France.—Congress of the Peace Society.—

The congress of the friends of universal peace was held at Paris, on the 22nd of August last. The Archbishop of Paris, who had been waited on by deputation, deelined presiding or attending personally from the state of his health, but wrote an excellent letter to the Congress, commending their efforts to supersede war by friendly arbitration. M. Victor Hugo, the celebrated literateur, was then called to the chair, who constituted the meeting in a glowing address, and resumed his seat amidst enthusiastic cheering. The speeches delivered at this Congress, printed in a cheap form, and circulated extensively through France and other countries, are expected to have a beneficial effect, at the present time, in exhibiting the evils of war.

On the Monday following, the English delegates of the Peace Society gave a handsome dejeuner, at Versailles, to the American delegates, and passed a resolution in honour of them. Mr. Cobden, as the chairman of the English delegates, made a speech, in which he spoke with great kindness of the American delegates, and afterwards presented to each of them a copy of the New Testament in French, with an inscription bearing his signature. The speech of Mr. Cobden was replied to by Mr. Allen of Massachussetts. After declaring the delight with which the Americans met their English brethren in the Congress of Peace, he said—“We are the descendants of the Puritans who, from Leyden in Holland, and from the chalky cliffs of England, crossed the wide ocean to find an asylum for freedom—freedom as to civil rights, freedom to read the Bible, freedom to worship God. We have crossed the ocean and assisted in this Congress, in order to give the world freedom from war.”

In alluding to the reception which the Peace Congress met with, Mr. Allen spoke in high terms of France, but added:—“What France wants, as ap-page 286pears to me, is not intellect, is not science, is not literature, taste, refinement; but the familiar knowledge of the great truths of the Bible. One of the Kings of France expressed the wish that every peasant in his dominions might have a chicken in his pot. We will express a different wish—that every French peasant may have a Bible in his cottage.”

This was the wish of George III. for his subjects, and to the principle respectively involved in these two wishes, we may mainly attribute the different state of France and Britain.