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the Turk Russia is Christian, and has the right to interpose in behalf of the subjugated Christian population.

As regards the East, the war has, therefore, in our view, settled nothing; and a few years may see the same complication reappear. In the West nothing is settled, except the personal position of the emperor of the French. England has lost Russia as her ally; she had already lost Austria; and she can, in a war with France, count upon no European ally. Austria has also lost Russia as her ally, and will find it no easy matter to sustain herself between France and Prussia. We see not how Austria is to sustain herself in Italy, or what is to prevent Napoleon III. from adopting and carrying out the Italian policy, shadowed forth in his famous letter to Colonel Edgar Ney. She cannot rely on Russia to come to her aid; and that policy so much accords, in so far as it is hostile to Catholicity, with the policy of England, that she can rely just as little on the assistance of Great Britain. If the newspaper reports of conversations held by the plenipotentiaries at the close of the peace conferences, on Italian affairs, are worthy of any confidence, an Italian question is likely soon to arise of far more difficult solution than that of the East. But we are not disposed to credit these reports; and we can hardly believe that Austria consented to assume her attitude towards Russia without being reassured as to her Italian possessions by France and Great Britain.

There are questions enough in regard to the East yet remaining, to make the allies chary of raising Italian questions. Since the foregoing part of this article was written, we have seen the treaty, as published in the newspapers. We see that the government of the Danubian principalities is not settled by the treaty; and there is room for a very pretty quarrel, as to what it shall be. We perceive also, that the hatti-houmayoun, conceding equal civil rights to the Christians of the empire, though communicated to the congress, is not placed under the protection of the five powers, and that these powers disclaim all right to the protectorate of the Christian population, or to interpose between them and the sultan. Thus they have sacrificed the Christians, and left to Russia all the reason for interposing her protection she ever had. The two great questions which led to the war, that of the principalities and that of the Christians of the Ottoman empire, remain in fact open questions, and questions on which the allies themselves are not unlikely to

disagree. Russia will hardly escape being drawn into the quarrel; and we may in a very few years find Turkey flying to her for protection against her present occupants.

But it is idle to speculate on the future. Just at present much depends on the emperor of the French, whose policy or conduct it is never easy to foresee, because he avails himself of events, and never shapes them. He uses men and events, but has not the order of intellect that controls them. We confess we have little confidence in him, and always apprehend more evil than good from any policy he may adopt. We do not oppose his dynasty, for France cannot be a republic, and we prefer the Bonapartes to the Bourbons. But we do not believe it wise for Catholic journalists to eulogize him. Were we a Frenchman in France, we should support the emperor; for there would be there no alternative. As an American, and a Catholic, we believe it would be incompatible with our duty both to our church and to our country to eulogize him. Catholicity is opposed to revolutionism, to anarchy, if you will, to red-republicanism; but she is not the friend of cæsarism, or despotism in any form. She accepts in every country the political order she finds established, and does the best she can with it; but there can be no doubt that the order most agreeable to her wishes, and most consonant to her principles, is the order which is established in this country. To eulogize Louis Napoleon, and to declaim against American democracy in the name of Catholicity, does not become a Catholic journalist in America, and is simply justifying the Knownothing movement. Men placed in responsible situations, in times like these, should weigh well the words they speak. The church is conservative, but she is not a cæsarist.

In conclusion, we must say, the eastern war and the recent peace alike prove to us, that European statesmen take no enlarged views, and act only in reference to temporary questions, Liberal and religious considerations have no weight with them; and they seek only the material interests of the moment. Louis Napoleon is laboring with great success to materialize France, and to destroy the interest of Frenchmen in great moral, social, political, and spiritual questions. If his policy succeeds, we shall in a few years see France as engrossed in material interests, as is England herself, and with just as little sense of religion. The forms of religion and the pomp of worship may be preserved, but religious thought and religious life will have

passed away, not to return till a new calamity befalls the nation. This will result from the fact, that the only freedom that policy allows is freedom to live and labor for the goods of the body. France may, like England, become rich in worldly goods, but she now bids fair to become poor in all that which has hitherto constituted her glory.

We intended, on commencing this article, to speak of the Anglo-French alliance in its probable relations to this western hemisphere; but events succeed one another with such rapidity, and the aspect of things changes so often and so suddenly, that what we should say to day would be obsolete to-morrow. We have no belief in the permanence of that alliance. The questions likely to arise in Turkey, the principalities, and Italy, will most probably dissolve it; if not, rival commercial and industrial interests will prevent its long continuance. But even its permanence has nothing very alarming for us. France will not in mere wantonness, or in a spirit of imperial propagandism, make war upon us; and Great Britain cannot afford to do it, because the injury she might do us would be at least an equal injury to herself. A commercial and manufacturing nation, like Great Britain, must be mad to go to war with her best customer, and without whose custom she must shut up shop. The enlistment question by the energetic action of our government, we presume, is settled; and the Central American question is in a fair way of settling itself. Any flagrant attempt of France or England to gain an undue control in Mexico will be followed by the annexation of that distracted republic to the Union, a thing which we do not desire, but which must come, if European powers attempt to interfere in the matter. Mexico, and especially the church in Mexico, would gain by the annexation, and we could not oppose it on Catholic grounds.

We are of course unprepared for war; and as our policy is peace with all the world, we always shall be unprepared for war, till war comes. France and England combined could do us serious injury, if they were to attack us, but they would by no means be able to subdue us. The third year of the war would be fatal to them. On our own soil we are invincible; and the trial, were it to come, would disprove Buffon's theory, that man degenerates in the New World. Upon the whole, old Europe had better attend to her own affairs, and let us on this continent alone. We wish Europe well; we acknowledge her superiority in

many things over us; but we hold ourselves independent. Americans, ready to take advice, and to spurn dictation; we feel that we have certain advantages which she wants, and is not likely to secure. Here we are not cursed by being overgoverned. Here man is man, and accustomed to rely on himself. He is not in perpetual leading-strings. He is not, as in old Europe, impatient of authority, and yet unable to govern himself. Here he can be manly; and in proportion as he gets rid of Calvinism and his European servility, and becomes Catholic, a member of a church that gives his nature fair play, he will prove himself the admiration and envy of the world. Let old Europe beware how she attempts to interfere with his natural development.

GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES.

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for January, 1856.]

A FEW weeks since the steamer brought us news that our English cousins were in a great ferment through apprehension of a war between Great Britain and the United States. Such a war might well strike them with consternation, for a war with this country would be a far more serious affair to Great Britain than that which, in conjunction with France, she is now waging against Russia,-not so much on account of our military and naval strength or preparations, indeed, as on account of the vast commercial interests involved between the two countries. Great Britain, especially while at war with Russia, has to depend on us for no inconsiderable portion of the breadstuffs and provisions needed for her operatives, and at all times for the cotton to supply her mills, the best market for her manufactures, and at present, for bullion to sustain her credit. The bare news of a declaration of war against this country would bankrupt half or two thirds of her trading houses, stop her mills, prostrate her finances, break up that network of credit by which she holds in thraldom the whole industrial and commercial world, and render it impossible for her to raise the taxes necessary to carry on the war, or to meet even the ordinary expenses of her goverment. She

wonld find herself, without a blow being struck, virtually reduced to a second or third rate European power. The very existence of England as a first-class power depends on her keeping the peace with us, and cultivating with us the most friendly relations. We cannot suppose her statesmen ignorant of this fact, and therefore we have felt on this side. of the water none of the apprehensions which appear to have been so distressing on the other.

Our policy is peace, for we want no conquests but those which are best secured by peace and friendly intercourse. We regard Great Britain and ourselves as rivals, but we wish for our sake and for hers the rivalry between us to be one of trade and industry, not one of arms. Yet we are not likely to tremble or turn pale at the thought of the latter sort of rivalry, if the protection of our legitimate interests, and the vindication of our national honor, render war necessary. We have a larger maritime population than Great Britain, our naval constructors and our sailors are at least equal to hers, and in an incredibly short space of time, if required to put forth our energy, we could construct, fit ont, and man a fleet which would command the respect of even British admirals, so sparing in their respect for any thing not British. Our military and naval officers and commanders we are quite willing to match against those of any other nation, for their science, skill, intelligence, bravery, and gentlemanly deportment, and for men, we can recruit half a million in less time and with less trouble than Great Britain can thirty thousand; men, too, who have all the activity of the Frenchman, the reckless bravery of the Irishman, and the pluck of the Englishman, or the German, with an intelligence and enterprising genius peculiarly their own. We have all our resources within ourselves, and nothing prevents us from being the first military power in the world, but the want of powerful neighbors and a battlefield. In spirit the American people are essentially a military people, combining the peculiar military excellences of the several European nations from which we have sprung. A war with Great Britain would, no doubt, cause us severe losses and much suffering, but we should come out from it stronger than we went into it, while she would come out sufficiently humbled to satisfy her bitterest enemies. We do not court war with her, but we do not fear it. We do not want it, because a few years of peace will do for us all that we could hope to effect by the most successful war.

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