There are persons who allow themselves sometimes to speak of associations like ours, if not with disapprobation, at least with levity and distrust. A writer so humane and genial as Robert Southey left on record a gibe at the "Society for the Abolition of War," saying that it had "not obtained sufficient notice even to be in disrepute."[281] It is not uncommon to hear our aims characterized as visionary, impracticable, Utopian. Sometimes it is hastily said that they are contrary to the nature of man, that they require for success a complete reconstruction of human character, and that they necessarily assume in man qualities, capacities, and virtues which do not belong to his nature. This mistaken idea was once strongly expressed in the taunt, that "an Anti-War Society is as little practicable as an Anti-Thunder-and-Lightning Society."[282] [281] Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, Vol. I. p. 224. [282] Hon. Jeremiah Mason, of Boston, to Mr. Sumner. Never a moment when this beautiful cause was not the occasion of jest, varying with the character of the objector. More than a century ago there was something of this kind, which arrested the attention of no less a person than Leibnitz, and afterwards of Fontenelle. It was where an elegant Dutch trifler, as described by Leibnitz, following the custom of his country, placed as a sign over his door the motto, _To Perpetual Peace_, with the picture of a cemetery,--meaning to suggest that only with the dead could this desire of good men be fulfilled. Not with the living, so the elegant Dutch trifler proclaimed over his door. A different person, also of Holland, who was both diplomatist and historian, the scholarly Aitzema, caught the jest, and illustrated it by a Latin couplet:-- "Qui pacem quæris libertatemque, viator, Aut nusquam aut isto sub tumulo invenies";-- which, being translated, means, "Traveller, who seekest Peace and Liberty, either nowhere or under that mound thou wilt find them."[283] Do not fail to observe that Liberty is here doomed to the same grave as Peace. Alas, that there should be such despair! At length Liberty is rising. May not Peace rise also? [283] Leibnitz, Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus, Dissert. I. § 1: Opera (ed. Dutens), Tom. IV. Pars 3, pp. 287, 288. Fontenelle, Éloge de Leibnitz: OEuvres, Tom. V. p. 456. Doubtless objections, to say nothing of jests, striking at the heart of our cause, exert a certain influence over the public mind. They often proceed from persons of sincerity and goodness, who would rejoice to see the truth as we see it. But, plausible as they appear to those who have not properly meditated this subject, I cannot but regard them--I believe that all who candidly listen to me must hereafter regard them--as prejudices, without foundation in sense or reason, which must yield to a plain and careful examination of the precise objects proposed.