ying, that, with all his cosmopolitanism, he is a shade or two
John-Bullish. Thanking him for his fraternal cordiality towards
"Jonathan," we must doubt if it will do to trust implicitly his reports
and impressions of men and things across the Channel. That he is more
than half right, however, when lingering remains of insular prejudice
tinge his solicitude to save his native land from entangling alliances,
and keep its free government from striking hands with despotism, we
incline to believe; and we honor him that his loyalty is not mere
adulation, but duly seasoned with the democratic principle that would
have the stability of the throne the people's love,--the people being of
infinitely greater importance than the propping-up or the propagation of
royal houses. In one sad direction Punch's patriotism and humanity, it
seems to us, were wrathful exaggerations, open to graver objection than
yielding unconsciously to a natural bias. In his zeal against terrible
outrages, he forgot that two wrongs never make a right. We refer to his
course on the Indian Revolt. From the way he raised his voice for war,
almost exterminating, and with no quarter, one would think the British
rule in the East had been the rule of Christian love,--that Sepoys and
other subjects had known the reigning power only as patriarchal
kindness,--and so, without excuse, a highly civilized, justly and
tenderly treated people, suddenly, and without provocation, became
rebellious devils, and rebellious only because they were devils. In the
hour of horror-struck indignation, was not Punch too blood-thirsty,
vindictive, unjust, and oblivious to the truth of history, that the
insurgents are poor superstitious heathens, whom a selfish policy may
have kept superstitious and heathenish? True, he was the witness of
broken hearts and desolate hearth-stones at home, and daily heard of
hellish atrocities inflicted on the women and children abroad,--enough
to crush out for the moment every thought but the thought of vengeance.
Yet, even at such a crisis, he should have remembered, that England, in
strict accordance with the stern, unrelenting logic of events, having
sown to the wind, might therefore have reaped the whirlwind. It is among
the mysteries of Providence, that retributive justice, when visiting
nations, often involves innocent victims,--but it is retributive justice
still; and tracing up rightly the chain of causes and effects, it may
be that the tragedies o