For these and other reasons, it is deemed better and safer to rely on the present system of International Law.

Under this system, and in this country, a resort to the arbitrament of war is not the result of impulse and passion,--a yielding to the mere "bestial propensities" of our nature; it is a deliberate and solemn act of the legislative power,--of the representatives of the national mind, convened as the high council of the people.

It is this power which must determine when all just and honorable means have been resorted to to obtain national justice, and when a resort to military force is requisite and proper.

If this decision be necessarily unchristian and barbarous, such, also, should we expect to be the character of other laws passed by the same body, and under the same circumstances.

A declaration of war, in this country, is a law of the land, made by a deliberative body, under the high sanction of the constitution.