The Express.
London, England, 1867-09-10 00:00:00

_
Zltz erPrefni•

To t"rßi:t~P,sNt,gNr.
ftdNeti•c.nents Inton,lo.l for •• The Express." London Korth*
Peer, n, tOo At the 11:11,..e, 10, Bourortoogrost, b 7 Two
ou the day of pubWatlon.

rtAYtl tl.l IT.
rip, Eel:Wm, AM YoU Uhl: If. Meson Howe, Chippen-
dale. R.. 4. r., Ken.ial, Clark. Westin:ashy. &c. : Mee lames
Scott Unrke Fitzwilliant.fie.—TO PARIS AND BACK
YOB .4;,:tlr. Bucksioue.—And Flail OUT OF WATKIL

PRINCIRIVVR.
Errlntl, POOR PILLICODDY. Megan Dominick
Murray d Oreaham ; Miss Polly Mnrshall.—lnd Till: STREETS
(W LoVals, Mr. %I ' 2, Maur*. M•Leau, U. Murray, &c.;
Itentuu, toart, Barnett, and Marston.

BRITANNIA.
Tmr F.rinirto, Tiff: !OLAF LA I/1"F: 01 FERNLEA. Atlas
E. Courtebny ntl.l I.li4vnio : Mr. Plumpt"n :
Mr. an I Mrs. Coleman and Mr. Erown.—Atal TUE WIDOW'S
IfIKE-4 DE. SI r. E. courVasas

01011 WATER AT LONDON MUDGE.
nun DAT —Mosalag, 11 h. 41m Mtnn..a. Oh. Om.
To•bloiliew—lforalni„• oh. I2m Alterugou, oh. as,..

LONDON, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10.

A CoN,.ier.ss of Peace has always been a facile
and a fertile theme of ridicule for those ready
writer, whose cheap cynicism supplies the current
wisdom of contemporary society. It is so easy to
call a few great and good men vain dreamers,
and their followers idle fools. If this is not con-
clusive, what can be more absurd than to prate
about universal peace in the existing state of the
civilized world ? Look at the enormous standing
armies of the European monarchies, and the in-
cessant invention and preparation of the most
destructive weapons. Consider the four wars—
the war in tho Crimea, the war in Italy, the
war in Denmark, the war in Bohemia—that have
raged in our hemisphere, and the tremendous
contest in that new Western world which is popu-
larly supposed to be a refuge from the rage
of monarchs and the miseries of peoples, since
the last Congress of Peace was held in Paris.
Contrast these evidences of ineradicable human
ferocity with the successive international fes-
tivals of industry which, at intervals of five
years, have celebrated the triumphs of inter-
national concord and beneficent progress, and
rebuked the ravages of ambition. And when you
have moralized in a mocking strain on these
flagrant inconsistencies and contradictions, what
can be wanting to satisfy a public who feed
on facts and not on aspirations, that a Con-
gress of Peace is a congregation of harmless
cobweb-spinning lunatics ? Conceive the contempt
with which " practical men" of all kinds—politi-
cians, diplomatists, soldiers, and the men of the
Bourses, who look on at the ROW:RIGOR and the
Cassios, and put money in their purses which-
ever way the fight turn, must contemplate the
gathering of a Congress of Peace at Genova !
Imagine the sovereign pity with which the two
great g• decorated " professions, whose proverbial
mod•cn a of wisdom governs this world of ours—
the diplomatists who discover cases of war
under the disguise of treaties of peace, and the
military chiefs who flourish by the trade of
wholesale homicide—must regard a meeting of
undecorated peacemakers mho propose to super-
sede treaties of alliance, and the industry of
camps and arsenals, and all the honours and
glories of war, by courts of arbitration and the
principles of common-sense and common welfare.
Nor, we fear, will the militant and salaried
churches bo more sparing of their taunts for those
paradoxical enthusiasts who in the year of grace
1867 presume to take the good tidings of
the Founder of Christianity in their most literal
sense, and to believe that it is possible for man-
kind to dwell together in goodwill. Priests and
soldiers may bo social rivals, but they have a
curious respect for each other's business. The
Chief of Catholicity, who employs foreign merce-
naries to keep guard at the tomb of the Apostles,
is notoriously not prepared to put up the sword
in the sheath.

It has recently been the fashion of writers in
the service of the old systems of government
and society to pretend that democracies are more
prone to war than monarchies and aristocracies.
What are the instances and examples they cite in
favour of this assertion ? The instance of the
French Republic in 1792 ; the example of
the American Republic in the war for the
restoration of the Union. Yet nothing is
more indisputable than that the war of 1792 was
in its origin an attack by the coalition of monar-
chies resisted by the French Republicans in self-
defence. As to the American civil war, it would be
impossible for those who accuse the warlike
instincts of democracies to select an illustration
more fatal to their argument. Where is the
an tlogy between the monarchical wars of ambition
and conquest which have made all Europe a battle.
field, and a war undertaken by a national govern-
ment for the defence of a free constitution
and of the national unity against a rebel-
lions sectional oligarchy ? That war, like the
wars that from time to time have deso-
lated the Old World, originated in the inordi-
nate ambition and in the interests of a privi-
leged class ;it was a victorious democracy that
restored peace, and in the very hour of victory
disbanded its armies, and sent back to the factory
and the field the citizen-soldiers who had saved
the republic. To suppose that the great body of
any people prefer war to peace is equivalent to
supposing that the majority of mankind prefer a
violent death to a happy and tranquil life. War
has always been the game of governments—
peace has always been the interest of nations. The
Peace Congress which is about to meet at Geneva
can therefore afford to meet ridicule with indif-
ference. All the great forces of civilization,
all the teachings of history, are on its side.
Religion, science, industry, art, popular instruc-
tion, are its allies. Not even its deriders
dispute its premises or deny its conclusions,
while they treat it as a collection of Utopian
philosophers who have no relation to the living
world of facts. And yet a Peace Congress
is but the synthetical expression of all those
tendencies which Associations for the advance-
ment of physical science, Social Science Con-
gresses, Statistical Congresses—even Church Con-
gresses—more or less consciously embody—ten-