justice among equal offenders they should share alike, and not one be made a scape-goat for all the rest.

The Hungarian intervention is alike condemned by the policy of the government and the feelings of the people of the United States. They hold-and, in our opinion, justly-that no foreign power has a right to interfere with the domestic affairs and internal struggles of any other nation; that this is their own affair, and that the parties should have fair play. Such interference is not only an impertinent intrusion, but objectionable in another point of view. It never permanently settles a question. It is only a temporary expedient which may produce a short-lived delusive tranquility. "But when the external repressive force is withdrawn, the reäction will commence; the interests and passions which gave rise to the first commotion, not having been either crushed by a decisive victory of one party over the other, or reconciled by voluntary and mutual concessions, will infallibly revive again, and another struggle become necessary to a final adjustment. We do not recollect a single example in history that does not sustain us in this view of the subject; and with regard to Hungary, it must be evident to all, that such will be the final result of Russian intervention. Setting aside all other considerations, we therefore think that this intervention was equally impolitic and unjust; and, if we are not mistaken, the offense is about to receive its reward through the ingratitude of the imperial stripling on whose behalf the Czar exposed himself to the condemnation of millions of his fellow-men.

But are the skirts of the governments of England and France free from any stain of this kind? Can they rightfully become accusers, when they too may be justly cited as delinquents before the tribunal to which they have dared to appeal? "Let him that is innocent cast the first stone," said the great Christian moralist. Are they thus qualified to cast the first stone? Has not England, for a century past, been perpetually interfering with the affairs of the princes of Hindostan, and through that interference, reduced them to abject subjection to her sway? Did she not interfere with the internal struggles of France, or rather the great national struggle of France for liberty, and make war on the people in behalf of an impotent sovereign whom they despised? Is she not interfering with the long-established policy of the Birman Empire, and making war on its people under pretense of establishing a commercial treaty, the terms of which are dictated at the cannon's mouth? If we turn towards France, we find her interfering between

the King of Greece and the Ottoman Porte; between the Ottoman Porte and its Christian subjects; with the domestic religious dissensions of the different factions in Albania, Bosnia, and other provinces nominally subject to the Grand Signior, and invariably taking sides against the Christian population. The Emperor of France has for years occupied the ancient capital of the world with an army of French soldiers, under color of maintaining internal tranquility and order, but, as the people of the United States believe, for the purpose of crushing the popular feeling of Italy, arresting the progress of free principles, and perpetuating a mixed, incestuous despotism, combining within itself the most tyrannical principles of civil government, and the most inflexible maxims of bigotry and intolerance.

The United States, it is believed, have no disposition to exercise a censorship over the conduct or policy of other governments, or to interfere with them in any manner whatever, except where their own interests are directly involved. We refer to these facts merely to show that the course pursued by the two governments now challenging our sympathy, and reproaching us for withholding it, is not, and has not been, such as entitles them to that sympathy, or to sustain them in the high position they have assumed that of the great champions of Christianity, civilization, and liberty. In this respect we are of opinion they can not justly plume themselves on their superiority over the Čzar.

It may then be asked, Why should the Emperor Nicholas be brought before the high tribunal of the civilized world, as the chief of sinners, the great modern leper, spotted from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot with the stains and blotches of moral corruption? And above all, why should the people of the United States be expected to join in the hue and cry against him? The better to answer these queries, let us briefly inquire as to his private character as a man, and his public policy as a ruler.

All travellers in Russia whose works have fallen under our notice-with the exception of Englishmen, who may be called the common libellers of nations-unite in bearing testimony to the private virtues of the Czar. As a husband and father, he is mild, gentle, and humane; nor has he ever been accused of availing himself of that latitudinarian code of morals exclusively appropriated to royalty. Though despotic over millions, he is master of himself. There is no blood-thirsty vein in his composition, nor have we ever met with a well-authenticated

instance of his having inflicted the punishment of death wantonly and by a mere exercise of his will. That exiles are occasionally sent to Siberia is certain; and that among sixty millions of people many will merit that fate, is equally certain. The Emperor of France, the beau ideal pro tem. of the British press, occasionally ships a cargo of exiles to Cayenne by his own sovereign will and pleasure, and it may be questioned whether the tropical swamps of that region are not as disagreeable, not to say deleterious, as the snows of Siberia. But men must be punished in some way, until we arrive at that degree of perfectibility anticipated in the new code of philosophy; and perpetual incarceration in a state-prison, a common penalty in the United States, is assuredly as severe an infliction as exile, the knout, or the cudgel. There is no accounting for tastes; and all agree that the Russians prefer these punishments to the gallows, the bow-string, the jail, or the penitentiary. We know from the very best authority, that the more intelligent Russians recoil with equal disgust and horror when they read of the succession of capital punishments in the United States and England. Every nation has its peculiar penal code, and it may be said with equal truth that every nation plumes itself on its superiority in this, as in almost every thing else. "Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" has passed into a proverb; and who shall decide when nations disagree? Not reason certainly. It is pretty clear, however, from Esman's and other late travels, that the Siberian exiles have no reason to envy the British operatives, the Troglodytes of the coal mines, or the poor down-trodden Irish, who are forced to banish themselves by tens of thousands.

But "Cæsar is ambitious," it seems. If so, his offense is palliated by innumerable examples in ancient and modern history. Ambition is surely not so rare a quality among men of all ranks and degrees, that it should be hunted as a strange monster by the bull-terriers of the British press. This inordinate ambition is, it seems, exemplified in his policy towards the Sublime Porte, to which we now propose to call the attention of our readers. Stripped of all its diplomatic obscurities, joint notes, protocols, and ultimatums, the Eastern Question, as it is styled, resolves itself into this simple proposition: The Czar wants to acquire a free passage for his commerce and fleets into the Mediterranean, and the Allied powers want to keep him out. This, we believe, is the whole gist of the business.

By turning to the map of Russia, it will be at once seen, that, with the exception of the Frozen Ocean, there are no outlets

to the foreign commerce of that vast empire by sea, but the Bosphorus and the Cattegat, the former of which is commanded by the Sultan of Turkey, the latter by the King of Denmark. The former is, and has always been, from the first establishment of the empire, the foe, the hereditary, religious, and political foe of Russia. For a great while Russia was the weaker power, and a portion of the possessions of Turkey in Europe were wrested from her by force. During a long series of wars, and after many a hard fight, Russia has gradually acquired the ascendency over her ancient rival, and had it not been for the moderation of the Emperor Nicholas, Constantinople would have now been in his possession, despite of all the combined diplomacy of the "Protecting Powers," whose leading point of policy in assuming the guardianship of the "sick man" is to exclude the Czar from the Mediterranean, by keeping the gates of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles shut against him.

In order to bring this question home to the people of the States, it is only necessary to observe that the Czar has the same, if not still stronger motives for his policy in relation to Turkey, and his desire to open the gate of the Black Sea, that the United States have for coveting the possession of Cuba. One belongs to a decayed and tottering empire on the eve of dissolution from age and infirmity; the other to a power almost equally impotent. While Constantinople remains in possession of Turkey, and while Cuba continues in point of fact and not merely nominally a colony of Spain, the one is not dangerous to the Czar, nor the other to the United States. But, in both cases, there is strong reason to apprehend that they are either about to pass into other hands, or at least to become the pliant instruments of mischief and danger to both parties. Surely, it is the duty of a wise government to provide as far as possible against such imminent contingencies; and accordingly we find the United States as desirous to acquire the peaceable possession of Cuba as the Czar is accused of having been to gain that of Constantinople, when he made those propositions to the British minister for the settlement of the affairs of the "sick man" after his decease, which were tacitly approved and favorably responded to at first, but afterwards repudiated, and an alliance concluded with France ostensibly to arrest a policy to which the cabinet of England had at least tacitly acceded. The cases of Constantinople and Cuba, though not exactly identical, are sufficiently parallel to justify a comparison. The great permanent interests of both nations being equally involved, alike demand the protection of their respective governments;

and we have no hesitation in expressing the opinion, that the policy of Russia in relation to the Ottoman Porte, so far as regards the acquisition of a free passage through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, is not less justifiable than that of the United States in relation to the acquisition of Cuba. Both are equally based on great permanent national interests, and both have reference to future probable contingencies. The Czar believed, and had good reason to believe, that the Ottoman Empire was on the eve of dissolution; and that, in the approaching dismemberment, its possessions on the European, if not the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, would, in all probability, pass into the hands of a great maritime power like England or France, whose policy it would be to shut Russia up for ever in the Black Sea. The United States have equal cause to believe that the island of Cuba, which, in possession of either of these powers, would command the commerce of the Gulf of Mexico, is in the hands of a government incapable of independent action, and ready to relinquish the real substance of Sovereignty to any power able to aid her in retaining the shadow. Thus it is, that the press of England and France has placed the United States and Russia in the same class of delinquents, and cited them before the bar of the civilized world for no other reason than that they present insuperable obstacles to the accomplishment of their vast schemes of ambition not only in the East but the West.

We have thus far considered this subject in the point of view presented by the two powers which have made such confident appeals to the sympathies of the world, and most especially of the people of the United States. The Czar has been accused of a vehement passion for the acquisition of Constantinople, and with it the whole of Turkey in Europe, if not Asia Minor. This, however, he has solemnly denied; and, for aught we can see, his word is quite as worthy of belief as the accusations of the entente cordiale. For ourselves, we frankly confess, we do not believe the Czar is particularly anxious to possess Constantinople, or to overthrow the Ottoman Empire, which must soon fall of itself. That city lay completely at his mercy, when the Russian army was in possession of Adrianople, and the adjacent kingdom of Bulgaria in a state of insurrection against the Ottoman Porte. Again it was at his mercy when the Russian army checked the advance of Ibrahim Pasha, and when the Czar might have peacably occupied that city under pretense of "protection," had he been aware of the potency of that cabalistic word in the vocabulary of British and French diplo

macy.