ber for each district, taking into consideration the number already furnished since the beginning of the war, so as fairly to equalize the burden. The enrolling officers shall then make the draft with 50 per cent. addition, and within ten days serve notices upon the drafted men. Substitutes may be furnished, or commutation made, not to exceed three hundred dollars, at the discretion of the Secretary of War. Any person drafted, and failing to report, furnish a substitute, or pay his commutation, shall be deemed a deserter, and subject to immediate arrest. When the draft is finished, all those not taken are allowed travelling pay to their homes. Those who furnish substitutes are exempt for the entire time of the draft, and the substitute has the same pay, &c., as though originally drafted. The bill, also, provides that volunteers now in service who re-enlist for one year shall have a bounty of $50, one half paid down; and those who enlist for two years, receive $25 of the regular $100 bounty.-Persons who entice soldiers to desert, or harbor them, or buy their arms or uniforms, and ship captains or railroad conductors who knowingly convey deserters, may be fined $500, and imprisoned from six months to two years. Any person who resists a draft, or counsels others to do so, or dissuades them from performing military duty, shall be summarily arrested, locked up until the draft is finished, then be tried by a civil court, and fined $500, or imprisoned two years, or both."

HARDSHIPS OF THE QUAKERS.-It costs the Friends not a little money, as well as a world of vexation, to keep up their testimony on the subject o Peace. The rebels compel them either to fight, or purchase exemption each by the payment of $500. We find it stated, that the "money to be paid by the Quakers of Indiana for exemption from military duty, will amount to about $233,000." The recent conscription act of Congress shows them no favor on account of their scruples about bearing arms; and from these few facts we can imagine the vast amount of expense, hardship and suffering to which they must be subjected throughout the land.

How can this evil be averted? It bears hard not only on Quakers, but equally on all who share their scruples on the subject of war; and it becomes such persons to devise, if possible, some effectual preventive or remedy. Can this be done? We confess we do not see how, except by forming such a public opinion, and training society to such habits, as shall supersede the sword as an arbiter of disputes among men ; just the process undertaken by the Peace Society. With their present opinions and habits our rulers will, whenever they deem it necessary, compel all to support government by bearing arms, or getting somebody to take their place as soldiers. The shortest, cheapest and only sure way is to create everywhere a public opinion that shall supersede the bloody arbitrament of the sword. This would be the wisest economy, as well as the only infallible cure of the evil. Had the Christians in our country who believe war to be wrong, and can not conscientiously take the sword, combined their efforts forty years ago, and spent half the money that this single rebellion will cost themselves alone, the country would never have been brought into its present terrible condition.

But how little have even such peace-men yet done, or are now doing, to secure a consummation so devoutly to be wished!" Not a hundredth part of what they might and should have done. The Quakers have indeed borne their "testimony" among themselves; but what have they done towards converting the mass of our people to the principles of peace? Something, we are glad to admit, far more, in proportion to their numbers, than any other Christians; and yet how small a pittance in comparison with what the urgency of the case demanded! Nearly all other denominations have, alas! little or no conscience on the subject; and if the nation is ever brought right on this subject, it must be by peace-men increasing their efforts an hundred fold.

THE WAR AND OUR COLLEGES.-It would seem from a late number of the Independent, that our Western Colleges generally have furnished soldiers at the rate at least of seventy from each; and yet these institutions are all comparatively young, and some of them have hardly any alumni. Hillsdale College, Indiana, 83 out of 143 students; Adrian College, Michigan, 48; Marietta College, 61, besides quite a number who had been students, but not completed their course. Wabash College has sen. off 76; Oberlin, two companies, and the present graduating class has been reduced from 80 to 8, mainly by enlistments. Illinois College has enlisted 32 graduates and 51 under-graduates, while of those who have been students 166 in all have gone. Beloit College numbers 62 in the army, and Shurtliff 45. Indeed there is hardly a college in the land but has furnished some of its students for soldiers. In rebeldom most colleges are supposed to be nearly, if not quite closed.

DESTRUCTIVE PROJECTILE-STAFFORD'S.-We are startled by the amazing extent to which ingenuity is pushing the engines of destruction. An experiment was lately made at Washington with Stafford's projectile, with the following results: A target, constructed of eight one-inch plates and twenty-one inches of oak, seven plates in front and one in the rear, was pierced, demolishing the timber to splinters, and breaking all the bolts. A penetration of six inches of iron was made with a shot of thirty-two pounds weight, with ten pounds of powder, from a fifty-pounder Dahlgren rifled gun. It has never yet been equaled."

SLAVERY ORIGINATING FROM WAR.-When unmitigated barbarity characterized war, prisoners were all put to death. If one was spared, it was not from any deforence to justice or humanity, but from mere impulse, fancy or freak of selfishness. The laws of war treated every prisoner as properly consigned to death as his inevitable fate, and no one pretended that he had the least ground to complain. If his life was spared, it was a gratuity that he could not claim as a right. In such a case, slavery was preferred to death; and it was a mitigation of barbarous cruelty, that the prisoners of war should be allowed to live, and become the servants of their conquerors.

Slavery is a horrid crime against humanity, but not as cruel as slaughter; so that the era of slavery was really an advance upon the murderous spirit which preceded it. This fact is a sad commentary upon the slow progress of civilization. What wretched plight for man, when slavery is esteemed not merely a virtue, but a mercy, a generous deed of kindness!

SENATOR SUMNER ON PRIVATEERING.—We regret that this relic of barbarism is still continued; but we are glad to find Mr. Sumner, on the pas sage of the bill authorizing the President to issue letters of marque, urging against the measure such objections as the following, which we quote as the substance of his able and earnest speech on the subject:

1. It proposes to cruise against a non-existent commerce for the sake of a non-existent booty.

2. It accords to private individuals the belligerent right of search, which must be fruitful of trouble in our relations with the great neutral powers.

3. It gives to the President, in his discretion, the power to issue letters of marque in any future wars without any further authority of Congress, when this power should always wait for the special authority of Congress on the declaration of war.

4. It is in the nature of a menace to foreign nations, and therefore is worse than useless

5. It vitalizes and legalizes a system which civilization has always ac cepted with reluctance, and which our own country was one of the earliest and most persistent to denounce.

6. It will give us a bad name in history.

It does all this without accomplishing any substantial good. If it be said that ships are needed for transportation, or for the blockade, or in order to pursue pirates on the sea, then I repeat, let the Government hire them. The way is easy, and it is also the way of peace. To this end I offer a substitute for the present bill, which will secure to the Government all the aid it can desire, without the disadvantage or the shame of a measure which can be justified only by overruling necessity. I will read the substitute which I propose:

That the Secretary of the Navy be authorized to hire any vessels needed for the national service, and, if he sees fit, to put them in charge of officers commissioned by the United States, and to give them in every respect the character of national ships.'

If Senators desire a militia of the seas, here it is; a sea militia, precisely like the land militia, mustered into the service of the United States, under the command of the United States, and receiving rations and pay from the United States, instead of sea rovers not mustered into the national service, not under national command, and not receiving rations or pay from the nation, but cruising each for himself according to his own will, without direction, without concert, simply according to the wild temptation of booty. Such a system on land would be rejected at once. Nobody would call it a militia. Do not sanction it now on the ocean; or if you are disposed to sanction it, do not call it a militia of the seas."

While endorsing all this, however, we must repeat what we said on the subject in our last, that we regard England and France as chiefly responsible for the continuance of this species of piracy in Christendom. We have from the very origin of our government, sought its abolition; and thus far we have risked the strong temptation of rebel example to let loose this Scourge.

WHAT CHRISTIANS PAY FOR WAR.-It would be a curious and very instructive calculation that should show how much Christians are taxed for the support of the war-system. The general expenses of our government have heretofore been chiefly for this purpose; the present enormous increase of these is owing solely to this cause. When our debt was lately $350,000,000, it was estimated that the Old School Presbyterians alone would have :) > least seventeen millions, now probably more than fifty millions, as their share. Yet al. their contributions for the year were merely $1,710,000, of which only about half a million could be considered as strictly benevolent. A like calculation would be applicable to all denominations, and the result would throw far into the shade the pittance they now consecrate either to the spread of the gospel abroad, or to its support at home. We may be thankful if we get out of this rebellion with a debt not exceeding $2,000,000,000, the bare interest on which would be $120,000,000 a year; and of this, Christians will have to pay not less that $10,000,000, perhaps twenty times as much as all the followers of Christ on earth have on an average contributed annually, for the last half century, to evangelize the world, and ten times as much as they are even now giving.

Yet how many Christians practically treat the cause of Peace as of little importance to the great work of a world's salvation! Alas! had they in season spent in this cause a single month's cost and waste of our rebellion to themselves alone, it might not only have averted the terrible evils now so heavy upon us, but have paved the way to supersede ere long nearly all war throughout Christendom. Why, the foreign missionary societies in this country will be obliged, in consequence of this rebellion, to pay, simply in the increased cost of exchanges, more than would probably have sufficed, with God's blessing on a right, seasonable use of means, to prevent the whole avalanche of evils poured by this rebellion upon ourselves and the world. A view which few Christians will heed just now; but they must sooner or later, if God's promises respecting the salvation of our race are ever to be fulfilled.

ARBITRATION ADOPTED.-We are glad to record some progress in the right direction. Two treaties between us and Peru were lately ratified by our Senate. By one the question of the sovereignty of the Guano Islands is referred to the arbitration of the King of Belgium. By the other all other claims between Peru and the United States are referred to a joint commission of two from each party, to sit at Lima.

THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. We are glad to find the popular mind in England at last coming to understand our case. We never doubted the friendship of her people for us in our death-grapple with the slave power; but we did for a time fear that her aristocrats, the men who hold in their hands the main-springs of influence, and would, if they could, gladly use the masses

very much as our slaveholders do their slaves, and the poor whites of the South, might inject into them so much of their own spirit as to bring on in time a chronic, general hostility of feeling that would end in actual war. Thanks to the honest, true-hearted yeomanry of our father-land, we may hope this danger is now passed; and yet the conduct of her Government, and of her wealthy, aristocratic classes, still keeps alive our fears. The friends of peace in both countries should in season look well to these dangers. Our chief hope, under God, is in the people on both sides.

OUR COURSE IN THIS REBELLION.-No man of sense can ever hope to please everybody in dealing with any great practical question like that of Peace; but, well aware of the special difficulties sure to environ our cause during the rebellion now upon us, we early did what we could to ascertain and meet the views of our most trustworthy associates. We called a meeting of our Society for a free interchange of opinion; and we have since taken pains to draw forth the maturest views of our most intelligent and most reliable friends. Such men, we believe, have in the main been satisfied with our course; nor have we found half a dozen peace-men whose displeasure we have provoked by the ground taken by us. And these were all men of crotchets. One was a political partizan, whose zeal for peace vented itself in strong reproaches on "Lincoln's party;" another, who made the peace principle synonymous with the strict inviolability of human life as his criterion, threatened us with loss of" support unless there should be a great change in our views "; while the only two other objectors, though justly deemed loyal men, and hostile to slavery, still argued in such a way as to justify the rebellion, and to throw nearly the whole blame of our presen: troubles upon our Government for not conceding to the rebels all they asked! We do not recall any objections that do not come fairly under these three heads - political partizanship, the wrongfulness of taking life in any case, and the right of citizens or subjects at will to throw off the government over them with entire impunity.

In times like these the wisest are quite liable to fail in determining what is best; but we have endeavored to steer as well as we could between Scylla and Charybdis. God grant that our cause, as well as our country, may at last come safe out of this new, strange and terrible experience. It must teach us all, peace-men as well as others, many very important lessons of wisdom and duty.

ANNIVERSARY.-The American Peace Society will hold its next anniversary in Boston, May 25, 1863. The Annual Address by Hon. AMASA WALKER. WM. C. BROWN, Rec. Sec. Receipts are reserved for the Annual Report, in which they will be given in full for the year.