kindred, and that the relations of fellow-countryman are less holy than those of fellow-man. To the love of universal man may be applied those words by which the great Roman elevated his selfish patriotism to a virtue when he said, that country alone embraced all the charities of all.* Attach this admired phrase for a moment to the single idea of country, and you will see how contracted are its charities, compared with the world-wide circle of Christian love, whose neighbor is the suffering man, though at the farthest pole. Such a sentiment would dry up those fountains of benevolence, which now diffuse themselves in precious waters in distant unenlightened lands, bearing the blessings of truth to the icy mountains of Greenland, and the coral islands of the Pacific sea.

It has been a part of the policy of rulers, to encourage this exclusive patriotism; and the people of modern times have all been quickened by the feeling of antiquity. I do not know that any one nation is in a condition to reproach another with this patriotic selfishness. All are selfish. Men are taught to live, not for mankind, but only for a small portion of mankind. The pride, vanity, ambition, brutality even, which we rebuke in individuals, are accounted virtues when displayed in the name of country. Among us, the sentiment is active, while it derives new force from the point with which it has been expressed. An officer of our Navy, one of the so-called heroes nurtured by War, whose

* De Offic. Lib. I. Cap. 17. It is curious to observe how Cicero puts aside that expression of true Humanity, which fell from Terence, Humani nihil a me alienum puto. He says, Est enim difficilis cura rerum alienarum. De Offic. Lib. I, Cap. 9.

name has been praised in churches, has gone beyond all Greek, all Roman example. "Our country, be she right or wrong," was his exclamation; a sentiment dethroning God and enthroning the devil, whose flagitious character should be rebuked by every honest heart. Unlike this officer was the virtuous Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, in the days of the English Revolution, of whom it was said, that he "would lose his life, to serve his country, but would not do a base thing to save it." "Our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country," are other words which, falling first from the lips of an eminent American, have often been painted on banners, and echoed by the voices of innumerable multitudes. Cold and dreary, narrow and selfish, would be this life, if nothing but our country occupied our souls; if the thoughts that wander through eternity, if the infinite affections of our nature, were restrained to that spot of earth where we have been placed by the accident of birth.

I do not inculcate indifference to country. We incline by a natural sentiment, to the spot where we were born, to the fields that witnessed the sports of childhood, to the seat of youthful studies, and to the institutions under which we have been trained. The finger of God writes all these things in indelible colors upon the heart of man, so that in the anxious extremities of death, he reverts in fondness to early associations, and longs for a draught of cold water from the bucket in his father's well. This sentiment is independent of reflection, for it begins before reflection, grows with our growth, and strengthens with our strength. It is blind in its nature; and it is the duty of each of us to take

care that it does not absorb and pervert the whole character. In the moral night which has enveloped the world, nations have lived ignorant and careless of the interests of others, which they imperfectly saw; but the thick darkness is now scattered, and we begin to discern, all gilded by the beams of morning, the distant mountain-peaks of other lands. We find that God has not placed us on this earth alone; that there are others, equally with us, children of his protecting care.

The curious spirit goes further, and while recognizing an inborn sentiment of attachment to the place of birth, inquires into the nature of the allegiance due to the State. According to the old idea, still too much received, man is made for the State, and not the State for man. Far otherwise is the truth. The State is an artificial body, intended for the security of the people. How constantly do we find, in human history, that the people have been sacrificed for the State; to build the Roman name, to secure to England the trident of the sea. This is to sacrifice the greater for the less; for the False Grandeur of earth to barter life and the soul itself. Is it not clear, that no dominion of the State not even the State itself is worth preserving at the cost of the lives and happiness of the people?

It is not that I love country less, but Humanity more, that now, on this National Anniversary, I plead the cause of a higher and truer patriotism. Remember that you are men, by a more sacred bond than you are citizens; that you are children of a common Father more than you are Americans.

Recognizing God as a common Father, the seeming divers.ties of nations separated only by the accident

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of mountains, rivers, and seas, into those distinctions around which cluster the associations of country disappear, and the various people of the globe stand forth as brothers members of one great Human Family. Discord in this family is treason to God; while all War is nothing else than civil war. In vain do we restrain this odious term, importing so much of horror, to the petty dissensions of a single State. It belongs as justly to the feuds between nations, when referred to the umpirage of battle. The soul trembles aghast, as we contemplate fields drenched in fraternal gore, where the happiness of homes has been shivered by the unfriendly arms of neighbors, and kinsmen have sunk beneath the steel nerved by a kinsman's hand. This is civil war, which stands accursed forever in the calendar of time. But the Muse of History, in the faithful record of the future transactions of nations, inspired by a new and loftier justice, and touched to finer sensibilities, shall extend to the general sorrows of Universal Man the sympathy still profusely shed for the selfish sorrow of country, and shall pronounce international War to be civil war, and the partakers in it as traitors, to God and enemies to

man.

6. I might here pause, feeling that those of my hearers who have kindly accompanied me to this stage, would be ready to join in the condemnation of War, and hail peace, as the only condition becoming the dignity of human nature, and in which True Greatness can be achieved. But there is still one other consideration, which yelds to none of the rest in importance; perhaps

it is more important than all. It is at once cause and effect; the cause of much of the feeling in favor of War, and the effect of this feeling. I refer to the costly PREPARATIONS FOR WAR, in time of Peace. And here is one of the great practical evils which requires an immediate remedy. Too much time cannot be taken in ex

posing its character.

I do not propose to dwell upon the immense cost of War itself. That will be present to the minds of all, in the mountainous accumulations of debt, piled like Ossa upon Pelion, with which Europe is pressed to the earth. According to the most recent tables to which I have had access, the public debt of the different European States, so far as it is known, amounts to the terrific sum of $6,387,000,000, all of this the growth of War! It is said that there are throughout these states, 17,900,000 paupers, or persons subsisting at the expense of the country, without contributing to its resources. If these millions of the public debt, forming only a part of what has been wasted in War, could be apportioned among these poor, it would give to each. of them $375, a sum which would place all above want, and which is about equal to the average value of the property of each inhabitant of Massachusetts.

The public debt of Great Britain reached in 1839 to $4,265,000,000, the growth of War since 1688! This amount is nearly equal to the sum-total, according to the calculations of Humboldt, of all the treasures which have been reaped from the harvest of gold and silver in the mines of Spanish America, including Mexico and Peru, since the first discovery of our hemisphere by