None of his successors nor any other sovereign took up again this glorious plan for procuring happiness for the nations. Rulers and politicians remained true to the old war-spirit; but the thinkers of all countries did not allow the idea of peace to fall to the ground again.
In the year 1647 the sect of the Quakers was founded, and the condemnation of war was its fundamental principle. In the same year William Penn published his work on the future peace of Europe, which he founded on the plan of Henry IV.
In the early part of the eighteenth century appeared the famous book of the Abbé de S. Pierre, entitled La Paix Perpetuelle. At the same time a Landgrave of Hesse sketched out the same plan, and Leibnitz wrote a favourable comment on it.
Voltaire gave out the maxim “Every European war is a civil war”. Mirabeau, in the memorable session of August 25, 1790, spoke the following words:—
“The moment is perhaps not far off now when Freedom, as the unfettered monarch of both worlds, will fulfil the wish of philosophers, to free mankind from the sin of war, and proclaim universal peace. Then will the happiness of the people be the only aim of the legislator, the only glory of the nations.”
In the year 1795 one of the greatest thinkers of all time, Emmanuel Kant, wrote his treatise “On Eternal Peace”. The English publicist, Bentham, joins with enthusiasm the ever-increasing number of the defenders of peace—Fourrier, Saint Simon, etc. Beranger sang “The Holy Alliance of Peace,” Lamartine “La Marseillaise de la Paix”. In Geneva Count Cellon founded a “Peace Club,” in whose name he entered into a propagandist correspondence with all the rulers of Europe. From Massachusetts in America comes “the learned blacksmith,” Elihu Burritt, and scatters his Olive Leaves and Sparks from an Anvil about the world in millions of copies, and takes the chair in 1849 at an assembly of the English Friends of Peace. In the Congress of Paris, which wound up the Crimean War, the idea of peace gained a footing in diplomacy, inasmuch as a clause was added to the treaty which provided that the Powers pledged themselves in future conflicts to submit themselves previously to mediation. This clause contains in itself a recognition of the principle of a court of arbitration, but it has not been acted upon.
In the year 1863 the French Government proposed to the Powers to call a congress, before which was to be brought the consideration of proposals for a general disarmament, and for the avoidance of future wars.
But this proposal found no support whatever from the other Governments.
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And now, my hour of trial was again drawing nigh.