used more easily, more effectually, before than after fighting! Such is the despotism, such the suicidal madness of war.

MORAL EFFECTS.

The influence of war on the moral and religious interests of mankind forms the very climax of its evils. There is no passion it will not kindle, no vice it will not indulge, no crime it will not perpetrate. It is a temporary repeal of religion, morality and law. It is the reign of vandalism. It debases the intellect; it sears the conscience; it steels the heart; it brutalizes more or less the whole soul, and transforms the man into a tiger fierce for blood. It is a hot-bed of abominations; and every species of vice and crime would soon start up, like mushrooms, all over the land.

Mark, also, the certain effects of a war on the cause of religion. It would suspend the Sabbath in many places, and greatly increase its desecrations through the whole land. It would close many a sanctuary. It would fearfully diminish the means of grace, and well nigh destroy their efficacy. It would alienate and embitter the professed disciples of Christ. It would grieve away the Spirit of God, and occasion a long and general dearth of revivals. Such has been the actual effect of every war in our country. The French and revolutionary wars retarded the progress of religion half a century, and produced a degeneracy from which only the millennium can fully recover us; and still worse, in all probability, would be the war now threatened with Great Britain.

But glance at its influence on all our enterprises of Christian benevolence and reform. It would throw back the cause of temperance a whole generation. It would be another Sodom of licentiousness. It would suspend every department of reform, and vastly increase the difficulties of future reformation. It would cripple all our enterprises of Christian benevolence both at home and abroad. We should have neither the power, the opportunity, nor the disposition that we now have, to promote them. The operations of our Tract, and Bible, and Education, and Missionary Societies, home and foreign, would all be sadly crippled and deranged.

But I will not pursue this painful theme. God only foresees, eternity alone can disclose, all its tremendous results. How many revivals of religion it would prevent! How many thousands of souls it would probably ruin for ever! What a flood of irreligion, vice and crime it would pour over the whole land! How many years it might put back the day of the world's conversion to God!

WILLIAM PENN'S WAY OF GETTING WHAT LAND HE WANTED. Penn learned in 1669 that there was some very choice land not included in his first purchase; and he sent to inquire of the Indians, if they would sell it. They replied that they did not wish to part with the land where their fathers were resting; but, to please their father Onas,—the name they gave the good man, they would sell him some of it. Accordingly, they agreed, for a certain quantity of English goods, to sell as much land as one of his young men could walk round in a day, beginning at the great river Cosquanco,' now Kensington, and ending at the great river Kallapingo,' now Bristol. This mode of measurement, though their own choice, did not in the end satisfy the Indians; for the young Englishman, chosen to walk off the tract of land, walked so fast and far as greatly to astonish and mortify them. The governor observed their dissatisfaction, and asked the cause. The walker cheat us.'

Ah, how can that be?' said Penn; 'did you not choose yourselves to have the land measured in this way?'

'True,' replied the Indians, ‘but white brother make too big walk.'

Some of Penn's commissioners, waxing warm, said the bargain was a fair one, and insisted that the Indians ought to abide by it, and if not, should be compelled to it.

Compelled exclaimed Penn, how can you compel them without bloodshed? Don't you see this looks to murder?' Then turning with a benignant smile to the Indians, he said, 'Well, brothers, if you have given us too much land for the goods first agreed on, how much more will satisfy you?'

This proposal gratified them; and they mentioned the quantity of cloth, and number of fish-hooks, with which they would be satisfied. These were cheerfully given; and the Indians, shaking hands with Penn, went away smiling.

After they were gone, the governor, looking round on his friends, exclaimed 'O how sweet and cheap a thing is charity? Some of you spoke just now, of compelling these poor creatures to stick to their bargain, that is, in plain English, to fight and kill them, and all about a little piece of land!'

If William Penn had been governor of Maine in 1839, would there have been any danger of war about our north-eastern boundary? If the rulers of that State, and of the nation, had breathed only a small portion of his spirit, there would have been little if any difficulty in bringing the whole controversy to a result with which both parties would now be satisfied.

Who is to pay the piper ?—The politicians of Maine have been dancing right merrily to the tune of $800,000, voted to carry on their war of jurisdiction, and, of $1,600,000, in all, appropriated at the recent session of her legislature. The papers also tell us, that her whole debt, not a cent for internal improvements, is now $2,000,000, including the late appropriations. On her loan procured in Boston, she was obliged, it is said, to pay a premium besides six per cent. interest; in New York, her credit did not obtain a dollar; her legislature, not daring to risk the popularity of their own expensive measures by a tax of $100,000, only a sixteenth part of what they had so patriotically voted away, called on the banks of the State for the aid which their charters oblige them in such an extremity to render. Maine cannot, like the United States, meet these expenses in the sly, unnoticed way of a tariff; and, when the people put their hands into their own pockets for more than the whole tract of land awarded to England is fairly worth, they will choose hereafter to dance, if dance they must, to a different tune, or I am no Yankee at guessing.

P.

Patriotism. When Maine was on the eve of her war with England, she sent an agent to Boston for the purchase of provisions, which he bought at a large advance upon the current market price, and then charged the State for his services, which occupied a week or so, nearly $700! Another patriot, a member of her legislature from a town near the disputed territory, and doubtless very urgent for the expulsion of the trespassers, obtained leave of absence immediately after the adoption of the various resolves for that purpose, and returned home in hot haste to get off his own teams!!

APPROPRIATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES FOR 1839.

R.

Here we have a round sum total of near $37,000,000 actually appropriated, and $10,000,000 more conditionally; and of all this, only about $9,000,000, less than one fourth, if not less than one fifth of the whole, go for purposes that would be necessary without the war-system. Of these $9,000,000, no small part is required in consequence of the war-method of regulating intercourse between nations. War is the chief burden of our own expenses; and our civil list cost us, from 1791 to 1832, a period of forty-one years, an average of less than $1,000,000 a year.

Direct loss of property on sea by war. The destruction of property by war is the least of its evils, and yet it appears by a list now going the rounds, that sixty-two British vessels of war were taken during the contest of 1812-15, mounting eight hundred and seventy guns. The following is a list of the merchant vessels taken by the Americans:

324 ships, mounting.

610 brigs,

250 schooners,.

2,500 guns 2,400"

600"

135 sloops, few armed,

750 vessels, besides the above (recaptured),

62 national ships, as above,....

.2,500 " 870"

800 "

31 ships of war were lost at sea during the above period, which may fairly come into the account,.

2153 vessels,

9,379 guns.

This is one side of the picture; the other would show perhaps an equal amount of American shipping destroyed. We say destroyed, for much the largest portion of the vessels captured, were set fire to, after being plundered of the choicest portions of their cargo, and burnt, or scuttled and sunk. The war lasted only two and a half years; yet here are its effect in the single department of commerce. From 4000 to 5000 vessels of both nations, taken with their cargoes from their rightful owners, and confiscated or destroyed! Supposing them to have been worth on an average $25,000 each, including the cargo; here is a loss to the owners, of $100,000,000 and upwards. And this is but an item in the catalogue of ruin caused by a short and not very vigorously prosecuted war. What friend of England or America, or of humanity,who, in short, but a fiend,—could wish to see these scenes of destruction and carnage acted over again?

AGENCIES.

Messrs. Ladd, Beck with and Lord have, as usual during the year, been zealously at work in our service since the date of our last reports from them; but we can barely allude to the fact and the scene of their labors. Mr. Lord has been lecturing in Albany, Utica, Rome, Whitesborough, Clinton, Auburn, and other places in the interior of New York. It is for the most part a new field; but he has met with a better reception and more success than could have been reasonably expected. Mr. Ladd, on his return from his Southern tour, lingered some weeks in the city of New York, and wrote much for the papers concerning the boundary difficulties, with the origin and progress of which few are so well acquainted. He passed through Boston near the close of last month, and lectured during a week or two in the vicinity of Portsmouth, N. H., about twenty times. He is now in Maine; and we trust his influence will be felt there in recovering the public mind from its war-mania.

The duties of our Secretary here restrain him from long absences or distant excursions; but we have been particularly encouraged by the report of his recent labors. "It is not often," he says, "that I can be absent a whole week at once; but when I can, and give myself up to the work of an agent, I find almost invariable encouragement. The last week in March I spent in this way. I went for the Sabbath to Essex, where I found some obstruction from the people having been led to confound peace with non-government; but I met with a very kind reception, especially from the minister, and obtained in one day and a half fifty names for the Advocate, and $46,75 in hand. Thence I went to North Danvers, where I lectured to a good audience on a Congress of Nations, and picked up, during a part of the next day, $20. Fast day of the same week I preached once in Byfield, and twice in Georgetown; but being obliged

to return the next day, I made no effort for funds in B., though I received in G. $39,50. Exposure occasioned an illness that compelled me, after three sermons on the following Sabbath, making twelve in eight days, to rest the quarter part of the next week; but on Friday I started for Nantucket, a place of very peculiar interest to all acquainted with its history, where I met a very cordial welcome for our cause. I had a ready and favorable access to the principal pulpits; the trustees of the Athenæum politely opened their lecture-room, which would accommodate 500 persons, yet some hundreds, I was told, went away for want of room; and, mainly through the aid of the Hon. David Joy, a devoted and distinguished friend of every such object, I succeeded in raising $170 for our cause in two or three days. I refer you to the list of receipts for the names of five gentlemen who made themselves Life-Members of our Society by contributing each $20, and of others there to whose liberality we are indebted. I have never found a community so pervaded with pacific feelings. Its history is a fine commentary on peace; and from a history of Nantucket, presented me by the family of Thomas Macy, may hereafter furnish some facts that cannot fail to interest the curious."

Anniversary of the American Peace Society will be the last week of this month in Boston. The Directors, Life-Members, and other members are invited to attend. We expect some distinguished speakers on the occasion; and the review then to be taken of a year so full of war-alarms, must be one of special interest to all the friends of our

cause.

Our Periodical.-We beg the special attention of our friends to its claims to a wider and steadier patronage. We put it so low,-little more than half as much as is commonly charged for periodicals of this size and sort,—that it has ever been a losing concern, a heavy bill of expense beyond what we receive for it, and we are anxious, for many reasons, to quadruple, if possible, the number of regular subscribers. It is our main channel of communication with the public; we shall spare no pains to make it worthy of universal patronage; and, if our friends choose, they could easily enlarge its subscription list enough to render it a source of income instead of expense to the Society. Every friend of peace, not in absolute poverty, can easily take a copy; and, if the reputed friends of the cause will not give a single dollar a year with more than a full equivalent in return, whence can we expect funds for the prosecution of this great enterprise? We beg them to consider this matter well, and not only continue their own subscriptions, but endeavor to obtain other subscribers.