which demands at the same time the most comprehensive genius, to embrace in one view the resources of the country and the objects to which they can be successfully applied, as well as the most exact attention to details pervading all the branches of the most complicated administration. The condition of our army in the field, especially if it be engaged in an enemy's country destitute of resources, differs entirely from the condition of an army at any other time. Even the administrative instruments and services which become indispensable at a moment of effort and danger, hardly exist in peace, or exist in a torpid and inactive form. The principle of war is authority-direct, rapid, uncompromising, and, we had almost said, uncontrolled; it is, therefore, the reverse of that principle of parliamentary government under which all authority is limited in a thousand conflicting forces and interests. Nor is it in the ranks of the army alone that rigid discipline is essential to success; every department of military administration ought to be equally absolute, for the fate of an army may turn on one single act of neglect. Above all, the conflict between different branches of the public service is destructive of all good administration, and unity of command is one of the most important conditions of success. We shall not conquer the enemy, and we may even waste incalculable resources in the attempt, if we do not succeed in bringing to the highest perfection the mechanism of our military administration. Modern science already lends us its powerful aid to simplify the task, and to conduct war with a power and energy which never were displayed before; and this nation has shown in a thousand ways on how stupendous a scale she can operate by the ingenuity and power of combination of Englishmen in every part of the world. We have now to do for war what we have accomplished in the arts of peace, by machinery as applied to manufactures, by steam ships and railroads, and by gigantic associations. Hitherto we must admit that the enemy against whom we are contending has shown no inferiority to ourselves in the administration of war throughout his vast Empire; from Petropaulowsky to the banks of the Pruth we find him well armed for defence; we know that we cannot beat him by numbers: it is therefore by superior skill, superior wealth, and superior organisation, that we can alone hope to terminate the war with success. In these essential qualities, however, the British army under Lord Raglan has proved unequal, if not inferior, to our enemies and to our allies. In courage and magnanimity the British troops have. shone with all their pristine glory on the field of battle and in the hardships of war; but the deficiency of high military edu

cation in large numbers of our officers, and of experience in many departments of the administration of their army, have taught us a lesson which it is the imperative duty of the Government to turn to good account for the future.

In estimating the chances of our success in this war, it can hardly have entered into the sober calculations of any man, and certainly not into the designs of any statesman, to accomplish, by the military strength of British forces alone, conquests of Russian territory, or the decisive overthrow of the enormous bands which form the Russian armies. Even when our own comparatively small military power is combined with the far larger military resources of France, the difficulty of carying on war in an enemy's country at 2000 miles from our base of operations, is an impediment which the entire command of the sea does not compensate. If Russia were secure on her western frontier, confident of the neutrality of Austria and Germany, she could, in a given number of months, throw forces into the Crimea, which must exceed any armies we could bring into the field. Already the estimate of the force required by the Allies to ensure success on that part of the theatre of war, is not much below 150,000 men; and the possibility of maintaining such a force at that distance depends on many circumstances which we cannot absolutely control. If the war were a mere trial of strength between the belligerent Powers now engaged in it, the contest might be indefinitely prolonged; for many campaigns might be fought before either side were exhausted, or any decisive advantage obtained.

But this is, happily, not the case with the present struggle. The continuance of this war is so great an evil to Europe, and the common interests of all the chief continental States are so deeply affected by it, that they are irresistibly led to support our policy, and join with France and England in demanding securities for the restoration of that peace which we all desire. It may be true that we have not yet succeeded so rapidly as we had hoped in all that we have undertaken, and that the most daring enterprise of the campaign is still at this moment unaccomplished. But if we sum up the account on both sides, it will be seen that, whilst we have only not succeeded in everything, the Emperor of Russia has thus far failed in everything he has undertaken from the fatal moment of Prince Menschikoff's mission, with the single exception of his dastardly surprise of a Turkish squadron of inferior strength at Sinope, and a partial but indecisive success over the Turkish army at Kars. Upon the breaking out of the war he attempted to force the

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passage of the Danube, but was repulsed by the Turks at Oltenitza and Citate. He had seized the Principalities as a material guarantee of his demands on the Porte, but he has been compelled to evacuate them altogether. He laid siege to Silistria, but failed to carry the place. He exerted his whole personal and diplomatic influence to obtain an assurance of the neutrality of Germany, but failed to secure it; and the triple alliance of the Northern Crowns crumbled to pieces, when Austria openly allied herself against Russia with the Western Powers. Having begun this war by the invasion of the Turkish Principalities, and by the most violent menaces to the Porte, within nine months he is reduced to abandon all these pretensions, to disclaim his policy, and to fall back on purely defensive operations. The Greek insurrection, fomented by Russian agents, was a disgrace and a failure. Austria he receives the keenest affronts without daring to resent them. His armies have never yet encountered an enemy in the field but to be beaten; and on two or three occasions they have sustained reverses of so signal a character that their defeats will ever be ranked amongst the proudest achievements of British valour allied to French gallantry. His fleets have not been beaten, because not a ship has ventured out of harbour, but they have been sunk to block up his ports; and in the meantime the Russian merchant flag is absolutely excluded from every sea. To set off against this long catalogue of humiliations, which have suspended the political influence, and shaken the military reputation of Russia, all that can be said is, that the Russians have, in two or three instances, repelled attacks more vigorously than was expected.

The Allied Powers have, on the contrary, succeeded at once and without difficulty in the first objects of the war. It soon became evident that no attack upon Constantinople or the Turkish Empire was any more to be apprehended; and before our troops had fired a shot the Principalities were evacuated. To strike a blow at Russia at all, it became necessary to pursue her into her own dominions; and the point selected for attack was that on which she possessed the strongest means of aggression. Her trade has been interrupted, her credit impaired, the whole empire impoverished, and compelled to expiate, by incredible hardships and sacrifices, the infatuation of its ruler. The most ancient and the most confidential alliances of Russia have been dissolved, and the position which the Emperor Nicholas filled in Europe is for ever lost to him. Happen what may, he can never hope to regain what this war has cost him; and so terrible has already been the lesson to his ambition and his imprudence,

that it will be long before a Russian sovereign again dares to ally the whole of Europe against him. At the present moment, if the war is not speedily terminated by the sincere acceptance of the terms agreed upon by the Western Powers, it is evidently about to assume a more extensive European character; and from that instant it is scarcely possible that territorial questions and conditions of far greater magnitude and difficulty should not arise. Between Russia and the German States the dismembered provinces of Poland must either be the closest bond of union, or the keenest subject of difference. Already throughout Germany the insecurity of its eastern frontier is a subject of terror and resentment. Russia, which succeeded in 1815, by the treachery of Prussia, in appropriating the duchy of Warsaw to herself, in spite of the resistance of England, Austria, and France, has spent the interval of forty years in fortifying herself on a colossal scale in the wedge which separates Silesia from Gallicia, whence she can threaten the capitals of Northern and Southern Germany. The fire already smoulders in the ashes: should it break out, another war of German independence will be fought on that ground; and it is not impossible that the present apparent lull of public excitement in Germany precedes some such explosion.

But we cannot desire that these terrible evils should break upon the world for the sake of the indefinite objects which might one day follow the termination of such a contest; we advert to them rather as warnings of the future, which it is a sacred duty to avoid, if peace can be restored on a secure basis by any other means. In the present temper of our countrymen, flushed with the excitement of unaccustomed efforts and with the heroic achievements of the army, it may require some courage in a Minister to speak of peace on any terms, not absolutely inconsistent with the strength and the rights of the Empire to which we are opposed. Yet peace is still our object, and our only object. We have bound ourselves by treaty to France, as she has bound herself to us, to seek no territorial aggrandisement or advantage in this war which shall not be common to the interests of Europe. No one has ever yet attempted to show that any exclusive or preponderating British interest was engaged in the quarrel; though British interests of the first order are identified with the independence of the East. and with the general cause for which we are contending. Those interests and those rights being defined by our alliances with the Powers pursuing the same objects, we have no motive to put forward any pretensions different from theirs; and if the people of this country were so unreasonable as to attempt to

prolong the horrors of war, and to impose incalculable sacrifices of treasure and of life not only on this nation but on the rest of Europe, after the essential objects of the war have been obtained, we should ourselves become an object of distrust and alarm to other nations, and we should lose that influence in Europe which, thanks to the disinterestedness and temper of the British Government, has never been more conspicuously displayed, or more beneficially exerted, than at the present time. There is no fear that too much will be conceded to Russia, for the four great principles wisely established by the Notes exchanged on the 8th of August stand immutably fixed in the public engagements of Europe; and although in the event of rapid and unbounded successes they would doubtless have been assailed for their moderation, yet they constitute a landmark in this question from which we see no reason widely to depart either in prosperous or in adverse fortune. The present situation of the belligerents does not justify us in going materially beyond them; and if that situation were less favourable we should resolutely refuse to abate one jot of these terms. By Russia, indeed, they were indignantly rejected in August last as conditions which nothing but the close of a calamitous and exhausting war could bring her to accept; yet before the close of November she has professed to tender her acceptance of them-a proof amongst many others that she is conscious. of her defeat, and alarmed by the prospect of still greater perils.

When once the proposition is firmly established in the mind, that this war is, at present, not a war of conquest, and not a war of revolution, we may dismiss from our thoughts the extreme views which are not unfrequently put forward to aggravate the present situation of Europe. We have not to consider what is to be done with the Crimea, because it is not yet conquered; and Lord John Russell declared with authority on the last night of the short Session, that it was not the policy or the desire of the Allied Governments to attempt a territorial dismemberment of the Russian Empire. We have not to discuss the results which might possibly be obtained by an appeal to 'compressed nationalities, or to those revolutionary elements which lurk in so many portions of the European continent; for France and England repudiate these instruments, which would only betray the hand that seeks to wield them. If questions of this magnitude were now to be settled, we must indeed prepare for an age of war and bloodshed; but they have not been raised by us, and they will not be raised, unless the pride and obstinacy of the Court of St. Petersburgh force additional causes of war upon Europe. But in the judgment not only of

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