Koszta was actually in Austrian jurisdiction, as he was when on board the Huszar, whatever was the case on land, was to have protested in the name of their government against his arrest and detention; and if this did not procure his release, as Austria is a friendly power, and acknowledges herself amenable to international law, to have remitted the case to the supreme authority, to be disposed of by the diplomacy of the two nations. This would have been in accordance with the general usage in similar cases, and would seem to have been demanded, if not by the law, at least by the comity of nations. There was no urgency in the case. Koszta, if in any danger at all, was in no danger of immediately losing his head, for Mr. Marcy takes special care to inform us, that the danger which induced Captain Ingraham to make his hostile demonstration was simply that he would be conveyed to Trieste, within the emperor's dominions. We had at the emperor's court a representative to look after Koszta's interest, and it is idle to pretend that Austria would have condemned him, or punished him under a previous judgment, if we were able to make good our claim to him as an American citizen. Policy, if not a sense of justice and respect for international law, would have restrained her. Our distrust of her in this case may well be construed into a distrust of our own claim. The threat to employ force, the actual demonstration of force, for his liberation, was a rash act, extremely imprudent, and might have been attended with the most fatal consequences; and that war has not followed with Austria, we owe to her prudence or forbearance. The act was, especially when approved by Captain Ingraham's government, literally an act of war; and it can never be for the interest of any nation to intrust the war-making power to its naval officers abroad, to be used at their discretion. It is not compatible with the peace of the world that they should possess it, and we hope that the act of Captain Ingraham will never be suffered to become a precedent. If such acts are to be approved and applauded, instead of rebuked aud punished, ships of war will soon be converted into corsairs, and their commanders into pirates.

As to Captain Ingraham himself, we have nothing to say. He is doubtless an honorable gentleman, as well as a brave and efficient officer; but in the present case, he mistook his duty, and suffered his zeal to get the better of his judg ment. But as his government has approved his conduct,

we must hold it, not him, responsible for the insult offered to the Austrian flag. He probably was not initiated into the plot, and was used as a blind tool by the revolutionists. The secret of the whole transaction it is not difficult to divine. It was not to vindicate American nationality or to protect the rights of the American citizen, but to get up, if possible, a war between this country and Austria, in accordance with the plans and ardent wishes of Ludwig Kossuth. Kossuth found, on his visit to the United States as the "nation's guest," that our people generally sympathized with him, and that perhaps a majority of them were not averse to intervening actively in his cause, if any plausible pretext for doing so could be found. But he was convinced that, however ready we were to feast him, make speeches and pass resolutions in his favor and denunciatory of Austria, we could not be induced to go to war with Austria avowedly on the principle of intervention. It was necessary, then, to obtain for us some pretext, under which the president, as in the case of Mexico, a few years since, might announce to congress, "War exists between the Austrian empire and this republic, by act of Austria herself." No matter if the statement should be utterly false, if it could be made to appear to be true, congress would vote an army and supplies, and the people would sustain it. It was necessary, then, to provoke Austria to the commission of some act which we could represent as a gross violation of our rights, or as a declaration of war against us. For this purpose, we doubt not, Koszta returned, or was ordered by Kossuth to return, to Turkey, and very possibly with the knowledge and approbation of our Jacobinical administration. It could very easily be foreseen that Austria would attempt to arrest him, as implicated in the abstraction and concealment of the Hungarian regalia, which she was exceedingly anxious to recover, and out of this arrest it was thought it would not be difficult to get the desired pretext for war. The whole was an artfully devised plan for inducing the United States to intervene with their physical force in favor of Kossuth and Mazzini, who had combined to establish Hungarian independence, and to expel the Austrians from Italy.

The whole difficulty, we need not doubt, grew out of our insane sympathy with the rebellious subjects of Austria, and their efforts to involve us in the contest, suspended by the Austro-Russian victories of 1849, the suppression of

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 seem, 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 South 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 workingmen, 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 integrity. 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