Fathers is doubtless to their children a most precious treasure ; but to enjoy it without transmitting it to the next generation, and without adding to it yourselves, this is the height of imbecility. Following these counsels, when your days shall be finished on earth, you will come to join us, and we shall receive you as friends receive friends; but if you neglect our words, expect no happy greeting then from us. Honour to the memory of our Fathers! May the turf lie gently on their sacred graves! But let us not in words only, but in deeds also, testify our reverence for their name. Let us imitate what in them was lofty, pure, and good; let us from them learn to bear hardship and privation. Let us, who now reap in strength what they sowed in weakness, study to enhance the inheritance we have received. To do this, we must not fold our hands in slumber, nor abide content with the Past. To each generation is committed its peculiar task; nor does the heart, which responds to the call of duty, find rest except in the world to come. Be ours, then, the task which, in the order of Providence, has been cast upon us! And what is this task? How shall we best perform the part assigned to us? What can we do to make our coming welcome to our Fathers in the skies, and to draw to our memory hereafter the homage of a grateful posterity? How can we add to the inheritance we have received? The answer to these questions cannot fail to interest all minds, particularly on this Anniversary of the birthday of our country. Nay, more; it becomes us, on this occasion, as patriots and citizens, to turn our thoughts inward, as the good man dedicates his birthday, to the consideration of his character and the mode in which its vices may be corrected and its virtues strengthened. Avoiding, then, all exultation in the prosperity that has enriched our land, and in the extending influence of the blessings of freedom, let us consider what we can do to elevate our character, to add to the happiness of all, and to attain to that righteousness which exalteth a nation. In this spirit, I propose to inquire What, in our age, are the true objects of national ambition-what is truly national glory—national honour-WHAT IS THE TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS? I hope to rescue these terms, so powerful over the minds of men, from the mistaken objects to which they are applied, from * The chief of this is borrowed almost literally from the words attributed by Plato to the Fathers of Athens, in the beautiful Funeral Discourse of the Menexenus. deeds of war, and the extension of empire, that henceforward they may be attached only to acts of Justice and Humanity. The subject will raise us to the contemplation of things that are not temporary or local in their character; but which belong to all ages and all countries; which are as lofty as Truth, as universal as Humanity. But it derives a peculiar interest, at this moment, from transactions in which our country has become involved. On the one side, by an act of unjust legislation, extending our power over Texas, we have endangered Peace with Mexico; while on the other, by a presumptuous assertion of a disputed claim to a worthless territory beyond the Rocky Mountains, we have kindled anew on the hearth of our Mother Country, the smothered fires of hostile strife. Mexico and England both aver the determination to vindicate what is called the national honour; and the dread arbitrament of war is calmly contemplated by our Government, provided it cannot obtain what is called an honourable peace. * Far be from our country and our age the sin and shame of contests hateful in the sight of God and all good men, having their origin in no righteous though mistaken sentiment, in no true love of country, in no generous thirst for fame, that last infirmity of noble minds, but springing in both cases from an ignorant and ignoble passion for new territories; strengthened in one case, by an unnatural desire, in this land of boasted freedom, to fasten by new links the chains which promise soon to fall from the limbs of the unhappy slave! In such contests, God has no attribute which can join with us. Who believes that the national honour will be promoted by a war with Mexico or England? What just man would sacrifice a single human life, to bring under our rule both Texas and Oregon? It was an ancient Roman, touched, perhaps, by a transient gleam of Christian truth, who said, when he turned aside from a career of Asiatic conquest, that he would rather save the life of a single citizen than become master of all the dominions of Mithridates. A war with Mexico would be mean and cowardly; but with England it would be at least bold, though parricidal. The heart, sickens at the murderous attack upon an enemy, distracted by civil * The official paper at Washington has said, "We presume the negotiation is really resumed, and will be prosecuted in this city, and not in London, to some definite conclusion-peaceably we should hope--but we wish for no peace but an honourable peace." feuds, weak at home, impotent abroad; but it recoils in horror from the deadly shock between children of a common ancestry, speaking the same language, soothed in infancy by the same words of love and tenderness, and hardened into vigorous manhood under the bracing influence of institutions drawn from the same ancient founts of freedom. Curam acuebat, quod adversus Latinos bellandum erat, linguâ, moribus, armorum genere, institutis ante omnia militaribus congruentes; milites militibus, centurionibus centuriones, tribuni tribunis compares, collegæque, iisdem præsidiis, sæpe iisdem manipulis permixti fuerant.* IN OUR AGE THERE CAN BE NO PEACE THAT IS NOT HONOURABLE; THERE CAN BE NO WAR THAT IS NOT DISHONOURABLE.† The true honour of a nation is to be found only in deeds of justice and in the happiness of its people, all of which are inconsistent with war. In the clear eye of Christian judgment vain are its victories; infamous are its spoils. He is the true benefactor and alone worthy of honour who brings comfort where before was wretchedness; who dries the tear of sorrow; who pours oil into the wounds of the unfortunate; who feeds the hungry and clothes the naked; who unlooses the fetters of the slave; who does justice; who enlightens the ignorant; who enlivens and exalts, by his virtuous genius, in art, in literature, in science, the hours of life; who, by words or actions, inspires a love for God and for man. This is the Christian hero; this is the man of honour in a Christian land. He is no benefactor, nor deserving of honour, whatever may be his worldly renown, whose life is passed in acts of force; who renounces the great law of Christian brotherhood; whose vocation is blood; who triumphs in battle over his fellow-men. Well may * T. Liv. viii. c. 6. + It will be observed that this proposition is restrained to our age. It is not intended to express any opinion with regard to the Past, and, particularly, with regard to the War of the Revolution. Wars are the natural consequence of the predominance of the animal part of our nature; but the day has now arrived in which we should declare Independence of the bestial propensities, and recognise the supremacy of the moral and intellectual faculties. The question of the justifiableness of the War of the Revolution has been handled with great strength and freedom by Hon. William Jay, in his admirable publication, Peace and War; in a sermon by Rev. Mr. Judd, and by the late Mr. Grimké, of South Carolina, in his address before the Connecticut Peace Society. For some considerations bearing on this question, and another occurring in these pages, I beg leave to refer to a letter printed in the Appendix, Note A. old Sir Thomas Browne exclaim, "The world does not know its greatest men ; "for thus far it has chiefly discerned the violent brood of battle, the armed men springing up from the dragon's teeth sown by Hate, and cared little for the truly good men, children of Love, "Cromwells guiltless of their country's blood," whose steps on earth have been as noiseless as an angel's wing. It is not to be disguised that these views differ from the generally received opinions of the world down to this day. The voice of man has been given mostly to the praise of military chieftains, and the honours of victory have been chanted even by the lips of woman. The mother, while rocking her infant on her knees, has stamped on his tender mind, at that age more impressible than wax, the images of war; she has nursed his slumbers with its melodies; she has pleased his waking hours with its stories; and selected for his playthings the plume and the sword. The child is father to the man; and who can weigh the influence of these early impressions on the opinions of later years? The mind which trains the child is like the hand which commands the end of a long lever ; a gentle effort at that time suffices to heave the enormous weight of succeeding years. As the boy advances to youth he is fed, like Achilles, not only on honey and milk, but on bear's flesh and lion's marrow. He draws the nutriment of his soul from a literature, whose beautiful fields have been moistened by human blood. Fain would I offer my tribute to the Father of Poetry, standing, with harp of immortal melody, on the misty mountain top of distant antiquity; to all those stories of courage and sacrifice which emblazon the annals of Greece and Rome; to the fulminations of Demosthenes and the splendours of Tully; to the sweet verse of Virgil and the poetic prose of Livy. Fain would I offer my tribute to the new literature, which shot up in modern times as a vigorous forest from the burnt site of ancient woods; to the passionate song of the Troubadour of France, and the Minnesinger of Germany; to the thrilling ballads of Spain, and the delicate music of the Italian lyre. But from all these has breathed the breath of war, that has swept the heart-strings of innumerable generations of men! And when the youth becomes a man, his country invites his services in war, and holds before his bewildered imagination the highest prizes of honour. For him is the pen of the historian and the verse of the poet. His soul swells at the thought, that he also is a soldier; that his name shall be entered on the list o those who have borne arms in the cause of their country; and, perhaps, he dreams, that he too may sleep, like the Great Captain of Spain, with a hundred trophies over his grave. But the contagion spreads among us, beyond those bands on whom is imposed the positive obligation of law. Respectable citizens volunteer to look like soldiers, and to affect in dress, in arms and deportment, what is called "the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war. The ear-piercing fife has to-day filled our streets, and we have come together, on this Anniversary, by the thump of drum and the sound of martial music. It is not strange, then, that the spirit of war still finds a home among us; nor that its honours are still regarded. This fact may seem to give point to the bitter philosophy of Hobbes, who held that the natural state of mankind was war, and to sustain the exulting language of the soldier in our own day, who has said : "War is the condition of this world. From man to the smallest insect, all are at strife; and the glory of arms, which cannot be obtained without the exercise of honour, fortitude, courage, obedience, modesty, and temperance, excites the brave man's patriotism, and is a chastening correction of the rich man's pride.' I now ask what is war? Let me give a short but strictly scientific answer. War is a public, armed, contest between nations, in order to establish JUSTICE between them; as, for instance, to determine a disputed boundary line, or the title to a territory. It has been called by Lord Bacon "one of the highest trials of right, when princes and states, that acknowledge no superior upon earth, shall put themselves upon the justice of God for the deciding of their controversies by such success as it shall please him to give on either side.”† Napier Penins. War. vi. 688. "Why, man," said a British General, "do you know that a grenadier is the greatest character in this world," and after a moment's pause, adding the emphasis of an oath to his speech, “and, I believe, in the next too."-Southey's Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, i. 211. Bacon's Works, vol. iii. p. 40. This definition of Lord Bacon has been adopted by Mr. Chancellor Kent in his authoritative work.-Kent, Commentaries on American Law, vol. i. p. 46. Vattel defines war as "that state in which we prosecute our rights by force."-Law of Nations, Book iii. ch. i. § 1; in which he very nearly follows Bynkershoek, who says, "Bellum est eorum, qui suæ potestatis sunt, juris sui persequendi ergo, concertatio per |