As for several years I literally fought my way through the world, it is natural to suppose that the reasons and results of war have frequently attracted my notice. The alleged and ostensible objects for which one monarch or ruler has engaged in war with another, are to punish some 214slight or injury, which the nation, or its dependencies, or some one of its allies, may have sustained; or to prevent or repel the assaults and invasions of its neighbours. In modern times, those who think of war, enlarge eloquently upon the law of nations, the rights of civil society, and especially the balance of power. This latter phrase has been exceedingly in fashion through the range of diplomatic lore; and the conflict, maintained through a long and dreadful struggle, to give equilibrium to the balance in question, has cost an expenditure of blood and treasure previously unknown in the history of this hemisphere. The truth is, that where war is determined, pretences are easily invented or discovered; as those who are for ever in search of a hook on which to hang a fault, seldom fail of success. Such then are the feigned or genuine motives for war; but every man who looks beneath the surface of political expediency, is convinced that other and more really efficacious reasons are to be detected. Avarice, ambition, religious bigotry, the absence of all religion, desire of dominion, thirst for fame, private pique and animosity, with other dispositions equally censurable, have been the actual though unmentioned causes of many of those sanguinary contests by which the face of nature is marred and spoiled. Roll rapidly, ye intervening years, which are yet to interpose between the present and a better state of things! May the time hasten, when the ingenuity of man shall be no longer misapplied in inventions so hateful; when earth-born malice and resentment, by which it is called into action, are subdued; and in place thereof shall arise the spirit of peace and amity, as a mild and holy dove, to hover over the world, ruling in the hearts of all, and bringing into willing bonds every power of the soul to the obedience of Christ!