hasty flight, the victors in their hot pursuit, care not for him. On the cold ground he lies, forsaken, mangled, and trampled on; no tender hand to staunch the flowing blood, or raise his fainting frame; no kind tongue to whisper consolation; he thinks, perhaps distractedly, of those loved ones who should have encompassed his dying bed; but his sickening glance meets only sights of horror, and he hears only piercing groans, and frantic shouts, and bitter shrieks, and the roar of that deadly thunder which strews the field with companions in misery. But comparatively few fall in the field of greater numbers, fatigue and disease are the lingering and loathsome destiny. If the grass yet grows bright and green on the plains of Waterloo, fed with the rotting carcases of thousands who bled in battle; there are plains yet in Russia, their surface bleached with the bones of the best of France and Italy, who were levelled by no hostile blow, but sunk under the cold, famine, and fatigue of that disastrous retreat. All protracted warfare is the prolongation of misery in a thousand forms, more agonizing than what is suffered in the bloodiest field of battle. Often does it make men pray for death, as a release from present anguish. But not to conflicting armies are confined the evils of war: they are the centre of mischief, but it spreads around them widely they are the nucleus of crime and misery, but large is its pestilential atmosphere.

Wherever they go, they carry desolation,-they devour like locusts,-they blast like the lightning, -they destroy like the volcano,-they overwhelm like the earthquake. Little is spared by plunder, revenge, or wantonness. At their approach, harvests vanish, and burning villages are torches to light their arcn. Law is at an end: life, honour, property, are held on sufferance by the mercy of the sword. O what have the peaceful inhabitants to recount, by whose abodes this torrent has rolled! They have survived scenes, they have tales to tell, which, long as they remember, shall wring their hearts, which their tongues shall falter to repeat, and at which the listening traveller shall shudder. Nor in escaping from the seat of war to remotest nations involved in it, can we escape its horrors. They have a kind of infernal omnipresence. The warrior is seldom an isolated being. Far distant from the field on which he conquers, or dies, or the hospital in which he lingers, there may be many a bosom throbbing with anxiety for him. His sufferings are multiplied in theirs. He may, perhaps, perish instantaneously; but they long suffer from anxiety, or mourn in anguish. On him is dealt the fatal stroke, but they feel the wound. The aged widow, tottering to the grave, weeps the child who should have soothed and supported her declining years. The mother bends in unutterable anguish over her orphaned babes. The

heart of affection is torn in sunder. Every sympathy of life is turned to bitterness and poison. In this favoured land, we have long been privileged from the immediate presence of war: on British ground, not one of you has heard the roar of battle, or seen its carnage; but who has not heard the voice of mourning? In those days when giddy crowds pealed high their acclamations, how many a bereaved one fled from the joyous uproar to the solitude of comfortless sorrow! How many does war deprive of all the comforts of life, by crippling industry, baffling foresight in its vicissitudes, and from its enormous expenditure forcing every thing into an unnatural state! In this country, how many families did the late war find happy, opulent, and respectable; and leave in beggary! At different periods, what scenes of complicated wretchedness have many of our large towns presented! How enormous were the strides of pauperism! It is the tendency of war to produce war, and thus to extend and multiply miseries. Treaties of peace seem little better than links to connect one war with another. They leave something ambiguous for future dissension, some germ of discord, which grows into a poison tree. Indeed, the professed object of hostility is seldom determined in favour of either party, by the peace. In the series of wars which have for ages desolated Europe, we may generally see one growing out

of another. The various connexions and interests of nations serve to spread hostility when once commenced. This was particularly exemplified in the late contest, into which nation after nation was drawn or forced. The torrent of blood swelled, as it rolled on; still fresh sluices opened, till it spread and widened, and seemed without fathom or bound. Like the Avalanche from the mountain's top, it rushed on, accumulating as it fell, and finding in one work of ruin materials to render the next more wide and dreadful. It stretched from the old world to the new, wrapping both continents in its flames, and covering the earth as with a fiery deluge of desolation. (") Let us turn to its moral character.

War is one great crime. It is not so much a violation as a repeal of the laws of morality and of God. The precepts of the Bible are directly opposite to the maxims of war. "The fundamental rule of the first is, to do good; of the latter, to inflict injuries: the former commands us to succour the oppressed; the latter to overwhelm the defenceless: the former teaches men to love their enemies; the latter to make themselves terrible even to strangers. The rules of morality will not suffer us to promote the dearest interest by falsehood; the maxims of war applaud it when employed in the destruction of others." The Bible says, "Thou shalt not kill;"

war enjoins, kill-the greater number the more glorious the Bible commands, "Thou shalt not steal;" plunder is of war both cause and consequence, and indissoluble companion: the gospel says, "Overcome evil with good ;" but war exhorts to subdue evil by greater evil, and more tremendous malignity: the one says, "Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you;" and the other, carry outrage, misery, and murder amongst those who have excited no anger, inflicted no injury. Who shall make these principles coalesce?

But surely defensive war is justifiable. And what is defensive war? According to the language of courts, almost every war that ever was waged has been a defensive war, and on both sides too. The defence of what? Of usurped territory; of obsolete claims to dominion; of arrogant pretensions; of the lordship of distant colonies; of imaginary interests; of individual assumptions of royalty; and of a thousand absurd and wicked things, which war has been made to defend; as if changing a term could obliterate a crime? If by the phrase be only meant, that, when a land is invaded, its inhabitants take up arms to repel the intruders, and lay them down when that is done,-it is a case not now under discussion; it is not properly called war; nor, if this be all, should it be in