The Sun.
London, England, 1864-03-12 00:00:00

with lofty scorn to the thin ranks of their ono-
nents. The best way of estimating the real worth
of this Hertfordshire victory, as indeed of all similar
contests, would be to reflect upon what opportunity
it would have afforded to the Government had they
won it, and what political capital they would have
made of it.

The Peace Society and the Emperor of

the French.

The subjoined Memorial from the Peace Society
has been presented to the Emperor of the French :
To His IMPERIAL MAJESTY THE EMPEROR OF THE
FRENCH—THE MEMORIAL OF THESOMMITTEE OF TEE
PEACE SOCIETY.

May it Please your Majesty,—The Committee of the
London Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Uni-
versal Pea3e ask permission most respectfully to express
to your Majesty the extreme satisfaction with which they
have observed the proposal recently laid by your Majesty
before the various Sovereigns and States of Europe for as-
sembling an International Congress to adjust by mutual
counsel and concession the unsettled questions that seem to
jeopardise the peace of nations, and to concert measures for
the mutual and simultaneous reduction of those great arma-
ments which have proved at once so burdensome to the re-
sources, so dangerous to the peace, and so detrimental to
the morals of Europe.

Your memorialists represent a body who have been en-
gaged for many years in propagating the doctrines of peace
on the broad grounds of humanity and religion ; but neither
have they failed to urge upon the attention of Governments
and peoples such practical measures for averting war and
consolidating peace as have now happily received you:
Majesty's sanction. Bat to your Majesty belongs the signal
honour of having taken the initiative in proposing to the
States of Europe to substitute the arbitration of reason and
justice for that of the sword, and to unite in relieving the
people from the grievous burden of those warlike prepara-
tions from which unhappily the nations of Europe have so
long menaced each other. The general and cordial re-
sponse with which de overture was greeted by the Go-
vernments to whom it was addressed sufficiently proves
how entirely in harmony with the conscious wants of the
age was your Majesty's generous thought. It is 'seldom that
great innovations, however wise and beneficent, succeed on
the first endeavour. But your memorialists cannot doubt
that your Majesty's idea is destined to bear fruit at no dis-
tant day, strictly in harmony, as they believe it to be, with
the dictates of reason and justice, the spirit of Christianity,
and the tendencies of a progressive civilisation.
And should your Majesty succeed in leading the Powers
of Europe into the path of arbitration and disarmament, it
will confer upon your Majesty's reign a glory far brighter
and more enduring than any that can be reaped from the
most brilliant military achievements, because it will be a
glory derived from the gratitude of nations and the well-
being of universal humanity.
And your Memorialists will ever pray, &o.

JOSEPH PEASE, President
SAMUEL GURNEY, Treasurer
HENRY RICHARD, Secretary.

The following is the Emperor's reply :7.

To MR. JOSEPH PEASE, PRESIDENT OF THE LONDON
;PEACF, SOCIETY.

Sir,—Your committee, in the address which it has for.
warded to me, congratulates me on having proposed a
European Congress. The en ression of its sentiments
touches me all the more because your society, occupying
itself, with an enlightened zeal, with the means of main-
taining the general peace, is on that very account better
able to appreciate my constant solicitude for the attainment
of that end.

" Will you be my interpreter to your honourable col-
leagues, and offer them my sincere thanks?
Believe, me, sir, with all sentiments, &c.,
NAPOLEON,