are these:  the works, when done, will have cost about twenty-eight millions.  We had the pleasure of examining them not long since, in company with several of the engineer officers employed on the works.  They were then three-fourths done, and had cost about twenty millions.  We were assured by these officers that the fortifications proper would be completed for somewhat less than the original estimate of twenty-eight millions.  Had we time to enter into details, other examples of exaggeration and misrepresentation could be given.

But it is not to be denied that wars and the means of military defence have cost vast amounts of money.  So also have litigation and the means deemed requisite for maintaining justice between individuals.  It has been estimated that we have in this country, at the present time, thirty thousand lawyers, without including pettifoggers.  Allowing each of these to cost the country the average sum of one thousand dollars, and we have the annual cost to the country, for lawyers, thirty millions of dollars.  Add to this the cost of legislative halls and legislators for making laws; of court-houses, jails, police offices, judges of the different courts, marshals, sheriffs justices of the peace, constables, clerks, witnesses, &c., employed to apply and enforce the laws when made; the personal loss of time of the different plaintiffs and defendants, the individual anxiety and suffering produced by litigation; add all these together, and I doubt not the result for a single year will somewhat astonish these modern economists.  But if all the expenditures of this nature that have been made for the last fifty years, in this individual “war of hate,” be added together, we have no doubt a very fruitful text might be obtained for preaching a crusade against law and lawyers!  But could any sane man be found to say that, on account of the cost of maintaining them, all laws and lawyers are useless and should be abolished?

If, therefore, these vast sums of money are deemed necessary to secure justice between individuals of the same nation, can we expect that the means of international justice can be maintained without expenditures commensurate with the object in view?  If we cannot rely exclusively upon the “law of active benevolence” for maintaining justice between brothers of the same country, can we hope that, in the present state of the world, strangers and foreigners will be more ready to comply with its requisitions?

The length of the preceding remarks admonishes us to greater brevity in the further discussion of this subject.

It is objected to war, that men being rational beings, should contend with one another by argument, and not by force, as do the brutes.

To this it is answered, that force properly begins only where argument ends.  If he who has wronged me cannot be persuaded to make restitution, I apply to the court,—­that is, to legal force,—­to compel him to do me justice.  So nations ought to resort to military force only when all other means fail to prevent aggression and injury.