case, and could not intervene without manifest injustice,not, indeed, without striking a direct blow at the right of independent nations to manage their own domestic affairs in their own way. We retort Kossuth's doctrine of nonintervention upon himself. He says, nations have the right to modify their institutions, and to adopt such ameliorations and such forms of internal government as seem to them good, without the interference of foreign powers. As against one another, with the single exception of the right of neighboring nations to intervene simply in necessary selfdefence, and understanding by nations independent nations, we accept and even maintain this doctrine. But in the present case this doctrine applies to Austria and Russia, not to Hungary, for Hungary was not an independent nation, was not in herself a complete state. She could introduce no reforms or alterations incompatible with her indissoluble union with and subjection to the Austrian state. She had no competency to declare herself independent of the empire; and to intervene at the request of the empire to prevent her from doing so, or to aid in reducing her to her allegiance, was not in any sense of the word to intervene in the domestic affairs of an independent state, was and could be no violation of the law of non-intervention. But to have intervened to prevent Austria from invoking the aid of Russia, or to prevent Russia from granting it, would have been a direct intervention in the domestic affairs of independent states, and an undeniable violation of the law of non-intervention.

What Kossuth is soliciting of us is manifestly in violation of the very law of non-intervention he contends for. He wishes us to unite with England in saying to Austria and Russia, that if Hungary again rebels,-for Hungary is not now in a state of rebellion or revolt, and declares her independence, Russia will not be permitted to take any part in the contest, and if she presumes to do so, it will be counted a casus belli. But this would be, not an intervention in behalf of a revolutionary government already existing de facto, but an intervention to encourage a province of an independent state to rebel and organize such government. If this would not be intervention in the internal affairs of independent states, we are at a loss to understand what would be. In any point of view, then, from which you choose to consider the matter, Kossuth's doctrine of nonintervention condemns him, and his insisting upon it proves

that, however brilliant a rhetorician he may be, he is but an indifferent lawyer, and a sorry logician. If non-intervention is the law, we have nothing to do with the case, and have no right to protest against the conduct of either Austria or Russia. If intervention is the law, or the right, as it must be to justify us in intervening at all, then the alleged intervention of Russia is justifiable, for she has as good a right to intervene to put down revolution as we have to intervene to sustain revolution.

But we deny that there was any intervention, in the legal or political sense of the term, in the case. To assist a friendly power, at its request, to put down a rebellion in its states is not intervention, is not to violate the law of nonintervention. The intervention prohibited by the law of nations is the intervention of a foreign power, motu proprio, in the internal affairs of an independent state, or without the request or permission of its sovereign. We have for this the authority of one of the greatest revolutionists of the age, the Abbate Gioberti, who belongs heart and soul to Kossuth's party, and is as innocent of all Catholic faith and tendency as the well-known pantheist, Stallo, who recently defended Kossuth at Cincinnati. Whatever Gioberti may have once been, his recent work, Del Rinnovamento Civile d' Italia, proves that he can no longer be regarded as a Catholic, and that for years he has been a thoroughgoing revolutionist, prepared to carry his points with or without the pope, with or without the church. He is a decided liberal, and can no more than the fallen La Mennais be regarded as a Catholic priest, or as a Christian believer. He must therefore be good authority for Kossuth and his friends. Well, Gioberti, when accused in the Sardinian chamber of having proposed, as Sardinian minister, to intervene in the affairs of Tuscany, replied, "I ask, Is to enter any foreign state whatever with an armed force always intervention, in the political sense of the word? I answer, if this entrance is by the request of the prince and people, it is not intervention; if against the will of the prince and people, it is intervention." * By people in this connection we must understand the people, not of a particular province, but of the state, and the people also in a political sense, speaking through its legal organs, not the mob or club. Now Russia did not take part in the contest against the will,

* Del Rinnovamento Civile d' Italia, Tom. II. p. 593.

but at the request, of the prince and political people of the Austrian state, and therefore neither intervened nor asserted the right to intervene in the internal affairs of independent nations. We are, as our writings have sufficiently shown, no special friends of Russia, and we do not seek to conceal the fears with which we see the advances of the Russian empire; but we are bound to be just at all times, to all persons, and to all states, and we must say, that, since the peace of 1815, we have seen no disposition on the part of Russia to intervene in the internal affairs of any of the western states of Europe, in the sense in which intervention is contrary to the law of nations. It is rarely that we find on the throne an abler or a more equitable prince, aside from his schismatic character, than the Emperor Nicholas. If he were, as he should be, in communion with the church, we should have no fears of his power or his growing influence. All things considered, it will be difficult to name the European state which for the last twenty-five years has been more wisely or advantageously governed than Russia, or a secular prince who has more scrupulously observed his engagements, and respected the rights of his neighbors, than its present sovereign.

There having been no political intervention in the case, and no assertion of the right of intervention, the request of Kossuth for our government to intervene against intervention is absurd. The fact is, all the intervention there has been, has been on the other side. In the first place, in the revolution in Vienna and in that of Hungary, the organized revolutionists of Europe openly and avowedly intervened, and many of the chief officers in the Magyar army were foreigners, such as Bem, Dembinski, and Guyon. Austria had to resist, not only her own Hungarian rebels, but armed Poles, Italians, Germans, Frenchmen, Englishmen, and perhaps Americans, aided by the popular demonstrations of the people of the United States, England, Germany, France, and Italy. In the second place, the English government and our own openly sympathized with the Magyars, and were on the eve of opening diplomatic relations with them. There was no lack of at least indirect intervention against Austria, amply sufficient to justify Russia, had she chosen, in volunteering her assistance to Austria, and in entering unsolicited into Hungary, in the interests of order and humanity, with an armed force adequate to suppress the rebellion.

Little does it become either the British government or our own to complain of Russian intervention. The British government has not ceased, for the last twenty or thirty years, to intervene in the internal affairs of continental states. Blackwood's Magazine for February last, speaking of Lord Palmerston, says very truly: "He supported openly, so far as he could,-favored covertly when this was impossible, the cause of revolution all over the world. He aided by the fleets of England the establishment of one revolution in Belgium, by the marines and volunteers another in Spain. He concluded the Quadruple Alliance to force revolutionary queens upon a reluctant people in both kingdoms of the Peninsula. He covertly aided in the spread of liberal ideas in Italy,-openly in supporting the insurgents in Sicily. He took Russia by the beard in the Dardanelles on account of the Hungarian insurgents; and afterwards, for a wretched private dispute at Athens, ranged France by her side,―all but brought on a war with France by the bombardment of Beyrout, and hostilities against Greece; and irritated Austria past forgiveness by the open sympathy expressed for the Hungarian insurgents." And in the discussion in the British parliament growing out of inquiries as to the dismissal of Lord Palmerston, it was avowed by Lord John Russell that the policy of the government had been the introduction and support of constitutional government in continental Europe. As for our own government, no man can deny its interference in Mexico in favor of federalism, its open declaration that it would intervene to prevent the reëstablishment of monarchy in that now distracted republic, or its unwarrantable interference in the affairs of European states by its expressed sympathy with the revolutionists, by resolutions of congress, the diplomatic correspondence of the secretary of state, and the official messages of the president. England has been constantly intriguing, and sometimes openly warring, for the establishment of British constitutionalism on the continent, and we have become a nation of democratic propagandists, openly, and even through our government proclaiming all non-popular governments illegal, and virtually all crowned heads tyrants and usurpers, against whom it is lawful for their subjects to conspire when they will; and there is little room to doubt that Mr. Webster and Lord Palmerston contemplated an AngloSaxon alliance for the protection and support of the revolutionary movement of Europe, which is headed by Mazzini,

Ledru-Rollin, Kossuth, and men of like character. Mr. Webster, we can believe, intended on our part no armed intervention, for he seems to have believed that the presence of English and American ships in the Mediterranean, and the united declaration of the two governments, would so overawe the sovereigns, and so encourage the revolutionists, that nothing more would be necessary. That something like this was in contemplation may be easily inferred from the acts and avowals of the government, and the lachrymose tone of the honorable secretary's letter to Mr. Rives, instructing him to maintain his diplomatic relations with Louis Napoleon.

Now, if we have a right to intervene for the spread of democracy, and England for the spread of constitutionalism, and to encourage revolutions for one or the other, neither we nor England can deny the right of Russia to intervene in opposition, and by our intervention we give her at least a very plausible pretext for doing so. The silly pretence that the allied sovereigns propose to intervene against our democracy here at home, is unworthy the least consideration, and no man knows it better than our present secretary of state. Mr. Webster pretends that the allied sovereigns, in their famous Laybach circular, assert principles which deny the legality of our institutions; but we have, in replying to his letter to the Austrian chargé d'affaires, proved that this is not the fact. Mr. Webster is a great man. We have never denied it; we have heard him advance truly conservative doctrines, and develop views which proved him capable of being a statesman of the very first rank; but his mind is comprehensive rather than acute, stronger in grasping certain general conclusions than in the analysis of principles. He has strong sympathies and strong prejudices, and is not incapable of blunders which would be unpardonable in a smaller man. He read the Laybach circular as a democrat, not as a statesman or as a lawyer, and entirely misapprehended its character. We have never been the advocate or the apologist of what has been called the Holy Alliance, but we prefer it to the unholy alliance of the revolutionists. That alliance was rendered necessary against the doctrine of the fraternity, the "solidarity," of peoples, proclaimed and acted upon by the French Jacobins; but in no document. we have seen has it ever proclaimed the right of one nation. of its own motion, to intervene, against the will of the sovereign authority, in the internal affairs of another. That