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a wrong to be redressed, or perhaps only an opinion to be advanced, it is thought quite fair and reasonable that they should use these violent and murderous means. What is forbidden to individuals in every state above the most savage, and hardly tolerated even there, is freely granted to civilised nations, which, accordingly, are every now and then seen falling into bloody fights about matters which, with private men, would be settled by a friendly arbitration, or at most a decision in a law-court. There is nearly perfect machinery for keeping individuals at peace; but scarcely any arrangement whatever for maintaining the same relations amongst states, though "states are in no respect different, but in their being composed of a plurality of individuals.

Our being accustomed to see force resorted to by nations, and the enginery of it kept up as a great department of public service, blinds us very much to the real character of war. A father might be seen amongst us taking the greatest pains to repress in his sons the disposition to fight out any dispute that might arise respecting their rights, telling them that they ought to bring the case to him, and he would settle it for them, and make them friends again; and next hour it would not be surprising to hear this man asking one of these sons if he would like to go into the army; that is to say, become a part of the mechanism by which nations seek a bloody adjustment of exactly similar quarrels. He would with one breath say it was contrary to the laws of God and man for brothers to fight, and the next he would be heard gravely counselling his children to fight, with firmness and bravery, the precisely similar quarrels of a state.

A rural clergyman might in like manner be heard deploring the unholy contentions which occasionally take place amongst his flock. Suppose he had amongst them a number of working-people, who had fallen out about wages, and proscribed and maltreated each other, the minister would doubtless express the greatest grief at what was going on, and deem himself called upon by every tie of duty to seek to restore peace; but if, next day, a pair of new colours were to be bestowed upon a regiment, the same man would have no scruple to invoke a blessing upon them-to consecrate them, as it is called; at least such ceremonies frequently take place, and no condemnation of the practice has ever been uttered in this country. Yet these colours are identified with operations of precisely the same nature as a village fight or the contentions regarding wages. They only differ in their taking place on a comparatively great scale, and involving infinitely more misery in their results.

Bewildered by this wonderful contrariety, some readers will be disposed to say: 'There surely is some difference; the mass of mankind cannot be so far wrong.' This, we fear, is fallacious reasoning. What prevents national war from being seen in the same light as private war, is the difficulty of getting a similar point of view from which to see it. We look coolly down upon a pair, or other small

number of combatants, and deplore their rage and its consequences. As to national war, we are perhaps involved in it as parties, and therefore cannot look upon it from without. Or even though it be taking place between nations apart from us, we still are far from being able to take a wide and contemplative survey of it. To see it in exactly the same light, we should almost require to see it as inhabitants of a different and more happy planet.

If we be right in thus regarding war, it follows that everything connected with it is liable to exactly the same reprobation as private outrages of whatever kind. To wreak out a quarrel with another nation by sending armaments against it, is precisely the same thing as to go to a neighbour who had injured or otherwise offended us, and break down his fences, fire his house, and slay himself and his servants. Two rude men may fight with, and bite and scratch each other at a fair, quite as justifiably. There may be less ready access in the one case than in the other to a tribunal which would settle the dispute without violence; but this does not alter the character of the action. Supposing that private persons had no law-courts to which to refer their quarrels, would they not be grievously wrong in bringing them to the law of the strongest? Say, then, that there is nothing analogous to a law-court for national disputes, surely nations are fearfully wrong to put these to the arbitrament of the sword, which will decide without the least regard to right. But, in reality, even nations are not without some resource for peaceably adjusting their differences. An arbitration may always be obtained from some third party, if there be a sincere wish for it on both sides. And any want in this respect might easily be remedied if nations were to come, as they ought to do, into greater union with each other, and act more in a harmonious concert. There might then be a public opinion amongst, as there is at present within, nations, to which any refractory member of the set would be obliged to

submit.

Some of the evils of war are so manifest, as to need only to be mentioned. Such is the destruction of life which it occasions, always followed, of course, by misery to many survivors. Such is the devastation it often introduces into a country which is its seat. The injury it does by misapplying the national energies and funds, is less apt to be understood. Yet this is one of its greatest evils. War destroys-it never creates or produces. All it does is in the way of subtraction-nothing in the way of addition. The men who become soldiers are laid idle from useful employment; the money spent in their pay, accoutrements, and all the appurtenances of war, is laid out on what makes no return, and is gone for ever as truly as if it had been thrown into the sea. The persons, indeed, who furnish the articles required for war, have lived upon the profits of their work; but their work has been unserviceable, whereas it might have been otherwise. Their talents and labour have all been

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Thus, in every point of view, the money spent in war is misspent. And how surprising do some of the facts of this expenditure appear! The expenditure on the British army and navy in 1868, for instance, was nearly three times the amount of all the government grants for the promotion of education in England and Scotland during the thirty previous years. The United States, during the fifty years following 1789, spent, in military and naval equipments (which were only employed one or two years in actual war), three hundred and sixty millions sterling; being seven times more than what they spent on all other national affairs whatever. Our own debt of above eight hundred millions represents only a part of our expenditure in war during the last hundred years.

War not only takes largely of our existing means, besides anticipating the future, but it paralyses and blights the powers by which means are acquired. The commerce of a country is usually much deranged by war, in consequence of the shutting up of certain markets, and the danger incurred in reaching others. Manufacturers are consequently thrown idle. All this descends in incalculable miseries upon the humbler classes.

But perhaps the most fatal effect of war is the lowering of the moral tone of a people. It introduces a new set of objects to public notice, and sets all their sympathies into wrong directions. Idle parade and gewgaws take the place of solidly useful matters; men worship what destroys; merit is estimated, not by the extent of good that a man does, but by his power of inflicting evil. The modest benefactors of their race are overlooked; while praise is heaped upon him who has shewn an unusual amount of perhaps merely animal courage, or at best exercised ingenuity in inflicting suffering upon his fellow-creatures. In the progress of such a dispute with another nation, the selfish feelings are called into powerful play. We wish for victory, and seek to obtain it, without the least regard to the merits of the case. 'Our own country and cause, right or wrong,' is practically the maxim of all belligerent parties. This selfishness and injustice diffuses itself into the administration of the government, and even into private affairs; so that corruption, peculation, contrabandism, and fraud abound on all hands. In such a state of things, all that conduces to moral progress is sensibly checked; and it may be said that, for every year spent in war, we should require five to do away with its bad effects, and enable us to start at the point where we formerly were.

It is not wonderful that war should be so disadvantageous; for men are constituted in such a way as to be benefited only by mutual kindness and a firm union, and not by doing each other harm. It is a great mistake to suppose even that we can be benefited in the long-run by only consulting our own interests; a much greater mistake is it to suppose that we can, as a rule, derive good from what does harm to our neighbours. All our highest gratifications

are found in the efforts we make to give happiness to others; it is a thing which requires to come, either originally or by reflection, from a fellow-creature; it has no spontaneous fount in ourselves. A nation, therefore, on the outlook for happiness to itself, would need to promote the benefit of its neighbours; it should seek to form friendly relations with them, to promote an interchange of benefits by commerce and other means; to do them, in short, all the good in its power. By these, but by no other means can nations experience benefit from each other's neighbourhood. It is to be lamented that this principle has not as yet been much acted upon; but wherever it has in any degree been put in practice, it has succeeded. As yet, we see governments for the most part disposed to take precautionary measures against each other, as more fearing each other as enemies, than disposed to trust each other as capable of being made friends. And thus a policy of suspicion, attended with immense expense, is established amongst states. France keeps up an army and navy, lest Britain should some day fall upon her. Britain does the same, dreading some outbreak on the part of France. Forts are raised beside harbours, to protect shipping from these imaginary hostilities. Half the men who are at the prime of life are obliged to go into discipline as soldiers for a month per annum, that they may be ready to repel any assault from their neighbours, who are drilling under the same terror for them. Thus money is misexpended, and human labour misapplied, to an enormous amount, from a mere sentiment of jealousy-a fear which actually engenders its own assailants. How strange that no people have ever yet been found capable of the gallantry of saying to a neighbour: 'We arm not, for we mean no harm, and wish to apprehend none here we offer you love instead of hostility: you are too magnanimous, in such circumstances, to refuse the one or offer the other !' No nation civilised to the degree of those in Western Europe, could withstand a communication of this nature: it would, like Orlando, blush and hide its sword. There is nothing Quixotic in this doctrine. It proceeds upon the most familiar principles in human nature; namely, that an honest good-will generates the same in the bosoms to which it is addressed. Would governments but try the relaxation of an import duty instead of the putting a warvessel into commission, would they but hold out a friendly hand in any case of exigency-such as occurred when Hamburg was burnt -instead of raising up jealous forts and martello towers, they would find how much better it was to do good than to threaten or presume evil, and how truly

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LOVE IS POWER.

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ANECDOTES OF SPIDERS.

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ITH the appearance and workmanship of the little creatures called spiders, every one must be more or less familiar. They belong to the great division of Invertebrate Animals called Articulata. At one time they were included by naturalists in the class of Insects; but a more minute examination of their form and general development has caused them to be disjoined from the Insecta, and formed, along with mites, ticks, and scorpions, into a separate class, called Árachnida, intermediate between Insecta and Crus

There are several hundred species of spiders-some large, some small; some of a dull sombre hue, others brilliantly coloured; some that abide in human dwellings, others that inhabit the fields and forests; some that have the means of floating themselves through the air, others whose means of locomotion are confined to their legs. At first sight, the body of the spider appears to be a roundish soft ball, supported on long jointed legs; but, on narrow inspection, the ball-like mass constitutes only the abdomen or hinder portion, the true body and head

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