and death. It is a most economical way of doing good upon a scale well nigh boundless. While the custom of war is now wasting in peace for Europe alone, directly and indirectly, a thousand million dollars every year, one thousandth part of this sum, a single million a year, if used aright in this cause, would probably suffice, under God, to prevent at once nearly all actual wars in Christendom, and put an end at length to her entire war-system. Can money be used to any better purpose?

The prospects of this permanent fund are better than our early fears. It was started in 1857; and the times nearly ever since have been extremely unfavorable for such an effort. The Secretary was expected, as a mere incident to his ordinary labors, to undertake the raising of this fund, and hence it became necessary to allow five years in which to complete it. No subscription is to be binding unless twenty thousand dollars shall be secured by the first of January, 1862; and about half of the thirty thousand dollars has already been obtained in sums varying from $100 to $5,000. Personal applications have as yet been made to very few; but the responses to these encourage the hope of a large liberality from friends possessed of much ampler resources.

OPERATIONS OF THE YEAR.

During the year we have pursued our wonted course, in some departments upon a larger, and in others upon a somewhat smaller scale than usual. Our aim has been, as far as possible with our very limited means, to set at work, in behalf of our object, the agencies and influences which create or control public opinion on every question like that of Peace or War, such as the pulpit, the press, and especially those higher seminaries of learning where are trained the men that mould or sway both society and government our legislators, and teachers, our authors, editors and professional men. With this view we have used our small resources partly in sending our periodical and some of our other publications to not a few leading ministers of the gospel, to nearly all our higher seminaries of learning, and to periodicals whose aggregate circulation probably reaches full half the readers in our land. How much we may in these ways have accomplished for our object, it is of course impossible to say; but we have deemed this the wisest and most effective way of employing the means at our command. We can expect no marked results at once; but we may reasonably hope to see such agencies and influences silently forming a public opinion that shall in time supersede the sword as an arbiter of national disputes, by the introduction of more rational, more Christian expedients in their place.

Our publications have been about the same as in preceding years. Of our Periodical we have issued, a part of the time, a larger number than usual; of the last Address before the Society between six and seven thousand copies were put in circulation; and of some of our stereotyped tracts we have published now editions. In the department of Lecturing Agencies we have done less than usual. Our Secretary has at length resumed the labors of former years, and we have also commissioned two others as lecturers; but we have not had the means of sending forth a tithe of the laborers that ought to be employed in the large field open before us.

FINANCES. Our income, though greater than in some former years, has been less than in the year preceding. Our receipts have been $2,754,79, and our expenditures $2,557,38, leaving in the treasury a balance of $197,38. Our Committee, under a standing, imperative rule of the Society, have for the last year, as for the fifteen years preceding, gone

upon the principle of paying as we go, and have attempted only what they could do without running in debt. Whenever our friends shall furnish more means, we shall rejoice to use them as wisely as we can in extending our operations, as they certainly ought to be, all over our land.

DECEASE OF FRIENDS.-We mourn to-day the loss of some of our most distinguished friends, especially Hon. DANIEL A. WHITE, of Salem, CHAS. LOWELL, D. D., of this city, and Rev. JOHN WOODS, of Fitzwilliam, N. H., all in a ripe and much honored old age. Judge White, a classmate in college with William Ladd, the Founder of our Society, was a steady and liberal contributor to the cause for many years. Dr. Lowell, a graduate of Harvard sixty-one years ago in the class of Allston, Buckminster and the late Judge Shaw, and for more than half a century the much esteemed pastor of one of the churches of Boston, became early an active and efficient supporter of our cause under Worcester and Channing, was for some years President of the Massachusetts Peace Society, and a Vice-President of our Society for more than twenty years. Rev. Mr. Woods, just deceased at the age of seventy-six, was through all his long and honored ministry a devoted friend of our cause, and in his own character a fine illustration of its principles. We cannot help feeling poorer at the loss of such men; but it is much that the memory of their works and their services in this cause of God and Humanity may still linger among us to hallow and cheer the work they leave us to complete.

We meet to-day under circumstances entirely new and unexpected. We are in the midst of a rebellion the most gigantic perhaps that the world ever saw; and at every turn we are asked, just as if we in particular were bound to answer the question, what shall be done in this terrible emergency? How would the Peace Society deal with such a case? What course would its principles require or allow ?

Our answer is at hand. Under our system, such evils could never have occurred; and under no view of the case, is it ours, as a Peace Society, to meet them, and say what ought to be done. They lie not in our sphere. They come not from our principles, but from those which we are trying to change, and to substitute in their place such as would have anticipated and averted them. We have no control, no direct responsibility in the case. It belongs not to peace reformers, but to society at large, or to the government as their organ and agent. Ours is a work of prevention, slow but sure; and, had our people been from the start trained to the views and habits we inculcate, nothing like this rebellion could ever have arisen. It all comes from their wrong education, an education nearly the reverse of what our principles would have given them. They have been taught, North as well as South, to rely, in the last resort, on brute force, instead of an appeal to reason and right, to laws and courts, for the settlement of such disputes as these; and, now that their interests have come into point-blank collision, and their passions are sufficiently roused for the purpose, they are ready to sweep the land with blood and devastation. The result is perfectly legitimate; and in it all we are just reaping the fruits, not of peace principles or measures, but of those which the custom of war has sown broad-cast over all the earth from time immemorial.

Now, is Peace to be held responsible for what War alone has done? Let the dead bury their own dead. Let the war system meet the recoil of its own principles and expedients. The Peace Society has had no voice or agency in the case, and of course cannot be held to any responsibility in saying what shall be done. This question the government must meet; and, being the organ of a people trained to reliance in the last resort on war measures, they must be expected to do so in the usual way of violence and

blood. They know no other; there is at present no other for them; and, until it can be superseded by a better, peace men, like other good citizens, must of course acquiesce in the result, and lend their moral, if they cannot their active support to the government over them.

Nor is this a new position; the Peace Society has held it from the first, and stereotyped it long ago in its publications. We never were so quixot ic as to regard Peace as a cure for every sort of evil, but have all along restricted ourselves to the single object of doing away the well-defined cus tom of war, the practice of nations settling their controversies by the sword. We are not organized to oppose any other evil; nor do we hold ourselves responsible for the way in which our friends may choose to argue or act against any other. We merely ask them to help us do away this custom. It may be connected with many other questions; but it is no part of our mission as a Peace Society, to say what shall be done with thieves and robbers, with pirates, mobs or rebels. Such questions belong to government, and there we must leave them.

But has our cause in truth, nothing to do with such evils as are now upon us? Certainly, a great deal; but chiefly in the way of introducing a new and more thoroughly Christian civilization, that shall supersede them, and render them morally impossible. Here is our specific sphere. No people, educated in our views, would ever abet or tolerate rebellion; and it is just the lack of such principles that has let loose these evils upon us. Had the South been trained even to the lowest views of peace, even half as well as New England has been, they would have calmly waited for peaceful, legal means to redress their alleged wrongs; and whenever our principles are wrought into the habits of our whole people, we shall hear no more of rebellion, nor ever see our land drenched in fraternal blood.

But what, after all, shall peace-men do in this crisis? Stand by the government in every way not forbidden by your principles. No peace-man can ever be a rebel, or lend the slightest countenance to rebellion. True, it is not ours, as a Peace Society, to say what shall be done with rebels; but it is ours, as loyal citizens, to stand firmly by the government, and render such aid as we consistently can in executing its laws, and bringing offenders to condign punishment. The government may not be right in all respects; we never knew one that was;-but no peace-man can consistently refuse to uphold its authority, or fail to throw his influence against the gigantic crime of attempting to overthrow the best government on earth, in order to establish upon its ruins an oligarchy of slaveholders for the spread of slavery in perpetuity over a continent.

ANNUAL MEETING.

The American Peace Society held its thirty-third anniversary in the Park Street Church, Boston, May 27. In the absence of the President, Hon. AMASA WALKER, one of the Vice-Presidents, was called to the Chair. Prayer was offered by our learned and venerable friend, WILLIAM JENKS, D. D. The Report of the Treasurer was presented, and that of the Directors read in full by the Secretary, both of which were adopted. Rev. George Trask and I. T. Hutchins Esq., were appointed to nominate officers.

The Secretary then read, for the consideration of the meeting, a series of resolutions, designed to elicit a free interchange of views relative especially to the present crisis in our country. Several hours were spent in an able and very animated discussion, in which Hon. AMASA WALKER,

9. That the Peace Society, while regarding questions like these as berond its legitimate province, has ever been, as it ever must be, loyal to government, a steadfast supporter of its just authority, and in favor of having its laws duly enforced as indispensable to the public safety and weal.

10. That our principles and measures, so far from being inapplicable to the present troubles of our country, will be found, when the heat and smoke of the contest are over, indispensable to their satisfactory adjust ment; for, after the sword shall have finished its terrible work, and filled the land with anger and wrath, with havoc and devastation, with sorrow and lamentation unutterable, the parties must cease from this wholesale mutual mischief, and betake themselves at last to reason and conciliation, as the only way to end the strife.

11. That, though we deem it no part of our mission to say how a government shall maintain its authority over its subjects, and enforce its laws against rebels, or any other wrong-doers, we approve, as proper and wise under the circumstances, the effort of our Executive Committee, in their appeal last January, to dissuade our people, both South and North, from all thought of settling the issues before them by a resort to arms, and to rely only on the peaceful expedients provided in our constitution and laws expressly for the purpose.

12. That the present crisis, so far from dispensing now or hereafter with the Cause of Peace, just serves to prove more fully than ever its urgent necessity, and calls aloud for a large increase of effort in its behalf.

HON. AMASA WALKER'S ADDRESS.

Gentlemen :-This is the thirty-third anniversary of the American Peace Society, and we meet under the most remarkable circumstances. War, and civil war, the most dreadful of all wars, is raging in our own midst. The largest armies ever known on this continent are in the field, amounting perhaps on this very day, in the aggregate, to some 200,000 men, besides vast numbers more preparing for military service. The whole country is in a state of the highest excitement, and the war spirit is universal.

The question which comes with the greatest force at the present moment is, what is the duty of Peace-men in the circumstances in which they are now placed? It seems to me very clearly that our first duty as the friends of Peace, is to examine the correctness of our principles, so that, if our position is right, we may stand by it. But we should do this in a spirit of candor, and, if we find we are in the wrong, we should retract. We should neither be afraid nor ashamed to do this.

What, then, has been our leading object, that which for a third of a century we have endeavored to promote? I answer, the Prevention of War; nothing more, nothing less. But what is war, as defined by this Society? Armed conflict between different nations. It is this, and this only. With the maintainance of law, the suppression of mobs, insurrections or rebellions, this Society, so far as I know, has never interfered. It has ever protested against the confounding of war with the preservation of civil government. This fact should be remembered by all who are disposed to examine its principles and action.