Take all the Institutions of Learning and Beneficence, the precious jewels of the Commonwealth, the schools, colleges, hospitals and asylums, and the sums, by which they have been purchased and preserved, are trivial and beggarly, compared with the treasures squandered within the borders of Massachusetts, in vain preparations for War. There is the Navy Yard at Charleston, with its stores on hand, all costing $4,741,000; the Fortifications in the harbors of Massachusetts, in which incalculable sums have been already sunk, and in which it is now proposed to sink $3,853,000 more;[10] and besides the Arsenal at Springfield, containing in 1842, 175,118 muskets, valued at $2,999,998,[11] and which is fed by an annual appropriation of about $200,000; but whose highest value will ever be, in the judgment of all lovers of truth, that it inspired a poem, which in its influence shall be mightier than a battle, and shall endure when arsenals and fortifications have crumbled to the earth. Some of the verses of this Psalm of Peace may happily relieve the detail of statistics, while they blend with my argument. Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth, bestowed on camp and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals and forts. The warrior’s name would be a name abhorred! And every nation that should lift again Its hand against its brother, on its forehead Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain!