at once be assented to by every free trader. They into which they have been involved by her own require to be allowed to export and import under bad tuition. any flag; to refine their own sugars on the spot, and to dispose of them in the home market on the same terms as the British refiner; to import any kind of sugar and molasses, and to distil from them; and, finally, that their rums should be admitted to home consumption, paying the same duty as British spirits. Such demands amount to nothing more than the liberty of making the most of their capital and industry, and ought to be liberally and cheerfully conceded. We have a few words of advice to give the West Indians before we conclude. Their means are reduced; the people of England will no longer pay their rents and profits; and, like prudent private persons, they ought to set about retrenching their establishments in earnest. As yet, they merely talk about it. We take the principal colony, Jamaica, as an example of West Indian expenditure. In the memorial of the house of assembly to the queen, we find the following astounding account of it: "For the four years last past, our public and parochial burthens have exceeded an annual average of 400,0007., nearly equal in amount to one third of the value of the whole exports of the colony." Here, then, is an islet of the Atlantic-much less in size than the county of York, with not double the population of one town of that county, with two thirds of its surface in a state of nature, and having for the great mass of its inhabitants, not industrious Europeans, but listless, semi-barbarous Africans-paying taxes that would suffice for the whole government, civil and military, of half-adozen German principalities; the matter being aggravated by the consideration that the whole military and naval charges are defrayed by the mother-country. Over so vast a field is it possible there can be no room for reform or retrenchment? Is it the legislature, that patronizes this monstrous expenditure, which is to be sponsor for a loan of a million to drain lagoons? Jamaica must give up all vice-regal airs, and henceforward live frugally, and unostentatiously, like others of the democracy. Adam Smith tells us that the whole civil charges of the nine principal colonies which now constitute the most influential members of the American Union, amounted to no more than 64,700l. a year; "an ever-memorable example," he adds, "at how small an expense three millions of people may not only be governed, but well governed." By a recent message of the governor of Maryland, we find that the whole civil charges of this sovereign state, which is four times the size of Jamaica, and contains half as many more inhabitants, are covered by the modest sum of 26,0002. per annum. Making the largest allowance for parochial charges included in the Jamaica, but not the Maryland statement, surely the disparity of expense is frightful. From the Examiner. CHINESE LABOR FOR THE COLONIES.-In the very able leading article on the "Slave Trade and the West Indies" in your journal of Saturday, January 22d, an allusion was made to the Chinese as laborers for the colonies, they being, as you justly observe, the only other race of men, besides the negroes, capable of performing efficient field labor within the tropics. I am well acquainted with the Chinese, having had a personal experience of their methodical and industrious habits, during my service with the expedition from Hong Kong to Nankin. I have long been aware of their peculiar aptitude as laborers for the colonies; and some months since, when this important question was first seriously mooted, recommended a general scheme of Chinese immigration. But so determined are all parties concerned to encourage the importation of free blacks, that it has not as yet met with much attention. It appears that the Chinese are already employed in the cultivation of sugar in Java and the Philippine Islands, and a few have even been imported as free laborers into the slave-holding island of Cuba. You say that it would hardly be worth their while to seek employment at so great a distance, when they can find it so near their own shores. It is very true that they do obtain work, although it is in many cases very precarious and ill-paid; notwithstanding which, however, it must be said to their credit, that wherever they settle they invariably prosper. I feel convinced that if they were assured of steady work and moderate pay, there would be little difficulty in inducing some of the thousands of the superabundant and starving population of China, who yearly leave their country in search of the very necessaries of life, to volunteer their services for our colonies. As to the expense—a very material point-it would not in the first instance, be more, if so much, per man as for the negroes. Let them, however, but once know the way, and I feel morally certain that they would soon flock to the West Indies, of their own accord and at their own expense, as they do at present to all parts of the Indian Archipelago. It is a question worthy of solution, whether we should not be doing much towards the abolition of the slave-trade, by proving to the slave-holders that we have discovered a class of laborers apt for the purposes of tropical cultivation, and vastly superior to the negroes in every A WEST INDIAN. We greatly fear Jamaica may in future times be held out as (6 an ever-memorable example" at what an extravagant cost the government of 400,000 people inhabiting a small sea-girt island of the Atlantic may be conducted. But, assuredly, the colonists are not the only party to blame. They were ill-brought-up children from their birth; and the parent that foolishly pampered them into prodigality must not only bear a share of the blame, but endeavor to extricate them from difficulties respect. From the Spectator. DEFENCE FOR PEACE, NOT WAR. LET us not be led away from the true point of view in respect of national defence: it is not whether we are to prepare for war, but whether our defences are in such a state as they ought always to present so as to guard against unforeseen contingences. In the heat of disputation, we might be drawn away from that, the real question, and should waste our labor in discussing subjects that have little to do with it. Those who have no earnest care about the matter may not mind letting a very plain and homely question branch out into other topics. Members of parliament in quest of a popular theme-exleaguers in want of a "mission"-professed agitators seeking employment—junior journals seeking a clientela—will all desire to magnify the question, and stuff it full of resources for eloquence, for "economical" agitation, and so forth. The ger that is the new element in the question, but a A correspondent in Paris assures us that we There is no question here of expense. Safety have underrated the present pacific turn of the nais a thing that must be provided for at any cost. tional temper in France-that our neighbors are There can be no 66 economy" in leaving the na- utterly disinclined to war, and that they are much tional security to the chapter of accidents. We amused at our sudden alarm. There is no sudden do not say that our national safety is not provided alarm at their attitude, but only a new consciousfor; but, seeing statements put forth on the high-ness of a want at home. The question is not to est of all authority, that our defences have not been sufficient, we say that they ought to be sufficient. Neither is it a question of aggregate numbers in army or navy: it is not an increase of the gross quantity, nor any special and absolute amount that we demand, but sufficient strength in a particular quarter for a particular service. They who assume that "free trade" will supersede the necessity of national defences do not really trust to their own principle. If free trade would supersede the necessity of guarding against contingent attacks—if it has placed us in a situation of more uninfringible safety than we enjoyed in the last year, 1847-then we need not only neglect to provide against ulterior mischances, but might disband our whole army. If, through free trade, we are to have, in 1848, positively and certainly less danger and hostility than we had in 1847, then our whole military and naval expenditure is a purely supererogatory burthen. Free trade is either a sufficient reliance, or it is not. If it is sufficient, it will prevent aggression, and we need provide no means of repulsion. If it will not prevent aggression, then the question recurs, Are our defences sufficient? For observe, if free trade does not absolutely prevent aggression, but only diminishes the chances of aggression in their number, it does not settle the question of sufficiency of defence. If, for example, free trade has been effectual in reducing the chances of aggression, say from three to one in the year, still our defence must be sufficient on that one occasion, or we should then be as ill off as ever. The danger of aggression may be less than it has been from one particular quarter, and we are willing to believe that it is. It is not a new dan be settled in France, or in any other foreign country. It is not our part to watch the shifting moods in a changeful neighbor. We must be always sufficiently prepared for what may happen in the ever-recurring circle of events, among which is war. The English wish for peace, and they are steadfast in that wish; but a neighbor, whose pacific professions are just now so exaggerated, has by no means displayed the same steadfastness. Very trifling incidents may provoke a contrary mood. They have done so not long back, and might do so again at any moment. Nothing could be more paltry than the Pritchard affair, yet it was the occasion of a project for a descent on England. Our government, as we learn from Admiral Bowles, received positive information that the French meditated a sudden attack on Portsmouth by armed steamers; and the emphatic opinion of one of the most intrepid commanders in our navy is freely quoted, that if the attempt had been made, we had then no means of stopping its execution. About the same time, we understand, Sir Robert Peel was so impressed by what came to his knowledge, that he immediately, on his own responsibility, without waiting for parliament, ordered an expenditure of 50,000l. towards bettering the defences; and Portsmouth has since been further strengthened. That is not the only instance in which the idea of attacking England has been disclosed by the French, even within the reign of "The Napoleon of peace." When King Louis Philippe visited us four years ago in friendly guise, he was struck with admiration at what he saw in "the capital of the commercial world;" he deplored, even in fancy, the havoc that a war might inflict on his old hospitable friends the English; and, in the openness of his heart, good man! he went so far as to disclose a danger of which his friends had national independence, in the Hanse Towns. And been unconscious. About 1840, when considera- theoretically, we perceive at once that it cannot ble irritation against this country existed in France, exert greater influences than those which exist in some of Louis Philippe's officers were prepared material objects. It is the poet, not the merchant with plans for a descent on England: they showed or retail shopkeeper, who finds 66 sermons in him how thirty thousand men might be landed stones"-in hearthstones, for instance; Westwithin easy distance of London, and how clear phalia hams carry with them no moral conviction; the road to our metropolis! Various motives for rein-deer tongues, however multitudinous, are the wily king's disclosure may be conjectured: mute; Baltic timber, however superior to Canathey were probably not unmixed-not all disinter-dian, is not more edifying, except in Spenser's ested, nor yet all insincere. Now, though we do not desire to war against France, does it follow that we are indifferent to her warring upon us? Or, if we tempted her to do so, should we be fostering peace? We seek nothing more, nor anything less, than defence for peace itself. From the Spectator. FREE TRADE IS NOT THE UNIVErse. sense, when he mentions "a little chapel edified" in a wood; the sweetness of sugar is purely physical, not moral. English hard-ware and delf are good, so are French silks and claret; but the mutual interchange imparts no intellectual virtues either to pen-knives or pale brandy; and the pictorial instructiveness of a figured dinner-plate or silk dress does not equal that of an ancient Mexican picture-book or an Egyptian hieroglyphic. Free trade can directly produce no moral sensation which is not the effect of sugar, cotton, silk, SOME worthy enthusiasts seem to think that free trade is the philosopher's stone, the inclusive cre-earthenware, and such substantial articles; indiator of all things human They ascribe to their formula such omnipotence, that it really becomes necessary to make distinctions between those few things which lie within its scope and all the rest of the universe. What free trade can do, in a word, is to give the productive resources of a country liberty of action, and thus to increase the riches of that country. Free trade is the exchange of goods unrestricted by distinctive fiscal burdens or prohibitions; but even in its largest aspect it is still no more than exchange of goods. It is freedom to exchange corn, wine, oil, cotton, silk, timber, metals, and other tangible things which are articles of sale; and the power to exchange implies a juster division of employments among workmen of different lands, so that each may take that which is most suitable to him, and may therefore produce a larger quantity. Free trade thus increases material wealth. It has certain indirect consequences, which are not different from those of commerce of any kind; only it is to be presumed that, when free, commerce will exhibit those consequences in the largest proportion. By increasing the productive powers of mankind generally, commerce tends to foster the natural capacities of man. By multiplying opportunities of intercourse, it tends to promote friendly dispositions, mutual enlightenment, and civilization. By augmenting abundance, it tends to produce ease, contentment, and the good feelings belonging to that condition. rectly, it increases such opportunities for mutual instruction in manners and knowledge as belong to the shop, the counting-house, the exchange, and the quay-not places the most famous as intellectual or moral schools. Those facilities, too, may exist without free trade: protective England offered far greater facilities for the foreign traveller, and therefore for intellectual commerce, than free-trade Turkey. Art, a much higher social influence than trade, rose in Italy as political and commercial freedom declined. Learning flourishes within the circle of the Zollverein; the savoir vivre within exclusive France. Shakspeare wrote without the inspiration of free trade; in spite of tariffs, Rossini's passionate language vibrates from the Baltic to the Mediterranean; the pulse of love is not dependent on the custom-house-officer; the ethics of Christianity know no fiscal confines. These things exist without free trade, and are not created by it. But free trade has some positive drawbacks—it may do its share of harm. By augmenting material wealth, it tends to materialize the ideas of a nation. By bringing into greater prominence mere commercial success, it tends to exalt the commercial test of "profit" into a standard of worth for higher things; insomuch that at this moment we have before us a spectacle incredible to the great patriots of ancient Greece or Rome, or of modern Europe-men reducing the question of national safety and honor to one of "pounds, shillings, and pence!" Books remain unwritten because they But that is all. Empirically, we may learn will not "pay :" the devotion which is necessary that free trade cannot perform many most impor- to art is suppressed by material worldliness; in tant functions needed by the body corporate. That English society, no virtue can cause poverty to be it cannot produce political freedom, we see in Tur-"received" except upon sufferance, no vice or key; nor social concord, in Switzerland; nor meanness can exclude wealth. PROSPECTUS. This work is conducted in the spirit of Littell's Museum of Foreign Literature, (which was fayor- ably received by the public for twenty years,) but as it is twice as large, and appears so often, we not only give spirit and freshness to it by many things which were ex- cluded by a month's delay, but while thus extending our scope and gathering a greater and more attractive variety, are able so to increase the solid and substantial part of our literary, historical, and political harvest, as fully to satisfy the wants of the American reader. The elaborate and stately Essays of the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and other Reviews; and Blackwood's noble criticisms on Poetry, his keen political Commentaries, highly wrought Tales, and vivid descriptions of rural and mountain Scenery; and the contributions to Literature, History, and Common Life, by the sagacious Spectator, the sparkling Examiner, the judicious Athenæum, the busy and industrious Literary Gazette, the sensible and comprehensive Britannia, the sober and respectable Chris- tian Observer; these are intermixed with the Military and Naval reminiscences of the United Service, and with the best articles of the Dublin University, New Monthly, Fraser's, Tait's, Ainsworth's, Hood's, and Sporting Mag- azines, and of Chambers' admirable Journal. We do not consider it beneath our dignity to borrow wit and wisdom from Punch; and, when we think it good enough, make use of the thunder of The Times. We shall increase our variety by importations from the continent of Europe, and from the new growth of the British colonies. The steamship has brought Europe, Asia, and Africa, into our neighborhood; and will greatly multiply our con now becomes every intelligent American to be informed of the condition and changes of foreign countries. And this not only because of their nearer connection with our- selves, but because the nations seem to be hastening, through a rapid process of change, to some new state of things, which the merely political prophet cannot compute Geographical Discoveries, the progress of Colonization, (which is extending over the whole world,) and Voyages and Travels, will be favorite matter for our selections; and, in general, we shad systematically and very ully acquaint our readers with the great department of Foreign affairs, without entirely neglecting our own. While we aspire to make the Living Age desirable to all who wish to keep themselves informed of the rapid progress of the movement-to Statesmen, Divines, Law- yers, and Physicians-to men of business and men of leisure-it is still a stronger object to make it attractive and useful to their Wives and Children. We believe that we can thus do some good in our day and generation; and hope to make the work indispensable in every well-in- formed family. We say indispensable, because in this day of cheap literature it is not possible to guard against the influx of what is bad in taste and vicious in morals, in any other way than by furnishing a sufficient supply of a healthy character. The mental and moral appetite We hope that, by "winnowing the wheat from the chaff" by providing abundantly for the imagination, and by a large collection of Biography, Voyages and Travels, History, and more solid matter, we may produce a work Agencies. We are desirous of making arrangements, in all parts of North America, for increasing the circula- tion of this work-and for doing this a liberal commissio will be allowed to gentlemen who will interest themselve Postage. When sent with the cover on, the Living Age consists of three sheets, and is rated as a pamphlet, at 44 cents. But when sent without the cover, it comes within the definition of a newspaper given in the law, and cannot legally be charged with more than newspaper postage, (1) cis.) We add the definition alluded to:- A newspaper is "any printed publication, issued in numbers, consisting of not more than two sheets, and published at short, stated intervals of not more than one month, conveying intelligence of passing events." Monthly parts. For such as prefer it in that form, the Living Age is put up in monthly parts, containing four or five weekly numbers. In this shape it shows to great advantage in comparison with other works, containing in each part double the matter of any of the quarterlies. But we recommend the weekly numbers, as fresher and fuller of life. Postage on the monthly parts is about 14 cents. The volumes are published quarterly, each volume LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 204.-8 APRIL, 1848. From Blackwood's Magazine. THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE.* RUSSIA is the most extraordinary country on the globe, in the four most important particulars of empire-its history, its extent, its population, and its power. It has for Europe another interest-the interest of alarm, the evidence of an ambition which has existed for a hundred and fifty years, and has never paused; an increase of territory which has never suffered the slightest casualty of fortune; the most complete security against the retaliation of European war; and a government at once despotic and popular; exhibiting the most boundless authority in the sovereign, and the most boundless submission in the people; a mixture of habitual obedience, and divine homage the reverence to a monarch, with almost the prostration to a divinity. man. Its history has another superb anomaly: Russia gives the most memorable instance in human annals, of the powers which lie within the mind of individual Peter the Great was not the restorer, or the reformer of Russia; he was its moral creator. He found it, not as Augustus found Rome, according to the famous adage, “brick, and left it marble;" he found it a living swamp, and left it covered with the fertility of laws, energy, and knowledge; he found it Asiatic, and left it European; he removed it as far from Scythia, as if he had placed the diameter of the globe between; he found it not brick, but mire, and he transformed a region of huts into the magnificence of empire. Russia first appears in European history in the middle of the ninth century. Its climate and its soil had till then retained it in primitive barbarism. The sullenness of its winter had prevented invasion by civilized nations, and the nature of its soil, one immense plain, had given full scope to the roving habits of its half famished tribes. The great invasions which broke down the Roman empire, had drained away the population from the north, and left nothing but remnants of clans behind. Russia had no sea, by which she might send her bold savages to plunder or to trade with Southern and Western Europe. And, while the man of Scandinavia was subduing kingdoms, or carrying back spoil to his northern crags and lakes, the Russian remained, like the bears of his forest, in his cavern during the long winter of his country; and even when the summer came, was still but a melancholy savage, living like the bear upon the roots and fruits of his ungenial soil. It was to one of those Normans, who, instead of steering his bark towards the opulence of the * Secret History of the Court and Government of Russin, under the Emperors Alexander and Nicholas. By H. SCHNITZLER. Two vols. Bentley: London. 4 south, turned his dreary adventure to the north, that Russia owed her first connection with intelligent mankind. The people of Novgorod, a people of traders, finding themselves overpowered by their barbarian neighbors, solicited the aid of Ruric, a Baltic chieftain, and, of course, a pirate and a robber. The name of the Norman had earned old renown in the north. Ruric came, rescued the city, but paid himself by the seizure of the surrounding territory, and founded a kingdom, which he transmitted to his descendants, and which lasted until the middle of the sixteenth century. In the subsequent reign we see the effect of the northern pupilage; and an expedition, in the style of the Baltic exploits, was sent to plunder Constantinople. This expedition consisted of two thousand canoes, with eighty thousand men on board. The expedition was defeated, for the Creeks had not yet sunk into the degeneracy of later times. They fought stoutly for their capital, and roasted the pirates in their own canoes, by showers of the famous "Greek fire.” Those invasions, however, were tempting to the idleness and poverty, or to the avarice and ambition of the Russians; and Constantinople continued to be the great object of cupidity and assault, for three hundred years. But the city of Constantine was destined to fall to a mightier conqueror. Still, the northern barbarian had now learned the road to Greece, and the intercourse was mutually beneficial. Greece found daring allies in her old plunderers, and in the eleventh century she gave the Grand-duke Vladimir a wife, in the person of Anna, sister of the emperor Basil II.; a gift made more important by its being accompanied by his conversion to Christianity. A settled succession is the great secret of royal peace: but among those bold riders of the desert, nothing was ever settled, save by the sword; and the first act of all the sons, on the decease of their father, was, to slaughter each other; until the contest was settled in their graves, and the last survivor quietly ascended the throne. But war, on a mightier scale than the Russian Steppes had ever witnessed, was now rolling over Central Asia. The cavalry of Genghiz Khan, which came, not in squadrons, but in nations, and charged, not like troops, but like thunderclouds, began to pour down upon the valley of the Wolga. Yet the conquest of Russia was not to be added to the triumphs of the great Tartar chieftain a mightier conqueror stopped him on his way, and the Tartar died. His son Toushi, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, burst over the frontier at the head of half a million of horsemen. The Russian princes, hastily making up their quarrels, advanced |