ble distresses without comfort, or succour: some in the battle are dismembered, whereby they are disabled to help themselves and though they call, and cry for help, none can or will assist them, but often they lie trampled upon by men and horses, whereby they die many deaths; or if they shift out of the field they feel the smart of their wounds, and the loss of their limbs, or senses to their dying day.

In war many are taken captives, and by their enemies put to cruel, and exquisite torments.

By war, some invade other's kingdoms, and countries, thrust out the true owners, and lawful heirs, take away their lands, and inheritances, goods, and cattle: abrogate good laws; make cruel, and oppressive edicts: deprive people of their privileges, and immunities: "make noble men, mean; rich men, poor; freemen slaves; deflower men's wives; ravish their virgins; rip up their women with child; trample the aged under foot: toss infants on pikes, or dash out their brains.

By war much more blood useth to be shed than any other way. Heaps upon heaps are thereby made of dead corpses: by the sword there have been slain in one battle five hundred thousand in one day, ii. Chron. xiii. 17. It destroys whole hosts of men. ii. Chron. xx. 24. Yea it destroys whole cities, men and women, young and old, ox and sheep, &c. Josh. vi. 21.

In war, most unnatural slaughters are often committed relations fighting on both sides:

so that sometimes brother kills brother: father son; one kinsman another, one friend another.

By war not only the living are cut off, so as towns, cities and nations have thereby been dispeopled: but corn-fields burnt, fruit trees cut down, barns, granaries, and other like places. filled with all manner of store, and other provisions both for man and beast, are destroyed, and consumed. Castles, towns, and walls beaten down. The most sacred house of God that ever was, that glorious temple built by Solomon was not spared, ii. Kings xxv. 9. Yea, famous cities, towns, and kingdoms, have by war been made into heaps of rubbish, and desolate wildernesses, full of briers, and thorns, and habitations for wild beasts, dragons and owls, and other doleful creatures. Isaiah vii, 20, 24.

By war the juster cause, and better part is often overthrown, and put to the worst: might overcoming right. For it falls out in war, as in duels, the stronger, and skilfuller, the more expert and active man may have the worst cause, and yet overcome the other, though the juster person.

Mirror of Providence. p. 686.

RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE.

THE first accounts we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their butcheries. All

empires

empires have been cemented in blood; and in. those early periods when the race of mankind began first to form themselves into parties and combinations, the first effect of the combination, and indeed the end for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated, is their mutual destruction. All antient history is dark and uncertain. One thing however is clear. There were Conquerors, and Conquests, in those days; and consequently, all that devastation, by which they are formed, and all that oppression by which they are maintained,

We know little of Sefoflris, but that he led out of Egypt an army of above 700,000 men; that he over-ran the Mediterranean coast as far as Colchis, that in some places, he met but little resistance, and of course shed not a great deal of blood; but that he found in others, a people who knew the value of their liberties, and sold them dear. Whosoever considers the army this conqueror headed, the space he traversed, and the opposition he frequently met; with the natural accidents of sickness, and the dearth and badness of provision to which he must have been subject in the variety of climates and countries his march lay through, if he knows any thing, he must know, that even the conqueror's army must have suffered greatly; and that of this immense number, but a very small part could have returned to enjoy the plunder accumulated by the loss of so many of their companions, and the devastation of so considerable a part of the world. Considering, I say,

the

the vast army headed by this conqueror, whose. unwieldy weight was almost alone sufficient to wear down its strength, it will be far from excess to suppose that one half was lost in the expedition. If this was the state of the victorious, and, from the circumstances, it must have been this at the least; the vanquished must have had a much heavier loss, as the greatest slaughter is always in the flight, and great carnage did in those times and countries ever attend the first rage of conquest. It will therefore be very reasonable to allow on their account as much as, added to the losses of the conqueror, may amount to a million of deaths, and then we shall see this conqueror, opening the scene by the destruction of at least one million of his species, provoked by his ambition, without any motive but pride, cruelty and madness, and without any benefit to himself; (for Justin expressly tells us, he did not maintain his conquests) but solely to make so many people, in so distant countries, feel experimentally, how fevere a fcourge providence intends for the human race, when he gives one man the power over many, and arms his, naturally, impotent and feeble rage, with the hands of millions, who know no common principle of action, but a blind obedience to the passions of their ruler.

The next personage, who figures in the tragedies of this ancient theatre, is Semiramis : for we have no particulars of Ninus, but that he made immense and rapid conquests, which doubtless were not compassed without the usual

car

carnage. We see an army of above three millions employed by this martial queen in a war against the Indians. We see the Indian army still greater; and we behold a war continued with great fury and with various success. This ends in the retreat of the queen, with scarce a third of the troops employed in the expedition, which at that rate must have cost two millions of souls on her part; and it is not unreasonable to judge that the country which was the seat of war, must have been an equal sufferer. But I am content to detract from this. and to suppose that the Indians lost only half so much, and then the accompt stands thus: in this war alone, (for Semiramis had other wars) in this fingle reign, and in this one Spot of the globe, did three millions of fouls expire, with all the horrid and shocking circumstances which attend all wars, and in a quarrel, in which none of the fufferers could have the least rational concern.

The Babylonian, Affyrian, Median,and Perfian Monarchies must have poured out feas of blood in their formation, and in their destruction. The armies and fleets of Xerxes, their numbers, the glorious stand made against them, and the unfortunate event of all his mighty preparations, are known to every body. In this expedition draining half Afia of its inhabitants, he led an army of about two millions to be slaughtered and wasted, by a thousand fatal accidents, in the same place where his predecessors had before, by a similar madness, consumed the flower of so many kingdoms, and wasted the force of

SO