lightning through the nation, and aroused the deepest indignation in every manly breast. Hundreds of meetings were convened in the free States to take the subject into consideration, and resolutions of the strongest kind were passed, condemnatory of the outrage, and sympathizing with, and approving the cause of the eloquent sufferer. For weeks, Mr. Sumner was confined to his room and bed; but he gradually gained strength, and hoped strongly that he might be able to return to the Senate in the December following: this his physicians peremptorily forbade, and he spent the winter in Boston. In the spring of 1857, he went to Europe for his health, receiving there, from all the noblest and most learned wherever he went, the highest marks of attention and respect. He returned in the fall, improved, and is now slowly, but we trust surely, regaining his former strength and vigor. EXPENSES OF WAR AND EDUCATION COMPARED. It appears from the last Report of the Treasurer of Harvard University, that its whole available property, the various accumulations of more than two centuries of generosity, amounts to $703,175. There now swings idly at her moorings, in this harbor, a ship of the line, the Ohio, carrying ninety guns, finished as late as 1836, for $547,888; repaired only two years afterwards in 1838, for $223,012; with an armament which has cost $53,945; making an amount of $834,845, as the actual cost at this moment of that single ship; more than $100,000 beyond all the available accumulations of the richest and most ancient seat of learning in the land! Choose ye, my fellow-citizens of a Christian state, between the two caskets-that wherein is the loveliness of knowledge and truth, or that which contains the carrion death. Let us pursue the comparison still further. The account of the expenditures of the University during the last year, for the general purposes of the College, the instruction of the Undergraduates, and for the Schools of Law and Divinity, amounts to $46,949. The cost of the Ohio for one year in service, in To the lasting disgrace of South Carolina, be it said that her citizens in numerous public meetings approved the act, and that the cowardly assailant was sent back to Congress, after having vacated his seat. Document No. 132, House of Representatives, 3d session, 27th Congress. Reference is here made to the Ohio, because she happens to be in our waters. The expenses of the Delaware in 1842 had been $1,051,000. salaries, wages and provisions, is $220,000; being $175,00 more than the annual expenditures of the University; more than four times as much. In other words, for the annual sum which is lavished on one ship of the line, four institutions like Harvard University might be sustained throughout the country! Still further let us pursue the comparison. The pay of the captain of a ship like the Ohio is $4,500, when in service; $3,500, when on leave of absence, or off duty. The salary of the President of the Harvard University is $2,205; without leave of absence, and never being off duty! If the large endowments of Harvard University are dwarfed by a comparison with the expense of a single ship of the line, how much more must it be so with those of other institutions of learning and beneficence, less favored by the bounty of many generations. The average cost of a sloop of war is $315,000; more, probably, than all the endowments of those twin stars of learning in the western part of Massachusetts, the Colleges at Williamstown and Amherst, and of that sing'e star in the East, the guide to many ingenuous youth, the Seminary at Andover. The yearly cost of a sloop of war in service is above $50,000; more than the annual expenditures of these three institutions combined. 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 Charlestown, with its stores on hand, all costing $4,741,000; the fortifications in the harbors of Massachusetts, in which have been sunk already incalculable sums, and in which it is now proposed to sink $3,853,000 more; and besides, the Arsenal at Springfield, containing in 1842, 175, 118 muskets, valued at $2,999,998, 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." Document, Report of Secretary of War, No. 2, Senate, 27th Congress, 2d session, where it is proposed to invest in a system of land defences $51,677,929. ว * See Longfellow's "Arsenal at Springfield," page 624. WHAT IS THE USE OF THE NAVY? The annual expense of our Navy for several years past has been upwards of six millions of dollars. For what purpose is this paid? Not for the apprehension of pirates; for frigates and ships of the line are of too great bulk to be of service for this purpose. Not for the suppression of the Slave Trade; for, under the stipulations with Great Britain, we employ only eighty guns in this holy alliance. Not to protect our coasts; for all agree that our few ships would form an unavailing defence against any serious attack. Not for these purposes, we will admit; but for the protection of our Navigation. This is not the occasion for minute calculations. Suffice it to say, that an intelligent merchant, who has been extensively engaged in commerce for the last twenty years, and who speaks, therefore, with the authority of knowledge, has demonstrated, in a tract of perfect clearness, that the annual amount of the freights of the whole mercantile marine of the country does not equal the annual expenditure of the Navy of the United States Protection at such cost is more ruinous than one of Pyrrhus' victories! In objecting to the Navy, I wish to limit myself to the Navy as an asserted arm of national defence. So far as it may be necessary, as a part of the police of the seas, to purge them of pirates, and above all, to defeat the hateful traffic in human flesh, it is a proper arm of government. The free cities of Hamburg and Bremen, survivors of the great Hanseatic League, with a commerce that whitens the most distant seas, are without a single ship of war. Let the United States be willing to follow their wise example, and abandon an institution which has already become a vain and most expensive TOY! THE VICTORIES OF PEACE. And peace has its own peculiar victories, in comparison with which Marathon and Bannockburn and Bunker Hill, fields I refer to Mr. Coues' tract, "What is the use of the Navy of the United States?" which has already produced a strong effect on many minds, the natural consequence of its unanswerable arguments and statements. No person should undertake to vindicate the Navy, or sanction appropriations for its support, without answering this tract. held sacred in the history of human freedom, shall lose their lustre. Our own Washington rises to a truly Heavenly stature -not when we follow him over the ice of the Delaware to the capture of Trenton-not when we behold him victorious over Cornwallis at Yorktown; but when we regard him, in noble deference to justice, refusing the kingly crown which a faithless soldiery proffered, and at a later day, upholding the peaceful neutrality of the country, while he received unmoved the cismor of the people wickedly crying for war. What glory of battle in England's annals will not fade by the side of that great act of Justice, by which her Legislature, at a cost of ore hundred million dollars, gave freedom to eight hundred thousand slaves! And when the day shall come (may these eyes be gladdened by its beams!) that shall witness an act of greater justice still, the peaceful emancipation of three millions of our fellow-men, "guilty of a skin not colored as our own," now held in gloomy bondage, in our own country, then shall there be a victory, in comparison with which that of Bunker H shall be as a farthing-candle held up to the sun. That victory shall need no monument of stone. It shall be written on the grateful hearts of uncounted multitudes, that shall proclaim it to the latest generation. It shall be one of the great landmarks of civilization; nay, more, it shall be one of the links in the golden chain by which Humanity shall connect itself with the throne of God. TRUE GLORY. Whatever may be the temporary applause of men, or the expressions of public opinion, it may be asserted, without fear of contradiction, that no true and permanent Fame can be founded, except in labors which promote the happiness of mankind. If these are performed by Christian means, with disinterested motives, and with the single view of doing good, they become that rare and precious virtue whose fit image is the spotless lily of the field, brighter than Solomon in all his glory. Earth has nothing of such surpassing loveliness. Heaven may claim it as its own. Such labors are the natural fruit of obedience to the Christian commandments of love to God and to man. Reason, too, in harmony with these laws, shows that the true dignity of Humanity is in the moral and intellectual nature; and that the labors of Justice and Benevolence, directed by intelligence, and abasing that part of our nature which we have in common with the beasts, are the highest forms of human conduct. There are not a few who will join with Milton in his admirable judgment of martial renown : They err who count it glorious to subdue Large countries, and in field great battles win, And all the flourishing works of peace destroy?' Well does the poet give the palm to moral excellence! But it is from the lips of a successful soldier, cradled in war, the very pink of the false heroism of battle, that we are taught to appreciate the literary Fame, which, though less elevated than that derived from disinterested acts of beneficence, is truer and more permanent far than any bloody glory. I allude to Wolfe, the conqueror of Quebec, who has attracted, perhaps, a larger share of romantic interest than any of the gallant generals in English history. We behold him, yet young in years, at the head of an adventurous expedition, destined to prostrate the French empire in Canada-guiding and encouraging the firmness of his troops in unaccustomed difficulties-awakening their personal attachment by his kindly suavity, and their ardor by his own example-climbing the precipitous steeps which conduct to the heights of the strongest fortress on the American continent-there, under its walls, joining in deadly conflict -wounded-stretched upon the field-faint with the loss of blood-with sight already dimmed-his life ebbing fastcheered at last by the sudden cry, that the enemy is fleeing in all directions and then his dying breath mingling with the shouts of victory. An eminent artist has portrayed this scene of death in a much admired picture. History and poetry have dwelt upon it with peculiar fondness. Such is the Glory of arms! But there is, happily, preserved to us a tradition of this day, which affords a gleam of a truer Glory. As the commander floated down the currents of the St. Lawrence in his boat, under cover of the night, in the enforced silence of a military expedition, to effect a landing at an opportune pro 'Paradise Regained, Book III. v. 71. |