The Express.
London, England, 1849-08-23 00:00:00

they are called, many political men who have grown old in
the management of affairs, reply "No." As for malt, I
reply with you, and without hesitation." Yes ;" and I shall
try tomes the truth of my statement immediately.
But I go farther; I do emceed, my that it is an object
capable of being realised, but that it is inevitable. All that
eau be dome is to heath or retard its commutation.
The law of the world is not and cannot be distinct from the
laws of God ; but the law of Gal is not war, but peace. Men
Wean :id' straggles just as creation commenced by chaos.
do they come? Evidently from war. Whither
are they going ? Net less stridently to peace.
When you abut these lofty truths it is quite plein that
your offrmation meets with negation, that your faith meets
with incredulity, that In this hour of our troubles and or our
commotion, the idea of universal peace surprises sad alarms
every one as being the apparition of something impossible
and tient It Is quits probable that our views will be called
Utopian; and as far as concerns myself, • humble and °b-
are labourer in the great worn of the nineteenth century,
I accept this opposition without being either astonished or
damaged by it. It is possible fur you to prevent people
taming aside their heads and closing their dazzled eyes
the midst of the thick darkens which still sur-
rounds m us, you suddenly open the radiant gate of the tuna*.
If any one, analogies, tour centuries ago, during the
time whoa commune waged war against commune, town
egaisst town, and previrce against province, if any one had
said to Lerraisw, to Picardy, to Normandy, to Bretagne, to
Auvergne, to Provisos, to Dauphiay, to Burgundy : "A day
will Mein whoa you will no longer make war, when men
will no low boar aims one against the other, win nit will
so law be said,' the Normans have attacked Picardy.' or
' the as of Lorraine We beaten the Bergundiane.' You
ergl still have many differences, to arrange, many interests to
divests, any. dispel, to ooMprailme dorm ham wnin -p as.
in will put thee place of arm n, of infantry and cavalry,
of tonnes and talconetts, of lances, pikes, and swords ? You
will put in the place of all these, a little wooden box ertich
you will call the balloting-box, and from that box will pro-
seed an assembly,—an assembly on which you will feel that
you all live, which will act as a soul to all of you, • sove-
reign and popular council which will decide, will judge, will
settle ell questions ; which will make the sword fall from the
bands of all, and justice rise is every heart ; which will say
to each man, ' Here ends thy right, them begins thy duty.'
Lay down your arms ! Live in peace I And on tbatday you
will feel that you have common thoughts, common interests,
a common destiny. You will embrace one another, you will
recognise one another as children of the same blood and of
the same race; on that day you will mare to be hostile tribe is,
—you will be a people. You will no :eager be Burgundy,
Normandy, Beltway, Provence,—you will be France. You
will no longer call in the aid of war, but you will summon
eivilisatioe to sash tom."
If say ea bad said this at that period, gentlemen, ell the
serious and positive men, all the great politician of the day,
would have cried out, "Oh, the man is dreaming; he is
talking arrant nonsense. It is plain that lie his very little
knowledge of human nature. What • strange piece of
folly ! What an absurd chimera!" Gentlemen, time hen
passed on, and we hod that this dream, this folly, this
chimers, is the reality. And I insist on this,—the man who
milieu have delivered this sublime prophecy would have
been declared a fool by the wise men for having seen into
the designs of God.
Well, you say at the present day, and I join wish you in
saying it—all of us who are here present speak to France, to
England, to Prussia, to Austria, to Spain, to Italy, to Russia,
sad say : A day will come when arms will tall from your hands
also, when war will appear as absurd and will be as impossible
between Paris and London, between Vienna and Turin, or
between Petersburgh and Berlin, as it would now be impos-
sible and appear absurd between Rouen and Attica', or
between Boston and Philadelphia A day will come when
France, Russia, Italy, England, Germany, all the nations of
the Continent, without losing their distinguishing charac-
teristics and their glorious individnality, will coalesce
into a superior unity, and will agitate an European fra-
ternity, precisely in the same manner as Normandy,
Barmy, Burgundy, Lorraine, Alsace, and all the other
provicees have cooluced into France. A day will come
when there will be no other battle fields than markets open-
ing for commerce, and minds opening for the reception of
ideas. A day will come when bullets and bomb-shells will
be superseded by votes, bi the universal suffrage of nation,
by the venerable arbitration of a grand sovereign senate,
which shall be to Europe what the Parliament is to England,
what the Diu is to Germany, what the Legislative Assent.
bly is to France. A day will come when cannon will be
shows in museums just as instruments of torture are shown
now-a.days. A day will come when men will behold those
immense groups, the lloited States of America, shaking
hands arms the ccean, exchanging their produce, their com-
merce, their industry, their ars, their Manta, combining
together, for the common welfare of all, those two infinitely
powerful forces, the fraternity of men and the power of God.
And we shall not want four hundred years to bring about
that day, for we live in stirring times, we live during the
moat impetuous course of events end ideas which has ever
occurred, and in these our times a year sometimes does the
work of ages.
And, French, English, Belgians, Germane, Russians, SW-
vonians, Europeans, Americans, what must we do to sr-
rive as soon as possible at this great day. We must love one
another. Love one another in this immense work of pacifica-
tion—this is the best way of aiding God. For God wills it,—.
this sublime end. And see what he is doing on all skies to
lead to its attainment. Look at the vast number of disco-
veries which he causes to be made by human genius, and
which all tend to peaces What great progress ! What nu-
nitrous simplifications ! How nature allows herself grado•
ally to be subdued by man ! How matter becomes more and
more the slave of intelligence and the servant of civilisa-
tion. How the emus of war disappear together with
Mate of suffering—haw near distant cations are brought to
Mss another—how distances are diminished. All this is the
beeduning of fraternity !
Thanks to railroads, Europe will soon be no larger than
was France during the middle ages. Thanks to 'team-
beats, we can now traverse the ocean more easily than per-
inea could formerly traverse the Mediterranean. Before
hag, VIM will go through the earth like the gods of Homer
went through h ,in three steps. A few yeses more,
al the electric thread of concord will surround the globe
Mini made the world.
Here, gentlemen, when I examine this vast concurrence of
efforts and events, all marked by the finger of (3.d, when I
think upon this magnificent object, peace, the welfare of
men ; when I consider what Providence does in our favour
and what politics do against us, • painful thought suggests
itself to my mind.
There results from • comparison of statist:es and the
budgets which the European nations spend every year in
the maintenance of their armies, a sum which is not Moth=
two Amsted millions of franca, and which, if we add to it
the keeping up of the Mail riot of the establishments of war,
amounts to three thousand millions. Add to this the loss of
the produce of the lemur of more than two millions of an,
the healthiest, the most vigorous, the youngest, the ilia of
our populations—produce which cannot be estimated at lees
than • thousand millions, and we arrive at this result,—the
permanent armies of Europe cost four thousand millions an.
nosily. Gentlemen, pace has now lasted thirty-two years,
and in them thirty-two yurs the monstrous sum of
128,000,000,000 has been spent in impassion for
war during a time of peace. Suppose that the people
of Europe had loved, instead of suirecting, mistrusting, and
bating one another; suppose that they had said that, even
before being Frenchmen, or Englishmen, or Germano, they
were mom and that if nations are fatherlands, humanity is •
family; ems am ennead this sum of • hundred and tweaty-
eight thennal alias, which has been so foolishly and so
vainly espoulodloyealstruat, expend it by contidecce. Give
thew 111,016.1.1006,000 to love, instead of hatred. Give them to
"n
of Is war. them
Give to labour, to intelligence,
to
to commerce, to navigation, to agriculture, to
sineley
the cheeses, to the arts, and then imsgine the result. If
dosing the last thirty-two years, this gigantic sum of on.
haired and twenty-eight tamml millions had been
good In this way, and America, on her side, had done the
moms is Europe, what would have been the consequence !
TM has of the world would have been changed. Isthmuses
well have been cut through, rivers made, mountains tun-
nelled ; railroads would have covered the two continents,
the merchant marine of the world would have increased a
hundred-fold ; there would no longer In anywhere any bogs,
or marshes, or moors; towns would have been built where
solitude now reigns; harbours constructed when there are
now nothinf but rocks and shallows ; Asia would have
yielded to civilisation ; Africa would have been restored
to humanity; wealth would spring up on every side
from all the veins of the earth and the labour of all men,
and Mosey would disappear. And know you what would
disappear together with misery? Revolutioes! Yet, tie
face of the earth would be changed. Instead of bung at
antics with one another, men would pi acefully spread
themselves over the earth. Instead of making revolutions
they would send out colonies. Instead of bringing barbarism
to civilisation, they would take civilisation to barbarian.
See, gentlemen, into what blindness the pre-occupation of
war throws nations and rulers; if the 128 000,000,000 which
have been given by Europe during the last thirty-two years
to a war which did not exist, had been given to piece which
did islet, let us declare, and declare loudly, we should not
see in Europe that which we do see at the mune moment;
the Continent, instead of being a field of battle, would be a
workshop, and instead of the painful and terrible sight of
Piedmont east down, Rome, the Morns] City, given over to
the miserable oscilleirm of human polities, Vet ice strug-
gling heroically, noble Hungary rising against her op.
pressers, France unquiet, impoverished, and gloomy ; mi-
eery, mourning, civil war, obscurity as regards the future;
instead of this mournful spectacle, we should have under
our eyes hope, joy, benevolence, the efforts of all to pro-
mote the common good, and we should see everywhere aris-
ing the majestic radiation of universal concord.
Subject worthy of meditation ! it is our precautions against
war which have brought about revolutions! All has ben
done, all expended spinet an imaginary danger I Mfiery—
tbe real danger—has thus been aggramtted. Potations have
been taken against • chimerical danger ; we have turned
our eyes to the side where the dark point was not; we have
seen the wars whiet did not come, and failed to a the revo-
lutions which did happen.
Nevertheless, gentlemen, let us not despair. On the COll.
tray, let us hope more than ever. Let us not allow cut-