well-disciplined and well-appointed naval force in order to recover our prestige, and to exert our legitimate influence among the great and leading nations of the world. We showed our weakness under Mr. Buchanan's Administration, when we dared not reinforce or provision a Federal garrison against the protest of one of the pettiest States of the Union. We gave the European nations just cause to despise us, and to treat our power with contempt. The military spirit awakened and the military resources of the nation called forth by the present Administration, have done something, perhaps much, to raise us in the estimation of foreign powers; but fully to regain and preserve our rightful position, we must, after the present war is over, keep on foot an army of not less than a hundred and fifty thousand men, and have a naval establishment that will enable us to assert equality with the first maritime powers of Eu

rope.

We write with a full conviction that the United States, in this civil war, will succeed in suppressing the formidable Rebellion against their authority; but we do not expect them to succeed without a long, severe, and bloody struggle. We do not think lightly of the resources of the Rebels, or of their courage and resolution. We think they will not only be able to bring large forces into action, but that they will fight skilfully and bravely. Their Commander-in-Chief, who, we understand, is Mr. Jefferson Davis himself, is not a man of high military character, or in himself a very formidable general; but he has under him a large number of able officers, educated at our national Military Academy, trained and disciplined in the Federal Army, and ranking among the first and best of the officers of that Army. These officers have military science, military skill, and their military reputation to sustain. The men they will lead into action, though not taking discipline kindly, and not the best materials in the world for regular soldiers, are strong, alert, and brave, accustomed from their childhood to the use of arms, generally good marksmen, and must be expected to fight desperately and often successfully. We do not persuade ourselves that they are to be easily beaten, or that the Rebels can be subdued in a single campaign by any force the Federal government is likely to bring against them. Indeed, it is better for the country that they should not be. The practical lessons of the war will be lost for both North and South, unless it is long and severe, making a

large portion of our young men practical soldiers, and imposing upon the whole country great privations and manifold sufferings.

The true way to regard this war is to regard it as a chastisement from the hand of Divine Providence, as a just judgment from God upon our nation for its manifold sins; but a judgment sent in mercy, designed not to destroy us, but to purify and save us, to render us a wiser, a better, a more virtuous, a more elevated, and a more powerful people. It is intended to try us, to inure us to hardship, to make us feel that all mere worldly prosperity is short-lived and transitory, and that no people that departs from God, neglects eternal goods, and fixes its affections only on the low and perishing goods of sense, can ever hope to be a great, a strong, and long-lived people. Let us then welcome the sufferings, the privations, the hardships, the toil, the loss of affluence, the poverty that this war is sure to bring upon no small portion of our population. Let us welcome them as a severe but necessary chastisement, and let us wish the chastisement to be severe enough to correct us and to ensure our amendment and our future progress. Unless such be the case, no cause of the war will be removed; its seeds will remain, and at the first favorable opportunity will germinate anew, grow up, blossom, and bear their deadly fruit.

What will be the final effect of the contest on the slave question, we pretend not to predict. Nobody has engaged in the war with the intention of putting an immediate end to slavery all who have responded to the call of the President and buckled on their armor, have done so to vindicate the Constitution, to enforce the prevailing laws, and to preserve the Union. But if the Rebels prove themselves able to protract the struggle and to gain some victories, if they carry on the war in the manner indicated by the murder of the lamented Ellsworth, and large numbers of our fathers, husbands, brothers, or sons fall, and the passions of the non-Slaveholding States become roused and embittered, slavery must go, and the war will be in effect a war of liberation. We, for ourselves, seek not this result, for we see not what disposition could be made of the slaves, if emancipated. But that this result will come, we think by no means unlikely. In the meantime, let us say distinctly that while we should disapprove of all attempts to excite the negroes to insurrection, we earnestly protest, in case

insurrections among them should take place without our agency, against employing Federal troops in suppressing them. As long as the slaveholders are in rebellion against the Union, we say let them employ their own forces in keeping their slaves in subjection. If this weakens their force against us, so much the better for us and so much the worse for them. We are not enough in love with slavery to volunteer it any protection. The "pound of flesh" stipulated in the bond we will pay to the exact scruple; but if the slaveholder asks for more, let the penalty fall on his own head. While he remained a loyal citizen and discharged his obligations to the Union, we were bound to give up his fugitive slave; but when he turns rebel, and arms himself to overthrow the Union, we are by his act absolved from that obligation, and he must expect from us no assistance in recovering or in keeping his slave property. If his slaves run away, escape from his control, they are for us free, and we will bid then take care and not be caught; and if, in order to preserve the Union, it is necessary to allow the slaves to emancipate themselves, we shall not grieve, but shall be much better pleased than we are with the necessity under which our fathers felt themselves, in order to found the Union, to bind themselves to give up to his owner a fugitive slave.

But we have exhausted our space. It is a trying moment for our Republic. Popular institutions themselves are on trial. The cause of self-government throughout the world is at stake. But let not absolute monarchs, the oscurantisti, or the friends of despotic power rejoice or persuade themselves that the cause of liberty is lost. The Republic yet stands, and with the brave old veteran, the well-tried soldier, the hero of so many battles who now commands her armies, and who is more than a match for any military skill or science that can be brought against him, continue to stand it will. It has, we think seen its darkest day. The New World will yet prove true to its mission, and be, as it has been from the first, the asylum of the oppressed, and the home of freedom. We bid our friends abroad, who are struggling for free governments or constitutional guarantees for liberty, be of good heart, keep up their courage, continue their efforts; we shall not fail them, but prove ourselves firmer and more efficient friends of the cause than we have ever heretofore been.

ART. V.-Deuxième Lettre à M. LE COMTE DE CAVOUR, Président du Conseil des Ministres, à Turin. Par LE COMTE DE MONTALEMBERT l'un des Quarante de l'Académie Française. Paris: Jacques Lecoffre. 1861. 8vo. pp. 80.

THE troubles in our own country and the stirring nature of the events during the last three months, as well as our inability during that period to use our eyes either for reading or writing, have prevented us from keeping as well posted as usual on European affairs. The preservation of our Republic, and with it the hopes of the friends of free government throughout the world, has claimed our first attention, and made even the great movements in Europe appear to us of but secondary importance. We have hardly kept run of the insurrectionary movements in Poland, Hungary, or Italy, and know little of what are the prospects of the "Sick Man" of the East. The most we have learned in regard to the Old World is that Spain is rapidly rising to a first-class Power, which gives us pleasure; that peace is still maintained between France and England; and that Austria is making energetic and, we hope, successful efforts to reconstitute her empire under a liberal parliamentary government. The French, we are informed, have withdrawn their troops from Syria; but the Imperial government promises not to abandon the Syrian Christians to the tender mercies of the Turks. The French troops, at the time we are writing, still occupy Rome, and though several Powers have recognized the new kingdom of Italy, the affairs of the Peninsula would yet seem far from being settled.

Next after the affairs of our own contry, those of Italy have for us the most interest; and, if we believed that the interests of our religion were inseparable from the Italian political movements, they would have more interest for us than even the civil war in which we are now engaged at home. Religion is man's supreme law, and its interests take precedence of all others. Without religion no man can attain to the end for which he has been created and redeemed, as without religion no people can be really free and fulfil the legitimate purposes of social existence. Christianity is the only religion; and there is no Christianity in its unity, integrity, and efficiency, without the Church; and

no Church without the Papacy. The body without the head is a lifeless trunk; and the Pope is the visible head of the Church. It is necessary to the well-being of the Church that the Pope should be free and independent in the exercise of his spiritual functions. If the loss of his temporal Estates and the establishment of the unity of Italy under Victor Emanuel or any other constitutional sovereign would deprive the Holy Father of his spiritual freedom and independence, we should consider the success of the Italian national movement the greatest possible calamity not only to Italy, but to the whole Christian world. But, as yet, we are not fully convinced that such would necessarily be the fact. It always depends on the Pope himself whether he shall be free and independent or not; for it is always in his power to follow the example of his predecessors for three hundred years under the Pagan emperors, and to suffer martyrdom. Never did religion flourish more, or the Church gain more brilliant conquests, than when the election to the Supreme Pontificate was an election to the martyr's crown. It may be a great convenience for the Supreme Pontiff to be also a sovereign prince and reign as an earthly potentate; but we cannot discover as this is an absolute necessity in the constitution of the Church. We know from history that the Popes governed the Church, watched over its interests, and performed all the functions as visible Head of Christ's kingdom on earth for seven hundred years without being recognized as sovereign temporal princes. Whether the possession of the supreme temporal power over a small Italian state has ever tended to secure their spiritual freedom and independence, has ever been of any real advantage to the Church, or rendered their spiritual power more acceptable or more efficient, is a question which it is not our province to discuss. It may have been necessary, or, at least, useful, in past times, before the consolidation of power, and the formation of the great centralized kingdoms and empires of Europe; but we are not certain that it is either the one or the other in the present changed circumstances of the political world, and therefore we regard the movements going on in Italy mainly as political movements in which the interests of religion are only indirectly and temporarily involved.

One thing is certain, that, since the general rejection by Christian nations of the divine right of governments and the recognition of de facto governments as legitimate,