usly long, by
those whose views of national policy are governed by maxims framed in
the infancy of the Republic.

This outward impulse of the European nations, resumed on a large scale
after nearly a century of intermission, is not a mere sudden
appearance, sporadic, and unrelated to the past. The signs of its
coming, though unnoted, were visible soon after the century reached
its half-way stage, as was also its great correlative, equally
unappreciated then, though obvious enough now, the stirring of the
nations of Oriental civilization. It is a curious reminiscence of my
own that when in Yokohama, Japan, in 1868, I was asked to translate a
Spanish letter from Honolulu, relative to a ship-load of Japanese
coolies to be imported into Hawaii. I knew the person engaged to go as
physician to the ship, and, unless my memory greatly deceives me, he
sailed in this employment while I was still in the port. Similarly,
when my service on the station was ended, I went from Yokohama to
Hong-kong, prior to returning home by way of Suez. Among my
fellow-passengers was an ex-Confederate naval officer, whose business
was to negotiate for an immigration of Chinese into, I think, the
Southern States--in momentary despair, perhaps, of black labor--but
certainly into the United States. We all know what has come in our own
country of undertakings which then had attracted little attention.

It is odd to watch the unconscious, resistless movements of nations,
and at the same time read the crushing characterization by our
teachers of the press of those who, by personal characteristics or by
accident, happen to be thrust into the position of leaders, when at
the most they only guide to the least harm forces which can no more be
resisted permanently than can gravitation. Such would have been the
role of Nicholas, guiding to a timely end the irresistible course of
events in the Balkans, which his opponents sought to withstand, but
succeeded only in prolonging and aggravating. He is honored now by
those who see folly in the imperial aspirations of Mr. Joseph
Chamberlain, and piracy in Mr. Cecil Rhodes; yet, after all, in his
day, what right had he, by the code of strict constructionists of
national legal rights, to put Turkey to death because she was sick?
Was not Turkey in occupation? Had she not, by strict law, a right to
her possessions, and to live; yea, and to administer what she
considered justice to those who were legally her subjects? Bu