior a murderer in the eye of reason and of God. If "an intention to kill" is the only "malice aforethought" necessary to constitute murder, what shall we say of the wholesale butcheries in war, offensive or defensive? Do not armies always intend to kill? Does not every soldier seek the life of his enemy? Is he not required to kill? Does not every nation, on going to war, design to kill? Does not every kind of war, whether offensive or defensive, consist mainly in killing men? Are not all

the preparations for war designed to kill? Is not the butchery of mankind by thousands the grand aim, well nigh the whole business of war? If this be not murder, tell us what is; and if it be, can you tell us the sum total of guilt incurred by Christian nations in continuing such a system of wholesale murder, in spending every year $800,000,000 for the sole purpose of murder, in keeping four millions of men under pay to commit murder by wholesale, at the bidding of rulers who have no more authority from God to license this species of murder than they have duelling, idolatry or blasphemy?

FRIEND OF PEACE.

CLAIMS OF WARRIORS ON WOMAN.

"NONE but the brave deserve the fair," poets of every age have told us; and the autocrat of Russia is literally carrying the sentiment into execution upon his female subjects in Poland. It was some time ago reported, that he had ordered the seizure of 600 young Polish women to be given in marriage to his soldiers. This report was soon contradicted; but Paris correspondents have since confirmed its truth" on the highest authority." Most of the victims were young married women, who were torn from the embraces of their husbands, parents and children, to be dragged into a returnless exile, to gratify the brutal lusts of Russian soldiers.

Such is war, for which many a Christian mother is educating her own sons; and such is the general character of the men whom some women of intelligence, refinement and virtue are still thoughtless enough to admire and caress. When will Christian women learn their duty and their interest on this subject, and no longer lend their influence in a thousand ways for the support of this foul, accursed system?

RESULT OF WAR FOR LIBERTY.

POLAND boldly drew the sword in vindication of her rights, and our entire nation applauded the step as patriotic and wise; but mark the result in a much deeper degradation and misery than she would ever had reached in a course of quiet submission, or in the use of only moral means for her deliverance.

"A letter from Warsaw announces the arrival of a new ukase from St. Petersburg, by which all the ancient boundaries of Russian Poland are abolished, and the latter kingdom is finally incorporated with Russia. The inhabitants are to pass freely from one country to the other, without obtaining passports; the custom houses between Russia and Poland are done away; the children of Polish soldiers are to belong to the Russian government, to be placed in military schools, and governed by the same laws as those of Russia."

MR. MAY'S REMARKS

AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AM. PEACE SOCIETY.

MR. PRESIDENT,-I rise not to make a speech, but merely to offer a resolution which was to have been presented and advocated by another gentleman, the Rev. BARON Srow, of this city. You will not regret more than I do, that I appear here in his stead.

Resolved, That the cause of peace, as an important but long-neglected part of the gospel, demands at present special attention from the whole Christian community.

*

If, Sir, we were sincere in our assent to the resolution that has just been passed, we shall not hesitate to give to the one now before us a unanimous vote. Surely, if the cause of peace be preeminently evangelical, it deserves, nay, demands, the special attention of all Christiaus. That it has been long neglected, only increases the urgency of its claims upon us now. But it will not be enough that we here vote, and that our fellow-Christians elsewhere assent to the declaration, that the cause of peace is an important part of the gospel. It is necessary we should deeply feel how important it is, and embrace its principles. Evils of a most malignant nature and fearful magnitude have overspread the Christian world (as it is called), because the professed disciples of Jesus have rejected or overlooked the pacific precepts and spirit of their Master. I am not willing to say merely, with the resolution, that, the establishment of universal and permanent peace upon earth is an important part, I say it is an essential part of the gospel. Where there is no peace, there is no Christianity. And the great purpose of Christ's mission is accomplished only so far as men are persuaded to abandon all the arts of war, and live together as brethren.

Allow me to say, Mr. President, that I am not pleased with the limitations put upon the objects of this association by the Annual Report just read.† We can effect nothing, if we aim only to abolish international wars. We must

aim at the root of the evil,-aim to extirpate the spirit of war from the hearts of men (from our own hearts first of all),-the spirit of revenge, hatred, malice. We profess to be disciples of one who suffered injuries far greater than we are exposed to, with patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and who even gave up his life for the good of his enemies. Sir, it is only so far as we have and manifest his spirit, that we can be instrumental in the advancement of his

cause.

I know it is said, and said truly, that Christ came into the world to reconcile men to God. But this can be done, Sir, only by reconciling them to one another. For we can love God only so far as we love our fellow-men. A man may say, "I love God," while he hateth his brother. But such a man deceiveth his own soul. "He is a liar. For if he loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?" No adoration of the lips, no oblations, no sacrifices, are any evidence of piety in him who is at enmity with his neighbor. "If thou bring thy gift to the altar," said our Lord," and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar; first go and be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift."

I know not how to labor in this cause, Sir, but by inculcating these fundamental principles. When these principles are embraced by men, all private and public wars will cease. It was the mission of Jesus to inculcate these

*The one advocated by Rev. Mr. Winslow.

† Our excellent friend mistook the tenor of the Report, as the abstract read was very brief.

principles in his preaching, and to illustrate and enforce them in his life and death. Thus did he lay the foundation of the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of peace. Upon that foundation we must build.

One word more, Sir. There are reasons, as the resolution before you intimates, why the principles of peace should be urged upon men with especial diligence, at this present time. In almost all the Christian nations, knowledge is now busily disseminated among the people; and knowledge is power for evil, as well as for good. If the people, who have been oppressed, shall be brought to perceive the extent of their wrongs, and to appreciate their rights, without being at the same time taught the more excellent way of redressing their grievances, will they not fly to the too common way of revenge, bloodshed, war? Nothing else can be expected.

And O, Sir, in our own guilty land, what must we look for, if the spirit of peace be not diffused among the millions who are enslaved, and the hundreds of thousands who have embraced their cause? What else, but servile and civil war? To avert this dread catastrophe, all the Christians in our land should labor with their might. In the view of men it may seem impossible to avert it; but with God all things are possible. Let us labor in faith, and in the spirit of him who came, as the angelic choir proclaimed, to bring peace on earth, and good-will towards men.

LITERARY NOTICES.

1. The Criminality, Cowardice, and Cure of Duelling. By Rev. CHARLES HOOVER, Newark, N. J. National Preacher for May, 1838.

We have room only for a brief analysis of this bold and well-argued discourse. The author aims to show, "that the duel is murder by the law of God and of man; and that it is murder invested with all those circumstances which can render it cold-blooded and atrocious." 1. The law of God is clear and decisive against it as murder. 2. "Duel is murder by the settled principles of human law." Proved by quotations from Blackstone, Russell, and Foster. 3. It is murder peculiarly atrocious, because deliberate. 4. It includes "the double guilt of murder and suicide." 5. It is murder "under pretexts eminently hypocritical." 6. It is accompanied with cowardice—“ a code for cowards." 7. It is "murder without the remotest prospect of gaining the alleged end." 8. "The duellist is a murderer by profession." 9. The principles of the duellist are without a parallel despotic, sanguinary, and subversive of all government.

The author next urges, as a cure for duelling, "the cultivation of deep-seated reverence for law;"-the correction of public sentiment, constraining the civil authorities to execute the laws against duelling;—the diffusion of right views, the exertion of a right influence on the subject, by the press, by the pulpit, by politicians of every school, by parents and teachers. All under this head might be included in the formation of a correct, efficacious public sentiment.

We have no space for extracts; but we could not help observing, in the perusal of this excellent discourse, how applicable most of its arguments are to the kindred practice of war, the custom of national duelling, the origin and support of private duels. Abolish the former, and the latter will cease at once; but never so long as the former is kept in countenance.

2. The Law of Honor; A Discourse occasioned by the recent Duel in Washington. By HENRY WARE, Jr. 1838.

A discourse of much beauty, well adapted to the class of minds to whom it