and which in the eyes of politicians will redeem | it possible for the Irish in Liverpool to take the organization from contempt, for it im- Liverpool are dangerous by reason of their parts to it the element which statesmen imbecility, - of their freedom from all the most heartily fear, something which restraining influences of judgment, and makes all received methods of calcula- foresight, and insight into facts. The Fenition inapplicable. During the Indian muti- ans had no leaders capable of perceiving ny the circumstance which of all others that the advent of 200,000 Americans was most embarrassed the Indian Government was this, they could never tell the limits of sepoy ignorance. A regiment might be cantoned in a place where its destruction if it rebelled was a physical certainty, might be surrounded with Europeans or Sikhs, might be divided against itself, might be absolutely powerless from sickness or desertions, and yet there was no security that it would not suddenly break out. One regiment mutinied in the midst of foes who destroyed it there and then; another rose nearly a thousand miles from succour, with the certainty that it would march across a hostile kingdom of forty millions; a third threw a province into disorder by rebelling with less than a hundred men. When an insurrection is headed by men of education, or standing, or wealth, statesmen have some basis for calculation. They can reason, or argue, or concede, or at worst, coerce. With an O'Connell it is possible to deal by compromise, with a Fitzgerald_official menaces have a meaning, even an Emmett does not fling peasantry armed with sticks upon British regiments and artillery. With such men in the front a province can be kept quiet in the last resort by an exhibition of irresistible force, by troops and police, and the visible existence of preparation. They can understand even a force they do not see, and unless driven mad by oppression will not stir till they have some reasonable chance of success, will in fact act in a greater or less degree from the same motives as statesmen do, and which statesmen therefore can in some degree anticipate. But no man can anticipate even in thought the course which men like these Fenian leaders would adopt. They are capable of rebelling in a county in which they have not a hundred followers, of threatening London with the vengeance of the Irish quartier behind Great Ormond Street, of trying to seize Cork and defeat its garrison with a squad of half-drilled peasants, of hurling their followers barehanded on to men armed with Enfield rifles. Any rumour is enough to deceive them, if only it is a rumour they like. No information is sufficient to deter them, if only it is at variance with their preconceived convictions. Ignorance is power sometimes as well as knowledge, and men who can conceive an impossibility, of recognizing the neces sity of organization, of doubting rubbishy stories about military disaffection, of in short understanding the facts with which they were about to deal. And therefore the Fenians were formidable, not indeed to the Empire, but to the peace and good order of certain Irish counties. Had they been Scotchmen, the Government would have let them alone, confident that they had no adequate means of resistance, and certain that they would never rise until they had. On the celebrated 10th of April, 1848, the city which after London required the most attention was Glasgow, where the Chartists were exceedingly strong, and had unusual facilities for defying both the soldiery and police. The Home Secretary, however, contented himself with a quiet order that no message not official should be transmitted from London to Glasgow, sat quite secure. He knew perfectly well that the canny Scotch operatives, however full of political feeling, would never stir till they knew their friends were in overt movement, would never fling themselves away in an isolated insurrection, would never refuse to recognize any existing facts. He was perfectly right; nobody moved in Glasgow, but the precaution as applied to Fenians would have been an imbecility. They would not have been able to see that isolation was dangerous, would have invented some wild story to account for the non-arrival of telegrams, and would have precipitated themselves on the soldiery out of sheer incapacity to understand political facts. The Northern Whig, we see, thinks it very hard that Irishmen should be called children, and so it may be, but it is not hard that Fenians should be so called, but only kindly. No one knows better than that journal that had a strong rumour floated through Cork of the arrival of an American fleet, the Fenians of that city were perfectly capable of announcing that the hour had arrived, and declaring war on the British Empire. That is childishness, and childishness of a kind which for the child's own sake requires a moderate application of the rod. To argue that Fenianism was not dangerous because no one of education, or position, or military skill was connected with it, is simply to argue that a madman is not dangerous because he has no sense. It is very difficult for Englishmen, accustomed always to seek practical ends, to discuss Fenianism without trying to discover a remedy for the evil, but we believe the Irish observers are right. There is no remedy except perhaps time and education. Medicine cannot discover a drug which will cure hypochondria, nor statesmanship a law which will eradicate from the minds of a people a false ideal. The body may be brought into a condition with which hypochondriasis is incompatible, and Ireland may be raised to a state in which disaffection will seem absurd, but there is no specific for the nation, any more than for the man. It is the peasants' ideal which needs changing, and laws can never affect an ideal. It is the nobler part of the Irish cottier which is in fault-his imagination which is diseased, his power of self-sacrifice which is dangerous, his unselfish pursuit of an Utopia for his country which compels Government to employ force, and it is very difficult to legislate virtues out. There are grievances existing in Ireland which ought to be redressed, which the Liberal party is greatly in the wrong not to redress immediately, but there is no proof that redress will in itself extinguish Fenianism. Equality of creeds will not conciliate men who hate the foreign priesthood rather less virulently than their own, a new tenure will not satisfy men dreaming of a new nationality, even social equality-the habitual courtesy of treatment which Englishmen as a nation refuse to everybody-will not assuage the thirst for social superiority. "I shall soon be above you," said one poor conspirator to the magistrates, and, when a man has dreamed such dreams, a régime of justice looks but a pale substitute. There is nothing for it but to wait till education has done its usual work, and the ideal has expanded, as it must do sooner or later, from that of an independent, very rich, very glorious, and very highly coloured Ireland, to that of a great free Empire, of which Ireland and England shall be equally only parts. The change has occurred in Scotland without eradicating localism, and it may occur also in Ireland. The way to hasten it is, we believe, to do what we did do in Scotland, get the local institutions into some sort of harmony with the genius of the people. As Scotland has her separate religious life and separate code of law, so Ireland must have the separate land system which is the distinctive crave of the race which occupies it. Everywhere on the Continent the Celtic race has secured to the cultivator the ownership of the soil, and thus changed the most mutable of all the families of men into the most conservvative. The same process must be repeated in Ireland, not by confiscation, but by rendering land as saleable as a watch,- in which case the small cultivator will ultimately bid highest, giving fifty years' purchase, as he does in Belgium, or attacking the waste, as he does in Aberdeenshire, or by so re-arranging the relation of landlord and tenant that mutual confidence is possible. It is not possible while the tenant has to make the improvement, and then to till his farm exposed to the risk of losing it at the discretion of another man, who has a direct interest in exercising that discretion against him. It is not possible while the tenant has always to deal with a middleman who exercises over him all the power of a landlord, but has none of the interest a landlord necessarily acquires in the prosperity and contentment of the tenantry. If agrarian outrage had disappeared Ireland would be at this moment the least criminal country in Europe, and the cause of agrarian outrage is the fact that the race which tills, has one set of opinions about tenure, and the race which owns, another. The latter set may be the. juster, as they are certainly the simpler, but until they are brought into harmony there can among an agricultural people be no genuine content, none of that deep reverence for institutions which kills Fenianism and similar follies. Scarcely a section of the Irish people are Fenian even in sympathies, yet from the absence of this conservative impulse even that fraction can throw whole counties into disorder, drive away tourists, arrest profitable projects, and make a country side shiver with fear because an armed vessel has been seen on an unusual corner of the coast. There are more Irish in many English counties in September than there are Fenians in any Irish county, yet they might talk treason for ever without disturbing the farmers' equanimity. The superincumbent weight is too great for them, and if we could but create a class of yeoman proprietors or of contented tenants, so also it would be in Ireland. The Fenian leaders are contemptible, their means are trifling, their organization is ludicrously defective, but the more these facts are urged the more pressing becomes the radical question, what is the evil existing in Ireland that the haughtiest Government in the world, which habitually turns to all dangers the same aspect of patient scorn, should depart from its best loved principles in order to arrest fifty or sixty obscure fools for talking treason and drilling with big sticks? As we believe, the cause is the application of a tenure peculiar to one civilization, namely, absolute ownership, to the land occupied by men really belonging to another. The removal of that evil will not, as we said, abolish Fenianism, but it will abolish the causes which make Fenianism dangerous, and will ultimately change the ideal in search of which Irish peasants are now willing to risk life and liberty. Irish selfishness has already strongly allied itself with England, the point now remaining is to bind to ourselves also Irish self-sacrifice. From the Saturday Review, 30th Sept. RECENT CHANGES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW. INTERNATIONAL law is constantly in process of formation, being added to, or done away with, or modified. A very large part of it, consisting of the usages which civilized nations adopt towards each other in the intercourse of peace or under the various circumstances of war, grows exactly as the common law, or the equity law, of England grows. New cases are decided, and old principles are extended or restricted in their application. But the general body of the law remains, answering, in a manner more or less adequate, the wants of daily life, and recording at least the mode in which a long experience has determined that disputes may best be decided which must practically be decided in some way or other. The general mass of private international law, the rules as to domicile, as to maritime boundaries, as to salvage and recapture and the like, have been long accepted by jurists, and are scarcely ever the subject of discussion. But the larger and vaguer doctrines-those which bind, or affeet to bind, national policy, and the duties of nations to each other are constantly being changed. Any nation can set up what it pleases to call a doctrine, and can hold it until it is forced to change it, or is brought to see the wisdom of foregoing it; and nothing can be of more importance to the world at large than the nature of the train of thought which prompts a nation to set up or abandon these positions of international law. If the train of thought is one that runs in the groove of moderation, good sense, and uprightness, the world is made so much the better, and a pledge is given that further steps will be taken in the same direction. If it runs in the groove of violence, robbery, jealousy, arrogance, or hypocrisy, the world is made so much the worse, and things are likely to go worse still. The abandonment of the MONROE doctrine by the United States is an instance under the first head, and the treatment of the Duchies by Prussia is an instance under the second. When the MONROE doctrine was first set up, it was a good doctrine. It was a protest on behalf of liberty against an audacious attempt to subjugate the world and bring both hemispheres under the sweep of the blighting curse which the Holy Alliance called orderly government. The United States proclaimed to the absolutists of the Old World that if an attempt were seriously made to coerce the revolted colonies of Spain on the mere ground that they chose to form themselves into republics, there was a great Republic in America that would try to prevent the wrong. The threat succeeded, and the Spanish colonies had free play given them, and were allowed to form themselves quietly and peaceably into the most demoralized, abject, anarchical, Heaven-forgotten communities that ever disgraced the civilized world. But the remembrance of their triumph lived on in the breasts of the Americans; and as the judicious threat of President MONROE had unfortunately been styled a doctrine, it was supposed that it must contain some general principle; and it suited the energetic, ambitious, tall-talking humour of Yankees to fancy that this principle must be that none of the Powers of the Old World have any right, under any circumstances, to interfere in the affairs of any part of the New World. The fact stared them, and all men, in the face, that England, France, and Holland are actual owners of American territory, and that the Mother-countries of almost all the white South Americans are Spain and Portugal. But it was glorious to to take no notice of this, and to say that the United States were entitled exclusively to preside over all America. The Emperor NAPOLEON tested this doctrine, and founded the Empire of Mexico. It was supposed that at the first opportunity the United States would vindicate the MONROE doctrine, and pull this Empire down; and so much were even outsiders like Mr. COBDEN led away by the verbal inaccuracy of calling a pretension a doctrine, that they thought the Uuited States would be quite right in doing this, and they had not a word to say against so glaring an assumption of unreal authority. The experiment has been made, the Americans have considered their doctrine afresh, and have apparently determined to abandon it. This was undoubtedly due in some measure to the firm attitude of France, and to the general unwillingness of the inhabitants of the United States to pass out of one great war into another; and the readiness with which the doctrine was abandoned was undoubtedly due in a great measure to the strange obedience which the Americans pay to the decision of their PRESIDENT, simply because it is his deci that a war with Prussia would be a greater evil than the maintenance of the principle on which the Balance of Power rests. England especially has shown a strong and unmistakable wish to keep out of Continental wars altogether. Possibly, if she saw another very glaring attack on what used to be called the rights of small nations to exist, but what are now understood to be nothing more than the rights which mice have to live on till the cat comes, she might be in a different humour. But it is also very probable that in each case the same argument would triumph, and that the vast misery, anxiety, and expenditure of a war would sion. But the chief cause of the course seem a greater evil than that some few they have taken is, that they saw on exami- hundred thousand Continentals should live nation that their doctrine was not a right under one set of police instead of under one, and, being an eminently just people auother. The question, therefore, forces itwhen their love of justice is fairly appealed self on us, What would Europe be like if to, they decided they would not uphold a the whole theory of the Balance of Power wrong principle out of mere vanity and bra- were done away with? There can be no vado. They perceived that if any one doubt that no small State would be suffered chose to help forlorn creatures like the to exist which it would answer to absorb. Mexicans, and give them, as the Emperor France would make short work with BelNAPOLEON has wished to give them, some gium and Geneva, and perhaps with Holof the elementary blessings of civilized life, land and with other cantons of Switzerland, they would be doing an infinite wrong to for she could easily govern them if she inthe Mexicans, to themselves, and the world, corporated them. Prussia would take posif they drove out the French without them- session of all Northern Germany, and perselves undertaking to govern Mexico. The haps of all Southern Germany. But it MONROE doctrine became at once ridicu- may be doubted whether France would lous and insupportably burdensome when it think it worth while to incur the risk of was seen to carry with it the duty of impos- constant rebellions by annexing Spain, or ing decency and order on all the mongrel whether Prussia would care to be burdened Spanish Catholics of the vast Southern with the non-German provinces of Austria. Continent; and so it was given up with In the long run, Europe would be divided much good sense, and in a handsome ration- out among a few great Powers, each of al way, without any pretence of saying that whom would have certain dependencies it was not given up. and tributaries, such, for instance, as Italy and Spain would be to France. When once things were settled in this way, it by no means follows that wars would be frequent, or that there would be any thing like the great contests of the Houses of BourBON and HAPSBURG. For all the causes which tend to make modern nations shy of war would operate with increased force. Commercial relations, the vast scale of military movements, railways, telegraphs, books, would all contribute, as they do now, to make great nations very reluctant to fight with each other. Nevertheless, what would have been done would have caused vast misery, grief, and despair to the victims of force-would have trampled out national life, have profoundly demoralized Europe, and laid the seeds of whatever retribution the existence of a Providential government of man may involve. We, too, have had to make a change in The Prussian Government has introduced a change into the international law of Europe which, if carried out to its full consequences, would change Europe almost as much as the MONROE doctrine, if carried out, would change America. By dint of endless wars, after a vast profusion of blood and money, and through protracted negotiations, treaties, and diplomatic arrangements, there has been established in Europe what is known as the Balance of Power, the two objects of which are to curb the ambition of the great Powers by keeping them at peace with each other, and to preserve the existence of small Powers. The Prussian Government has chosen to violate this arrangement, and has swallowed up, or has at least been on the point of swallowing up, a little Power, without a shadow of justification; and it has been able to do this because the other great Powers have decided It From the Saturday Review, 30th Sept. THE SHENANDOAH. our conception of international law, for we the risk of war, to capture a vessel that had have been taught a lesson by events. We escaped out of a British port and bore the have seen that, whatever may have been flag of France, of Russia, or of the United our municipal law on the subject, and what- States, we ought not to have used our ever may have been the rules of interna- strength against the poor, weak, struggling tional law, we cannot allow a belligerent to Confederates., If we allowed the rule to be fit out ships of war from our ports under carried so far as is proposed, and if France any pretence. We have been forced to and the United States were at war, and a think what would happen to us ourselves, in ship built during the war in Great Britain case of a war, if we did not invent or up- were added to the navy of either, the inhold the doctrine that a neutral shall not jured belligerent would have a right to permit the issue of belligerent vessels from threaten us with war if we did not take by his shores; and we have based our decision force, if necessary, from out of the fleet of on one of the surest of all the sanctions of in- a proud and powerful nation a vessel which ternational law the desire so to shape the we alleged had clandestinely escaped from rule that it may guard and uphold our own our jurisdiction. This would be making a interests. We have also acknowledged - very dangerous concession, and England reand shall doubtless be ready, when our turn quires more experience to guide her, and comes, to exercise and insist upon- the more opportunity of reflection, before she right of the belligerent injured by infrac- can possibly agree to make it. tions of this rule to call upon the neutral to be very vigilant, and not to let the rule be evaded by cunning pretexts and dexterous manœuvres. The stricter we make the rule, the further we carry it out, the more rigidly we enforce it, the better for us. has even been suggested that we, at this late hour, should try to catch the Shenandoah, which the American navy seem unable to get hold of. As there is now no Government to which the Shenandoah belongs, we should thus be pleasing the Americans, enforcing the rule with new strictness, and acting without a possibility of being called to account. On the other hand, we should thus confess that we were wrong in our treatment of Confederate ships throughout the war, and it would be difficult to see how we could resist the claim for compensation brought against us by owners of Federal property destroyed through our not having exerted ourselves to capture the Confederate vessels that issued from British ports. Neither consideration should have too much weight. If we have done wrong - that is, if we have made a mistake, and not sufficiently attended to our own permanent interests we need not be ashamed either to own or to pay for our mistake. But it requires a very wide and patient study of consequences to see whether we have really made a mistake or not. We bave hitherto defended our refusal to deal with these vessels when once out of our maritime jurisdiction, on the ground that when once a ship is, as a matter of fact, a ship of war belonging to a recognized belligerent, and is on the high seas, no one can touch her without committing an act of war against the Power she represents; and certainly, unless we should be prepared, at THE change of sky has produced a very singular change of mind in the Correspondent who represents the Times in the city of New York; or it may be that the good fortune of the Northern arms has converted a thorough Southern partisan to a blind admiration for all the strongest deeds and all the weakest prejudices of the Northern people. When an English observer is so infected with the prevailing sentiment as to consider that the cruelty of which a subordinate has been accused is a sufficient ground for banging Mr. DAVIS, who is not even charged with complicity in the treatment of the Andersonville prisoners, it is idle to look for fair and dispassionate criticism on any of the topics about which American feeling is excited. Like most sudden converts, the Times Correspondent probably goes far beyond the prevailing sentiments which have so strangely fascinated him, and, notwithstanding his premature verdict of guilty, it seems doubtful whether the late PRESIDENT of the Confederacy will even be brought to trial. On matters which more immediately affect the relations between America and England, it might perhaps have been expected that facts would be accurately stated, even though the inferences from them might be coloured in harmony with the American view. Mr. SEWARD himself, however, could not have stated the ground of complaint which is |