burning, the ruining of women, the defacing
God's image?

Yes, all inconveniences—undeniable inconveniences,
but not to be thought of when national
welfare requires war to express its anger, to
assert its right, to retrieve its honour, to extend
its territory, or to augment its glory; and of
this justifiable war, in a good cause, privateering
is a necessary volunteer adjunct.

But let me sketch the probable evils resulting
from this determination of the South to
let loose her privateering murderers. As soon
as this news is telegraphed from the secession
capital of Alabama, to the Southern seaports,
that instant the worst of the bankrupt
merchants, the rich "rowdies," and old slave
dealers, will rake up every possible old schooner
and raking clipper they can find to scour the
seas, for rapine and plunder. They will buy
some old guns, which they will get rifled;
they will lay in grape-shot and round-shot;
and then put up placards in the bar-rooms
and dram-shops, and collect sailors. And
whom will they get? The patriot—the
honest—the merciful—the brave? No: the
thieving drunkard—the homicide—the gang-
driver—the slave-hunter—the runaway-convict
—the swindler—the murderer,—the seven
Deadly Sins for officers, all the Passions for
crew, and Apollyon himself for sailing-master.

And what will they do first? These men are
mere midnight murderers; they will steal up
creeks, and float with muffled oars round
harbours; they will seize free negroes, and send
them to die in the rice swamps round Savannah
River; they will cut brave men's throats in
their sleep, and seize unsuspecting fishing-
boats, burn quiet seaside villages, seize
outlying barks, do the devil's work in God's name,
and go home and exult over their patriotic
labours, and thank Heaven for making them
other men than those proud Pharisees of the
North.

The motive of a privateersman is plunder.
He comes out to steal—to fight and steal—
but not to fight if he cannot steal. The
privateersman is the common enemy of mankind,
as the pirate is, and he should be treated as such,
and hanged by whomsoever can get a rope on
his neck. The laws of God and man are against
him.

Let us suppose for a moment that duel is a
lawful combat, and that the most skilful shot
could decide the right or redress a wrong.
Because I, A., challenge B. for slandering and
basely injuring me, is that any reason why all
B.'s kinsmen should think themselves permitted
to go about armed, looking for all my (A.'s)
relations, in order to stab, rob, and pistol them?
How much more, then, would it be insufferable, if
not only B.'s friends, but all the scum and hangdogs
of B.'s parish should arm themselves and
sally out to burn my ricks and harry my stables;
and this because some ridiculous parochial law
existed, permitting anybody paying eighteenpence,
and buying a stamped paper, to take up B.'s
quarrel and injure and torment me, A.!

No! laws are not perfect, nor nations either;
still the nation that encourages privateering is
tolerating a wicked and unjust thing. There
must be snakes, nature says; and even the
mosquito may have its use in the vast circumference
of things. But bad and useless as war is, it is
not so bad and useless as privateering. It
belongs to the day when religious disputants
burnt each other, and generals plundered towns
that had been absurd enough not to allow
themselves to be taken without resistance. It
belongs to the age that shut up Galileo for
saying that the earth moved, and it belongs to that
earlier age that stoned the prophets. It is a
disgrace to the time, and is contrary to all
the laws of humanity. We no longer employ
Indians to scalp our enemies, nor do we cram our
prisoners into great ogre images and then set
them on fire. We have learnt to temper the
horrors of war. But to encourage privateersmen
is to let loose swarms of murderers to scourge
the seas, and to render the commerce of every
nation unsafe; to give the bad, privilege, under
the protection of a flag, to commit every crime
with impunity.

Privateering, whatever Grotius, Vattel,
Puffendorf, or anybody else, may say, is legalised
piracy. The nation that grants letters of marque,
grants the right to speculate in human blood and
human life. An age that has grown ashamed of
pouring red-hot shot into defenceless towns; of
ravaging unoffending territories; of carrying
away poor harmless women into infamous cap-
tivity; of torturing prisoners; of poisoning
springs; of robbing and slaying sacked towns,
ought also to be ashamed of privateering.

THE KING OF THE PIGEONS

IN a notice by the writer of The King of the Pigeons
of the Hytopadesa in No.113 (page 312) of this journal,
it is inaccurately stated that the publisher of the work
in English, Mr. Stephen Austin, "had lived at Hertford,
and ruined himself for the sake of devotion to Eastern
wisdom."

Mr. Austin still lives, we find, at Hertford, and still
prosperously devotes himself to Eastern literature; of
which we have ample proof from an elegant little catalogue
of Asiatic books printed and published by him. We learn
from it, that not only profit, but honour has sprung from
his labours, Mr. Austin having received gold medals from
Queen Victoria and the Empress of the French, in
approval of the skill and good taste which he has displayed
in his art.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Will be concluded in the Number for Saturday, 3rd August,
And on SATURDAY, 10th AUGUST,
Will be commenced (to be completed in six months)
A STRANGE STORY,
BY THE
AUTHOR OF "MY NOVEL," "RIENZI," &c. &c.