of that single ship; more than $100,000 beyond all the available accumulations of the richest and most ancient seat of learning in the land! Choose ye, my fellow-citizens of a Christian state, between the two caskets that wherein is the loveliness of knowledge and truth, or that which contains the carrion death.

I refer thus particularly to the Ohio, because she happens to be in our waters. But in so doing I do not take the strongest case afforded by our Navy. Other ships have absorbed still larger sums. The expense of the Delaware in 1842, had been $1,051,000.

Pursue the comparison still further. The expenditures of the University during the last year, for the general purposes of the College, the instruction of the Undergraduates, and for the Schools of Law and Divinity, amount to $46,949. The cost of the Ohio for one year in service, in salaries, wages and provisions, is $220,000; being $175,000 more than the annual expenditures of the University; more than four times as much. In other words, for the annual sum which is lavished on one ship of the line, four institutions, like Harvard University, might be sustained throughout the country!

Still further let us pursue the comparison.

The pay

of the Captain of a ship like the Ohio, is $4,500, when in service; $3,500, when on leave of absence, or off duty. The salary of the President of the Harvard University is $2,205; without leave of absence, and never being off duty!

If the large endowments of Harvard University are dwarfed by a comparison with the expense of a single ship of the line, how much more must it be so with

those of other institutions of learning and beneficence, less favored by the bounty of many generations. The average cost of a sloop of war is $315,000; more, probably, than all the endowments of those twin stars of learning in the Western part of Massachusetts, the Colleges at Williamstown and Amherst, and of that single star in the East, the guide to many ingenuous youth, the Seminary at Andover. The yearly cost of a sloop of war in service is above $50,000; more than the annual expenditures of these three institutions combined.

I might press the comparison with other institutions of Beneficence, with the annual expenditures for the Blind- that noble and successful charity, which has shed true lustre upon our Commonwealth amounting to $12,000; and the annual expenditures for the Insane of the Commonwealth, another charity dear to humanity, amounting to $27,844.

-

Take all the institutions of Learning and Beneficence, the precious jewels of the Commonwealth, the schools, colleges, hospitals and asylums, and the sums, by which they have been purchased and preserved, are trivial and beggarly, compared with the treasures squandered, within the borders of Massachusetts, in vain preparations for War. There is the Navy Yard at Charlestown, with its stores on hand, all costing $4,741,000; the Fortifications in the harbors of Massachusetts, in which incalculable sums have been already sunk, and in which it is now proposed to sink $3,853,000 more ;* and

* Document; Report of Secretary of War; No. 2. Senate, 27th Congress, 2d session; where it is proposed to invest in a general system of land defences $51,677,929.

besides, the Arsenal at Springfield, containing in 1842, 175,118 muskets, valued at $2,999,998,* and which is fed by an annual appropriation of about $200,000 ; but whose highest value will ever be, in the judgment of all lovers of truth, that it inspired a poem, which in its influence shall be mightier than a battle, and shall endure when arsenals and fortifications have crumbled to the earth. Some of the verses of this Psalm of Peace may happily relieve the detail of statistics, while they blend with my argument.

Were half the power that fills the world with terror,

Were half the wealth, bestowed on camp and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals and forts.

The warrior's name would be a name abhorred!
And every nation that should lift again
Its hand against its brother, on its forehead

Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain!

Look now for one moment at a high and peculiar interest of the nation, the administration of justice. Perhaps no part of our system is regarded, by the enlightened sense of the country, with more pride and confidence. To this, indeed, all the other concerns of Government, all its complications of machinery, are in a manner subordinate, since it is for the sake of justice that men come together in states and establish laws. What part of the Government can compare in importance, with the Federal Judiciary, that great balancewheel of the Constitution, controlling the relations of the States to each other, the legislation of Congress and of the States, besides private interests to an incalcula

* Exec. Documents of 1842-43, Vol. I, No. 3.

ble amount? Nor can the citizen, who discerns the True Glory of his country, fail to recognize in the judicial labors of MARSHALL, now departed, and in the immortal judgments of STORY, who is still spared to us, - serus in cœlum redeat a higher claim to admiration and gratitude than can be found in any triumph of battle. The expenses of the administration of justice, throughout the United States, under the Federal Government, in 1842, embracing the salaries of the judges, the cost of juries, court-houses and all officers thereof, in short all the outlay by which justice, according to the requirements of Magna Charta, is carried to every man's door, amounted to $560,990, a larger sum than is usually appropriated for this purpose, but how insignificant compared with the cormorant demands of the Army and Navy!

It ap

Let me allude to one more curiosity of waste. pears, by a calculation founded on the expenses of the Navy, that the average cost of each gun, carried over the ocean, for one year, amounts to about fifteen thousand dollars; a sum sufficient to sustain ten or even twenty professors of Colleges, and equal to the salaries of all the Judges of the Supreme Court of Massachu. setts and the Governor combined!

Such are a few brief illustrations of the tax which the nations, constituting the great Federation of civilization, and particularly our own country, impose on the people, in time of profound peace, for no permanent productive work, for no institution of learning, for no gentle charity, for no purpose of good. As we wearily climb, in this survey, from expenditure to expenditure,

from waste to waste, we seem to pass beyond the region of ordinary calculation; Alps on Alps arise, on whose crowning heights of everlasting ice, far above the habitations of man, where no green thing lives, where no creature draws its breath, we behold the cold, sharp, flashing glacier of War.

In the contemplation of this spectacle the soul swells with alternate despair and hope; with despair, at the thought of such wealth, capable of rendering such service to Humanity, not merely wasted but given to perpetuate Hate; with hope, as the blessed vision arises of the devotion of all these incalculable means to the purposes of Peace. The whole world labors at this moment with poverty and distress; and the painful question occurs to every observer, in Europe more than here at home - what shall become of the poor the increasing Standing Army of the poor. Could the humble voice that now addresses you, penetrate those distant counsels, or counsels nearer home, it would say, disband your Standing Armies of soldiers, apply your Navies to purposes of peaceful and enriching commerce, abandon your Fortifications and Arsenals, or dedicate them to works of Beneficence, as the statue of Jupiter Capitolinus was changed to the image of a Christian saint; in fine, utterly forsake the present incongruous system of armed Peace.

That I may not seem to press to this conclusion with too much haste, at least as regards our own country, I shall consider briefly, as becomes the occasion, the asserted usefulness of the national armaments, which it is proposed to abandon, and shall next expose the outrageous fallacy, at least in the present age, and among