[370] not less than he. I regard such ultra theories on that subject with complacency, and with no disposition to contest or to treat them with levity. They seem to be, as I said to you in conversation, anchors cast to the windward against the innate propensities of mankind.
Two well-known merchants of that day, Nathan Appleton and Thomas G. Cary, communicated in letters their dissent from the doctrines of the oration. The eminent lawyer, Jeremiah Mason, at that time retired from the profession, with whom Sumner frequently passed the evening in late discussions of current topics, and who sometimes called at the latter's office, told him, some time after, that ‘an anti-war society is as little practicable as an anti-thunder-and-lightning society.’1 Dr. Lieber also stated frankly his dissent.
But no expression of opposite views troubled Sumner so much as Horace Mann's. He had counted on the sympathy of one so deeply interested in the welfare of mankind. Mr. Mann questioned Sumner's definition of war, maintaining that it had been sometimes waged, as by Holland against Spain, to repel injustice, not to establish justice; and that the Poles and Southern negroes would, with an even chance of success, be justified in an appeal to arms.
In October, a reply to the oration,—a pamphlet of thirty-one pages,—well written and trenchant in style, was published in Boston without a name. The author treated logically Sumner's positions, and contended also, with ample reference to the examples of history, that war is not an unmixed evil. The Boston Post also contained a long article from a correspondent in reply to the oration.2 It may be mentioned, too, that the next city orator, Fletcher Webster, expressed sentiments the reverse of those which his predecessor had inculcated.
A few copies of the oration reached England about the first of December. One of them fell into the hands of Mr. Richard Rathbone, of Liverpool, at whose instance the Peace Society of that city published, late in the following January, an abridgment prepared by him. Seven thousand copies of this edition were printed; of which this Society distributed two thousand, the London Peace Society two thousand, and other Peace Societies the remaining three thousand. The friends of Peace took special pains to send copies to daily and weekly journals, reviews, and other periodicals, and to eminent clergymen and public
