PREVALENCE OF WAR. WAR is the law of violence. Peace the law of love. That law of violence prevailed without mitigation from the murder of Abel to the advent of the Prince of Peace. war. We might have imagined, if history had not attested the reverse, that an experiment of four thousand years would have sufficed to prove, that the rational and valuable ends of society can never be attained, by constructing its institutions in conformity with the standard of But the sword and the torch had been eloquent in vain. A thousand battle-fields, white with the bones. of brothers, were counted as idle advocates in the cause of justice and humanity. Ten thousand cities, abandoned to the cruelty and licentiousness of the soldiery, and burnt, or dismantled, or razed to the ground, pleaded in vain against the law of violence. The river, the lake, the sea, crimsoned with the blood of fellow-citizens, and neighbors, and strangers, had lifted up their voices in vain to denounce the folly and wickedness of war. The shrieks and agonies, the rage and hatred, the wounds and curses of the battle-field, and the storm and the sack, had scattered in vain their terrible warnings throughout all lands. In vain had the insolent Lysander destroyed the walls and burnt the fleets of Athens, to the music of her own female flute-players. In vain had Scipio, amid the ruins of Carthage, in the spirit of a gloomy seer, applied to Rome herself the prophecy of Agamemnon: "The day shall come, the great avenging day, Which Troy's proud glories in the dust shall lay; [Grimke. PHILLIPS ON THE WRONGS OF IRELAND. You traverse the ocean to emancipate the African; you cross the line to convert the Hindoo; you hurl your thunder against the savage Algerine; but your own brethren at home, who speak the same tongue, acknowledge the same king, and kneel to the same God, can not get one visit from your itinerant humanity! Oh, such a system is almost too abominable for a name; it is a monster of impiety, impolicy, ingratitude, and injustice! The pagan nations of antiquity scarcely acted on such barbarous principles. Look to ancient Rome, with her sword in one hand, and her constitution in the other, healing the injuries of conquest with the embrace of brotherhood, and wisely converting the captive into the citizen. Look to her great enemy, the glorious Carthagenian, at the foot of the Alps, ranging his prisoners round him, and by the politic option of captivity or arms, recruiting his legions with the very men whom he had literally conquered into gratitude? They laid their foundations deep in the human heart, and their success was proportionate to their policy. You complain of the violence of the Irish Catholic: can you wonder he is violent? It is the consequence of your own infliction, "The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear, The blood will follow where the knife is driven." Your friendship has been to him worse than hostility; he feels its embrace but by the pressure of his fetters ! I am only amazed he is not more violent. He fills your exchequer, he fights your battles, he feeds your clergy from whom he derives no benefit, he shares your burdens, he shares your perils, he shares everything except your privileges, can you wonder he is violent? No matter what his merit, no matter what his claims, no matter what his services: he sees himself a nominal subject, and a real slave; and his children, the heirs, perhaps of his toils, perhaps of his talents, certainly of his disqualifications, can you wonder he is violent? He sees every pretended obstacle to his emancipation vanished; Catholic Europe your ally, the Bourbon on the throne, the emperor a captive, the pope a friend; the aspersions on his faith disproved by his allegiance to you against, alternately, every Catholic potentate in Christendom, and he feels himself branded with hereditary degradation, can you wonder, then, that he is violent? He petitioned humbly; his tameness was construed into a proof of apathy. He petitioned boldly; his remonstrance was considered as an impudent audacity. He petitioned in peace; he was told it was not the time. He petitioned in war; he was told it was not the time. A strange interval, a prodigy in politics, a pause between peace and war, which appeared to be just made for him, arose; I allude to the period between the retreat of Louis and the restoration of Bonaparte: he petitioned then, and was told it was not the time. Oh, shame! shame! shame! I hope he will petition no more to a parliament so equivocating. However, I am not sorry they did so equivocate, because I think they have suggested one common remedy for the grievances of both countries, and that remedy is, a REFORM OF THAT PARLIAMENT. SALATHIEL TO TITUS. SON of Vespasian, I am at this hour a poor man, as I may in the next be an exile or a slave: I have ties to life as strong as ever were bound round the heart of man: I stand here a suppliant for the life of one whose loss would imbitter mine! Yet, not for wealth unlimited, for the safety of my family, for the life of the noble victim that is now standing at the place of torture, dare I abandon, dare I think the impious thought of abandoning the cause of the City of Holiness. Titus! in the name of that Being, to whom the wisdom of the earth is folly, I adjure you to beware. Jerusalem is sacred. Her crimes have often wrought her misery, often has she been trampled by the armies of the stranger. But she is still the City of the Omnipotent; and never was blow inflicted on her by man, that was not terribly repaid. The Assyrian came, the mightiest power of the world: he plundered her temple, and led her people into captivity. How long was it before his empire was a dream, his dynasty extinguished in blood, and an enemy on his throne?-The Persian came: from her protector, he turned into her oppressor; and his empire was swept away like the dust of the desert!-The Syrian smote her: the smiter died in agonies of remorse; and where is his kingdom now?-The Egyptain smote her: and who now sits on the throne of the Ptolemies? Pompey came: the invincible, the conqueror of a thousand cities, the light of Rome; the lord of Asia, riding on the very wings of victory. But he profaned her temple; and from that hour he went down,down, like a millstone plunged into the ocean! Blind counsel, rash ambition, womanish fears, were upon the great statesman and warrior of Rome. Where does he sleep? What sands were colored with his blood? The universal conqueror died a slave, by the hand of a slave! Crassus came at the head of the legions: he plundered the sacred vessels of the sanctuary. Vengeance followed him, and he was cursed by the curse of God. Where are the bones of the robber and his host? Go, tear them from the jaws of the lion and the wolf of Parthia,—their fitting tomb! You, too, son of Vespasian, may be commissioned for the punishment of a stiff-necked and rebellious people. You may scourge our naked vice by force of arms; and then you may return to your own land exulting in the conquest of the fiercest enemy of Rome. But shall you escape the common fate of the instrument of evil? Shall you see a peaceful old age? Shall a son of yours ever sit upon the throne? Shall not rather some monster of your blood efface the memory of your virtues, and make Rome, in bitterness of soul, curse the Flavian name? [Croly. |