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have advocated our cause when it required a courage that has scarcely been excelled on the battle-fields of the Republic. We hold these brethren in hearty and honored affection, and esteem them for their work's sake.

We are ready to coöperate with those who have misrepresented us, if satisfied that they sincerely desire such an alliance, and have resolved to avoid in the future the arrogant judgments which first indiscriminately condemned Northern Christians for complicity with slavery and then slandered them for an honest effort to remove the curse from their country. The preservation of a kindly feeling between England and the United States, and the combination of their Christian efforts for the salvation of the world, depend largely upon the relation of the churches represented in the National Council at Boston and those represented by the delegates from abroad. All who love the Kingdom of the Redeemer will pray that they may see eye to eye and labor together in unity and piety under the leadership of our ascended Lord.

The report of the committee made no allusion to a matter which was introduced by young Mr. Monod, diffidently under the urgent pressure of foreign opinion, and which deserves a calm and frank answer. He represented the wish of our friends in Europe, that there should be no capital punishment inflicted for the crime of rebellion, fearing the encouragement it would afford despots, and closed his appeal with this sentence:

"On the other hand, if, under such provocations as you have suffered, and such sacrifices as you have undergone, you should still deem it compatible with the present dignity and with the future safety of the nation-(I do not enter on that question)— not to execute the sentence pronounced upon men guilty of treason, such an exhibition of clemency would be looked upon as highly honorable to democracy, and as an example for all governments."

We cannot, at the close of this Article, enter upon any discussion of the justice and expediency of punishing the conspirators against our republic with the severest penalty. We can only remind these brethren that treason against a nation is a graver crime than treason against a king, and that this offense,

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in our republic, was the sum of all villainy, involving not only perjury, but a war in behalf of cruelty, and tyranny, and anarchy; and that to permit this sin to go unscathed, would be to invite its repetition. We cannot appreciate the relief which clemency would afford the Liberals in Europe. We hold that no revolution against an established government is justifiable, unless there be a reasonable prospect of success, and also a cause for which a man should be willing to suffer martyrdom. Our forefathers, in their Revolutionary struggle, accepted the risk of their lives, and were ready to meet the doom, and die ignominiously, if they failed; and we should be the last to encourage abortive insurrections, which would never be undertaken if the leaders did not deem themselves exempted from punishment. Civil government is too sacred to be lightly assailed, and those who attempt its violent overthrow must be able to justify their course by the intolerable wrongs which they suffer, by their probability of success, and by their self-forgetful devotion to justice and freedom; and then, if they perish, history will revere their heroism, and the admiration of the world will embalm their memory.

We cheerfully and confidently leave to the future the deci sion whether the conspirators against the republic, to extend slavery, whose atrocities were only the natural and necessary methods of prosecuting the rebellion, deserved the gravest punishment, not solely for their cruelties, their starvation of defenseless prisoners, their assassinations and arsons, but for hat crime which is blacker than all, comprehending and compelling all the rest, their treason against this republic of freemen.

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ARTICLE VIII.-HISTORY OF JULIUS CÆSAR, BY
NAPOLEON III.

History of Julius Cæsar. Vol. 1. New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, Franklin Square, 1865.

THE first Cæsar wrote books; why may not the third Napoleon do the same? Cæsar wrote in modest phrase concerning himself, and withal left monuments of the purity and unaffected dignity of the language of Rome. Why may not Napoleon leave a French classic behind him, and why may he not also, through the History of the great Cæsar, speak of himself, while he reveals to a puzzled world his thoughts of imperial duty? Not that Napoleon honestly designs to reveal himself in this work, or to resolve the riddle of his policy. The world will probably be as much in doubt as before concerning the Emperor's course, even if it be not so much in the dark respecting the man. They will see what thoughts he has had which might apply, and perhaps ought to apply, to his life. But will any one venture to calculate his orbit, or the smallest arc of it, from the observations which he can take from this book? Still it is a very interesting work, because it shows us something of the life and workings of his mind and soul when not immediately devoted to the vast activities of his office,—interesting too, as presenting from him some materials, at least, of a theory of his life, such a theory as he might insist on as an explanation of his policy, even though the incredulous world might with equal seriousness persist in considering his apologia only the next move in the great and inscrutable game he is playing in the face of all men. When his game is ended, we shall feel that an estimate may be formed not only of his reach and skill but also of his absolute worth. Who will dare to pass judgment on him now? He tells us in the preface that the peoples, who misunderstand and combat such men as Cæsar and Napoleon, are blind and culpable, like the Jews who crucified the Messiah, and that the

aim he has in view in writing this history, is to prove that the design of Providence in raising up such men is to trace out to peoples the path they ought to follow. These are substantially his words. But he has unfortunately given us no criterion by which we may judge whether the Napoleons are the safe, heaven-sent guides he would have us consider them,—whether they can be securely followed by the nations through the devastations and cruelties of war to "the good which they intend to do for mankind." We may have hopes, but we are liable to mistake, and we find that it requires quite a courageous faith to lead us to commit ourselves to "guides" who may murder helpless prisoners of war, or whose scepter is, at the very beginning, stained with innocent blood. The Jews rejected and crucified the Messiah. But they certainly could not urge in justification of their crime that he bore such a scepter as that of Cæsar or that of a Napoleon; and who, we may ask, that comprehends and believes in Christianity, can presume to compare them?

Considerably more than half of the volume contains preliminary matter, consisting of a careful resumé of the history of Rome from Romulus to the birth of Cæsar. The chronology and the historical order of events adopted in this resumé are in harmony with the belief of the Romans themselves, that is, two and an half centuries of regal government and four centuries of republican government precede Caesar's times. The omission to admit or discuss any of the important historical innovations of Niebuhr and others respecting the earliest period is in itself an indication that the author's object is not historical but political. He aims to bring out in their historical place the events which had a political significance, to enter into and interpret this significance, to trace the progress of ideas and the growth of evils in the state, and especially the decline of virtue and patriotism among the higher orders, and thus to show that Cæsar was the man who was sent to save what was good, and at the same time to carry the state-the Roman world-forward to a newer and higher civilization. This object of the author being kept in mind, the historical review will be found very interesting to those

who are familiar with Roman history, and instructive to those who are not so. This part of the volume, and indeed the whole of it, is vivified by its manifest connection with the times and events in which the author is bearing so conspicuous a part. In the following extract, from pages 342, 343, and 344, the present emerges into full view, and we are almost ready to believe that we find in it a clue to the ruling Napoleon's policy:

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It is always a great evil for a country, a prey to agitations, when the party of the honest, or that of the good, as Cicero calls them, do not embrace the new ideas, to direct by moderating them. Hence profound divisions. On the one side, unknown men often take possession of the good or bad passions of the crowd; on the other, honorable men, immovable or morose, oppose all progress, and by their obstinate resistance excite legitimate impatience and lamentable violence. The opposition of these last has the double inconvenience of leaving the way clear to those who are less worthy than themselves, and of throwing doubts into the minds of that floating mass, which judges parties much more by the honorableness of men than by the value of ideas.

"What was then passing in Rome offers a striking example of this. Was it not reasonable, in fact, that men should hesitate to prefer a faction which had at its head such illustrious names as Hortensius, Catulus, Marcellus, Lucullus, and Cato, to that which had for its main-stays individuals like Gabinius, Manilius, Catiline, Vatinius, and Clodius? What more legitimate in the eyes of the descendants of the ancient families than this resistance to all change, and this disposition to consider all reform as Utopian and almost as sacrilege? What more logical for them than to admire Cato's firmness of soul, who, still young, allowed himself to be menaced with death rather than admit the possibility of becoming one day the defender of the cause of the allies claiming the rights of Roman citizens? How not comprehend the sentiments of Catulus and Hortensius obstinately defending the privileges of the aristocracy, and manifesting their fears at this general inclination to concentrate all power in the hands of one individual?

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And yet the cause maintained by these men was condemned to perish, as everything which has had its time. Notwithstanding their virtues, they were only an additional obstacle to the steady march of civilization, because they wanted the qualities most essential for a time of revolution-an appreciation of the wants of the moment, and of the problems of the future. Instead of trying what they could save from the shipwreck of the ancient regime, just breaking to pieces against a fearful rock, the corruption of political morals, they refuse to admit that the institutions to which the Republic owed its grandeur could bring about its decay. Terrified at all innovation, they confounded in the same anathema the seditious enterprises of certain tribunes, and the just reclamations of the citizens. But their influence was so considerable, and ideas consecrated by time have so much empire over minds, that they would have yet hindered

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