ADVOCATE OF PЕАСЕ. No. XII. JANUARY, 1839. AUXILIARIES OF PEACE. It would require a volume to detail the influences now at work in favor of our cause through the world, especially among civilized nations. Every thing which interlinks their interests, or interchanges between them thought and feeling, respect and sympathy, must act as a check upon war; and we subjoin, in extracts from contemporary periodicals, some of these incidental auxiliaries of peace. I. PECUNIARY BONDS OF PEACE. Trade in Stocks. Public stocks to a vast amount have in this country been created mainly for works of internal improvement; and these stocks, purchased chiefly in England, and forming there a regular item of trade, are like so many mortgages on each country for the preservation of peace. Every dollar thus invested is an argument against war. The State of Massachusetts has recently issued or authorized scrip, no small part of it already in the London market, for the following objects: We subjoin a more extended view of American stocks held 3,000,000 1,500,000 1,000,000 2,000,000 14,200,000 do............................................... Indiana do. ....... Florida Territory,.. ...... Farmers' Loan and Trust Company 5 per cent. Bonds, New York Life Insurance and Trust Company, do. do..... Delaware & Raritan Co., and Camden & Amboy R. R. Co. Bonds,.. $110,000,000 But these are not all the American stocks that are held by foreigners; nor have we the means of ascertaining the probable amount of funds invested by them in our banks, and other institutions; but the sum total may perhaps exceed $200,000,000, all of which would be seriously injured by war. II. COMMERCE. We give a few specimens of our own imports and exports in 1836 and 1837: Here we have, in one year, nearly $300,000,000, in another, more than $236,000,000, an average of about $267,000,000, at stake in the commerce of our country, and all suspended, or put in jeopardy, by war. Here is an interest of nearly $300,000,000, pleading incessantly for the permanent peace of the world. III. DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. This spends itself mainly in agriculture, and different kinds of manufactures. Of the products of agriculture, we will not now attempt any estimate; but some idea may be formed from the facts, that the Southern States exported cotton alone, in 1836, to the amount of $71,284,925, and that the wool growth of the North has been thought to equal in value that of Southern cotton. England, as a country of manufacturers, is dependent for her prosperity on her trade as an outlet for the products of her industry and skill. In the hardware and cutlery business alone, she is said to employ 40,000 persons, and nearly $190,000,000. Universal and incessant war would dry up all her sources of wealth. Mr. Webster, in his celebrated speech on the Sub-Treasury Bill, quoted the following among other products of Massachusetts industry: Cotton fabrics,................ .$17,409,000 { Soap and candles,.... .$1,620,000 Woollen fabrics,............... 10,399,000 Nails, brads and tacks,.... 2,500,000 Fisheries,.... 7,592,000 Machinery of various kinds,. 1,235,000 Paper, books and stationery,... 2,592,000 Clothing, neckcloths, &c.,...... 2,013,000 The grand total, besides "the gains of commerce, the earnings of navigation, and almost the whole agricultural products of the State," is $91,700,000 in a single year. All these interests would be endangered, if not seriously injured, by war; and, if Massachusetts, containing only a fraction of our country's territory, population, or wealth, has so much to lose, how much must the whole nation suffer! We could not even begin a war without sacrificing some fifty times the amount of our late claim on France. Yet for the paltry sum of $5,000,000, not a few among us would fain have had us go to war, in the certainty of thus inflicting on ourselves a thousand-fold more injury than we should have suffered from losing the whole debt! IV. TRAVEL. This species of intercourse has vastly increased since the close of Napoleon's baleful career. Thousands of Americans are constantly in England, and thousands of Englishmen as constantly in our own land, every one of them a sort of hostage for the continuance of peace and amity between the two nations. The lines of sail and steam packets between England and the United States, are a species of sanatary cordon against the war-plague; and we were happy to hear a man of Daniel Webster's sagacity and forecast remarking, at the festivities recently held in honor of the first arrival of a steam-ship from Europe, on the tendency of such facilities of international intercourse to preserve the peace of the civilized world. War would annihilate such facilities; and all the interest, whether of profit or of pleasure, at stake in such means of intercourse between nations, must act as a constant and powerful check on the war-propensities of Christendom. V. STEAM-POWER AGAINST War. "Thanks to the growing common sense of mankind," says Blackwood's Magazine; "the world is beginning to discover that fifty years of victory are not worth one year of peace. In short, the world is evidently become a buying and selling world, a vast spinning and weaving community, a vast aggregate of hands and heads busy about the main chance, and much more inclined to eat, drink and be happy, than to burn each other's warehouses, or to blow out each other's brains." "That war will never cease out of the world, is a theorem founded on the fact, that the countless majority of mankind have a strong tendency to be fools; but we establish another theorem, that the more difficult it is to make war, the less likely it is to be made. The more mechanical dexterity, personal ingenuity, and national expense that is required to make war, the more will success be out of the power of brute force, and the more in the power of intellectual superiority. Let war come to a conflict of steam-engines, and all the barbarian rabble of the world, Turks and Tartars, Arabs and Indians, Africans and Chinese, must obviously be out of the question at once. They might massacre each other; but they must fly from the master of mechanics. All the half-barbarians, Russian, Greek, Pole, Swede and Austrian, must make the attempt only to be shattered; and Field Marshal Stephenson, with his squadron of 'fire-horses,' galloping at the rate of eighty miles an hour, would consume their battalions with the breath of his nostrils !" Here are topics full of encouragement to our cause. One year of peace better than fifty years, not of war, but even of victory! Noble sentiment! Let it become universal, and war must soon cease of course.-Industry, enterprise, manufactures, wealth, comforts, improvements of every kind, all are so many antagonists of war, and handmaids of peace.-We also like much this new theorem, and wish it might soon displace the absurd, pernicious maxim, that preparation for war is the best preservative of peace. Such preparation makes war easy; the want of it renders war difficult; and, if nations were obliged to cast their cannon, and build their ships, and construct their fortifications, and raise their troops, and man their fleets, before commencing hostilities, there would not be one war, where there have been fifty. The time, labor and expense of preparation would cool down the war-spirit, and dispose them to settle their difficulties without fighting. Preparation for war is a strong incentive to war; and the custom will never cease until nations agree to abandon all such preparations. VI. CHRISTIAN INTERCOURSE. But the interchange of visits, views and sympathies between Christians in different parts of the world, must form a still more effectual barrier against war; and the day may soon come, if it has not already, when the prompt and full-hearted reciprocities of Christian feeling between England and our own country shall render war between the two nations morally impossible. VOL. II.-NO. XII. 15* |