archs of Europe, England enlisted him in a war against Russia, hoping through his aid to cripple the power of Russia, and check her further advance towards India, nothing doubting that she would be able to keep him faithful to her policy, through her hold on the revolutionists, and her power, if he became restive, to stir up a formidable redrepublican movement against him. The war was declared, and grew to more gigantic dimensions than were counted on; Russia proved a more formidable enemy than had been anticipated, and though in fair fight, man to man, the allies beat the Russians, they were able to do it only at a terrible loss to themselves. The emperor of the French having gained his objects in going into the war, and having secured the point of honor in the fall of southern Sebastopol, succeeded in making peace, and in coming to a good understanding with Russia, before England had secured any of her own objects in the war. Russia had suffered, but she had neither been humbled nor effectually crippled, and as between France and England, the peace of Paris, March, 1856, was a French triumph. But the triumph was but for a moment. The settlement of the Danubian principalities was left to be effected by commissioners. France leaned to the Russian mode of settlement, which was opposed to the Austrian mode. This gave to England a chance to side with Austria, and in concert with her to check France and Russia at the court of Constantinople, and to reestablish the preponderance of British diplomacy in the councils of the sublime porte. She used her preponderance to defeat the projected canalization of the Isthmus of Suez, and to obtain from the porte, with the guaranty of a six per cent minimum on the cost, the concession of a railway along the valley of the Euphrates from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, both measures directly in the teeth of the policy of France as well as of Russia. Her Indian government declared war against Persia, sent an army to invade the Persian dominions, and took possession of Bushire, on the gulf, which she yet holds, and will hold as long as she can. With the command of Aden, of the Persian Gulf, and through a friendly power of Herat, she seemed, when our last Review went to press, to have command of all the gates of India, and with a redrepublican revolution held in terrorem over the emperor of the French, and through a good understanding with Austria, the predominance at Constantinople, to have checkmated both France and Russia, while through the interests

of trade and the power of credit, she held the United States as her vassal. She seemed to have completely triumphed, and to hold the world at her feet.

But at this moment, when the only trouble she had on her hands was a trifling brush with four hundred millions of Chinese, in which she counted on the coöperation of France and the United States, the revolt in India came like a sudden clap of thunder to startle her from her dream of universal supremacy, to threaten her with the loss of that very empire she had directed all her policy to defend, and to which she owed her rank as a first-class European power. It is impossible to judge, at this distance and with our imperfect information, of the magnitude or probable consequences of what is called the "Indian mutiny." Its first effect has been a partial relaxation of her Constantinopolitan policy, and the partial ascendency of French and Russian diplomacy over the English and Austrian, which will be a complete ascendency, if the troubles in India continue for any great length of time.

The British authority in India before the revolt, extended, directly or indirectly, over one hundred and fifty millions of souls. The British Indian army, of regular and irregular troops, distributed through the several presidencies and provinces, from the best information we can get, was not far from three hundred thousand, of which less than thirty thousand were Europeans. Of the native troops about onethird have mutinied, or been disbanded, and the greater part of the remainder, though reported loyal, we suppose cannot be relied on with entire confidence. The revolt, we take it, must be suppressed mainly by European troops. Of these, counting the forces intended to operate against China, but countermanded to India, about fifty thousand, all the available forces England has to spare, have been despatched, and may reach their destination in the early part of November. Our own impression is, that these, with the European troops already in India, will be sufficient to defeat the revolt wherever it makes a stand, but not to render the future possession of India secure and peaceful. We think that the Indian empire, though retained, will hereafter be a source of weakness rather than of strength to England, and that she will find it henceforth difficult to maintain that supremacy at which she has aimed. Obliged at the moment to abandon Austria, and no longer able to play off Russia against France or France against Russia, she will find her

self in the presence of these great powers relatively weakened, and unable to prevent them from carrying out both a European and an oriental policy hostile to hers.

The press of this city, conducted to a great extent by British subjects, or by men who were born and bred British subjects, and have British rather than American sympathies, is very generally desirous that England should maintain her Indian empire, and the Herald, owned and edited by a "canny Scot," has gone so far as to recommend recruiting the British army in this country, and to propose that in case of need our government should assist England in reconquering India. This only proves that, if we are ever to emerge from our colonial dependence, and to be in spirit and feeling an independent nation, Great Britain must lose her present rank, and cease to be at the head of the industrial and mercantile system of the world. We are, perhaps, less independent of England than we were in our colonial days. Our mercantile interest is strictly united to hers, and depends on her prosperity; our planting interests, and latterly even our agricultural interests in general, have become dependent on her maintaining her preponderance. The United States are little less than an English farm, and our trade a branch of the English house. Any thing that gives us the possession of our own farm, and the control of our own trade, we should regard as a real blessing to the country. We prefer national independence, with poverty and hard labor, to national slavery to a foreign power or to foreign interests, even with wealth, luxury, and idleness to gild it. Our patriotism revolts at the idea of being the tenant of England, or any other foreign nation. It revolts equally at the idea of having our country governed by men who would sacrifice national dignity, national welfare, and the real interests of the human race to a bale of cotton, a hogshead of tobacco, a bag of rice, or a box of merchandise. A nation so governed must always be mean and contemptible, and can never be a nation of men, of high-souled, chivalric freemen. Our government now and then, to save appearances, makes a bluster and uses big words, but is really afraid to say its soul is its own before the British government, and seldom fails to conform to its wishes. Yet these Anglo-American newspapers and our Anglo-American administration, professing an anti-English, but always pursuing an English policy, do not represent the real American feeling; they represent only certain classes and inter

ests. The real American_sentiment would not be pained to see England lose her Indian empire, and reduced to a second rate power. Unhappily this sentiment is smothered, and hardly finds an organ for its expression.

The

India is one of England's best markets; deprived of India she can buy less of us; we then can sell less to her, and buy less of her. No doubt of all that, and for a time our trade would suffer, as well as that of Great Britain, by her loss of her Indian empire, though not to an equal extent. But there are things of greater value to a nation than trade. No nation is really enriched by trade. Trade accumulates luxuries, but luxuries impoverish, not enrich a people. All real wealth is in land and labor, and that nation is richest in which labor can the easiest obtain from the land the means of subsistence and comfort. The land is with us vastly more burdened than it was fifty years ago, and hence it is far harder for the laborer to maintain his independence. Land and labor have to sustain with us a lavish expenditure, a luxury and extravagance that tax their energies far beyond their present capacity, since our indebtedness, our drafts on the future, must be counted by hundreds, if not by thousands of millions. All credit is a draft on the future, and the amount of a nation's indebtedness is the excess of its expenditures over its income. actual addition to our productive capital in any one year does not equal the indebtedness we contract during that year, and hence with all our trade and industry we rather grow poorer than richer, and the difficulty of living becomes greater. The fact of this difficulty every poor man feels, and feels notwithstanding the new lands opened to cultivation, and the immense additions made every year to our wealth by the immigration of hardy, healthy, able-bodied, adult laborers, men and women. The reason of this is the fact, that by the modern system of trade and commerce, we increase the burdens of land and labor. Let China engage in trade with the energy and enterprise displayed by Great Britain, and she would soon find herself unable to support her four hundred millions of inhabitants, and the want and wretchedness of her population would be increased a hundred-fold; for the additional burden it would impose on land and labor would be expended in luxuries, and worse than a dead loss to the nation. During the last thirty years the population of this state has more than doubled, and yet during that time the rural population has been steadily de

creasing. Suppose the same to be the case throughout the Union, which I presume it is not as yet, it would be easy to see the increased burden imposed on land and labor, in having more than double the number to support out of their earnings. The evil that weighs us down is in the immense numbers of non-producers land and labor have to support, and to a great extent in luxury and extravagance.

We know that we do not follow Adam Smith or any of the political economists, though it is possible that we have studied him and them as much as most men have. They are right enough from their point of view and in their narrow sphere, but the system they defend, when carried into practice, and made the rule of national policy, is about as absurd and mischievous a system as the devil ever assisted the human mind to invent. If all the modern political economies had been strangled in their birth, it would have been a blessed thing for the human race. We know there are few at present to agree with us, and the leading minds of the age and country, if they notice us at all, will set down what we are saying to our ignorance, our eccentricity, or our love of paradox. Be it so. That will not make what we say less true, or prove the wisdom of those who regard commerce as the pioneer of Christianity, and the merchant who does his best to master or circumvent unchristianized nations for the purposes of gain, as the most successful Christian missionary. But, believing, as we do, the modern industrial and mercantile system the greatest curse of the times, we of course cannot regret as untoward any of those events which tend to break it up. We cannot very bitterly lament the disturbances in British India, and should not grieve immoderately were Great Britain to lose all her foreign possessions, and be confined to her own sea-girt islands, because with her fall must fall, or be greatly modified, that system which now enslaves or cripples all nations, and ruins innumerable souls. We should regret, therefore to see England recruiting her Indian army on our soil, or aided by American sympathy to preserve her East India posses- . sions. If with her own unaided strength she can suppress the revolt, let her do it; let no one try to hinder her, but let no one offer her assistance.

We cannot discover that the English have contributed any thing to the well-being of India. India was wealthier, the land was better cultivated, and the people were less oppressed under Mahometan than they have been under Brit