. But,
take the cases themselves, and examine them in all their
circumstances; the degree of suffering inflicted--the innocence
and helplessness of the sufferers--the interests at stake--and
the possibility of otherwise securing them; and if any man can
defend the lawfulness in the abstract of the starvation of the
inhabitants of Genoa, I will engage also to establish the
lawfulness of the massacres of September."

We rejoice to find that the great authority of Colonel W. Napier--an
authority of which posterity will know the value--is arrayed on the side
of those who think that war, the best school, as after all it must often
be, of some of our noblest virtues, need not be always the cause of
such atrocities.

This enquiry shows us how the centre of external movement in Europe has
varied; but it is not merely to the territorial struggle that our
attention should be confined--mighty principles, Christian truth, civil
freedom, were often partially at issue on one side, or on the other, in
the different contests which the gold and steel of Europe were set in
motion to determine; hence the necessity of considering not only the
moral power, but the economical and military strength of the respective
countries. It requires no mean share of political wisdom to mitigate an
encounter with the financial difficulties by which every contest is
beset. The evils of the political and social state of France were
brought to a head by the dilapidation of its revenues, and occasioned,
not the Revolution itself, but the disorders by which it was
accompanied. And more than half of our national revenue is appropriated
to the payment of our own debt; in other words, every acre of land,
besides the support of its owner and the actual demands of the State, is
encumbered with the support of two or three persons who represent the
creditors of the nation; and every man who would have laboured twelve
hours, had no national debt existed, is now obliged to toil sixteen for
the same remuneration: such a state of things may be necessary, but it
certainly requires investigation.

Other parts of the law of nations, the maritime law especially, require
improvement. Superficial men are apt to overlook the transcendent
importance of error on these subjects by which desolation may be spread
from one quarter of the globe to the other. As no man can bear long the
unanimous disapprobation of his fellows, no nation can long s