Americans who are most ready to tell their countrymen of their faults, are precisely those who will be the most ready to defend them when assailed by the foreigner. It is their sensitiveness to the honor and glory of their country that leads them to find fault with their countrymen, and the same sensitiveness must make them equally quick and brave to resent any insult from abroad.

Whatever filibustering proclivities a portion of our people may have had, or may still have, we have not yet fallen so low in the scale of nations as to justify the treaty of France and England with Spain to prevent their development, or to prevent us from regarding such a treaty as a national insult, very likely to defeat its own aim. We are not fallen so low as to listen to lectures on morality or international law from the English press, especially from the London Times, which is independent only in its recklessness and inconsistency; which advocates and opposes by turns all sides of the same question, and which is as remarkable for its moral obliquity as for its pompous arrogance. are not among the enemies of Great Britain, nor among those who would like to see her reduced to a second or third rate power. Our personal feelings towards her, as is natural, are kindly rather than otherwise. We wish her great and prosperous. The world is wide enough for her and us too. We do not like her government of Ireland, but we see not how Ireland would gain by becoming independent of her; we do not like her rule in India, but we see no public advantage that would result to the people of India by the substitution of some other power for hers. We see nothing that the world, as things now go, would gain by a dismemberment of her empire. Her downfall would pull down with it more than we care to contemplate. She has yet a mission among the nations to fulfil, and we are not among those who think she has passed into her decline, although we think she has reached the zenith of her power. But we place our own country in our affections far before her, and must defend it, whatever be the consequences to her. If she is wise, she will resign herself to the growth of our republic and the expansion of our trade and industry. In attempting to head us off, or to interpose obstacles to our natural extension, she will not materially check us, but will hasten the day when she must share the fate of Tyre and Carthage. That day will come, unless she returns to the bosom of Catholic unity; but a wise and just policy with

regard to this country may delay it for a long time. Now she and we are rivals but not enemies, and it depends on her whether we continue so or not. There was a day when we were extremely sensitive to the judgment entertained of us by England and Englishmen, when the old feeling of colonial dependence was not yet worn off. We, in fact, looked up to her as our superior, and in many respects as our model. We were wounded by her sarcasms, and disturbed by her frown. But that day has gone by. We laugh now at things which used to vex us, and the arrogant tone, in which John Bull indulges a little too much, now amuses instead of irritating us. The reason of this is, that we feel that we have grown to man's estate, and are really a powerful nation. We are conscious of our strength. We no longer regard England as our superior. We have no impatience to try our strength with her, for we feel that we are able to defend ourselves. Peace is therefore easily maintained between the two states, and will be interrupted only by the attempt of England to grasp advantages which it does not comport with our interest to yield her. Her wisest way is quietly to withdraw from Central America, and to forbear to intervene between us and Spain. She must do it sooner or later, and the sooner and with the better grace she does it, the more will it be to her honor and to her interest. We speak not thus because we think lightly of the English military and naval power, for we do not so think; nor because we think very highly, in its actual state, of our own; for we have no army or navy that is really worth counting, save as the nucleus of an army and navy to be formed. But Great Britain is essentially a manufacturing and commercial nation, and commerce makes at once her strength and her weakness. She is weaker in a war with us than with any other nation, because we are the largest consumers of her manufactures, and the largest producer of the raw material that supplies them, and which she cannot obtain from any other source. Here is what constitutes her weakness towards us, and our strength towards her. A war between the two nations would interrupt the trade between them, and this interruption we could endure, but she could not for any great length of time.

This trade is, no doubt, of mutual advantage. It is profitable to us, and it is profitable to Great Britain. It has built up New York and Liverpool. But it is of less vital consequence to us than to her. With our ingenious

population, with our immense extent of territory, and variety of soil and climate, we can produce and manufacture for ourselves. We could provide for all the wants, and nearly all the luxuries of civilized life, without any foreign commerce at all. We have within ourselves the means, if we choose to use them, of providing for all our wants, of living in entire independence of all foreign commercial relations. England cannot do this, even by taking in all her colonies. A war which should interrupt our trade with Great Britain and her colonies, and throw us back on ourselves, would prove, in the long run, advantageous to us, as the present war is likely to prove advantageous to Russia, by forcing her to a more full and rapid development of her internal resources. But England has developed to the fullest extent her internal resources, a d she cannot fight her battles without foreign mercenaries, or a subsidy to foreign states, or employ or feed her population without foreign commerce. Every year of the war would weaken her, while it would strengthen us. The two nations cannot, therefore, go to war on equal terms; for the one has to draw its supplies, in a great measure, from abroad, while the other draws them from its own resources at home, increasing in proportion to the drafts made. We can lose our foreign trade, not without present injury of a very serious nature indeed, but without ruin, and even with some ultimate advantage, while the loss of her foreign trade would be the inevitable destruction of England.

We are far from believing that the modern industrial and commercial system, inaugurated by the treaty of Utrecht, 1713, and at the head of which is Great Britain, is a system really advantageous to the world, or destined in fact, to be a permanent system. We believe it impoverishes more than it enriches nations, while it favors their moral degradation. It multiplies luxuries to an enormous extent, as we can see by simply looking about us in our own city, but it does not. render a people really wealthier, or render it more easy for them to obtain a living. Expenses are increased at a greater ratio than gains. The general style of living requires an income larger than can possibly be obtained in the slow and regular way of business or industry. Hence the rage for speculation, the reliance on a lucky hit, in which few can be successful, to make a fortune. Hence the innumerable failures, bankruptcies, insolvencies, frauds, dishonest contrivances which are the disgrace of modern states, and are

fast destroying all confidence of man in man. We sometimes think that Great Britain, by carrying with her everywhere this demoralizing system, more than overbalances the good she does by her advocacy of the great principles of eivil freedom and constitutional government. A war with her that should break up this system, and force us to become less a commercial and more an agricultural people, would, we have no doubt, in the long run, prove an advantage to us, both under an economical and a moral point of view. But as long as the system remains, each nation must in self-defence adopt it, defend it, and draw from it. all the advantage it can. Therefore, though disliking the system, we still urge our government to guard it with vigilance.

We had hoped before concluding this article to have received the president's message; but the delay in organizing the house has prevented us. We know not what measures the president will recommend, or what measures the new congress may be disposed to adopt; but we trust that congress will not adjourn without providing for a large increase of the army and navy, for both are now far below what we need for an effective peace establishment. The extent of our territory, the various points needing protection, and the necessity of a national police, so to speak, every year becoming more and more necessary, require a large increase of our regular army, even if we paid no attention to the rule, in time of peace prepare for war. Our extended and rapidly extending commerce requires still more imperiously for its protection a large increase of our navy. We are not likely to need any very large land forces, for we have no powerful neighbors. Mexico is too weak and distracted to give us any trouble, and England would never undertake to defend Canada against us, any further, perhaps, than to hold the citadel of Quebec, while Canada herself, as much as we respect her spirit, and wish her prosperity, could bring no force, worth naming, against us. Whatever forces we are to guard against are and will be naval forces. The hostile powers we may have to encounter can reach us, or be reached by us, only by sea. It is therefore always to the sea we must look, for on the sea is our only serious battlefield.

This fact determines what should be our policy. We know not why there is in many parts of the country a prejudice against creating and sustaining a respectable navy. It is

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true, Mr. Jefferson was said to be opposed to it, although he maintains to the contrary in his correspondence with John Adams; but even if he had been, and justly so, it would not follow that we ought to be now, for times and circumstances have much changed. We remember well a conversation with Mr. Calhoun, certainly one of our greatest and most enlightened statesmen, in which he maintained that we ought to rely chiefly on our navy for the defence of our coasts, and that our true policy is to keep in commission at all times, a fleet large enough to cope with any that Great Britain can ordinarily bring against us. thought would require a naval force one-third or one-half as large as hers. We agreed with him then, and we agree with him now. The true policy of the government, in our judg ment, is to provide for the annual increase of our navy, till it is equal to any naval force which the greatest maritime power of Europe can detach against us. With our three thousand miles and more of sea-coast, we are a maritime nation, and must be a maritime power of the first class. We must have a large navy to secure us the rank and respect abroad to which we are entitled, and which our commercial interests demand. We cut now a sorry figure beside the maritime powers of Europe. Even Sardinia has a naval force superior to ours. It is mortifying to be obliged to say this, but so it is. We hope this subject will receive the attention from the administration and congress that it deserves. If we had had such a navy as we ought to have, our offer to mediate between Russia and the allies would have been treated with respect; the British minister at Washington would never have said that the failure of a single house in Liverpool would make the whole Union tremble, and Great Britain would never have undertaken to recruit her armies on our territory. Lord Palmerston, most likely, would not have sent the British fleet to winter in the West Indies. We should find such a fleet saving us from many insults and mortifications, and tending strongly to the maintenance of peace between us and all nations. The expense of such a fleet is not worth mentioning, and we should be a hundred fold indemnified for it, by the effect it would have on the national spirit and character. We can now afford to do something for the national spirit, for the promotion of high, chivalric, and noble character, to which nothing more than a good military and naval education and command will contribute.