zed, then their intercourse with each other will be regulated by such laws, and their differences settled by such tribunals as regulate the intercourse and settle the differences of individuals. in well ordered communities.

Several circumstances show that the progress of civilization in this respect, though slow, is still certain; and our country possesses the singular advantage of passing its youthful and forming period under the influence of these circumstances.

1. The acknowledged grounds of war have been very greatly diminished, and are still diminishing. In ancient times, a desire of conquest, a love of what was called glory, or the mere want of something else to do, were considered sufficient reasons for a nation's attacking and butchering its unoffending neighbors; and much of the glory celebrated by the poets of antiquity is the glory of being robbers and murderers without provocation. Christianity very early exerted influence enough on national character to abolish this system of national pillage; and the people who would now go to war avowedly for such purposes would justly be regarded and treated as pirates by the whole civilized world. Even after the spread of Christianity in Europe, the propagation of religion or the extinction of idolatry or heresy was considered a just ground of war; and many of the most bloody scenes were enacted in these so-called religious wars. But the thirty years' war which was terminated by the peace of Westphalia in the year 1648, after a seven years' negotiation, was the last war of this kind; and public sentiment is now so firmly settled on this point, that the pope himself would no longer dare proclaim a crusade against heretic or infidel.

Again; the preservation of the balance of power, as it is called, was long considered a sufficient ground of national hostility, and it was in wars of this kind that Marlborough acquired so much glory by making so much misery. But no cabinet in Europe would now dare to make war on this pretext only. Indeed the grounds of war acknowledged at present are reduced to two, the preservation of national honor, and the repelling of aggression; and in regard to these, the first will soon be confessed a mere illusion, and the second will be obsolete.

2. The increasing facilities of communication between the most distant parts of the earth, and the intimate financial connections between different nations are a strong security against war. Constant habits of personal intercourse and the mutual

dependencies of mercantile transactions are quite inconsistent with the device of mutual destruction; and governments who now devise to make war, must ask council of the merchant as well as the soldier.

3. The aristocratic influence over governments is continually diminishing, and that of the industrious classes as constantly increasing.

One great reason of the continuance and popularity of wars has been, that human butchery has been regarded as the only employment worthy of a nobleman. It would disgrace the son of a noble to do anything beneficial to society; a place in the army or navy is all that is fit for him, and to have a sufficient number of places in the army and navy, there must be something for the army and navy to do. All the honors and profits of war belong to the few who hold its high places, while its unmitigated miseries and horrors fall upon the great many, the industrious classes, who have been so long the dupes and slaves of the higher orders, but who will be so no longer. They already feel their strength and assert their rights, and so decided already has their influence become, that even noblemen now begin to make themselves useful as farmers and merchants, and kings and emperors are emulating the honors of the school

master.

6

When the industrious and productive portions of the community fully understand their interests and their rights, then wars will be impossible. Hear what an ingenious living writer appropriately calls, The purport and upshot of war: "What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport and upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of Drumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these, by certain 'natural enemies' of the French, there are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able bodied men. Drumdrudge at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them: She has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red, and shipped away at public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain; and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans, from

a French Drumdrudge, in like manner wending; till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxta-position; and thirty stand fronting thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word 'Fire!' is given; and they blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty brisk, useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury and anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrels? Busy as the devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a universe, there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot."* Can such things be when men become sufficiently enlightened to understand their interests and their rights?

4. In our own country we have a farther security against war in the very curious balancings of the various interests of the different portions of the nation. No one interest is sufficiently strong to hold out against all the others, and the connections of the different interests are so complicated, that it is impossible to form extensive hostile classes.

In the rapid increase of commercial intercourse, it will not be long before the whole world will be linked together by similar ties; and the associations for Atlantic steam navigation are among the most efficient of Peace Societies.

II. OUR DEFECTS.

Having thus spoken of the advantages of our condition, I must now, with the same plainness and simplicitly, proceed to notice our defects.

1. We have in the United States a vast amount of vulgar and obtrusive vice, in addition to our full share of the more decent and secret modes of wickedness, which always attend a high degree of worldly prosperity.

No man or woman can travel in our stage coaches, on our canals, or in our steamboats, without being often offended with outbreakings of profaneness and filthiness against which there is no remedy but uncomplaining silence; for any manifestation of displeasure or any attempt at reproof, unless contrived and exe

Sartor Resartus.

cuted with very unusual skill, will increase tenfold the obnoxious torrent. There is no country on earth where the traveller is so much exposed to this species of annoyance; and as our great lines of public conveyance are the scenes which first present themselves to the notice of strangers, is it any wonder that foreigners should sometimes become prejudiced against us and our institutions? There is nothing like it in Europe; and the nearest approach to it is found in the low, uneducated, and vicious part of the populace of France. While in that country I was at no loss to conjecture where the instruments were found to perpetrate the horrid excesses of the French revolution; and I trembled when I traced the too visible features of resemblance to a large and, I fear, an increasing part of our own population. The source of this evil in the United States is easily pointed out. What must be the inevitable result of permitting large masses of active, ardent mind to grow up without culture, and continue from year to year engrossed in the business and pleasures of sense, without any of the modifying influences which arise from cultivating the imagination and taste or the religious sentiments? The class of population to which I refer enter on the business of their lives, with little or no training from schools, and once engaged in their occupations they have no Sabbath to break the current of worldly thought and feeling, and no objects of veneration to soften or to awe the rougher propensities of their nature. No, they have no Sabbath. Griping avarice, contemptible demagogueism, and a supercilious disregard of authority, which practically denies to God himself the right to rule except so far as the democracy of numbers shall please to permit, has swept away from our great lines of conveyance that palladium of our safety, that great source of modifying influences over minds let loose from governmental restraints—and our country offers no substitute in the shape of venerated usages, traditional customs, or artificial and imposing forms of society.

Those political men, (for statesmen they are not,) who have dared hazard the consequences of desecrating the Sabbath from the example of Europe, have shown themselves extremely shortsighted; for in Europe, where the day is not strictly appropriated to religious duties, a part of it is devoted to elevating and civilizing amusements, to visiting the ornamental public walks, the works of art, the statues and paintings, the venerated castles and cathedrals, the cherished antiquities which continually impress the mind with the hallowed recollections of ancient

times, and thus soften and refine it-and with all this the constant presence of an armed police accustoms every man to suppress the outward expression of his rougher feelings.

But with us there are no such customs, no such linkings with antiquity, no such restraining influences on our manners. Take away the religious character of the sabbath, and everything civilizing and humanizing in the day is gone, and there is nothing left but one continued stream of worldly pursuit, interrupted only by bursts of drunkenness and brutalizing debauchery. With us the desecration of the sabbath brings with it its natural and most appropriate punishment, in the degrading and brutifying of that part of our population who have little opportunity of intellectual or moral culture, except what the hallowed rest of this day is designed to afford. And yet this institution of God, so essential to the civilization and moral culture of the mass of our people, so necessary to our political safety, this most important institution must be set at nought, lest a business letter should be delayed a few hours on the road, or a package of merchandize not quite so rapidly change owners, or an imbecile demagogue Jack a hobby to ride into office with!

"Shall I not visit you for these things? saith the Lord; and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?" Jer. 5: 9.

"Thou hast despised my holy things, and hast profaned my sabbaths. Behold, therefore, I have smitten my hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made.-Can thy heart endure, or can thy hands be strong, in the days that I will deal with thee? I the Lord have spoken it and will do it." Ezek. 22: 8, 13, 14.

Surely without speedy repentance and reformation the visita tion will come; and, as God's visitations usually are, it will be the natural result of the transgression. Already has the appropriate retribution been commenced, and every year the rod is felt with increasing severity. Whence result those terrible steamboat explosions, but from the recklessness of men, made wanton by entire political freedom, without the checks of intellectual and religious instruction? Every year, the destruction of life from this source increases at a fearful rate. In 1836, 400 were destroyed in this way; in 1837, 600; and during the first half of 1838, more than 1000.

Are we so blind that we cannot see the hand of God, so deaf that we cannot hear his voice, in these fearful catastrophies?