ANOTHER SPEAR GONE INTO A PRUNING-HOOK.
As we have reached the time when popular religious teachers tell us the temporal millennium is being, or about to be, ushered in, when men should beat their spears into pruning-hooks, and learn war no more, we have a right to look around for some such movements among men, if this position is correct. We look abroad and see a terrible activity in the inventive powers of men in the direction indicated in the following paragraph. The nations seem to be panting for war, and the world to be ripe for revolution; and there is a call for such death-dealing weapons as is here described. Is this the way the spears are to be turned into pruning-hooks? If so, what must the millennium be? The San Francisco Chronicle speaks of the new gun as follows:— “Friday afternoon, at the request of the Japanese Consul, Samro Takaki, the new gun patented by Leonard and De Vry, and christened ‘Peace Conservator,’ was exhibited at the Pacific Iron works. The prompt action of the instrument, delivering seventy shots in four seconds, and 1,050 in one minute, through an oak barricade, proves that it is one of the most terrible death-dealing inventions ever known. The machinery is simple, easily worked, requiring but few attendants, who are perfectly protected from their adversary’s bullets, and can be transported with much greater ease than an ordinary six-pounder. The bullets from this terrible machine will, it is claimed, diverge three hundred feet in one thousand yards—the distance claimed that it will effectually deliver shots. It can be easily worked by one person in any direction, or made to shoot almost solid. For narrow defiles it is proposed to be equal to three thousand infantry, and for combination on the battle field equal to three batteries of regular artillery.”