part of the Southern States of their allegiance to the Federal Government; and since the Northern States, disputing their right to make such a renunciation, undertook to compel its retractation at the sword's point. From that day to this the world has been held in amazement by the spectacle of the most gigantic civil war that has ever existed, with every feature of a corresponding vastness of proportion. Armies are levied on each side, of numbers which would have excited the envy of Napoleon in the plenitude of his power; sums are lavished in a single year such as never were at the command of Louvois or Pitt during the whole period of their administration; to crown all, new agents of warfare are brought into operation; and, while politicians are perplexed, and financiers bewildered at the complicated vastness of transactions to which they see no solution, military men in Europe are curiously watching one part of the war with a scientific interest, hoping to be able to test the value of the new discoveries in the art of destruction by the experience of those thus engaged in real warfare. Our business, however, as journalists, is rather with the origin, and still more with the probable results, of this great calamity. We cannot take our view of its origin from the parties themselves. From the first they both agreed in misrepresenting, perhaps it would be more fair to say in misapprehending it. Professing an utter indifference to public opinion in Europe, they nevertheless ostentatiously put forward, as the grounds of the quarrel, each that plea which seemed most likely to win favour with England and France. By the advocates of the Federals (to adopt the name by which the belligerents are now distinguished) the extinction of slavery was represented as involved in their success. The Confederates were held up as the champions of political liberty and independence, and of the inalienable right of freemen to choose their own government. As it seems to us, however, the quarrel arose rather from ethnological and social than from political causes; first and more remotely from the diversity of race; and more immediately from the difference of habits and feelings engendered by that diversity of race; and, in a greater degree still, by the dissimilarity of occupations, and of the sources of wealth which distinguish the Southern from the Northern provinces. The question of the origin of the disruption is not merely speculative; on the contrary, it has a direct practical bearing on the probable eventual termination of the strife; which is what we have next to consider; and this question, though second in order, is immeasurably first in importance. Happily for the means of forming a correct conclusion on this point we are not dependent on the information to be derived from the Federalists, who, in all that relates to the present progress of the war, have secured to themselves a complete monopoly of statement. Not that we imagine that their accounts are necessarily, or in any material degree, false; about the capture of New Orleans, or the evacuation of York Town and Norfolk, there can be no dispute, and it may be taken as unquestionable that hitherto the events of the campaign of 1862 have been even more favourable to the North than those of 1861 were to the South. But the conteft is not of a nature to

be decided by the capture of any city or stronghold, however wealthy or important; nor by any single campaign, however full of great achievements. It would not be so, even were it waged within the comparatively narrow limits of an European kingdom; much less can it be so when, even if the battle-field as yet lies amid cultivated plantations, easily traversed districts, and opulent cities, it may presently be transferred (as each successive victory of the North has a tendency to transfer it) to the almost boundless expanse of provinces not yet wholly reclaimed, where every step will supply a fastness for the retreating Confederate, a barrier against the advancing conqueror. The Confederates claim to be fighting for independence and freedom; the way in which they are conducting the war, evacuating their towns so completely that, (as, for instance, at York Town,) not a human being is left behind, save one or two sullen. or decrepit negro slaves; devastating their own lands, and burning their own stores, to the value of millions of English money, lest they should fall into the hands of their conquerors, shows that they believe in the claims they thus put forth. And if they do believe in it, all history proves that such a people cannot be conquered. The unprecedented and causeless ferocity, too, of the proclamation, which has placed the unresisting New Orleans under martial law, is only calculated to add stubbornness to their belief and to their resolution. We are aware that this doctrine is absolutely discredited in the North; we know that not only do Northern politicians and Northern newspapers vie with one another in unhesitating predictions of a speedy triumph, but that even grave ministers of religion, peaceful scholars devoted to the study of literature and science, express to their friends in England as undoubting a confidence in the success as in the justice of their cause. But those who speak thus seem to have forgotten the lessons which their own history as a nation might teach them. In the first years of the war which established their own independence were not the British troops almost uniformly successful? Did they not take New York, and Philadelphia, and win the battles of Brooklyn and Brandywine? And did not these advantages prove not only delusions but snares, leading us on to disasters such as had never befallen British armies in any other quarter of the globe, and serving only to render our ultimate discomfiture more conspicuous? It may be added that, if the continuance of the war which they tended to protract was a calamity to us, it was such also to the Americans themselves, by engendering a feeling of stubborn enmity between the two countries, which an early recognition, on our part, of their independence would probably have prevented. Not that, in saying this, we mean to blame Lord North's Government for withholding that recognition. The revolt of our American provinces was the first instance of the kind recorded in history; and our ministers may be easily pardoned for failing at first to appreciate its true character, and for hesitating to surrender so great a portion of their sovereign's colonial dominions.

But the Federal statesmen in America cannot plead this excuse. plead this excuse. They have not only the light

of our unsuccessful attempt to retain them in their allegiance to guide them; but they actually owe their own existence as an independent power to the successful assertion of the principle which, when put forth by the Confederates, rouses them to fury. We are aware that pure theoretical logic, when unsupported by practical proof, has but little weight with those who govern states; and, therefore, we will not say to the Government at Washington, "Because you had a right to discard your allegiance to us, you cannot deny the right of the Southern states to renounce your authority in the same manner;" but, bringing practical proof to our aid, we may fairly warn them, "The power and wealth and population and resources of every sort which Great Britain possessed in 1775 exceeded those of your forefathers, immeasurably more than the advantages of those kinds which belong to you surpass those of your seceding states now. And, if we failed in coercing you then, it will be found equally impossible to you to coerce them now." May we not go one step further and say, "Supposing, against all probability and all precedent, that you should succeed, what will you gain by your success? Supposing that you suppress the revolt, shall you also extinguish the spirit of revolt; change the whole character of the people of the South, and extinguish the differences of customs and habits and feelings, which have led to that revolt? All this you must do before you can make them once more friendly and cordial towards you. And if you fail to do this, or disown the idea of doing this, by what means do you propose to retain them in subjection or in union, if you prefer the term? (which some of you do not.) If in subjection how many thousand bayonets will be required to keep down eight millions of conquered subjects? If in union, what kind of an union can that be, one member of which is not only recalcitrant by nature, but sore from the feeling that it is through defeat and compulsion alone that it is reduced to form a part of that union?"

We, therefore, look on a restoration of the union between the contending parties in America as impossible; and we earnestly desire to see the North acknowledge this fact, and acknowledge it soon. It is indispensable to their own welfare not less than to the welfare of the South that they should do so. Not only because the war between them is being conducted at a cost that, long continued, must ruin both; but because the early restoration of cordiality is essential to both. As we have already said, Great Britain and the United States both suffered greatly from the sullen ill-will that, after the peace of 1782, long continued to animate the two nations against one another. But the intervention of the Atlantic prevented that ill-will from having any practical development. Had we been conterminous states, we should probably have been at war half-a-dozen times in the next quarter of a century. The Northern and Southern states when separated will still be conterminous states, and being such, cannot be merely illwishers to one another. They must be friends or enemies. It is for the interest of the whole world, but most of all it is for their own interest that they should be friends.

We need say nothing about ourselves, and the part which we have taken, or rather the steady wis

dom with which our Government has abstained from taking any part at all in the quarrel; and the dignified self-denial with which, in spite of the greatest inducements to a contrary course, the whole nation has approved of the conduct of its rulers in this matter. At present it pleases neither of the contending parties. We have no fear but that the day will come when its wisdom and its justice will be recognized by both. Yet the most rigid adherence to the great principle of non-intervention is not inconsistent with the tender of calm and friendly counsel. Mediation, we know, would be rejected, intervention would be resented, and, for the moment, advice will be scorned. Yet to offer it, and even to press and reiterate it may often be the duty of a sincere friend. And England has a greater right to give such advice than any other country, to a nation sprung from her loins, and, even in its present madness, only too faithfully copying her own example.

Such advice must of necessity be addressed to the North alone. To bid the South lay down its arms while the North is attacking it is to require an impossibility—to bid it do so when the North ceases to assail it would be superfluous. In the power of the North alone, then, is the choice of peace or war. And as an impartial friend, sincerely desirous of her prosperity and welfare, we would counsel her for her own sake to abandon a war in which success is not only hopeless, but, were it attainable, would be so pregnant with difficulties and dangers for the future, as to be a curse rather than a blessing. As the original parent of her and her antagonist, we would claim even to add some little of the authority of a parent to enforce that friendly advice; we would say to both, as Anchises said to his descendants, and most emphatically to him who boasted a descent from himself,

"Ne, pueri, ne tanta animis assuescite bella,
Neu patriæ validas in viscera vertite vires :
Projice tela manu, sanguis meus——”

Clergy Relief Bill.

T is very amiable, and in most cases very necessary, to mitigate the harshness with which the old laws imposed the principles which they embodied upon a dissentient minority, and, much as has been accomplished, much doubtless may still be rightly done; but it be may questioned whether changes, in themselves proper, have always been inspired by the most appropriate motives, and whether the present age, in its lack of earnestness, is not so falling into a habit of sentimental tenderness for the few as to blind itself to the higher rights, and to the true interests, of the many. It is at least certain that if a class, however small, can establish a superficial connection between the redress of their alleged grievance and the operation of some pet principle of the time, they will gain a loud support from the well-meaning sentiment of some and the popularity-seeking cowardice of more. In time they will probably carry their point, and as probably, in doing so, bring the principle, the help of which they have invoked, into collision with another and equally important one.

The two principles may have existed side by side for centuries, logically opposed, perhaps, but so instinctively avoiding all occasions of offence that they have worked together, with now and then a few jars, and now and then a little hardship to the individual, yet on the whole harmoniously and for the most real good to the State. But if they are ever thoughtlessly brought into serious conflict, no compromise can afterwards be re-established, and their relative strength can thenceforth alone define the limits of their respective action.

No

It cannot be said that Mr. Bouverie's Clergy Relief Bill has induced such a crisis as this in the relations between the principle of free thought, and that of a State Church, but it at any rate causes one of those petty jars which it is always better to avoid, and which in this case was hardly necessary. Neither principle ought to be lightly touched; and the propriety of Mr. Bouverie's measure depends on whether an injury has been done to the one so great as to justify the infliction of a shock upon the other; or, on what is practically the same thing, whether better moral effects would be produced upon the people at large by an altered law than by that which exists at present. A view of abstract right is taken by the Church, which is so far endorsed by the State that it would seem some grave injury must be established, or some high probability of improvement held forth, to excuse any such interference with the actual state of things. So long as the Church retains its character as an establishment, the State is bound to give effect to its principles, unless they distinctly militate against public policy; and one of the most fundamental of these principles is the indelibility of orders. There is the less reason for any change that it is a principle which is not acted upon offensively by the Church, and is supported in theory only by the State. one imagines that a clergyman who abandoned his calling to engage in trade would be in any risk of persecution; no one supposes even that he would be debarred from any career which he might wish to attempt in the colonies. His disabilities extend no further than to an incapacity to practise at the English bar, or to sit in the English Parliament; and the argument, urged with contemptuous emphasis by some adherents of Mr. Bouverie, that the removal of these disabilities would in fact benefit very few clergymen indeed, might be used with equal force to show that, as the actual law gives rise to no practical injustice, it is at once needless and imprudent to incur any hazard by disturbing it. Nor would the hazard be at all imaginary. It is a very different thing to allow a principle to slumber, and to formally disavow it, even though its disavowal should be utterly inoperative. However common it may be to sneer at, or to talk disrespectfully of, the clergy individually, there is yet a vague feeling of reverence floating in the minds of every class, and certainly not referable in its entirety to high estimation of their intellect, education, and social position. Much more is it to be ascribed to the knowledge that they are a body set apart for holy purposes for ever; and it is hard to believe that much of this reverence would be preserved when it was understood that they might at any moment lay down their office as easily as a tradesman retires

from business. Society cannot afford to look upon its spiritual teachers with decreasing respect. It is a mere truism to say that facts or opinions have weight with the mass of mankind, not so much according to their intrinsic value as to the light in which their exponents are regarded; and, with reverence for the men, would also vanish reverence for their doctrine, even were that enforced with as much depth of feeling, and as much earnestness of utterance as is now employed; though this we should have no right to expect. For not only would a greater facility in throwing off the bonds of orders produce effects directly upon society, but yet more profoundly upon the minds of the clergy them

selves.

It is alleged, and, it must be confessed with no little truth, that not a few of the clergy originally enter upon the sacred office with a very inadequate sense of the responsibilities which they undertake; and it is consequently inferred that these men can make but unwilling labourers, and that, if a road were open, they would depart, to the great advantage both of the Church and of themselves. With some inconsistency it is also argued that so strongly would public opinion declare itself against deserters, so terrible would be the social penalties with which they would be visited, that secession would then be nearly as rare as it is now. The latter assertion is more probably true than the former; but just as the general respect would diminish in proportion to the easiness, and not to the frequency, with which orders would be discarded, so the number who would in fact take advantage of their opportunity to secede would be no measure of the quantity of restlessness and of indisposition to honest work which would spring into being in the ranks of the priesthood There can be no doubt, as we have already conceded, that many clergymen have adopted their calling for very frivolous reasons; but in a profession numbering so many members it is impossible, in the vast majority of cases, to secure more than an average intellect, and at the commencement a little more than common serious

ness.

The real question is into what this ordinary material is fashioned by the influence of solemn vows, and of a duty which cannot be shuffled off; and we are sure that the personal experience of most men, certainly of university men, will confirm the belief which we entertain, that an extraordinary proportion are sobered into contented gravity by the mere fact of being committed for ever to a certain course of life. But the effect upon those common men, those creatures of circumstance, of a liberty such as it is proposed to give them, must be essentially unhealthy. Their belief would not be altered, but their worldly desires would be quickened; their veneration for their own office would be gone, because it would be put on a par, in the eye of the world, with others over which they were wont to think that it had anadvantage of prestige, which compensated for its monetary disadvantage; and they would linger on, plotting, yet never daring, to attempt some other life; lukewarm and heartless in their own duties, yet not bold enough to frankly take up another burden. This is the way that indifferent men behave in other professions, and in that one which has the deepest responsibility, and the

most that is disagreeable to the untrained mind, there is every reason to believe that the proportion of indifferent men would be the largest. Yet it is for these indifferent men, who require to be helped and guided into usefulness, that laws should be made; not for those sturdy thinkers and actors who will go their own way under whatever hindrances. But there is a third class to whose lamentable position the advocates of Clergy relief most frequently refer, -those, namely, who hold the doctrines of the Church of England in all essential matters, but who are sufficiently uncertain upon some minor points to be unable conscientiously to conduct her services. They are assumed to be very numerous; yet, if they feel so acutely as to be willing to brave the social penalties which would accompany their renunciation of orders, they must surely now prefer poverty or expatriation to a life of hypocrisy. The personal experience of every one may again be appealed to for proof of how small the number really is; nothing is more rare than to meet with a conscientious clergyman who refrains from exercising his profession. The more in fact that the proposed Bill is considered the more evident it becomes that its provisions would secure the benefit of a numerically insignificant, though perhaps a somewhat noisy, section of the clergy; and however real may be their troubles, however they may deserve sympathy as men, we must yet emphatically deny that they have any right, for their own peculiar advantage, to endanger the highest interest of their fellows and of the people. Let it be granted they have made a mistake in their vocation; but, as in the other lifelong engagement much misery, caused also by mistakes in early youth, has to be endured, because the sacredness of the marriage-tie is a matter of more importance to the world than the wretchedness of the comparatively few, so in this also must the individual be sacrificed to the general interests of society. Most, if not all, of the dogmas upon which the Church bases her relations with society, and of the rules with which she fences herself round, originally expressed the actual needs of the people as much as of the ecclesiastical order. Some have become antiquated and have passed away; some have become antiquated without disappearing: but some are as useful now as ever, and among them must be reckoned the indelibility of orders. Purely for its own sake society ought to insist upon the maintenance of the doctrine by the clergy as well as by the Church; and, indeed, opinion would probably declare itself in this direction if one part of the existing law could be got rid of.

No one

wishes to keep penal articles in the Statute Book which can never be acted upon, which no one would now wish to enforce, and which only serve to mislead the public mind. If these were swept away, there would be no occasion for further interference; and in all likelihood there would be little inclination except on the part of avowed enemies of the Church. Meantime from what has taken place in the House of Commons in connection with this Bill, as with Sir Morton Peto's Bill, one of two things is plain. Either a sound judgment upon such questions has yet to be created in the constituencies; or, from lack of organization, it has not sufficient influence with members.

Non-Intervention.

ORALITY in present times has happily extended itself into the domain of international politics. No European Power now dismisses an ambassador and marches its legions into a neighbour's territory in the brusque and highhanded fashion of Catherine of Russia or Napoleon the First. Victory is, and ever must be, on the side of the "big battalions;" but it is now seen that public opinion can raise battalions more numerous and enthusiastic than ever sprang up at the stamp of an imperial Cadmus. Unfortunately, wherever Morality enters, Hypocrisy follows. And although it is impossible not to acknowledge the great and beneficial change which has supervened in the foreign policy of all the European States, this change has been accompanied by an elaborate hypocrisy in the diplomacy of some leading Powers, which is not less dangerous to the European commonwealth, and is certainly more contemptible than the brusque appeals to the sword which Europe was accustomed to in former times. Now, more than ever, Ambition masks herself. If a colossal Power desires to annex some fair provinces of a weak neighbour, she sets her battalions in motion on the plea of establishing a protectorate of Christianity" in the coveted region. another Power, reviving the frequently baffled "traditions" of empire, seeks to extend her frontier, and aggrandize her power at the expense of her neighbours, she does so on the plea that she must draw the sword on behalf of "liberty and civilization." The very virtues of the age are made the handmaids of military ambition. And now more than ever, therefore, it becomes us to be on our guard against hypocrisies that veil themselves in the garb of virtues which we respect, and to scan well professions of principle, to see if they accord with the actual policy of those who profess them.

If

Our own country is of all others the most exempt from temptations to adopt such diplomatic hypocrisies; and we think we may say also, from the character of our people, the least prone to indulge in them. Yet the power of words is mighty everywhere; and not even the good sense of the British people is sufficient to prevent them being oftentimes led away by cant phrases of the day. We have seen how the cry for "Reform"-a word so justly attractive in itself, but made to cover so many projects of pernicious innovation-led both our Government and people to the vernment and people to the very brink of a precipice, from which they have timeously recoiled, rather from beholding the sad experiences of other countries than from any unassisted sobering of the national judgment. Foreign politics have now supplanted domestic questions in public interest: and it behoves us to see that in this new field of national concern we are not befooled by phrases equally as in the other. Equally-or at least with equal danger to the State-we certainly are not; yet there are phrases and professions of policy current amongst us which are used in a sense which implies much

Of all these cant phrases of the day there is not one which covers so much hypocrisy and misconception as that of "Non-intervention." We are congratulated that Non-intervention is now the established and recognized principle of European policy-that all the Powers acknowledge it, and that we ourselves show a noble example of practising it. Any one who looks at the actual position of affairs will see at once that there is a mistake of some kind here. With a French army in the capital of Italy, and a joint intervention of England, France, and Spain in Mexico, unsophisticated minds will naturally in quire, If this be Non-intervention, what is Intervention? Or if it be said—which is hardly true in the case of Mexico-that England at least takes no part in these high-handed interferences with the internal affairs of other States, the new question will arise, Does Non-intervention consist in allowing Intervention on the part of others? Lord Palmerston says that the continued occupation of Rome by the French is excusable, because it is sanctioned by the Pope, who, thanks to their aid, is still the Sovereign of Rome. But were not the Austrians in the Roman States by the same sanction?-and has not almost every case of intervention, however unjustifiable, been defensible on a similar plea? When the French army intervened to put down the revolution in Spain in 1823-or when the Russians intervened to crush the Hungarian revolt in 1849 -was not the intervention in either case justifiable on the same plea which Lord Palmerston adduces in support of the intervention of the French at Rome? And when England, or any other Power, stands by and permits interventions to take place, the conduct of such a Power is not entitled to be called "nonintervention,"—it is simply neutrality; a neutrality which, so far from arising from noble or generous motives, may be purely selfish,—a dislike to incur the cost of opposing the wrong-doing of others.

The principle of "non-intervention," in its true sense, cannot be too highly extolled. In this sense it is the palladium of national liberty; it constitutes a bulwark behind which every State, however small, may regulate its domestic affairs without interference on the part of other Powers. This was the non-intervention of Pitt and Castlereagh. This was the principle maintained by the Tory Government in 1792, when, in the despatch of 29th December, they proposed that if France would abandon her conquests, and withdraw her armies within the limits of the French territory, the Powers of Europe "should engage to abandon all measures or views of hostility against France, or interference in her internal affairs, and to maintain a correspondence and intercourse of amity with the existing Powers in that country with whom the treaty might be concluded." This principle was never departed from by the British Government in its long contest with revolutionary and imperial France; and at the very close of the struggle, Castlereagh at Chatillon and Wellington at Bourdeaux steadily refused to countenance the claims of the Bourbon family, and adhered to the principle that the French people should be left to manage their domestic affairs as they pleased. In like manner, when the Continental Powers proposed to in

tions in Naples and in Spain, Lord Castlereagh issued a circular in which he formally expressed his dissent, stating that such procedure "was diametrically opposed to the fundamental laws of Great Britain, and could not be admitted with any degree of safety as a principle of international law." And in regard to Spain he said, "As to the form of government which she has of late established for herself in Europe, that is a matter with which no foreign Power has the smallest right to interfere."

This is the doctrine of Non-intervention in its true form. But every Government which holds this principle must in certain cases go a step further. For, where one part of a heterogeneous empire breaks off from the other, establishes a Government, and shows that it can maintain its independence, then the very principle of recognizing every change effected in the internal government of a State requires that we should recognize this new Government as soon as it has shown itself strong enough to maintain its existence. This happened in the case of Greece, and also in the case of the South American republics, when they threw off the yoke respectively of the Porte and of Spain. And, in accordance with its principles, the Tory Government of England, led first by Castlereagh and afterwards by Canning, was the first to recognize the new

States.

But of late years, under a succession of "liberal" ministries, the utmost confusion has been introduced into this branch of foreign politics. Lord Palmerston, as Foreign Minister, directly contravened the principle of Non-intervention by taking part in the civil wars both in Spain and in Portugal. This was done, indeed, in order to "secure the triumph of constitutional principles;" but most obviously, if England was justified in interfering on the one side, any despotic power was equally entitled to interfere on the other. So that, instead of the salutary rule of Non-intervention being adhered to by all parties, Intervention became a mere question of power, to be adopted whenever any interested State can do so with success. People who prate so much about "the principle of Non-intervention" at the present day should think of this: for the conduct of our own Government under liberal ministers has amply justified the caustic saying of Talleyrand, that

Non-intervention is a metaphysical expression meaning pretty much the same thing as Intervention." We cannot lay down one law for ourselves and a different one for other powers; and it is a sheer hypocrisy for us to appeal to the principle of Non-intervention in order to check the interference of other States, when we have shown that we ourselves don't care a fig for the principle when it suits our interests to ignore it.

In truth, the great talk at present made about Non-intervention is simply owing to the fact that this country is resolved not to go to war, and we seek to exalt into a virtue what is simply a consideration of prudence. What our fathers called neutrality we extol as Non-intervention. And yet, with all our unparallelled zeal for this cause, we permit other Powers, if they are strong ones, to intervene as they please, whether it be at Gaeta or Rome, or on the more distant plains of helpless Mexico. The economy of