Criticisms on Art. By William Hazlitt. With Cata- As we esteem Hazlitt the first of the popular writers in fighting well. One would think the time had gone | American story, from the pen of an author whose tales by in which nations needed to rush to arms, to prove that are as entertaining as if they had no higher aim than to they were not cowards. If there is one truth which beguile the passing hour. history has taught, it is that communities in all stages of society, from the most barbarous to the most civilized, have sufficient courage. No people can charge upon its conscience, that it has not shed blood enough in proof of its valour. Almost any man, under the usual stimulants of the camp, can stand fire. The poor wretch, enlisted from a dram-shop and turned into the ranks, soon fights like a "hero." Must France, and England, and America, after so many hard-fought fields, go to war to disprove the charge of wanting spirit? Is it not time, that the point of honour should undergo some change, that some glimpses at least of the true glory of a nation should be caught by rulers and people? "It is the honour of a man to pass over a transgression," and so it is of states. To be wronged is no disgrace. To bear wrong generously, till every means of conciliation is exhausted; to recoil with manly dread from the slaughter of our fellow-creatures; to put confidence in the justice which other nations will do to our motives; to have that consciousness of courage which will make us scorn the reproach of cowardice; to feel that there is something grander than the virtue of savages; to desire peace for the world as well as ourselves, and to shrink from kindling a flame which may involve the world; these are the principles and feelings which do honour to a people. Has not the time come when a nation professing these may cast itself on the candour of mankind? Must fresh blood flow for ever, to keep clean the escutcheon of a nation's glory? For one, I look on war with a horror which no words can express. I have long wanted patience to read of battles. Were the world of my mind, no man would fight for glory; for the name of a commander, who has no other claim to respect, seldom passes my lips, and the want of sympathy drives him from my mind. The thought of man, God's immortal child, butchered by his brother; the thought of sea and land stained with human blood by human hands, of women and children buried under the ruins of besieged cities, of the resources of empires and the mighty powers of nature all turned by man's malignity into engines of torture and destruction; this thought gives to earth the semblance of hell. I shudder as among demons. cannot now, as I once did, talk lightly, thoughtlessly, of fighting with this or that nation. That nation is no longer an abstraction to me. It is no longer a vague mass. It spreads out before me into individuals, in a thousand interesting forms and relations. It consists of husbands and wives, parents and children, who love one another as I love my own home. It consists of affectionate women and sweet children. It consists of Christians, united with me to the common Saviour, and in whose spirit I reverence the likeness of his divine virtue. It consists of a vast multitude of labourers at the plough and in the workshop, whose toils I sympathise with, whose burden I should rejoice to lighten, and for whose elevation I have pleaded. It consists of men of science, taste, genius, whose writings have beguiled my solitary hours, and given life to my intellect and best affections. Here is the nation which I am called to fight with, into whose families I must send mourning, whose fall or humiliation I must seek through blood. I cannot do it without a clear commis I This is one of a series of religious works of a popular and practical character, which are intended to edify the author's particular flock, but which, we think, may benefit a much wider circle. Notices of Windsor in the Olden Time. This, exteriorly, is a very pretty book. Its subjectmatter was in substance delivered before a literary institution in Windsor, the members of which admired the discourses so much, that Mr. Stoughton was induced to lay them before the public. The volume is divided into five chapters, the first of which gives an account of Windsor in its earliest days; the other four, of Windsor in the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Its present history is not touched uponthis, we presume, being delicate, if not forbidden ground to the denizens of Windsor. The work is creditable to the author's painstaking and research. Thoughts on Habit and Discipline. Fcap. octavo. Pp. 310. London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co. book. It is well written; and its anonymous author is We have been much gratified by the perusal of this sion from God. I love this nation. Its men and women are my brothers and sisters. I could not, without unnot only a man of a sober and pious, but of a cultivated utterable pain, thrust a sword into their hearts. If, mind; alive to the graces and amenities, as well as to indeed, my country were invaded by hostile armies, the duties of life. The work is intended for the use of threatening, without disguise, its rights, liberties, and the young, to whom the early formation of good habit dearest interests, I should strive to repel them, just as I should repel a criminal, who should enter my house to is of infinite importance. It is divided into three great slay what I hold most dear, and what is entrusted to heads :-1. On the Nature of Habit and Discipline; 2. my care. But I cannot confound with such a case the On Bad Habit; and, 3, On Good Habit; of which last common instances of war. the author says, " Good Habit is considered in its appliThe Log-Cabin; or, the World before you. By the Au- cation, first, to the movements and uses of the body; thor of "Three Experiments of Living," "Sketches of secondly, to art-that useful result of the joint exercise the Old Painters," &c. London: John Chapman. of body and mind; thirdly, to intellectual capacities and This is a cheap reprint of an instructive and well-told ¦ pursuits; fourthly, to morals; and, fifthly, to religion," Chinese and English Vocabulary. By Robert Thom, | cathedrals and ecclesiastical buildings; and to architecEsq. British Consul at Ningpo. Printed at Canton. The readers of Tait's Magazine may remember Mr. Thom's translation of Æsop's Fables into the Chinese, and of a Chinese novel into English, which performances were intended to facilitate the acquisition of the Chinese language. Mr. Thom, since that period, with the younger Morrison, acted as interpreter to Sir Henry Pottinger during his negotiations with the Chinese plenipotentiaries. He has recently produced the work mentioned above, which we are assured, on competent authority, is one of great value. The difficulties encountered we can in part apprehend, though we are not sufficiently skilled in Chinese adequately to explain them. But the excellence of the object of the work is apparent to every one. It is to enable the people of China to become acquainted with the science and literature of Europe through the medium of the English language, and to facilitate commercial and social intercourse between our countrymen and the inhabitants of the celestial empire, Historical Essay on the Rise and Early Progress of the The Scientific Phenomena of Domestic Life, as they are Lives of the English Saints-St. Wulstan bishop of Wor- SERIALS. MURRAY'S COLONIAL LIBRARY. No. XI. Mary Schweidler, the Amber Witch. Edited by W. Meinhold, Doctor of Theology, &c. Translated from the German by Lady Duff Gordon. No. XII. Southey's Lives of Oliver Cromwell and John Bunyan.-This Number is of great value from the Life of Bunyan, which, from the pen of Southey, forms a very interesting piece of English biography. OLD ENGLAND. A Pictorial Museum of Regal, Ecclesiastical, Baronial, Municipal, and Popular Antiquities. Edited by Charles Knight. Parts VIII. and IX. -The engraving of these Parts is of undiminished beauty. The last of them is almost entirely devoted to tural designs this style of engraving is peculiarly adapted. THE COMPLETE CONCORDANCE TO SHAKSPERE: being a Verbal Index to all the Passages in the Dramatic Works of the Poet. By Mrs. Cowden Clarke. Parts IV. and V. London: Charles Knight & Co. A TREATISE ON THE STEAM-ENGINE. By the Artisan Club. Parts II. and III. Illustrated by Steel Plates and Wood-cuts. London: Longman & Co. MUSIC AND POETRY OF IRELAND-SPIRIT OF THE NA- MAXWELL'S HISTORY OF THE REBELLION IN IRELAND PAMPHLETS. OUTLINES OF PHRENOLOGY. By the late J. G. Sparz- REMARKS ON THE SCOTTISH POOR-LAWS; with an Abstract of the Acts of Parliament relating to the Poor. By Robert Somers, editor of The Scottish Herald. Edinburgh: C. Ziegler. MAN: as a physical, Moral, Religious, and Intellectual Being, considered Phrenologically. Glasgow: J. & G. Goyder. THE METEOROLOGICAL EPHEMERIS FOR 1845; with ruled pages for observations. By Henry Doxat, Esq. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. A LETTER TO THE IRISH TEMPERANCE SOCIETIES, concerning the present state of Ireland, and its connexion with England. By S. C. Hall. London: J. How. A LETTER TO the People of the United KINGDOM ON NATIONAL REFORMATION IN CHURCH AND STATE. By s THE INTERESTS OF AGRICULTURE AND OF MANUFAC TURES IDENTICAL. By Thomas Plint. Leeds: E. Baines and Sons. THE SABBATH. By the late Henry A. Worcester, Boston, U. S. Glasgow Series of Christian Tracts. THE MISERIES OF PROSTITUTION. By James Beard tion of Young Females. London: James Madden & Co. Talbot, Secretary to the London Society for the Protec A Letter to the Secretary of STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT, upon the unjust and pettifogging conduct of Metropolitan Commissioners of Lunacy, in the case of a gentleman lately under their surveillance. By Jeha Perceval, Esq. London: Effingham Wilson. EDUCATION. THE FORMATION OF WORDS OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE, practically developed and arranged, according to the views of Dr. Becker; with an Appendix, Questions for Examination, &c. &c. By H. Apel. London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. AN ELEMENTARY GRAMMAR OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE, founded on Dr. Becker's system. By H. Apel. London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. POLITICS OF THE MONTH. THE LAST OF THE MONSTER TRIAL-TAHITI AND MOROCCO. Now that we are a little recovered from the thrill of the startling intelligence that O'CONNELL IS FREE, it may be well to take a cool and leisurely view of the results and tendencies of a fact, which, whether we look at its immediate or its prospective consequences, may be safely pronounced one of the greatest of our time. In its most simple and obvious aspect, the judgment of the House of Lords, on the 4th September, affords matter for hearty congratulation. It is a just judgment - the reversal of a palpable and shameful injustice, or rather series of injustices. Looking away from the technicalities on which the case of the appellants was in part based, and by which it was in great measure decided, there can be no difficulty in pronouncing the decision to be in accordance with the plain, commonsense right of the case. Mr. O'Connell may have said and done many foolish and some wrong things in the Repeal Agitation of 1843. He is, beyond all doubt, guilty of sedition, over and over again, like every other man who talks and writes politics in these days. But he is clearly not guilty of conspiracy, in any intelligible sense of " conspiracy:" it has been the aim and business of his political life to suppress and prevent conspiracy. He is not guilty of writing the Trinity-College student's song, the "Memory of the Dead ;" nor of speaking Mr. Barrett's speeches; nor of printing and publishing Mr. Duffy's Nation newspaper. That he had not a fair trial, no plain man needed to be told, though it is a pleasant surprise to hear the highest legal tribunal in the empire say so. He had not a jury of his peers: he, an "alien" by race and creed, was denied the alien's privilege of a jury de medietate. He had not a judge "counsel for the prisoner," but a judge on the other side." Unjustly accused of other people's offences; unjustly tried by a packed jury and a partisan judge; unjustly sentenced to find security for seven years' abstinence from a sort of crime which he has spent forty years not without effect in weeding out from the soil of Ireland; and most iniquitously punished while his guilt was still an open question before the Courts,Mr. O'Connell may, with more truth than ever, call himself the best-abused, or worst-used, man living. The whole of this miserable business, from its first stage to its last but one-from the "accident" to the jury list, to the decision of three-fourths of the English judges, to keep a political enemy in prison, on the strength of a legal fiction that was known to be an actual falsehood has been a tissue of injustices, great and small, such as one could only match by going back to the century before last. 66 Of these injustices, taken singly, the public have already heard enough, from time to time, as the Monster Trial went on. But, as we do not remember ever having seen them exhibited collectively in one view, the following catalogue may be useful as a sort of memorandum and brief chronicle of the case : Sundry specimens of sharp practice on the part of Mr. Attorney-General T. B. C. Smith, in the preliminary proceedings; e. g. the attempt to cheat the traversers out of one of the four days allowed them by law to pre pare their pleas, and to deprive one of them, (Mr. Tyrrell,) by a base pettifogging quibble, of the help of counsel to argue a point of law. The refusal of the Attorney-General and the Court to furnish the traversers with a copy of the caption, and of the government list of witnesses; both of which would have been given in England as a matter of course. A 66 A The "accident" with the jury list-making trial by jury, says the Lord Chief-Justice of England, MOCKERY, A DELUSION, and a SNARE." The exclusion of Catholic jurymen, on the pretence (an after-thought, by the way, and a falsehood besides) that they were of the same politics with the traversers. The "endless, unintelligible, unwieldy, voluminous indictment," constructed in open contempt of the limitation of the human understanding, and the brevity of human life. The enormous extension of the enormous doctrine of constructive and inferential complicity-making orators answerable for articles they had never read, and editors for speeches they had never heard. Sundry stretchings of the law of evidence; e. g. admitting newspapers in proof against other parties than their own proprietors and editors. Sundry tamperings with the conscience of the jury; e. g. the Solicitor-General's hint that a coercion act might ensue on their refusal to convict. The judicial charge against "the other side." The insulting appendage to the sentence on Mr. O'Connell, requiring him to find bail to keep the peace which he had kept, when no other man in the empire could have kept it. The imprisonment pending the appeal-as it now turns out, the illegal and wrongful imprisonment. The decision of six English judges out of eight, that the Irish judges must be presumed to have been cognizant of the invalidity of the sixth and seventh countswhich counts they had unanimously ruled to be " unex ceptionable." It will be matter of satisfaction to the historian, and of pride to the constitutional lawyer of future generations, as it is now of exultation to the heart of every honest man, that on the whole of this gigantic and cunningly complicated iniquity, the Supreme Court of British Judicature has stamped at last its damning NON-CONTENT. As a mere legal decision- even apart from its bearings on that tremendous political struggle in which it marks a conspicuous epoch, and whose future history it must powerfully influence-the judgment of the 4th September is of immense value and importance. It has put an extremely good precedent in our law books, in place of an execrably bad one. It has turned an iniquitous attack on the most precious of popular franchises into a good case in point for the popular cause. The case of the QUEEN v. O'CONNELL AND OTHERS will henceforth, for generations to come, be a precedent, not against, but in favour of the most valuable of our liberties-that which is the essence and guarantee of them all-liberty of public meeting and discussion. The vicious and dan gerous principles which this case had introduced into our constitutional law are, once for all, swept clean out of it. It is decided, at the head-quarters of British jurisprudence, that trial by jury shall not-whether by accident or fraud-be made a "mockery, a delusion, and a snare." It is ruled, by our Court of Appeal in the last resort, that (in the words of our clear-headed and sound-hearted Lord Chief-Justice)" there cannot be a greater grievance and oppression than these endless, unintelligible, unwieldy, voluminous indictments," which spread their nets over half a year of a man's life, sweeping into the meshes of one monster-process every thing that he and his friends have said and done, or caused and suffered to be said and done, for months together which, in their bulk and complexity, transcend the powers of any average human memory to retain, and of any ordinary human intellect to comprehend. The doctrines of constructive conspiracy, inferential complicity, and cumulative guilt made up by aggregation of deeds and words individually innocent, are, by this decision, cleared out of our jurisprudence. The iniquitous absurdities, that many legal acts make, by juxtaposition in an indictment, one illegal act-and that A is to be punished, because something that B has done indicates community of purpose with C, who is a particular friend of D, who happens to be exactly of A's way of thinking in politics-these monster principles Lords Denman, Cottenham, and Campbell have, it may be hoped for ever, banished from British law. "We have fiction enough, uncertainty enough, elasticity enough, already in our criminal code,' (as it is pleasantly called,) and this new importation from the Dublin Queen's Bench we absolutely decline and ignore"-such is the practical meaning and effect of the recent decision of our British Court of Cassation. which these men have done, and every thing which they have omitted to do, has only helped forward the agitation for Irish nationality. When Repeal was young and weak, they did nothing, but looked on and let it grow, administering only a few gentle and wholesome stimulants, in the shape of magisterial supersedeases. When the monster meetings had about done their work, almost overdone it, and it seemed as if the Agitator himself was frightened at the power he had evoked, and puzzled what to do with it; when the movement needed a check, to temper its hot enthusiasm with sobriety, patience, prudence, and working practicality, the check was given, in the Clontarf proclamation. A brief lull followed, until the Government decided, in its wisdom, to move the agitation into the Queen's Bench, and have the Repeal Speeches spoken there, by authority: with what excellent effect, is fresh in all men's memory. Then came the verdict, the unsuccessful New-Trial motion, and the sentence. This undoubtedly was, for the moment, a blow to O'Connell's influence, as it abated somewhat that prestige of legal infallibility so essential to the success of his peculiar mode of political warfare. Yet the scurvy way in which the prosecution had been conducted, saved his professional reputation from all serious injury; even an infallible lawyer cannot be lawyer enough to get law and justice from a packed jury and a partisan judge; there was always the Writ of Error in the background; and even from the first, O'Connell gained far more by martyrdom than he lost by defeat. Repeal went on now bravely. With its leader in gaol, it grew less talkative and more earnest, less boastful and more business-like. The Protestantism of Mr. Smith O'Brien took off from it the appearance of being, in any special sense, a Popish and priestly movement,-made it less Catholic and more naAnd so the monster bubble has burst at last! Here we tional. O'Connell's imprisonment, in truth, did more are, after some ten months of the hardest work that ever for the agitation than six months of his best speeches government and government lawyers took in hand-as could have done; cured it of its most dangerous faults, we were; rather, not as we were, but very considerably, brought out its latent strength, developed the talents of almost incalculably, worse than we were. It was thought men whom his presence had kept in the shade, and fit, last year, by a strong Conservative Government, that tested and confirmed the obedience of the people. In "the law should be vindicated;" and vindicated it is at particular, it contributed this great fact to the cause of last, (thank God! we have a house of Lords,) on the Irish nationality, that agitation can go on without the backs of Cabinet Ministers, judges, and law officers of agitator, that O'Connell is not absolutely necessary to the Crown. It was determined, by a "business" Go- Repeal, that the successful working of the O'Connell vernment, that something must be done-and, behold the policy is not contingent on the length of one man's "something"-the administration of justice in Ireland lifetime. A second campaign of monster - meetings covered with contempt, ("red-hot confusion," as the would not have done so much to give Repeal solidity, Post neatly calls it,) the whole of the English judges persistency, and real formidableness, as Mr. Smith being of opinion that the whole of the Irish judges are O'Brien and his coadjutors did during the three months wrong on certain questions of constitutional law, of first- of the captivity. And now, with the prestige of his class importance; the Irish people more exasperated legal infallibility more than recovered; with the judg than ever, more bent on repeal than ever: O'Connell ment of the highest court of the empire that he has crowned with the double honours-it might have seemed been right all through, and the whole of the Dublin à priori the incompatible honours-of martyrdom and of Queen's Bench wrong; his policy vindicated by a splen victory; and the "great difficulty" grown to such a did legal and political success; his name and person greatness, that they dare not name its name in their consecrated by martyrdom, he comes back to his work Queen's Speech. Never, surely, was a Government so a greater man than ever, to wield and guide a power humbled and disgraced. They have done the thing at which his brief absence has amazingly increased. We last which they were eternally twitting wiser and warier have much faith in the Union, that is, in a union be men with cowardice for not doing-measured their tween Great Britain and Ireland; but, if the future is to strength with the Agitator; and they have got a most be at all like the past, we cannot understand how any tremendous fall. They have been exulting, for many a union is to stand a much longer continuance of the Peel month past, with rude, unmannerly insolence, over" con- policy. It is, we apprehend, in the nature of things, victed conspirators ;" and it turns out that they are the that the great man should go on beating the small man convicts; false imprisonment the crime. They have to the end of the chapter. taken all sorts of knavish advantages; and they have taken nothing by them but defeat and scorn. They have waded neck-deep in mire, and only got themselves dirty. They have played with packed cards and loaded dice, and lost the game. Baffled chicane, bungling and detected dishonesty this, in brief, is the history of Sir Robert Peel's Irish policy, from the 14th of October 1843, to the 4th of September 1844. Nothing can be more signal and disastrous than the Tory failure, thus far, in the treatment of their chief difficulty. As if, by some irresistible fatality-Irish Catholics call it miracle and special providence, we British Protestants may look higher still, to those moral laws which express the universal providence-every thing And now, what next? We have wasted, and worse than wasted, one year in an experiment which has turned out an enormous and shameful failure: what is the next move to be? Sir Robert Peel is again where he was twelve months ago, with his policy yet to choose; though with a diminished scope for choice, a narrower range of alternatives to choose from, his character fearfully damaged, and his great difficulty swollen up to an immeasurable size and height. The do-nothing policy has been tried, found wanting, and formally abandoned; and cannot very well be now resumed. Coercion by form of law has been tried too, and found wanting, and will quite certainly not be tried again. The "accident" with the jury list was one of those curious felicities which no man can reckon on twice; the challenge of Catholic jurymen is not a thing that will bear repetition; and we may be tolerably sure that neither Chief Justice Pennefather, nor any other Chief Justice, will again borrow the Attorney General's brief to help out his own notes, or charge too strongly against "the other side." There only remain (the alternative of resignation apart) conciliation and new powers." But conciliation from a Tory ministry, any such conciliation as Ireland would not repudiate with scorn,-any such conciliation as would not be a stimulus to new and bolder agitation, -is not to be thought of. They cannot conciliate; at least, it is so certain that they will not, that it is not worth speculating about the "can." Three months' imprisonment of O'Connell stand between Sir Robert Peel and the conciliation of Ireland. He may lower the qualification, and extend the franchise, and give a score of new members to Ireland; he may enact fixity of tenure; he may restore the superseded magistrates, and sweep the bench clear of the O'Driscolls and Thomas O'Briens; he may treble the education grant, and endow the priests; he may even pass an Appropriation Act;but he will not draw off a man from the ranks of the Loyal National Repeal Association, nor intercept a groat on its road to the Repeal exchequer. We doubt whether even a sweeping change of men and measures in every department of the State, certainly not a mere Whig, or Whig-Radical restoration,-would now satisfy the wants of which Repeal is the short epitomised expression. It is not mere "good government," according to English Liberal notions of good government, that Ireland has now set her heart on, but self-government, nationality; and any kind or degree of reform which shall not in some way satisfy this want, will only feed the old agitation with new resources. Whig good government was an excellent thing once; but it would, at this time of day, do about as much to conciliate Ireland as the enfranchisement of Birmingham and Manchester would have done, in 1832, towards quieting England and Scotland. There is nothing left for Sir Robert Peel to try, but " new powers." That he has not very long since "deprecated" asking for new powers, that "there is nothing which he deprecates more than these applications to parliament for new powers," is, we fear, little to the purpose. Sir Robert Peel, unfortunately, is famous for deprecating things first, and doing them afterwards. To "new powers," then, we suppose it must come. After all his eloquent and emphatic deprecation; after again and again boasting that he has conquered Repeal by ordinary process of law; after taking large credit to himself for doing without the dangerous help of a Coercion Act; with his character for statesmanship fatally damaged by blunders that politicians count worse than crimes; with the great break-down of the 4th September, and the foul play by which it was so richly earned, fresh in the public memory; with Ireland in a state of exasperation and self-relying enthusiasm that will render any fresh experiment on her patience, in the last degree hazard-| ous, and yet in a state of unbroken external tranquillity, that will leave coercion without a plea or pretext; with O'Connell in the House to contest every inch of ground with him, supported by such a mass and weight of public opinion as never supported him before; under such auspices, (with Oregon and Morocco questions, it may be, pressing for prompt adjustment,) will Sir Robert Peel have to call on the legislature to help him through his difficulty, with new powers, in place of those which he has so egregiously misused. We have no taste at present for speculating on what is to come after a Coercion Act. Should the contingency which we anticipate arise, it will be high time for the people of England and Scotland to determine that Sir Robert Peel's difficulty shall not, by any act or default of theirs, become their difficulty. The gratifying intelligence, conveyed in the Royal *See his Speech of last Session, (February 23,) on Lord John Russell's motion. Speech, which closed the session, that "by the spirit of justice and moderation which has animated the two governments" of France and England, the "danger" of an interruption of "good understanding and friendly relations" between the countries is "happily averted," will, we trust, soon receive some more satisfactory confirmation than the official belief of Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen. "Spirit of justice and moderation which has animated the two governments," sounds excellently well; but the plain truth we apprehend to be, that it is the spirit of injustice, reacting in political embarrassment and weakness, which has for the present averted the worst possible calamity that could befall Europe and mankind. England loves peace, because Ireland must be kept well garrisoned; and war, otherwise than with the poor Morocco Emperor and Queen Pomare, would be highly inconvenient to France, while Algiers is but half conquered. At all events, the justice and moderation are not so eminent on either side, but that it behoves every right-minded man to protest, according to his ability and opportunity, with all his heart and soul, and mind and might, against the insane and wicked notion of England going to war with France, on any such questions as those of Tahiti and Morocco. Whether the tri-color or the union-jack shall wave over the hut of Queen Pomare; nay, whether Queen Pomare and her subjects shall be Papists or Protestants; whether Tangiers and Mogador shall obey the Koran or the Code Napoleon,-these are, no doubt, very important questions in their way, worthy of all manner of diplomatic protocolling; but we submit that they are not worth new burdens on industry, and new restraints on liberty; they are not worth a lapse from civilisation into barbarism; they are not worth tens of thousands of human lives, and tens, or hundreds, of millions of treasure; they are not worth making myriads of widows and orphans; they are not worth one half-hour of human butchery; they are not worth the agony, the thirst, the stench of one single military hospital. It would seem that thirty years of peace have made us forget what war really is-have left us only a faint, traditionary notion, of the horrors of war-else never would the peace of Europe be imperilled, for an instant, by any such trumpery squabbles. The tone which some influential leaders of public opinion have recently taken on this subject, has perfectly amazed us. With grief and astonishment have we heard the language which men, professing the doctrines of the religion of peace-not disciples, merely, but actual teachers of that religion; men claiming (and deserving) no small credit for the zeal with which they promulgate it to savage and heathen nations, have lately addressed, amid "cheers and laughter," to audiences, not of soldiers and sailors, but of the sober, industrious, and religious middle class, that to which we have been accustomed to look as pre-eminently the pacific class of the community-the great peace-party of the country. At a meeting of the London Missionary Society, held in Exeter Hall, on the 14th of August, "for the purpose of expressing their sympathy with the missionaries and missionchurches in Tahiti," which meeting was numerously attended by ladies and ministers of the Gospel, and "opened with prayer"-a Christian divine (Dr. Hamilton of Leeds) obtained the plaudits of a Christian auditory, by the following bellicose rhapsody :-" Had this country taken a proper, a manly, and independent tone? (No, no.) Seventy-four years ago we were generally agitated on the case of the Falkland Islands; fifty-four years ago on the Nootka Sound question; fifty-three years ago upon the doubtful right to possess a city of Catherine, or of the Sublime Porte. Then a healthy tone existed among our statesmen, and they knew how to speak out. (Hear, hear.) That was the true policy of peace. (Cheers.) He was not an advocate for war-he hated it; but tyranny and oppression, falsehood and injustice, he hated much more. (Cheers.) France had at this very day no less than five vessels at Tahiti, while this country, the queen of the seas, had-what? a ketch. (Loud laughter.) What was that? They might think it some relation of the worthy John of that name. (Re |