I rank first among these that of the practicability and ultimate certainty of Universal Peace. There have been several amateur Peace Congresses after a fashion; but I esteem this the first satisfactory working model of a Peace Congress. The men of the Sword and their champions tell us that Nations _will not_ submit their conflicting claims and jarring interests to the chances of Arbitration; but here they _did_ it, and with the most satisfactory results. Individual heart-burnings there must ever be; cases of injustice, neglect of merit, and partiality; there probably were; but as a whole, the award of Prizes at the Fair was discriminating and satisfactory. If the representatives of rival nations there assembled had set to fighting for the honor and credit of their several countries; hired all the bravoes and marketable ruffians they could find to help them; run in debt for more than they were worth; and finally burned up the Glass Palace with all its contents in the heat of the fray—who imagines that the result would have been more conclusive and satisfactory than it now is? Yet the contrast between the settlement of National differences by War and by Arbitration is as favorable to the latter mode as in the parallel case of rival pretensions to superiority in Art and Industry. But while I hold that Arbitration is the true mode of settling National differences, and War at all times a blunder and a crime on the part of those who wage it, refusing to arbitrate, I do _not_ therefore hold that those who seek only justice should disarm and proclaim their unqualified adhesion to the doctrines of Non-Resistance, and thus invite the despot, the military adventurer, the pirate, to overrun and ravage at their will. I do not believe that peace and justice are in this way attainable, but by quite a different, an almost opposite course. Let the lovers of Freedom and Right repudiate all standing armies, all military conquests, under any conceivable circumstances—all aggressive interference in the domestic concerns of other nations; but let each People be essentially prepared to resist tyranny at home and repel invasion from abroad, each with its own chosen weapons when others shall have proved ineffective. Let the just and pacific take up a position which says to the restless and rapacious, “Be quiet, and do not put us to the disagreeable necessity of quieting you, which you see we are perfectly able to do,”—then and thus we may hope for peace; but not while the “old man,” absolutely relies on driving off the “rude boys” who are “stealing his apples,” with “words and grass” only.