Social Science Congress. 179 
and at length a general peace is concluded. Yes, peace is 
restored on the Continent, and all friends of social science 
must heartily rejoice. 
Such is a brief abstract of this powerful address which. 
concluded in the following words :— 
“ Although the glory of war lends its horrible atrocities a 
false glare which deceives us as to its blood guiltiness, in 
what does the crime of Napoleon, when he sacrificed thou- 
sands of lives to his lust of foreign conquest, differ from that 
of Robespierre, when he sought domestic power by slaying 
hundreds of his fellow-citizens ? In one particular there is 
more atrocity in the crimes of the latter; they were perpe- 
trated under the name and form of justice; whose sanctity 
they cruelly profaned; but, on the other hand, far more 
blood was spilled, far more wide-spreading and lengthened 
misery occasioned to unoffending provinces by the inva- 
sions of Spain, and Switzerland, and Germany, and Russia, 
than by all the acts of the Committee, the Convention, and. 
the Revolutionary Tribunal. Nor will mankind ever be 
free from the scourge of war until they learn to call things. 
by their proper names, to give crimes, the same epithets, 
whatever outward form they may assume, and to regard. 
with equal abhorrence the conqueror who slakes. his thirst 
ef dominion with the blood of his fellow creatures, and the 
more vulgar criminal, who is executed for taking the life of 
a wayfaring man that he may seize upon his. purse. We 
hesitate not to shed the blood of a common felon, and even 
those most averse to capital punishment make an excep- 
tion against the murderer. Thus there is no difficulty in 
prosecuting murders, and the juries convict, who in cases of 
theft or embezzlement, or even forgery, would hesitate. 
Such is the universal horror of murder, or even of attempts 
to commit it, and of partial committal. Then, why do the 
same parties regard the slaughter of tens or thousands, 
some with tolerance, and some even with approval ? 
“** One to destroy to murder by the law, 
And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe ; 
To murder thousands takes a specious name, 
War’s glorious art, and gives immortal.’ 
Young, Universal Passion, Sect. vil. 
Such is the result of war, and while men will fight and slay 
their tens of thousands, the crime of murder on the largest 
scale must go on unpunished and unrepented. Yes, un- 
punished in this world. But our Heavenly Father bestowing 
