fishermen on the coast of France. No doubt every interference with the mercantile pursuits of a country tends to cripple its resources; but where this result was so remote, and the suffering to those immediately concerned would have been so grievous, our government was perfectly right in resisting the temptation.

It is to be regretted that the same course has not been decidedly acted upon by our fleets in the Baltic during the war. It is well known that the Fins live during their long and dreary winter upon the fish they have caught and salted during the summer months. This is almost the only subsistence of the lower orders among them. Now surely our seizing their fishing vessels, and confiscating all the cargoes of salt which were coming to them for this purpose, was a very clear breach of the important principle which has been referred to that some sort of balance should be maintained between the advantage to be gained and the misery to be inflicted. We really have not advanced the success of our arms, nor reduced the strength of Russia in the smallest degree by this severity, and we have caused the deepest distress to the hapless Fins. There is abundant excuse for our government in not having made this exception to the rigour of the blockade. But it might be wished, that for the sake of engaging the affections of the Fins, and their neighbours the Swedes, and of mitigating the calamities of the war, and of establishing more firmly than ́ever the principle before us, we had had the wisdom and self-control to allow the Fins to fish as usual, and had permitted salt to be imported.*

To this principle, again, is the rule owing which is now observed by all civilized armies, not to fire upon the enemy's sentinels. For, in such a case, the diminution of the enemy's force is microscopically small, whereas the suffering to the individual men would be very severe. In this case, too, the sentinel is performing a purely defensive duty; and the very fact of his standing alone gives him a claim to pity.

No doubt this principle, that the advantage must outweigh

* The Times, last autumn, contained frequent passages like the following:- List of captured Russian vessels burnt or destroyed by her Majesty's steamship Miranda, between the 24th and the 31st of August, 1854-A lugger, 57 tons, laden with salt fish, burnt; a lugger, 63 tons, laden with salt fish and five casks of oil, burnt; a lugger, 67 tons, laden with salt fish and rye flour, burnt; a lugger, 35 tons, laden with salt fish, burnt;-names unknown, captured the 24th of August. A lugger, 61 tons, laden with salt fish, scuttled ;;-name unknown, captured the 28th of August. A lugger, 55 tons, laden with rye flour, scuttled ;-name unknown, captured the 29th of August.' These were in the White Sea.

Henry V. at Montereau.

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the misery, is indefinite, and its application must depend on the discretion of the commander-in-chief. But this is no objection to its truth. There is no moral principle whose application does not depend on the fallible judgment of man. And though in many cases the commander might find it hard to say whether the advantage he might gain would be likely to balance the suffering he would cause, yet in others the question is already settled for him by public opinion. For instance, it is now generally admitted to be an unjustifiable act of a besieging general to refuse a passage to the townspeople who wish to escape through his lines, because the appalling horrors which a refusal is apt to cause, exceed the advantage that would be gained by increasing the number of hungry mouths within the place besieged.

Another principle that might be laid down is this,―That you have no right to inflict death or misery upon B for the sake of influencing the conduct of A. This principle has been shamefully contravened in many instances in modern history; but in none more disgracefully than in the conduct of Henry V. which is thus described in Lord Brougham's History of England under the House of Lancaster :

The siege of Montereau was a much longer operation. After the town had fallen, Henry became impatient at the garrison holding out, and he resorted to an act of the greatest cruelty, in the hope of making them surrender. He drew up under the walls of the castle eleven or twelve of the garrison, persons of rank, who had been taken prisoners; and he threatened to execute them if the commandant would not yield. Upon the refusal, which he might well expect, he erected a gibbet, and, after allowing the wretched men to take leave of their families in the fortress, he caused them all to be hanged, one after another, in face of the garrison, hoping that the sight so deliberately inflicted upon the commandant would melt the heart of one whom he at the same time accused of the Burgundians' murder.*

It is owing to the consciousness of this principle, that the system of taking hostages has become obsolete in Europe. Since men have become more humanized, it has been felt impossible to slaughter a gentleman in cold blood, because his father or brother left undone that which he ought to have done.

And now the question naturally arises, whether it is not justifiable for a conquering nation which clearly has had right on its side, to inflict punishment on its opponent for having unjustly begun the war? To this question, upon the whole,

* Hist. of the House of Lancaster, p. 206.

we should put a negative. For it is evident, that in every case of the kind, the judge would be the very party aggrieved, and therefore could not be trusted to decide correctly as to whether he had been wronged or not, or to what extent. Very likely his opponent had some measure of justice on his side, to which the conqueror is totally blind. And not only would he have to be the judge in his own cause, but he would have to act as such just when his passions were most heated by the excitement of war. On this ground we should condemn any attempt of the kind; and also because, even if the conqueror could be trusted to judge candidly as to the criminality of his foe and the degree of punishment which he deserved, yet we do not see that such chastisement is necessary. The fact that the wrong-doing nation has been conquered is sufficient penalty, one should think, and warning enough to it and to its neighbours for the time to come. Any additional ill-usage would be more likely to lead to war afterwards, for the sake of vengeance, than to prevent it by awakening fears of a similar punishment again.

But though it is not justifiable for the conqueror to do any damage to the conquered nation, for the sake of chastising him, he clearly has the right to demand that the nation which. wrongly provoked the war should make good the loss it has caused; and, of course, his strongholds may be ruined, and his fleets and stores destroyed. That is simply to disarm him, and keep him out of mischief for the time to come.

Here, then, we have several principles, each obvious enough to any thinking mind; and each, in a great degree, admitted amongst civilized nations. They are so closely intertwined, that it is not quite possible to separate them, but they may be re-stated as follows:

I. The main principle is, that a belligerent (so far of course as he had a right to enter into the war at all) has the right, by all means in his power, to lessen the force of his opponent; but except for that purpose he may not touch a hair of his head.

II. Even this permission is so far restricted, that the more merciful method of lessening the opponent's force must invariably be selected.

III. There must be some sort of balance between the advantage to be gained and the misery to be inflicted.

IV. A may not injure B, in order to influence the conduct

of C.

V. It is not right to chastise a conquered nation for having provoked the war; though it is fair to make him pay for its cost.

The present Opportunity.

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Perhaps two of these principles might be resolved into the same truth; but we leave that point for the reflection of the reader. All of them, however, issue naturally from the command of God-' Love your enemies;' a command which does not seem to imply that man is to sacrifice his rights to every assailant, but that in resisting aggression, he is to control the evil passions of his heart, and treat him with perfect justice and mercy.

The more these principles become rooted in the public mind, the less will war continue to be the ruin of the contending nations. By degrees it would become a scientific game of chess between the two generals, in which there must be a great deal of suffering to the soldiers, and great waste of money, and still worse of mental energy,* to the two states; but still the ravage and rapine which have usually followed in its train would be extinguished. Doubtless, too, the tendency of humanity in war is not merely to make war less cruel, but open the eyes of the world to the horrible wickedness of it in itself, where it can by any possible means be avoided. It is one vast advantage of submission to any moral principle, that it enlarges the horizon of the conscience; that the more you obey, the more clearly do you see the laws that you ought to obey; and further, can anything ennoble a nation more than its earnestly seeking out, and submitting itself to, the dominion of high moral principles, and sacrificing to them the indulgence of its brute passions?

to

It is especially important that the true principles by which the conduct of war ought to be controlled, should work freely in the mind of the nation at the present time, because there never was so fine a chance of establishing them for ever as the laws of war. Let England and France but embody them in their conduct, on so huge an occasion, and on so vast a scale, and they will be emphatically preached to all posterity. After a forty years' peace, the world will look upon the behaviour of two such countries as these as the precedent to which the conduct of war in aftertimes may be conformed. If we now show that we comprehend these principles, and will act upon them in spite of every temptation, then they are sure to settle down in the world's conscience as clear moral laws; but laxity in our observance of them now will be an excuse and precedent for still grosser transgression of them in future times.

*This absorption of the state's whole attention by the war is one of the greatest evils connected with it. It paralyses all improvement in those things which really contribute to the happiness and comfort of life.

And that the restrictions on war which morality requires are still not so fully understood as they ought to be, has been shown but too plainly, even in the present war. Generally, indeed, there has been an admirable desire evinced, both by the authorities at home and by our admirals and generals, to act humanely and generously; but there have been two or three painful exceptions to this rule.

One of these was the burning of private property, valued at 300,000l., at Uleaborg. The place was in no way fortified. It contained no Russian troops. The property destroyed consisted of timber, deals, and tar, several half-built merchant ships, and several thousand fathoms of firewood. These stores were in no respect munitions of war;' they were the materials of peaceful commerce, and belonged, not to the government, but to private individuals, who had laid them up before the war began.

The only plea* we can imagine for this devastation would be, that since it is usual (and quite justifiable) in war to capture all the merchant ships of the enemy, it must be equally justifiable to capture the materials of which they are to be made. But there is this broad difference :—when you begin a war, you are justified in bringing the enemy's trade to a stand-still, so as to lessen the resources of his government. In order to this, you capture any merchant vessel that attempts to break through your blockade; and if the owner of such a ship chooses to run the risk of its capture, he knows what the rule is, and the penalty of breaking it. But an unfinished ship on shore, and the tar and timber of which others are at some future day to be made, have broken no rule, and are not engaged in prosecuting the trade of the country, and are not, therefore, increasing the wealth of the enemy's government; consequently there is no possible reason for drawing any line between such commodities and the stock on a farm, or the furniture in a house.†

(2). Again, the burning of Kola, a town in the White Sea, was no doubt justifiable, because a fire of musketry was kept

* Except indeed that the admiral did not stop to ascertain whether they really were munitions of war or not,—a plea which he would probably repudiate.

It seems strange enough that Admiral Plumridge made proclamation (June 1, 1854), that the English Admiral would not injure private individuals nor their property. His intention was only to destroy all defences, fortifications, and property belonging to the Emperor of Russia. Yet the very next day he burnt all these half-built merchant ships and other goods!