by war on the internal manners of a country. As it affects the external moral sentiment, or the public feelings of right and wrong, with respect to other nations; it's tendency is to obscure all the obligations of natural justice, and to dissolve all the principles of reasonable, proper, and equitable action.
"Hence the morality of peaceful times is so directly opposite to the maxims of war. The fundamental rule of the first is to do good; of the latter to inflict injuries. The former commands us to succour the oppressed; the latter to overwhelm the defenceless. The former teaches men to love their enemies; the latter to make themselves terrible even to strangers. The rules of morality will not suffer usto promote the dearest interest by falsehood; the maxims of war applaud it, when employed in the destruction of others. That familiarity with such maxims must tend to harden the heart, as well as to pervert the moral sentiments, is too obvious to need illustration. The natural consequence of their prevalence is an unfeeling and unprincipled ambition, with an idolatry of talents, and a contempt of virtue; whence the esteem of mankind is turned from the humble, the beneficent, and the good, to men who are qualified, by a genius, fertile in expedients, a courage that is never appalled, and a heart that never pities, to become the destroyers of the earth. While the philanthropist is devising means to mitigate the evil and augment the happiness of the world, a fellow-worker together with God, in exploring and giving effect to the benevolent tendencies of nature; the warrior is revolving, in the gloomy recesses of his capacious mind, plans of future desolation, terror, and ruin. Prisons crouded with captives, cities emptied of their inhabitants, fields desolate and waste, are a-
