Not in vision, nor in promise only, is this Unity discerned. Voluntary associations, confederacies, leagues, coalitions, and congresses of nations, though fugitive and limited in influence, all attest the unsatisfied desires of men solicitous for union, while they foreshadow the means by which it may be permanently accomplished. Of these I will enumerate a few. 1. The _Amphictyonic Council_, embracing at first twelve, and finally thirty-one communities, was established about the year 1100 before Christ. Each sent two deputies, and had two votes in the Council, which was empowered to restrain the violence of hostility among the associates. 2. Next comes the _Achæan League_, founded at a very early period, and renewed in the year 281 before Christ. Each member was independent, and yet all together constituted one inseparable body. So great was the fame of their justice and probity, that the Greek cities of Italy were glad to invite their peaceful arbitration. 3. Passing over other confederacies of Antiquity, I mention next the _Hanseatic League_, begun in the twelfth century, completed in the middle of the thirteenth, and comprising at one time no less than eighty-five cities. A system of International Law was adopted in their general assemblies, and also _courts of arbitration, to determine controversies among the cities_. The decrees of these courts were enforced by placing the condemned city under the ban, a sentence equivalent to excommunication. 4. At a later period, other cities and nobles of Germany entered into alliance and association for mutual protection, under various names, as _the League of the Rhine_, and _the League of Suabia_. 5. To these I add the combination of _Armed Neutrality_ in 1780, uniting, in declared support of certain principles, a large cluster of nations,--Russia, France, Spain, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, and the United States. 6. And still further, I refer to Congresses at Westphalia, Utrecht, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Vienna, after the wasteful struggles of War, to arrange terms of Peace and to arbitrate between nations.