justice, and touched to finer sensibilities, shall extend to the general sorrows of universal man the sympathy which has been profusely shed for the selfish sorrow of country, and shall pronounce all war to be civil war, and the partakers in it as traitors to God and enemies to

man.

6. I might pause, fearing that those of my hearers who have kindly accompanied me to this stage, would be ready to join in the condem-) nation 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 more consideration, which yields to none of the others in importance; perhaps it is more important than all. It is at once cause and effect; the cause of much of the fecling in favor of war, and the effect of this feeling. I refer to the costly preparations for war, in time of peace.

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 $5,387,000,000, 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 amounted in 1839 to $4,265,000,000, all of this the growth of war since 1688! This amount is about 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 Christopher Columbus! It is much larger than the amount of all the precious metals, which at this moment form the circulating medium of the world! It is said rashly by some persons, who have given little attention to this subject, that all this expenditure was good for the people; but these persons do not bear in mind that it was not bestowed on any useful object. It was wasted. The aggregate capital of all the joint stock companies in England, of which there was any known record in 1842, embracing canals, docks, bridges, insurance companies, banks, gas-lights, water, mines, railways, and other miscellaneous objects, was about $835,000,000; a sum which has been devoted to the welfare of the people, but how infinitely less in amount than the war debt! For the six years ending in 1836, the average payment for the interest on this debt was about $140,000,000 annually. If we add to this sum, $60,000,000 during this

same period paid annually, to the navy and ordnance, we shall have $200,000,000 as the annual tax of the English people, to pay for former wars and to prepare for new. During this same period there was an annual appropriation of only $20,000,000 for all the civil purposes of the government. It thus appears that war absorbed ninety cents of every dollar that was pressed by heavy taxation from the English people, who almost seem to sweat blood! What fabulous monster, or chimera dire, ever raged with a maw so ravenous! The remaining ten cents suficed to maintain the splendor of the throne, the administration of justice, and the diplomatic relations with foreign powers, in short all the proper objects of a Christian state.

Let us now look exclusively at the preparations for war in time of peace. It is one of the miseries of war that, even in peace, its evils continue to be felt by the world, beyond any other evils by which poor suffering humanity is oppressed. If Bellona withdraws from the field, we only lose the sight of her flaming torches; the bay of her dogs is heard on the mountains, and civilized man thinks to find protection from their sudden fury, only by enclosing himself in the defences of war. At this moment the Christian nations, worshipping a symbol of common brotherhood, live as in entrenched camps, in which they keep armed watch, to prevent surprise from each other.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at any exact estimate of the cost of these preparations, ranging under four different heads; the standing army; the navy; the fortifications, and ordnance; and the militia or irregular troops.

The number of soldiers now keeping the peace of European Christendom, as a standing army, without counting the navy, is upwards of two millions. Some estimates place it as high as three millions. The army of Great Britain exceeds 300,000 men; that of France 350,000; that of Russia 730,000, and is reckoned by some as high as 1,000,000; that of Austria about 275,000; and that of Prussia 150,000. Taking the smaller number, suppose these two millions to require for their annual support an average sum of only $150 each, the result would be $300,000,000, for their sustenance alone; and reckoning one officer to ten soldiers, and allowing to each of the latter an English shilling a day, or $87 a year, for wages, and to the former an average salary of $500 a year, we should have for the pay of the whole no less than $256,000,000; or an appalling sum total for both sustenance and pay of $556,000,000. If the same calculation be made, supposing the forces to amount to three millions, the sum total will be $835,000,000! But to this enormous sum another still more enormous must be added on account of the loss sustained by the withdrawal of two millions of hardy, healthy men, in the bloom of life, from useful, productive labor. It has been supposed that it costs an average of $500 to rear a soldier; and that the value of his labor if devoted to useful objects would be $150 a year. The Christtan powers, therefore, in setting

apart two millions of men, as soldiers, sustain a loss of $1,000,000,000 on account of their training; and $300,000,000 annually, on account of their labor. So much for the cost of the standing army of European Christendom in time of peace.

Glance now at the navy of European Christendom. The royal navy of Great Britain consists at present of 556 ships of all classes; but deducting such as are used as convict ships, floating chapels, coal depots, the efficient navy consists of 88 sail of the line, 109 frigates; 190 small frigates, corvettes, brigs and cutters, including packets; 65 steamers of various sizes; 3 troop-ships and yachts; in all 455 ships. Of these there were in commission in July, 1839, 190 ships, carrying in all 4,202 guns. The number of hands employed in 1839, was 34,465. The navy of France, though not comparable in size with that of England, is of vast force. By royal ordinance of 1st of January, 1837, it was fixed in time of peace at 40 ships of the line, 50 frigates, 40 steamers, and 190 smaller vessels; and the amount of crews in 1839, was 20,317 men. The Russian navy consists of two large fleets in the Gulf of Finland and the Black Sea; but the exact amount of their force and their available resources has been a subject of dispute amongst naval men and politicians. Some idea may be formed of the size of the navy from the number of hands employed. The crews of the Baltic fleet amounted in 1837, to not less than 30,800 men; and those of the fleet in the Black Sea to 19,800, or altogether 50,600. The Austrian navy consisted in 1837, of 8 ships of the line, 8 frigates, 4 sloops, 6 brigs, 7 schooners or galleys, and a number of smaller vessels; the number of men in its service in 1839, was 4,547. The navy of Denmark consisted at the close of 1837 of 7 ships of the line, 7 frigates, 5 sloops, 6 brigs, 3 schooners, 5 cutters, 58 gun-boats, 6 gun-rafts, and 3 bomb vessels, requiring about 6,500 men to man them. The navy of Sweden and Norway consisted recently of 238 gun-boats, II ships of the line, 8 frigates, 4 corvettes, 6 brigs, with several smaller vessels. The navy of Greece consists of 32 ships of war, carrying 190 guns, and 2,400 men. The navy of Holland in 1839, consisted of 8 ships of the line, 21 frigates, 15 corvettes, 21 brigs, and 95 gun-boats. It is impossible to give any accurate idea of the immense cost of all these mighty preparations for war. It is melancholy to contemplate such gigantic means, applied by European Christendom to the erection of these superfluous wooden walls in time of peace!

In the fortifications and arsenals of Europe, crowning every height, commanding every valley, and frowning over every plain and every sea, wealth has been sunk which is beyond calculation. Who can tell the immense sums that have been expended in hollowing out, for the purposes of defence, the living rock of Gibraltar? Who can calculate the cost of all the preparations at Woolwich, its 27,000 cannons, and its hundreds of thousands of small arms? France alone contains upwards of one hundred and twenty fortified places. And it is supposed

that the yet unfinished fortifications of Paris have cost upwards of fifty millions of dollars!

The cost of the militia or irregular troops, the yeomanry of England, the national guards of Paris, and the landwehr and landsturm of Prussia, must add other incalculable sums to these enormous amounts.

Turn now to the United States, separated by a broad ocean from immediate contact with the great powers of Christendom, bound by treaties of amity and commerce with all the nations of the earth; connected with all by the strong ties of mutual interest; and professing a devotion to the principles of peace. Are the treaties of amity mere words? Are the relations of commerce and mutual interest mere things of a day? Are the professions of peace vain? Else why not repose in quiet unvexed by preparations for war?

Enormous as are the expenses of this character in Europe, those in our country are still greater in proportion to the other expenditures of the federal government.

It appears that the average expenditures of the federal government for the six years ending with 1840, exclusive of payment on account of debt, were $26,474,892; of this sum, the average appropriation, each year for military and naval purposes amounted to $21.328,903, being eighty per cent. of the whole amount! Yes; of all the income which was received by the federal government, eighty cents in every dollar was applied in this useless way. The remaining twenty cents sufficed to maintain the government, the administration of justice, our relations with foreign nations, the light-houses which shed their cheerful signals over the rough waves which beat upon our long and indented coast, from the Bay of Fundy to the mouth of the Mississippi. Let us observe the relative expenditures of the United States, in the scale of the nations, for military preparations, in time of peace, exclusive of payments on account of the debts. These expenditures are in proportion

to the whole expenditure of government :

In Austria, as 33 per cent.,

In France, as 38 per cent.,

In Prussia, as 44 per cent.,

In Great Britain, as 74 per cent.,

In the United States, as 80 per cent!

To these superfluous expenditures of the Federal Government, are to be added the still larger and equally superfluous expenses of the militia throughout the country, which have been placed at $50,000,000 a year!

By a table of the expenditures of the United States, exclusive of payments on account of the public debt, it appears that, in the fiftythree years from the formation of our present government, in 1789 down to 1843, there have been $246,620,055 spent for civil purposes, comprehending the expenses of the executive, the legislative, the judi

ciary, the post office, light houses, and intercourse with foreign governments. During this same period there have been $308,526,594 devoted to the military establishment, and $170,437,684 to the naval establishment; the two forming an aggregate of $538,964,278. Deducting from this sum the appropriations during three years of war, and we shall find that more than four hundred millions were absorbed by vain preparations in time of peace for war. Add to this amount a moderate sum for the expenses of the militia during the same period, which a candid and able writer places at present at $50,000, cco a year; for the past years we may take an average of $25,000,000, and we shall have the enormous sum of $1,335,000,000 to be added to the $400,000,ooo; the whole amounting to seventeen hundred and thirty-five millions of dollars, a sum beyond the conception of human faculties, sunk under the sanction of the government of the United States in mere peaceful preparations for war; more than seven times as much as was dedicated by the government, during the same period, to all other purposes whatsoever.

From this serried array of figures the mind instinctively retreats. If we examine them from a nearer point of view, and, selecting some particular part, compare it with the figures representing other interests in the community they will present a front still more dread.

Within a short distance of this city stands an institution of learning, which was one of the earliest cares of the early forefathers of the country, the conscientious Puritans. Favored child of an age of trial and struggle, carefully nursed through a period of hardship and anxiety, endowed at that time by the oblations of men like Harvard, sustained from its first foundation by the paternal arm of the commonwealth, by a constant succession of munificent bequests, and by the prayers of all good men, the University at Cambridge now invites our homage as the most ancient, the most interesting and the most important seat of learning in the land; possessing the oldest and most valuable library, one of the largest museums of mineralogy and natural history-a school of law, which annually receives into its bosom more than one hundred and fifty sons from all parts of the Union, where they listen to instruction from professors whose names have become among the most valuable possessions of the land—a school of divinity, the nurse of true learning and piety-one of the largest and most flourishing schools of medicine in the country-besides these, a general body of teachers, twenty-seven in number, many of whose names help to keep the name of the country respectable in every part of the globe, where science, learning and taste are cherished-the whole presided over at this moment by a gentleman, early distinguished in public life by his unconquerable energies and his masculine eloquence, at a later period, by the unsurpassed ability with which he administered the affairs of our city, now, in a green old age, full of years and honors, preparing to lay down his present high trust.

Such