of marque from Russia, England would, if this doctrine be recognised, be justified in treating such privateers as pirates. After a peace of nearly forty years, England enters upon a European war, with her political and social institutions invigorated by the reforms introduced since 1830, and with her finances placed on a sound basis by the fiscal legislation of the last decad. She at least need not fear that operation of war which, according to an ancient orator, consists in searching out the rotten parts of the political fabric. She enters upon the war reluctantly, and with no ambitious projects of aggrandisement, but from a sense of national obligation; in order to support the weak against the strong; to resist the encroaching policy of an unscrupulous despot, and to protect British interests by maintaining a just equilibrium of power in Europe. She might, a year ago, have formed a convention with Russia for a prospective partition of Turkey, and might subsequently have connived at the silent employment of proper means for accelerating the contingency upon which the convention was to take effect. She has preferred being the defender of the oppressed, to becoming the accomplice of the spoiler. But just wars are not always short and decisive. We must not conceal from ourselves that a Russian war is an enterprise of vast magnitude; that the country is distant and difficult of approach; that its population is large; and that all its resources are wielded by a single ruler,—haughty, unbending, unaccustomed to opposition, unexpectedly foiled in the accomplishment of a favourite project, semi-oriental in his character, forming his plans with the sagacity of an European, and executing them with the recklessness of an Asiatic. Taken in the whole, the circumstances under which we embark in the contest are indeed such as to give us a reasonable assurance of success; but if the hostilities should be of long duration, England will at least be able to remember with satisfaction that, at the very outset, she took effectual measures for diminishing the evils of war, and for bringing it within the influences of rules suited to the advanced civilisation of the age in which we live. NOTE. IN Art. V. of our last Number, p. 173., we have, through inadvertence, done an injustice to New College at Oxford. In speaking of the foundation of William of Wykeham, we stated that scholars are chosen from Winchester to New College, not by merit, but by favour. It is true that places upon the foundation at Winchester are bestowed by favour, but we are assured that the admissions from Winchester to New College are determined solely by merit, and that the examinations are conducted on the fairest principles. We owe the correction of an error into which we were undesignedly led to the courtesy of a Fellow of New College. ERRATUM. In No. 201. p. 118. note, for that noble foundation,' read 'the noble foundation at Durham.' No. CCIII. will be published in July. 635 INDEX. B - Blind, The, their works and ways, review of books and reports re- Alston's alphabetical system, 71-3, and extract-Lucas's arbi- C Codification, review of Parliamentary Papers and Mr. C. S. Greaves' |