treaty, that, as madmen are put by their neighbours in a strait waistcoat, and they who offend against society are sent to Coventry, Turkey may provoke surrounding Governments to vote it out of Europe.1 “Necessity has no law.” But has Turkey so acted? On the contrary, however far its conduct towards Christians in the East may fall short of that ideal standard by which Russia now takes a fancy to measure it, has there not been for a long time, with occasional exceptions, a marked and steadily progressive improvement in the exercise of its now declining government, as regards them? It would need some sudden and flagrant excess to justify the arming of Europe against it, still more to warrant the zeal of such a solitary champion as the Czar.

But is there no other power which threatens to become, rather than Turkey, a public offender? Are the instinctive and constant apprehensions of all Europe on the side of Russia pure hallucinations? Are they not so strong as to survive every fresh apprehension from France? Is not every help which Russia has lent against revolutionary principles accepted with suspicion, as insincere; with a grudge, as dearly bought; with dread, as dangerous to European liberty? Whatever ties may bind the court of Russia to others, is it not notorious that the hatred of the whole German people to Russia is such, that no German monarch dare tax the loyalty or the pockets of his people in behalf of Russia, and each may count upon both, against her?

Are we so blinded by the spirit of selfish reaction, and so contracted by the spirit of party, as to see none but those proximate evils which the brute can feel, to apprehend danger from nothing but rebellion, and to see wickedness in none but the radicals of Western Europe? Or are we such devotees to the mere catchwords of Christianity, and so given up to believe the religious phrases which political craft takes up into its mouth, (in order to instigate its friends and paralyze its foes,) as to be blind to the realities of things, and deaf to the claims both of interest and of justice? Is our vision so filled with the Antichrist who denies God, that we have no corner for him who confesses Him? Or have we so pinned our faith to the Antichrist of Rome or republicanism that we have no watchfulness left for the great Antichrist of the North, who has lifted his paw to appropriate the spiritual crown of Christ; whose name stands parallel with that of God in the hearts of his serfs, and on the buildings of his realm; and who, at the time dictated by Scythian cunning, will mount his chariot, to drive like a modern Jehu in his zeal for the Lord? Are we Englishmen prepared, after contesting it with those who have paved the way into the East under cloud of night, to look on when the journey is undertaken in broad day? Are we prepared to hail the tyranny of the knout, and the treachery of the bribe, as a blessed substitute for the Bash of the scimitar and the grasp of the spoiler? Are we who, when the fancy took us to be suspicious, could Hardly listen to the pacific assurances of France, ready to swallow any assurance from a government, which is the impersonation of craft, and the tallowy unmoved countenance of which never yet betrayed its passions or projects? Do we believe that those who bide their time in silence are less dangerous than those who anticipate it with bluster? Do we dream that Russia has become such an unwieldy mass, as to endanger us only by its fall? Or do we regard the hordes of the North, which have more than once overrun Europe in savage disorder, as being incapable of doing so again in imperial order? If we do, it is time that we thought otherwise.

Now is the time. War is a sad