the Roman republic by republican France in the same year, and Louis Napoleon's coup d'état of December, 1851. The plans of the revolutionists were well laid. They were secretly organized throughout all western and central Europe, but they did not choose, as in 1848, to rely wholly on themselves. They had two powers to fear, and only two,Austria and Russia; and their plan was to neutralize Russia by means of Turkey, and Austria by means of a war between her and the United States. England they could count on as a friend, to back Turkey morally, perhaps physically, against Russia, because she has made it her policy to aid them in all the continental states ever since the congress of Laybach, and because her commercial interests as well as her East Indian possessions required her to resist the further progress of the Russian empire. France also, it was trusted, could be gained, through jealousy of Russia, and through a desire to extend her influence in Italy, to weaken Austria, to reannex Belgium, perhaps also Savoy, and to gain the protectorate of the smaller German states, to make common cause with England against northern and eastern Europe. All then that was wanting was to gain this great republic, with its vast resources and overflowing treasury, to the same cause. This it was hoped to do by getting up a quarrel between us and Austria.

Austria understood the plan of her enemies, and could not be caught in the trap, and, judging from the conditions offered and accepted by our minister at Constantinople for the release of Koszta, she has come off, so far as we are concerned, with honor, while we stand before the world in a most unenviable light. But France and England appear to have caught the bait, and the prospect now is that Europe must either succumb to the demagogues or become Cossack. To all appearances, a war between Russia and Turkey is inevitable. Hostilities, it is reported, have actually commenced, and Turkey has assembled as formidable an army as her resources admit of, officered to a great extent by renegade Austrian and Russian subjects; and it would seen, at the time we are writing, that France and England are prepared to lend her even more than their moral influence. Thus far Kossuth and Mazzini, except with us, have apparently succeeded in their plan, and France and England are playing their game, if not in reality the ulterior game of Russia herself.

It strikes us that, if France and England are really bent,

as they pretend, on maintaining the balance of power threatened or assumed to be threatened by Russia, they adopt very unwise means to effect their purpose. The real mediating power of Europe is Austria, and whether it be the purpose to guard against the demagogues of the South and West, or the absolutism of the North and East, she should be regarded as the point d'appui of all the operations required. As we understand it, two dangers threaten European civilization, anarchy and despotism, the demagogues and the Cossacks, the revolutionists of the Sonth and West, and Russia from the North and East. The western powers, leaving out Austria, are impotent against either danger. England can keep down a revolution at home only by encouraging revolutions abroad, and France is still the hotbed of demagogie, and which the emperor prevents from breaking out in open insurrection and revolution only by adopting some of the worst elements of socialistic economy. His vast expenditures on public works and modern improvements, avowedly for the purpose of giving employment to the workinginen, cannot be continued for many years without alienating from him the tax-paying classes, and when discontinued, a whole army of workmen are ready to find employment in making revolutions. The moment that the revolutionists succeed, or have a fair prospect of succeeding, in detaching Hungary and the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom from Austria, all central Germany, and every western dynasty, unless Russia intervenes, are at the mercy of the demagogues. On the other hand, if Austria is dismembered, and reduced to her German provinces, nothing, humanly speaking, can prevent Russia from occupying the seat of the ancient empire of the East, and ruling all Europe and Asia. Nothing can be made of that rickety old concern, the Ottoman empire, which has exhausted all her resources in her present very inadequate efforts to maintain her independence and integ rity. The only safety of the western powers is in cultivating the friendship of Austria, and in enabling her to extend and consolidate her power, so that she can rely on them, and be able to make the balance incline to the side on which she throws her weight.

If France and England, the two leading powers of the West, were sincere and earnest to maintain the balance of power, their first effort would be to detach Austria from Russia, and make it for her interest to unite with them.

But this is precisely what they have neglected to do. They have both been hostile to her. They prevented her from intervening to protect the Swiss Sonderbund in 1847, which would have prevented the terrible convulsions of the following year; they armed in 1848 all Italy against her, and prevented her from pushing her advantages as far as she lawfully might against Sardinia, who had twice made unprovoked war upon her, without a shadow of a pretext; they stirred up a rebellion against her in her own capital, and encouraged her Hungarian subjects to revolt, and compelled her to invoke the assistance of Russia; and on the reorganization of the German diet, they protested against her entering it with her non-Germanic provinces, a measure so essential to the maintenance of the balance of power, and which could have endangered the safety of no European state. Even the French army which suppressed the Mazzinian republic was sent to Rome avowedly to maintain French influence in Italy against Austria, and it is probably maintained there for the same purpose, and perhaps also with the vain hope of ruling the pope, and through him the Catholic populations of Europe, a policy attempted by Napoleon the uncle, with all the success it deserved. The hostility of France and England in 1848 and 1849 drew Austria into a close alliance with Russia, and their present designs make it for her interest to continue that alliance; for if she has something to fear from Russia, she has still more to fear from them. All this we should call a blunder on their part, and its sad effects will be long felt in European politics. In the present struggle Austria will remain neutral, if permitted, and if not, she must take sides with Russia, who will gain the chief advantage.

As far as we can see, Russia, as against Turkey, is in the right. Her demands are just and reasonable, as all western Europe has virtually decided in the Vienna note. She simply demands that her treaties with the porte in behalf of the Christians of her communion shall be executed, and that a sufficient guaranty of their execution shall be given. There is nothing wrong in this. The sultan pledges his word that they shall be, it is true, but that is just no security at all. All concessions in favor of Christians, whom the Turks regard as slaves and treat as dogs, are contrary to the Koran, the supreme law of every Mahometan state, and are regarded by the Turkish judges as non avenues. The Chris

tian power must have an acknowledged protectorate over the Christian subjects of the porte, or the treaties in their favor are so much waste-paper. Russia knows this, and demands the protectorate of the Christians of her communion. But this, say France and England, will give her too much control over the internal affairs of Turkey. Be it so. Why, then, not compel Turkey, their protégée, to emancipate all her Christian subjects, of whatever communion, to place them and their religion under the protection of the law? This would supersede the necessity of Russian interference, and take away all pretext she may have for interfering. If they will not do this, they have no right to complain of her for taking upon herself the protection of the Christians of her own communion. The Christians of the Ottoman empire have long enough been the slaves of the insolent and fanatic Turks, and religion, civilization, humanity, demands their emancipation, their elevation to the status of citizens, and their free and full possession of the liberty of worship, and the western powers, if they neglect their duty in this respect, have no right to interfere to prevent Russia from doing it.

It is for the interest of Christendom, of European civilization, and of common humanity, that an end be put to the Mahometan power, and it is a scandal to find Catholic France combining with heretical and pope-hating England to uphold it. Russia is a schismatical power, and no friend to Catholicity; but she is morally and religiously as good as Protestant England, and however we may dislike her political system, she succeeds better in winning the affections of the nations she subjugates than England does in winning the affections of those she professes to assist and for whom she really pours out her blood and her treasure. The Polish peasant has a far warmer affection for Russia, than the Spanish peasant has for England. It would no doubt be a calamity for Russia to subjugate western Europe, but we defy her to govern it worse than England has governed Ireland and India. The predominance of Russia. would no doubt injure the Catholic cause, but not more than England has injured it in Spain and Portugal, and is now injuring it in Sardinia, Sicily, and the whole Italian peninsula; or than France herself has injured it by her league with the Turks against Austria and Spain, and with the Protestants against Catholic Germany, by her Gallicanism, Jansenism, and infidel philosophy, her immoral literature,

her Jacobinical revolutions, and by her Italian and German wars and conquests under the republic and the empire. But be all this as it may, Russia is better than Turkey, the Greek schism is far preferable to Mahometanism, and if the western states cannot preserve the balance of power without uniting to uphold the standard of the Arabian impostor, they ought not to preserve it at all. Russia certainly does not favor, and never has favored radicalism or socialism, the two worst enemies the church has to defend herself against, and that is much.

We are far from believing Russia wishes to extend her empire to Constantinople, and we do not believe her present movement was begun with any view to conquest. She wishes, no doubt, to protect, to gain to her cause, if you will, the Christian subjects of the porte, and to supplant the influence of France and England at the court of Constantinople, to prevent them from making the porte a bad neighbor, and the revolutionists from making her their rendezvous, and the point d'appui of their operations against Europe. There is nothing unreasonable in this. The czar is only acting on the defensive, only taking a step which France and England render necessary, to protect himself and his allies. If they choose to make use of Turkey against him and his allies, as they avowedly do, what more natural than that he should seek to thwart them? If he cannot do it otherwise than by taking possession of Turkey, whom have they to blame but themselves? They cannot expect to use Turkey against him, with his acquiescence, and they must compel her to keep the peace, and suppress their demagogie, if they wish him to refrain from advancing to the South. At present they give him a good excuse for what he is doing, and place themselves in a wrong and in a most foolish position. If Russia does not profit by it at their expense, they may consider themselves happy.