Henry Drummond, Esq., M.P., says to the Peace Conference: —

"You endeavour to cast obloquy on the profession of arms, and are indignant at ‘successful warriors occupying posts of distinction in courts and cabinets.’ Take the army and the navy as a class, and take any other class of men in this country—merchants, tradesmen, manufacturers, savants, lawyers—compare them together for talents, patriotism, honour, virtue, disinterestedness, kindness, self-devotion—for, in short, every quality that ennobles man—and I assert that the military class is beyond measure superior to any other. You would prefer to see statues erected to those who have been most eminent in the money-making arts of peace; and instead of statues to Marlborough, Wellington, Duncan, and Nelson, you would prefer to see statues to the inventors of spinning-jennies and railroads, or to Kant and Jeremy Bentham. You think a broad-brim in bronze more picturesque than a cocked hat. You are severe upon Mars and Moloch, and prefer Mammon to both. Idolatry, like statuary, is an affair of taste, but Milton, who seems to know as much about devils as you do, tells us that Mammon was the basest and meanest of all."

"You state that ‘the flower and strength of European manhood is living in coerced idleness at the expense of the rest of the community, in order that they may be ready to fight;’ it would be more true if you had said, in order that the rest of the community may be able to spin cotton and grow corn in quiet."

"Agreeably to the cant of the age, you try to mix up some fragments of Holy Writ to sanctify your folly; and imagining that you are to be the means of introducing the Millennium, you ask ‘if there is nothing which Christian men can do towards that end?’ You want a universal peace without the Prince of Peace; you want the world more quiet, that men may be left more undisturbed in the enjoyment of selfish gratification; and you think that no one can penetrate the darkness in which you have enveloped history, both sacred and profane. Yes, you can do something to bring in universal peace; join together to beseech the Prince of Peace to come again, as He has promised to do, in the same way as that in which he was seen to go, and He will come and bring peace with him; but without him ye shall do nothing.

"At this moment every sovereign on Continental Europe has usurped over the rights of their nobles and of their people; the Emperors of Russia and Austria, the Pope and his priests, the King of Naples, and all the minor absolute German princes. For this usurpation the people are vowing vengeance; and from England their leaders have issued proclamations calling on all subjects not to war with each other, but unite in warring on all the reigning families, and put them to death. If you have any honesty and sincerity amongst you, transfer your conference to Moscow, Vienna, or Constantinople, in all of which I can venture, though unauthorised, to promise you a reception much more consonant with your deserts than the urbanity of the Scotch are likely to give you in Edinburgh; and when the inhabitants of that city, and of Manchester, have been brought to dismiss their magistrates and police, and to rely upon the pacific disposition of the rabble in those towns, it will be time enough to begin to think about what may be done with the rest of Europe."

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