judge, when, like Dr. Kinkel, he has established a brewery, or, like other august exiles, bought a villa on the Thames. Either would be wiser than purchasing old muskets or cavalry saddles, and attempting to return to fields where nature has never meant that he should shine.. It is not very surprising that a man, educated under the influences by which M. Kossuth has been found, should have fallen into these grotesque political whimsies. They are common through the continent of Europe. In Germany, particularly, they remind us of the old scholastic fancies, chimeras buzzing in a vacuum, and eating up second intentions." But it is a little strange to find American statesmen gravely advocating the puerile abstractions of European minds. These political theories springfrom ignorance of that practical business of government. in which our politicians and statesmen are trained from boyhood. They know better. These declaiming rhetoricians, and crafty catchers of the popular gale, in Congress, have no faith in intervention, or the solidarity of the peoples, nor would one of them commit himself to any such fatuity. But it is a pleasant topic for Buncombe. It produces agreeable flattery for the sovereign multitude, for which the thorough-bred politician has at once immense deference and profound contempt-deference, exhibited in a perpetual attempt to flatter it; and contempt, in the choice of the means by which this is to be accomplished.. The right of intervention is an aggressive principle. It is the convenient principle of ambitious nations. It furnishes to them, at all times, the opportunity or pretence for invasion and conquest. Polybius distinguishes between the causes and the pretexts of wars. The pretext of the second Punic war was Roman intervention, for the assistance of the people of Sagentum; the cause was a desire to overthrow Carthage and subjugate Spain. The right of intervention never fails to supply these pretexts. We intervened, in behalf of Texas, against Mexico. Here was, apparently, a difficult problem in the science of the solidarity of the peoples. There were two peoples in conflict. We could not interfere for one, without attacking the other. If there had been no motive in operation but a desire to do justice to the peoples, the United States must have remained neutral. But the right of intervention is a very convenient and flexible principle, and we

found no difficulty in making war upon the one party and annexing the other. Nor was this all. We not only annexed Texas, but a large portion of Mexico also. The remaining territories of that republic are waiting upon the next application of the principle of the right of intervention. Some other province will, at no distant period, revolt, and the people assert their independence. They will claim our assistance, against any attempt of the Mexican republic to coerce them by violence. The solidarity of the peoples will be appealed to. We will again find, in the right of intervention, the pretext for war, the cause for which will be again revealed, by the conquest of another part of the Mexican territory, and the annexation of the revolting province.

This is what the solidarity of the peoples means, if it means anything. It is a new phrase for the ancient approved Roman maxim, "parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos,"-help the weak, in order to subdue the stronga maxim that carried the eagles of the republic from the Rhine to the Euphrates. It is the old story of the horse, that procured the intervention of the man, to drive the stag from their common feeding ground: the stag was killed; the horse subdued to bit and spur. There is no more mischievous principle in the budget of demagogues; not one that produces a larger amount of injustice and wrong. If the consequences were not so serious, it would be vastly amusing to hear our senators solemnly recommending, for the guidance of the United States, as just and honourable, this principle of systematic aggression and intermeddling, which can never be acted on generally among nations, without involving the world in perpetual wars, and which they know has been, in all ages, the instrument of tyrannical and arrogant governments, throughout the world.

When was there ever wanting, among the ancient republics of Greece, a pretence for interfering in the affairs of their neighbours? and how did that intervention, if successful, ever end, but in the aggrandizement only of the intervening party? Rome was never at a loss to find a reason for interposing in the disputes and contentions of the neighbouring states. The right of intervention always supplied one. In Italy, in Gaul, in Spain, Greece, Asia, she continually intervened, to protect or uphold

some faction, or people, or power, or claim, with the never varying result-the advancement of her own dominions. The working of the system is strikingly exhibited in the fate of Sicily and Spain. To protect the peoples of these countries from the attacks of Carthage, or rather, to defend a faction of the people in each state, favourable to Rome, against another faction, hostile to her influence, the Roman republic was always ready to take an active intermeddling part. Nothing could exceed the generous promptness with which she interposed in these domestic conflicts among the peoples of Sicily and Spain. Her consuls and armies were always ready, and she never ceased to lend material aid to the peoples, until they had all become provinces of the Roman republic. The progress of England, in India, furnishes another illustration of the true meaning of the doctrine of intervention. She has carried on no war professedly for conquest-far from it. She has been forced, by the necessary tendencies of the principle of intervention, to interpose, for the benefit of the disputing parties, in the contentions of provinces or principalities, and Begums and Rajahs in endless succession have begun with receiving material aid, and ended with becoming subjects to the beneficent company. It matters little whether the cause for interference be supplied by the dissentions of a people or of its rulers, the result is the same. The tree always produces the same fruit. If cases exist of supposed exception to what is affirmed to be the rule, it will be found, on examination, that the variation arises from want of power only, in the intervening party, to carry out the legitimate consequences of its system, and not from the want of disposition to do so. Nothing but the lack of power and opportunity has prevented the extension of the blessings of intervention from India to China. Some future period will see the advantages of this grand political maxim, in its successful application to the politics of the Celestial Empire and the Islands of Japan. The peoples of those countries will become divided, their factions will seek material aid from the outside barbarians, the Anglo-Saxon will be ready, at the proper time, to confer on their bronzed brethren the benefits of the great principle-the solidarity of the peoples and Canton and Jeddo will become what Calcutta and Delhi now are, examples and evidences of the genuine

effects of intervention. If M. Kossuth had proved successful in his attempt to establish the independent power of the Hungarian nation, he would have given to the world another interesting illustration of the consequences of his favourite dogma. We would see him intervening in the conflicting parties of Croats and Sclaves, and vindicating the principle of the solidarity of the peoples, by subjecting the interests of the surrounding provinces to those of his own nation. Whether that nation had become democratic in its government, or an aristocracy, or continued, by making M. Kossuth perpetual dictator, the monarchical form of polity, the results would have been essentially the same. No power is more exacting than a popular government-none more relentless in the exercise of power or remorseless in oppression; and Hungary, under the modest rule of M. Kossuth, whether as president or dictator, would have made his principle of intervention a rod of iron to the neighbouring peoples. If the people of the United States permit themselves to be beguiled by the crafty subtleties of foreign or native demagogues, into this course of aggression upon the rights of other nations, by intermeddling with their domestic affairs, under no matter what specious pretext of sympathy or fraternity, the growth, the mighty future wealth and power of our country, will prove a scourge and a curse, not a help and a blessing, as we hope they will, to the feebler nations of the earth. We shall play again the game of universal dominion, and furnish to the world another lesson on the true meaning of the solidarity of the peoples and the disinterested benevolence of aspiring demagogues.

If, then, the United States intend to prepare the way for future aggression and conquest, when their fleets shall cover all seas, and exercise unquestioned mastery on either ocean, they can adopt no more convenient or suitable maxim than that inculcated by M. Kossuth. The pretext for intervening, in the affairs of every people under the sun, will not be wanting. Demagogues, at home and abroad, will easily contrive sufficient causes. Proconsular agents will direct and control the factions of distant countries, and the American flag be the signal and defence of all the discontented conspirators throughout the world, who may choose, like M. Kossuth, to mistake their selfish purposes for the welfare of the peoples.

Far other, as we hope, will be the beneficent influences exercised, in all quarters of the globe, by the mighty coming power of our country-the influences of honesty, truth and justice, of equal laws, liberal institutions, unfettered enterprise, unlimited commerce, and, above all, of perfect freedom of religious opinion and worship. In all these things, the example of the United States, steadfastly presented, but not obtrusively or offensively thrust upon the attention of other nations; will exercise among them an incalculable power. We must approach the peoples with no false pretences of bestowing material aid, and so steal into their affairs, to direct and control them. Our gifts must be our examples of industry and intelligence, of civil and religious freedom. They will learn to remodel their forms of social life, by seeing the fruits of our polity. If war must come, as it occasionally will, between ourselves and other countries, let it come under no scoundrel pretexts of helping a faction, that may choose to call itself the people and champion of the people's liberties, against the government of their own country; but in the form of generous strife, that recognizes and honours the loyalty of the citizen to his nation and government, and scorns even such a man as Moreau, when in arms against them.

We have seen, in a very late movement among some of the Christian churches of our country, a striking illustration of the manner in which the United States may spread broadly over the world the salutary influences of equal laws and free government. It is in the form of a calm, religious, brotherly appeal, inviting the catholics of Europe to extend to protestants and others, in catholic countries, the religious freedom enjoyed in this, by catholics, as by all other persuasions-to permit the Calvinist, Lutheran and Jew, in Spain and Rome, to worship God in his own way, and according to his own conscience. It is an invitation to the catholic churches of the United States to combine with all others, in this labour of Christian love, for imparting to other countries the religious freedom so largely enjoyed in our own. The proposal disclaims all interference with the government of any nation, all means of influence but persuasion, example, and the inducements of Christian charity, all desire of acting, but through the convictions, which our country so