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last year but one, none at all. You know, I believe, that house-breaking or street robbery, is an event almost unknown in this city, and that the roads in the environs may be, and are, travelled without any apprehensions from highwaymen.

Could our security in these respects be well founded if the morals of the people were as corrupt as you represent? Look at the people to whose tender mercy you advise us to submit without resistance. Do not their own accounts which are more disposed to diminish, than to swell the catalogue, and see if they do not give accounts of outrages frequently committed, at which nature shudders, and to which, thank God, our own country which you paint as having extinguished all benevolence and humanity, is yet a stranger?

I wish you had before you enriched your harangue with describing War as extinguishing among us all the mild, kind and gentle affections, directed your eye to the records of those charities, in behalf of which

you have yourself several times appeared as a solicitor. Do not the receipts of these institutions at the annual collections at the places of worship, prove that charity, which I hope you will not deny to be a mild, kind, benevolent and gentle affection, is still in vigour among your countrymen, however inconsistent this may be with your other representations.

From the beginning of the year 1785, to the end of 1792, a period of eight years profound Peace, when of course all the mild and humane virtues were most prevalent, when money was most plenty, and the three per cent. Stock nearly at par-the collections for the General Hospital amounted to

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From the end of the year 1792, to the end of the year 1800, a period of eight years. of continued war, with the three per cent. Stocks, 45, at least, per cent. lower than in the former period, the receipt

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I shall next consider what you have borrowed from Mr. Hall's Sermon, respecting what call the external moral sentiment, you or the public feelings of right and wrong with respect to other nations. The tendency of just, necessary and properly speaking, defensive War, is not as you represent "to obscure all the obligations of natural justice, nor to dissolve all principles of reasonable, proper and equitable action." Were this the case, no Peace could ever take place if nothing done in War could have any credit affixed to it or trust reposed in it.

"Sunt belli sicut pacis jura, justeque ea, non minus quam fortiter didicimus gerere. Arma habemus non adversus eam ætatem cui etiam captis urbibus parcitur; sed adversus armatos, et ipsos, qui nec læsi nec lacessiti a nobis, castra Romana ad Veios oppugnarunt."

Such were the sentiments of Camillus, the Roman General, in the early ages of the Republic; and more liberal, more generous, or more descriptive of the true nature of

defensive and justifiable War, have not been delivered in later times. His maxims by no means resemble those which you and Mr. Hall represent as the maxims of War.

Livy, says, that War interrupts those connections which are founded on specific treaties and agreements between the several Governments, but leaves uninjured the feelings of nature, and of humanity.

"Nobis cum Faliscis, quæ pacto fit humano, societas non est, quam ingeneravit natura, utrisque est, eritque." You quote from Mr. Hall, that "the rules of morality will not suffer us to promote our dearest interests by falsehood, the maxims of War applaud it, when employed in the destruction of others." But in what book or treatise on the Laws of Nations, did he or you pick up this strange position?

Falsehood, or in other words, breach of faith with an enemy, which you say is applauded, is reprobated in the strongest terms, both by moralists and historians.

The stratagems of War are no falsehood; they must be expected and betray no one, because no faith is pledged upon them; but promises or agreements are equally valid in what respects War, or made in time of War, as in Peace. To cite Grotius* for instances of this, from the writers of antiquity, you might think pedantry, so shall content myself with quoting two fathers of the Church, whose opinion, perhaps, you may regard with more respect: The first is from St. Ambrose, liquet igitur etiam in bello fidem et justitiam servari oportere." The other is from St. Augustine, "Fides quando promittitur, etiam hosti servanda est, contra quem bellum geritur;" to which, Grotius adds, “nimirum hostes qui sunt, homines esse non desinunt."

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"The faith of promises and treatises," says Vattel,†“is the basis of the peace of

* See Book III, c. 19. † Book III, c. 10.

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