be coerced by direct appeals to their susceptibility of painful or pleasant sensations; and a rod for compulsion, or sweetmeats for a bribe, may, with very little children, be perhaps beneficially employed. Yet even in the management of children, such appeals to force or to bribery may be, and ought to be, superseded, at a very early age, by judicious treatment in cultivating the understanding, and gently but firmly checking any waywardness of disposition. But the recklessness with which appeals to force or to bribery, especially to the former, have been made in all ages down to the present moment, and in all countries, even those most advanced in civilisation, indicates how slow is the progress of our race in the knowledge of our own nature; or rather how pertinaciously we adhere to the most absurd and barbarous practices which gratify our passions.

Two men quarrel. They are at variance in their statements. The one says that the other lies. The. other, instead of taking measures to disprove the allegation, and so correct the mistake of his opponent, strikes him. Then the passion of revenge is roused, and the blow is returned. Perhaps recourse is had to deadly weapons, and grievous injury, even death itself, is inflicted on one, or it may be both of the parties; while the question of the truth or falsehood of the accusation, or of the original statement, remains untouched.

The two men who quarrel perhaps have friends and dependants, whom they engage in the quarrel. A feud commences; men assail each other with murderous aim, houses are burned, wives and children are slaughtered, a whole territory is laid waste and filled with desolation, amidst scenes of unspeakable horror and anguish.

The rulers of two nations disagree. The king of one offers some slight or indignity to the emperor of another. Each has money and soldiers at his disposal. Thousands of men, provided with implements of destruction, are sent into each other's territory, and the unoffending

inhabitants, who knew nothing of the quarrel, are assailed with fire and bloodshed, their villages plundered and burned, their towns taken and sacked, and men, women, and children involved in indiscriminate slaughter.

One great nation, or rather the rulers of a great nation, become jealous of the rulers of a neighbouring nation, fearing that they may obtain so much power as to render their neighbourhood dangerous. Instead of seeking directly to influence the minds of the nation that they dread, or its rulers, or to persuade the sur rounding nations to discountenance a spirit of aggrandisement in it, or even bringing them to an agreement to aid one another, should any attempt be made to encroach upon them, or otherwise to injure them by brute force, it engages in active warfare, and endeavours to persuade others to take part with it in the warfare. And merely in order to bring a few individuals, the rulers of a neighbouring nation, to a better mind, armies are levied, including in them the most debased and unprincipled ruffians that the nation can produce, and marched into peaceful districts to lay them waste with fire and sword. These injuries arouse the spirit of a people, who would else have been glad to continue in the quiet prosecution of their ordinary avocations; retaliations commence; and, in the reckless, ferocious conflict, thousands of peaceful people, aged men, helpless children, timid and delicate females, are driven from their homes, plundered, insulted, and ruthlessly massacred.

Nay, a nation priding itself on having arrived at the very acmé of civilisation and humanity, finds its commerce with some foreign country impeded by the internal regulations of that country. The regulations are, perhaps, disliked by the people, who would gladly avail themselves of the opportunity of making gain by the commerce prohibited by their rulers. The humane and

civilised nation, not being able, or perhaps never attempting, to persuade the rulers of the foreign nation to permit the people to trade with one another, sends out armaments, avails itself of the improved machinery for destruction which its advanced civilisation places at its disposal, attacks the people who would willingly trade with them, because it cannot get at their rulers, burns their houses and ships, murders their wives and children, and then glories in having thus forced the rulers of a nation, at the other side of the globe, to withdraw those commercial restrictions which they deemed necessary, and perhaps truly deemed necessary, for securing the well-being of their subjects.

The laws of war-for war has a sort of code of laws of its own-strikingly expose the horrible nature of its operations. In the first place, when an army is in the field, that it may be absolutely under the control of its head or general, the slightest disobedience of orders, however unreasonable those orders may be, whatever suffering or danger the execution of them may imply, however revolting to humanity, however absurd, may subject the person who commits it to instant death. A general, having thus at his absolute command a body of men, it may be to the amount of hundreds of thousands, furnished with every implement which the ingenuity of man has invented, during the world's history, for the destruction of life and property (we say every implement, for if some have fallen into disuse, it has only been because others more potent for destruction have been substituted for them), is left by the laws of war to his own uncontrolled discretion, in regard to the use that he makes of that enormous power of destruction. He may, for example, if the success of his enterprise requires, lay whole districts of country waste. He may

send bands of the greatest ruffians in his army to burn towns and villages, to destroy or carry off property, to trample down, or burn, or carry off the standing corn,

and to drive the people before them like sheep to the slaughter. And these things not only may be done, but have been done in all ages of the world, down to the present, by men whose names are recorded in history, with the epithets great or illustrious attached to them. It is considered not only within the power of a general, but is the usual procedure, if a town be taken by storm, not only to massacre the garrison, but to give up the town itself and all its inhabitants, young and old, male and female, to the uncontrolled will of a rabid, infuriated soldiery. It has recently been ruled by that nation which values itself on conducting warfare on the most honourable principles, that if a body of people hide themselves with their wives and children in caves, it is agreeable to the laws of war to fill up the mouths of the caves with combustibles, set fire to them, and suffocate or roast alive their wretched victims. It is further considered perfectly legitimate in warfare to lure men to their destruction by every species of deceit, even to the extent of inventing and propagating the grossest falsehoods.

We have thus exhibited this mode of influencing the minds of men in its most vigorous exercise, and have displayed the apparently irresistible energy that it possesses, that we may not be supposed to underrate it, when we assert that it is powerless when compared with the other implement, namely, the simple communication of thought, without appeal to the infliction of pain or the communication of pleasure.

The world, it has been said, is governed by opinion, which amounts to this, that the conduct of men is regulated by what they believe to be true. Were it regulated by what is really true-by the knowledge of the whole of the truth calculated to influence them in every case, there were an end at once of all confusion, and crime, and misery. Then the world would be under the guidance of God, not merely de jure, but de facto, for

the light of truth is the sceptre of his kingdom. As it is, the conduct of men is directed by what they believe to be true, and the cause of all the disorder and crime of the world is, that men are ignorant of the truth that ought to influence them, and have been induced to believe and act upon falsehood as if it were truth. Hence it is obvious, that the only really effective and permanent means of influencing others is occupying their minds with truth, or quasi truth. So far as their minds are occupied with truth, their conduct will be beneficially influenced. The power of the most despotic monarch on the earth rests on the opinion of his subjects, that it is their duty or their interest to obey him. Change that opinion, and his power crumbles to nothing; his people resist him, his armies forsake him; he is shorn of his locks, and has become weak as other men. The ancient monarchies were reared up by the power of arms; but whence did that power proceed, but from the opinion of their subjects, that they were bound to obey their sovereigns in fighting under their command; or, in the opinion of men, that it was honourable to be soldiers; that it was glorious and patriotic to subdue other nations, and to bring them into subjection to their own; or that, by obeying their military chiefs, they would most readily and certainly obtain the gratification of their rapacity, their lust, and their pride.

It required some seven centuries of almost constant warfare to build up the Roman empire by the power of the sword; that is, by the infliction of pain, to compel other people to submit to the citizens of Rome. Little more than two centuries of the use of the other weapon, -the communication of thought-were sufficient to subdue it; and that not merely as Alexander subdued the Persian empire, leaving the people just as he found them, with only a change of rulers, the mind of Alexander himself being more subdued to the Persians than they were to him; but to subdue it effectually, not