that have been gained, are the establishment of the political supremacy of the West, and the preservation of Turkey as a separate State in the European family of Nations: objects of great value, it is granted, but gained at an immense expense to the cause of Civilization in the scene of this deadly strife, by the loss of nearly all the monuments of human progress reared by the intelligence and enterprise of both the State and people, during the last fifty years, in one of the fairest provinces of the Russian Empire.

What a lesson of instruction to the crowned Heads, and the ministers of State in every country of Europe, and of the World! But recent events, supply too much ground for the belief that this fearful lesson has, for the most part, been wasted on the individuals on whom it might have been expected to make the most salutary impres-: sions. Scarcely had Peace been restored in our Hemisphere before Factions at home and abroad, sought to raise the Demon of War in the New World. While the great grave of armies was scarcely closed in the Crimea; in the same year in which Cossacks of the DonFrenchmen from the Seine and the Garonne-Britons from the Thames, and the Tweed, and Celts from the Shannon, the Boyne, and the Liffey, were laid as mouldering carcases in Sebastopol and its environs to the number of hundreds of thousands; while the world saw the Taxgatherer pouring into the Coffers of War, sums far exceeding the Revenues of mightiest Monarchies, there were found on either side of the Atlantic, madmen, who laboured hard to strike the spark which should enkindle a fatricidal war between our own country and the United States of America. And for what purpose? Simply to determine whether the Bay Islands belong to the Republic of Honduras, or to Great Britain,-whether Great Britain has a right to protect the King of Mosquita, the semi-barbarous chieftain, who rules over a few tribes of naked Indians, between the frontiers of Honduras and of Costa Rica, and whether in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty there were reserved to this country any territorial rights on the Continent of America. Happily, after the exchanging of a few high sounding words of vanity, better counsels prevailed, and war was averted. The two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon family were saved from a conflict pregnant with the most awful results to themselves and the human race in general, for their mercantile connections with foreign nations must have extended the conflict over the larger portion of the civilized world. The struggle in the East would have been repeated on a larger scale in the far West. The Destroying Angel would have appeared with tenfold power. The consequences to the American Republic had been wide-spread desolation along the whole sea-board of the States, and to England, commercial distress involving, in the first instance, the ruin of merchant princes in Liverpool, and of Cotton lords in Manchester, but extending from these great centres in wider circles to the remotest towns and hamlets of the kingdom, and in wider circles still, to the remotest provinces of the Empire. It is matter then of devout gratitude to Almighty God that Peace has been preserved between Great Britain and the United States of America, two countries, which in a state of War would effect vastly greater

desolation than any other. Thank God! our friendly relations with our brethren on the other side of the Atlantic have not been disturbed, their cities have not been burnt, or their villages pillaged, or their women violated, on any such peurile ground as the dismissal of an incompetent diplomatist, or the questioning of our right to a ridiculous Protectorate. The good sense, if not the fraternal feelings, of the bulk of the people, on both sides, have saved us from such a spectacle.

During the past year, we have witnessed an audacious attempt on the part of the Slaveholders of America, in the case of Kansas, to stamp the image and superscription of Slavery on the Republic for ever; to put ruffianism in the place of law,-to supersede every appeal to equity in matters of Government, by setting up the law of might against right. It augurs ill for the "Model Republic," that the bowie Knife and the Revolver have been substituted by numbers of desperate men for the voice of Conscience and the Law of God. The philan thropist while pleased to witness an increased disposition on the part of the North to prevent the extension of Slavery, will regret that the Free-State party should have been so ready to adopt the same means, and to send forth emigrants armed with the bludgeon and the rifle in the filibustering style of these unprincipled marauders. It was to attempt to cast out Satan by diabolical means: it was to supply ruffianism with the only pretext it wanted for the exercise of unlimited brutality. But all consideration of the means apart, there can be no doubt, from recent American intelligence, that this question of Slavery-extension involves the very existence of the Republic, a matter which "ought not to be left to the chance results of bloody skirmishes on the extreme confines of its territory, where victory, as is ever the case in conflicts of brute force, depends greatly upon accident, and is most likely to turn on the side of those distinguished by the most unscrupulous ferocity." The policy of a nation on matters of such grave importance ought to be determined by the deliberate judgment of the great body of the people. We have, no doubt, that in the long run, this momentous question will be decided by the people. And there is enough of intelligence and moral principle in the Free-States to effect such a solution as will be in harmony with the rights of manhood and the dictates of the Law of God. The North is becoming awake to the inconsistency of three and twenty millions of white men keeping three millions of blacks in bonds, as if liberty were the exclusive right of a particular complexion ;-awake especially, to the danger to which the best interests of the commonwealth are exposed from the organized and systematic efforts of the Slaveholders of the South to corrupt the integrity of Statesmen at home-and to kindle the fires of discord in neighbouring States with no other motive than the extension of their accursed system, which year by year becomes more corrupt-more and more intolerable, illustrating in the political relations of the Slave and Free States of the New world, before the eye of civilised man everywhere, that revolting practice of the ancients-the chaining of the putrifying remains of the dead to the body of the living. On this point, American Statesmen have made some most startling announcements. Speaking of the South, one of them says ;-" they have no literature, no

science, little or no commerce, little or no mechanical industry, and even their agricultural industry is falling off." Nor is there much of depreciation in this statement. It is largely borne out by well known facts. In the United States, Two thousand patents were taken out last year-Of these, only One hundred and twenty-five were invented by men living in the Southern States. But their political influence has been, out of all proportion, to their numbers, their wealth, and their intelligence. The Slave-owners have been variously estimated at from thirty thousand to a hundred thousand, and yet they have managed by various acts-during the brief period that the Republic has existed, to secure the election of 11 Presidents out of 16; 17 out of 28 Judges of the Supreme Court; 14 out of 19 Attorney Generals: 61 out of 77 Presidents of the Senate; 21 out of 33 Speakers of the House; and 80 out of 134 Ministers to Foreign Courts. After a severe struggle between liberty and intolerance, during the present year, they have succeeded in the election of Buchanan as the President of the Republic. This, was thought at first, by the friends of liberty on both sides of the water, to be a severe blow to sound principles. It may turn out otherwise. Buchanan is a man of intelligence, and although he has been regarded hitherto as being of Pro-slavery sentiments, we cannot bring ourselves to think, that such an astute individual will, in the present crisis, listen to a mere faction of ruffians and steer the vessel of State as they wish, in the face of intelligent and enterprising millions, who put in their emphatic protest against the extension of slavery, by the addition of a single Slave State to the Union, or the acquirement of a single inch of territory to be blasted and withered beneath the shade of this dark Upas of social despotism, which has been the scandal of the cause of freedom, from the moment of the declaration of American Independence to this hour. We are greatly mistaken if the event do not show the Pro-slavery Candidate to have been ruled by the Anti-slavery extension views of the masses of the American public, in the New England States, and on the banks of the Ohio and the Illinois.

While American philanthropists have been girding up their loins for a mighty struggle with the supporters of Negro Slavery in the States, the friends of liberty in this country have been evincing their antipathy to Ecclesiastical Absolutism. The men who carried "Reform of the Parliamentary Representation," and "Repeal of the Corn Laws," begin to feel that the overthrow of Ecclesiastical Absolutism is the great question on the solution of which, all the friends of liberty must concentrate their energies. Men of every class begin to feel that the days of this form of Absolutism are numbered. Even on the Continent, philosophers begin to note the signs. of the times, in their aspect towards this question. Chevalier Bunsen, in a pamphlet recently published, says,-"Of the two great signs of the times, with observing which, we began our inquiry—the spirit of free inquiry, and that of priestly hierarchy, one is rising, the other declining. The spirit of association and its freedom, is the genius of dawning day. The hierarchy and its tyranny, is the expiring star of departing night. It is not Hesperus which shines in the twilight of heaven, but the morning star. Full seven years back, the hierarchy,

driven by a feeling of approaching dissolution, connected itself with the associative spirit, as long before, it had done with Absolutism. It sought confirmation where it saw power. But it was hidden from its self-seeking eye, that it was decreed that from that power it should meet its death. Freedom of course is the vital breath of manhood, and the cradle of true individuality; and this freedom of all other freedom, the mother of hierarchy, in the main can never tolerate. He who labours for oppression of conscience and slavery of soul,-yes, he who does not with all truth and power, demand freedom of conscience and of spirit in matters of faith, labours for Jesuitism, and so far as in him is, for the destruction and ruin of his own religious community and private home. If he be a Protestant, then he deserves double abhorrence or pity; but he, who within the sphere allotted him, be it high or low, does not truly labour for right and freedom, labours for the overthrow of the energy of God's kingdom to the ends of the earth. Surely, then, a great warfare lies before us, a holy war, and none with impunity can approach it with unholy hands; but eternally remains. the enmity between compulsion and freedom of conscience, and victoriously hovers over the battle field, one who waves a banner, on which is written in letters of fire, 'In this sign thou shalt conquer.' Yes, the good shall conquer in the world's history, for it has already conquered for mankind, eighteen hundred years ago, in Jesus Christ." Such is the judgment of the enlightened German, and his words are full of comfort to the friends of liberty among the free Churches in Christendom, but fraught with terror and confusion to the advocates of Absolutism, whether in the Wesleyan Conference, the Anglican Establishment, or the Romish Church. Such are the developments of the Age, that Ecclesistical Absolutism is now found to be in direct conflict with the very genius of Society. To this aspect of things, the words of our Lord admit of striking application. No man putteth a piece of new cloth into an old garment, for that which is put in to fill up, taketh from the garment and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old bottles, else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish. In accordance with these views the leading journal of Europe represents all accounts from our colonies as showing that wherever the Anglo-Saxon goes, he carries not only Protestantism with him, but the voluntary principle too. The Anti-state Church Association has been attacking our Establishment here for a long time. "However, we have got our Establishment, and now that we have got it, we intend to keep it. But the Association it must be admitted, has the whole English Empire, except these home Islands, for its disciples, and may triumph in the spread of its principles. There are exceptions in the shape of particular Institutions, which we do intend to keep, but there can be no doubt that Voluntaryism is what we have adopted as a principle. This is the rule which we have adopted as an Empire. Wherever our Colonial Empire spreads, the Voluntary principle will go with it. It is part and parcel of our imperial policy. 'No State aid to Religion is the Watchword everywhere except at Home." And unless we must regard Englishmen from Home as having much more sagacity than their brethren at Home; unless we turn a deaf ear to

all claims for justice to man, and honour to the great Head of the Church, the Voluntary principle is destined to triumph even more signally at Home, than in the distant Colonies of the Empire.

The past year has been singularly fruitful in facts, evincing the bondage in which a false religion keeps myriads of human beings in the Indian peninsula. The Cholera made its appearance anew on the spot whence it first went forth to desolate the earth. Many English fell victims, and the excited apprehensions of the native population carried them to a point verging on Insanity. They declared that a mysterious Horseman was riding over the country, and wherever the horse's hoofs struck, there the pestilence appeared. They actually offered up figures of this demon-rider in the Hindoo Temples existing on the scene of his devastations. But the incubus of superstition presses universally on humanity in that Eastern clime. Accordingly we read in the Correspondence of the British Press from India, the following startling statement, which if it were not so fully accredited, would at once be pronounced incredible.

"We have just had a little Santal insurrection of our own, which, though not on so great a scale as that in Lower Bengal, has had a good deal in common with it. We are not able to discover how the misunderstanding first began. As usual, it is said, there have been a woman and priests in the case. Some of the railway people, working at the foot of the Bhore Ghaut had, it is asserted, behaved themselves improperly in the villages, and the belief began to spread abroad, that they were in quest of young children, of whom 300 were said to be required, to propitiate the demons of the rock. The workpeople first fled from the part of the line near Matheran, after having severely maltreated some Parsee workmen employed in constructing houses on the hill-top. Irritation had now proceeded to such a pitch, that every stranger, of whatever race, on making his appearance in the neighbourhood was almost sure to be attacked. The villagers have nowhere taken the fields in bodies, nor is there any apprehenson of a general rising, and with a little quiet management, everything will most likely settle down, when the fallaciousness of the fears for their children becomes apparent. There was the same panic at the idea of human sacrifices when the cuttings were in progress at Nowrojee-hill, near the centre of Bombay, in 1852. A fine commentary it affords us certainly on enlightenment descending from above, and on the relative merits of universities and of village schools, to find a whole district along the line of the great highway to the Deccan, constructed 40 years ago, panic stricken at the apprehension of the wholesale immolation of their children! The disturbed villages are within two-hours' railway run of the Elphinstone College. Their inhabitants have been in constant communication with Europeans since Governor Nepean's time, and yet in civilization they seem behind the South Sea Islanders.

This is a gloomy picture of the most important dependency of the British Crown, after an occupation by a Christian power for more than a hundred years. But there is a bright side to the picture as well as a dark one. It cannot be doubted that the future destiny of 150,000,000 of human beings in India depends largely on the conduct of the Christians of this country, in reference to that important dependency. And it is pleasing to know that we have been doing something more than carrying on the work of subjugation. Lord Dalhousie has just returned from his singularly successful administration of the Affairs of our Eastern Empire. He has the repute of having