wise, liberal, honorable, and just. He offers to withdraw his troops from the principalities, where as yet they had acted only on the defensive, providing the western powers withdraw their armaments from the Baltic and the Euxine, and obtain from Turkey, under their joint guaranty, the recognition of the religious and civil rights of the Christians, of whatever denomination, subjects of the Ottoman empire. This was perfectly fair, and would have settled. the present difficulty, and removed all occasion of similar difficulties in future. It would have secured what all parties professed to have at heart, and maintained undisturbed the so much talked of balance of power. But the western powers contemptuously reject these overtures, and will hear of nothing but the unconditional submission of Russia,-a submission which would not only be humiliating to her, but destructive of that very balance of power which they profess to be armed to sustain.

Having failed by their threats to terrify Russia, having rejected all her overtures of peace, and having declared war, the allied powers seek now an issue not previously hinted. The issue which they now make, as far as they make any, is, in words, the resistance of Russian aggression, and the maintenance of the independence, the autonomy of nations, which in reality means forcing all the other nations of Europe to unite with them in a war against the independence and integrity of the Russian empire, that is, to suffer no free and independent national action in any nation except themselves. This is the aspect the question now assumes. France and England have formed, apparently, a league between themselves for the adjustment of the affairs of the whole world, which is, under pretence of maintaining the balance of power, to secure to them the universal dictatorship of both hemispheres. We may be mistaken, but we cannot help thinking that this would throw the balance altogether on one side; and we are not able to see how the supreme dictatorship would be more compatible with the autonomy or independence of nations in the hands of England and France than in those of Russia. The equilibrium would be as much disturbed in the one case as in the other.

One thing is certain, the independence of the Ottoman empire has not less to fear from the French and English alliance, and from French and English protection and advice, than it has from Russian aggression. To regenerate the Ottoman empire, and sustain its independence and in

tegrity, by innovations in the sense of European liberalism, is, we take it, an utter impossibility. That empire is founded on the Koran, and can subsist only as a Mahometan state, with Mahometan laws, manners, and customs. To detach it from the Koran, to seek to separate the Turkish state from the religion of the Prophet, and to govern it according to approved European political atheism, is simply to dissolve it. Turkey, we are told, is entering the path of European civilization; but all accounts go to prove that she has thus far borrowed from European civilization, saving, perhaps, in regard to military organization, only its worst features. In politics the progress consists in centralization, in the destruction of the great hereditary fiefs of the empire, and making the pachas and all the local authorities immediately dependent on the will of the sultan,-a change by which corruption and oppression have been multiplied a hundred-fold, and the empire is hurried on to its destruction. In private morals and manners the progress consists in sneering, before Europeans, at the Koran, in travestying the European costume, and in getting gloriously drunk. The "Old Turk" is a fanatic, but he has certain principles of natural integrity and good faith. If he has the vices, he has also the virtues, of his race; but your "Young Turk," your liberalized Turk, has the vices of the European and the Asiatic, without the virtues of either. He is the most false-hearted, faithless, unprincipled mortal you can find. And yet it is by encouraging these liberalized Turks, and sustaining them in power, that England, especially, hopes to regenerate Turkey and make her a European state!

The London Times, everybody knows, is a very amusing journal, and throws Punch quite into the shade. We need not therefore be surprised to find it arguing, apparently quite gravely, that Turkey is to be sustained and invigorated, not as an exclusively Turkish state, but by elevating the Christian population of the empire, and calling them to participate in the affairs of the state and to swell the ranks of its armies. Its plan seems to be to mould the Turks and Christians, without regard to difference of religion or race, into one homogeneous people, under the paternal rule of a descendant of Othoman. A wise plan and a practical, indeed! Does this British journal need to be informed that the distinction of race is indelible in the East? Has England, after a seven hundred years' experiment, succeeded in moulding the Anglo-Saxon and Irish into one homogeneous

people? and has she with all her efforts succeeded in establishing harmonious political action between the Protestant Saxons and the Catholic Celts? Well, the difference of race between the Turk and the Christian is broader and deeper than that between the Saxon and the Celt; and the difference of religion between Christians in the East-except a few Protestant converts-and Mahometans is far greater and more difficult to leap than that between Catholics and English Protestants. Can any man in his sober senses believe it possible, without his conversion to the Catholic faith, if even then, for the haughty and domineering Turk to regard as his fellow-citizens and equals those whom he has conquered, and for four hundred years regarded as slaves and treated as dogs; or that the Christians, who have the memory of the conquest deep in their hearts, who are smarting under four hundred years of wrongs, slavery, and degradation, will ever use their power, if they get it, in any other way than to revenge themselves on their former oppressors He who thinks the contrary knows little of human nature, and still less of the populations of the East. The political amalgamation of the two races and the two religions is wholly impracticable and out of the question. Either the Turks alone or the Christians alone must constitute the political people of the empire, the ruling race. The attempt to amalgamate them will only render all autonomy of the empire impossible, and the constant intervention of foreign governments in its internal administration indispensable.

The Turkish government in its weakness and embarrassments will concede whatever is demanded, and it is said that it has, at the advice of the western powers, granted to the Christian population throughout the empire equal religious and civil rights with the Mussulman population. This may be so, but it is only so much waste paper, unless some Christian power or powers be present to watch over the execution of the grant, prepared to enforce it, if necessary, by fleets and armies. If left to the Turkish authority, it will prove to be a mere sham. How is it to be carried into effect? Are the Christians to be governed by Mahometan, or the Mussulmans by Christian laws? Is justice to be administered in mixed courts, according to the sapient recommendation of Lord Stratfordde-Redcliffe? These mixed courts have already been tried in a few localities, and found to be impracticable. Chris

If

tians might administer Turkish law for Turks, but Turks can never administer Christian law for Christians. the internal administration is managed by the official advice of foreign ambassadors, what becomes of Turkish autonomy or Turkish independence, which you profess to have it so much at heart to sustain? How much more independent would Turkey be, compelled to follow the advice of the English or French, or the English and French ambassadors, than if compelled to follow that of the Russian or the Austrian ambassador, and how much less the disturbance of the present balance of power? Nothing is more certain than that, if the allied powers succeed against Russia, Turkish autonomy is no more, and the administration of the empire falls into the hands of their ambassadors at Constantinople. Neither England nor France is blind enough not to see this, or not to see the blow struck at the solidity of the empire in the recent confiscation of the property of the mosques; and therefore we look upon their profession of engaging in war in order to sustain the independence and integrity of Turkey as so much moonshine. They may wish to keep Turkey independent of Russia, and in a condition to be used against her, but only by keeping her dependent on themselves. Their object would seem to be to nullify Russian influence over the porte, and exclude her entirely from all intervention in the management of oriental affairs. But while a just policy would, no doubt, require that no one of the great powers should have an exclusive and all-controlling influence at Constantinople, we cannot understand why England and France, any more than Russia, should have such an influence.

But Russia, we are finally told, is too powerful for the safety of Europe, and it is necessary to weaken her power, and to erect barriers against her further expansion. That Russia is powerful, and tends to become more so by absorbing the whole Sclavic family in Europe and uniting all its members under her sceptre, and that in this there is some danger to other European powers, we are not disposed to deny. The Sclavic family is, we will not say the most powerful, but the most numerous, of all the great European families. Its numbers are variously estimated, but are probably not far from eighty millions, while the German, the next largest family, reckons only about forty millions. These, if they had one common country, and were capable of acting as one body under one head, would be abundantly

able to defend themselves against any possible Sclavic aggression, but they are divided, separated into different states, and incapable of acting in concert, while the Sclavic population, as to its immense majority, constitute a single body, under one and the same chief. But the Sclavic race is the least aggressive in its character of any of the European families. It has from the remotest antiquity been devoted principally to agriculture, and distinguished for its peaceable habits and dispositions. Brave indeed in its own defence, it has seldom, if ever, attempted foreign conquests. It has, since its original settlement in Europe, never subjected an independent nation of another race, and it is today very far from possessing all its original territory.

We do not choose to lose ourselves in ethnographical speculations or conjectures, but the oldest inhabitants of northern Europe were probably the Letts and Fins, more especially the Fins, who at a remote period possessed, not only the eastern shores of the Baltic and the present Finland, but all Scandinavia, together with the British isles. The Sclavi were probably the earliest emigration from Asia after them, and, driving them before them, took possession of the whole of Europe from the Oural mountains and the Oural river on the East, the Caspian and the Euxine Seas, the valley of the Danube, and the right bank of the Rhine on the South, and the Baltic provinces and Finland on the West, where, not being a maritime people, they left the aborigines, who were subsequently expelled or subjected by the Scandinavians and Germans. They were prior to the Teutonic wave, and possessed originally nearly all the territory now occupied by the Germanic confederation. The German tribes were undoubtedly conquerors, and obtained their territory by conquests from the Sclavi on the one hand, and from the Celta on the other. The original possessions of the Sclavi, if our conjecture is well founded, were far more extended than their present possessions, with all the acquisitions made by Russia under the Romanoffs,a mixed Scandinavian and German family. This may prove that the Sclavi are not really an aggressive race, that they are disposed to content themselves with their own homestead, and have not the elements of a conquering people. We are not aware of their having, if we except the aborigines, ever subjected any foreign family, or founded states which ruled extensively over any other race. The seat of empire has shifted, but whether it was in Servia, at

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