The political aspect of affairs is more pressing. It is of great importance that there should be no hasty conclusion of an ill-advised peace. The English, as history shows, are a nation peculiarly prone to this error. Napoleon said, that even at the Congress of Vienna Wellington had peace as if he had been conquered.' There are many more marked occasions on which, satisfied with having shown our power, we have relinquished the real causes for which we put it forth. So long as Sebastopol was untaken, it would have been most unpopular to do this. The English people, commercial as they think themselves, are as sensitive as soldiers to a stain on their honour. They could hardly have borne with patience that a great national effort should fail to attain a defined and important object. It represented too, in some sense, the cause; in answer to the refined arguments of our Peelite statesmento their subtle questioning of the end and intention of the warthey at heart said, we are fighting for Sebastopol. It became a symbol to the popular imagination; and this we have now lost. In a similar point of view, the death of the Emperor Nicholas was a misfortune to the allied cause. He, as Napoleon did formerly, represented the idea of the enemy. It was felt at Chobham that you must have some fellows in white to run away, and show whom we were fighting with; just so, it was a great advantage to have a Czar who incarnated his cause-to have one single, imperious, stedfast, arrogant, over-weening will, which it was necessary to break or bend. In him we lost our symbol of the enemy; the fall of Sebastopol has removed our symbol of the end.

It is to be hoped that the English people will really remember the cost at which they have attained this great victory. We do not mean the pecuniary loss, great as that is; but the real cost, which our pacific statesmen have so carefully and wisely explained to us. Mr. Gladstone said, on the 27th of May, in one of his most remarkable speeches-“We have seen, a few days ago, with the deepest interest, some of the fainter traces of the desolation of war in the forms of those heroic men who received from the hands of their Sovereign at least an acknowledgment of their glorious deeds. We rejoiced to see that many of those noble forms were again erect, and that they had regained the elastic step of health and youth. But what shall we say to the thousands of our countrymen who sleep beneath the waters of the Black Sea, and under the rocks of Balaklava? What are we to say to our gallant allies, side by side with whom we have been fighting these battles, and whose losses, I believe, have been very severe? If we have lost 12,000 or 15,000 English, and twice that number of gallant French,

great in proportion must be the number of Russians—perhaps four times as many sleep beneath the turf. Nor is there any consolation in what I saw in The Times the other day-and the statement has every appearance of truth,-in which it was said that the loss of the Turks was 120,000. (Cries of "No, no, -Russians.") No; that was the loss of the Turks. If we have, then, 15,000 English, between 30,000 and 40,000 French, and 120,000 Turks numbered among the dead as the consequence of this war, it is no consolation to think that 250,000. Russians have been killed. The total number of the slain is nearly half a million; so that, during this war, on an average, the lives of 1,000 of our fellow-creatures have been extinguished daily."

Now is the time when these reflections become valuable. When they were used to prevent our taking Sebastopol, they were most mischievous: during a great effort, it is unwise to dwell on its agony and intensity; but at present we can scarcely think too much of the scenes of carnage, of wounds and groans, of dying men and grieving women. They will ensure us against surrendering the prize of our victory. Let us think, if a thousand men should be slain daily for a barren laurel-half a million, and thousands since for a status quo! Let every family which has lost a friend reflect if they would like to have lost him for nothing.

A great help will be the dread of diplomacy, inspired by the Vienna conferences. The English people tend to believe in the utility of recognized institutions. Until lately, it was believed that, though the really important points of foreign policy were not commonly discoverable in dispatches, yet, that in some mysterious latent obscure form they truly existed there. It was the same with the science of special pleading. A gentleman of sense went to law for twenty pounds. His solicitor informed him that his case presented points of professional interest, and would be heard at large before several judges. He attended accordingly to a serious and admirable argument of four counsel on profound points of the ancient science-assignments, replications de injurid, rebutters, surrebutters. At the end, he said quietly, "They never mentioned the £20 at all." The day's proceedings cost him £40, and he has never yet been able to see the use of the science. The English people are much in the same position. As to the Vienna protocols, they think those dialogues were "much ado about nothing," that no really effectual plan of controlling Russia was at all discussed there,-that so much intellectual refinement is unnecessary on plain and practical topics.

We now understand something about the power of Russia.

The war at the outset was an object, to one party of irrational fear, and to another of irrational contempt. Mr. Cobden was not the only person who thought he could "crumple her up" easily. Gentlemen who had travelled in the east, brought home the idea, which she has so much striven to communicate to oriental nations, of her mysterious, awful, omnipotent might. Lord Grey, if we remember, divided his speech into a dilemma: either she is weak, and you need not defend Turkey from her; or she is strong, and it is of no use trying to repulse her. The exact truth, as we now know, is halfway between these two conclusions: she is so strong that it has taken a year for the two greatest powers in the world to drive her from a single isolated point; she is not so strong as to be able to retain that point against them. It is idle now to talk of her being unable to conquer Turkey, if Turkey were unassisted; it is equally foolish to imagine that she can do so, if Turkey is aided by France and England.

The real point is very evident. It is to prevent Russia beginning any future war with the wonderful advantages with which she commenced this. We, it is quite obvious, shall not uniformly be able to command the power and resources which we now possess; we do not know what may be our domestic situation; we may have distant wars of great magnitude, American wars, or Indian wars; we may have a commercial crisis, or a bad cotton crop, or a hundred impoverishing events. Nor can we always reckon on our ally. There is no power upon earth upon which it is so difficult to reckon: because there is no power in which the determining and deciding part of the state is subject to so many changes and fluctuations. After sixty-six years of various revolutions, the most thoughtful observers are content to doubt, whether the conditions of any stable government can be found there. At present we can rely on the judgment of one of the most anxiously discerning of living politicians. But we cannot always hope to be so fortunate. The bullet of an assassin, the transition of events, may again throw the practical government into the hands of a large divided Assembly, in which Russia would soon have a party, and of clever newspapers in which the Czar would invest his capital. What would be the foreign policy of such a period no one can say, but it is not likely to be very consistent or very wise. The position of Western Europe may be so different, that it is most necessary that the position of Russia should not be the same.

The only way to prevent this, is to secure the general independence of the shores of the Black Sea. Mr. Gladstone has strongly and justly insisted on the necessity of looking to

the elevation of the independent nations in that region, and not merely endeavouring to cripple and impair the power of Russia. But the truth is, that it is impossible for those nations to be really independent, so long as what is, in comparison with them, an omnipotent power holds the Crimea. Whatever may be the strength of Russia as respects France and England, there can be no doubt but that over Asiatic nations she has, and from her position must have, the greatest influence. This arises from her wealth, from her magnitude, from her resources; it is quite enough without a vantage ground. If you give to the most powerful nation on the shores of the Black Sea the sovereignty of a peninsula which, from its natural position and evident features, certainly must command the whole of that sea, it is absurd to fancy that anything like independence can arise in any of those nations. A recent writer denies that we can judge of the instinct of animals, because it is kept down and utterly depressed by the preponderating influence of man. We are not responsible for this idea; but are certain that, exactly in the manner supposed, it is idle to expect original energy or free development in small and half-formed nations, which are under the influence of a meddling and enormous power.

The Crimea, therefore, we are clear, ought to be taken from Russia, and should never be given back to Russia. Every other means-especially, we are inclined to think, the conquest of Bessarabia-ought to be taken to free the coasts of the Black Sea from the overweening supremacy of Russia. The thorough opening of the commerce of the Danube, a proper treaty with the Circassian tribes, a complete introduction of Western influence into that part of the world, seem among the most necessary steps. But we are not at present concerned to enter into details, which would require much discussion, and will receive the anxious attention of those practically familiar with Eastern Europe. One thing is certain, that the complete independence of the Euxine is essential to the security of civilization, and that no such independence is possible so long as the Crimea is held and ruled by Russian garrisons.

We turn again to the consideration of the great event which has given rise to these considerations. Such a victory is among the greatest of the gifts of Providence. Independently of its remote effects, and putting out of view the protec tion which it has afforded us from the menaces of Barbarism and the pride of Despotism, such moments are the life of a country. They send a thrill through the heart of a people. We feel our companionship in great trials, our common posses

sion of deep feelings. There is little that is truer in human sentiment than the Te Deum for a great victory.

In some sense this is peculiarly the nation's victory. The mens æqua in arduis has seldom been exhibited by more persons. The war was begun in a manner upon the testimony of Statesmen. All those whom the English people had been wont to trust and honour told them, nearly with unanimity, that a war was necessary. The scene lay out of the line of our customary reflections. It was some time, especially amid the nice perplexities of diplomacy, ere we could estimate the force of different arguments and the value of various considerations. But when the real nature of the subject was thoroughly explained, the strong conviction of the nation became more clear, more true, more persistent than that of the Statesmen from whom it was first derived. In opposition to the questiunculæ of negotiation, we felt at once that we had commenced a great war for a great object. Most of our Statesmen were chargeable with Mr. Gladstone's reproach of making war for "small, secondary, petty objects ;" and, not least, the advocates of a war for the four points, of whom the speaker was one. The nation felt that we were "making war in a just and sufficient cause, that will bear examining in our hearts and consciences, in the face of man and in the eye of God." Lord Palmerston is the only man in the whole House of Commons who has, with strong ability and manly energy, worthily expressed and steadily displayed a high and noble daring. It is not too much to hope that we must make peace as we have made war, on just and sufficient terms; not upon "small, secondary, petty concessions; but on sure guarantees; with realized intentions; upon a lasting basis; on conditions" that will bear examining in our hearts and consciences, in the face of man and in the eye of God."