INTRODUCTION 



THAT the centenary of the treaty which has 

 secured to Great Britain and the United States 

 one hundred years of unbroken peace should 

 deserve a celebration might seem strange to 

 some philosopher in his study, whose medita 

 tions on the folly and cruelty of war would have 

 led him to suppose that peace was natural 

 between two great nations kindred in blood, 

 both highly intelligent and highly civilized. 

 Very different are the feelings of the historian, 

 who remembers how often wars have arisen from 

 slight causes, or of the practical statesman, 

 who knows the kind of motives by which rulers 

 who determine the issues of peace or war have 

 been and still are governed. Jealousies, rival 

 ries, antagonisms have still so much power over 

 peoples, rulers are still so far from trying to 

 apply as between states that moral law which 

 the better sort of individual men recognize in 

 private social and in business intercourse, and 

 which public opinion imposes even upon the 

 worse sort, that the maintenance of peace be- 



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