Only when we contemplate War in this light can we fully perceive its combined folly and wickedness. Let me bring this home to your minds. Boston and Cambridge are adjoining towns, separated by the River Charles. In the event of controversy between these different jurisdictions, the Municipal Law establishes a judicial tribunal, and not War, as arbiter. Ascending higher, in the event of controversy between two different counties, as between Essex and Middlesex, the same Municipal Law establishes a judicial tribunal, and not War, as arbiter. Ascending yet higher, in the event of controversy between two different States of our Union, the Constitution establishes a judicial tribunal, the Supreme Court of the United States, and not War, as arbiter. But now mark: at the next stage there is a change of arbiter. In the event of controversy between two different States of the Commonwealth of Nations, the supreme law establishes, not a judicial tribunal, but War, as arbiter. War is the institution _established_ for the determination of justice between nations. Provisions of the Municipal Law of Massachusetts, and of the National Constitution, are not vain words. To all familiar with our courts it is well known that suits between towns, and likewise between counties, are often entertained and satisfactorily adjudicated. The records of the Supreme Court of the United States show also that States of the Union habitually refer important controversies to this tribunal. Before this high court is now pending an action of the State of Missouri against the State of Iowa, founded on a question of boundary, where the former claims a section of territory--larger than many German principalities--extending along the whole northern border of Missouri, with several miles of breadth, and comprising more than two thousand square miles. Within a short period this same tribunal has decided a similar question between our own State of Massachusetts and our neighbor, Rhode Island,--the latter pertinaciously claiming a section of territory, about three miles broad, on a portion of our southern frontier. Suppose that in these different cases between towns, counties, states, War had been _established_ by the supreme law as arbiter; imagine the disastrous consequences; picture the imperfect justice which must have been the end and fruit of such a contest; and while rejoicing that in these cases we are happily relieved from an alternative so wretched and deplorable, reflect that on a larger theatre, where grander interests are staked, in the relations between nations, under the solemn sanction of the Law of Nations, War is _established_ as Arbiter of Justice. Reflect also that a complex and subtile code, known as Laws of War, is established to regulate the resort to this arbiter. * * * * *