Suppose the same offender to be adjudged worthy of death; how shall he be brought to punishment? Shall it be by a measure that reverses the maxim, "better that the guilty escape than that the innocent perish?" Will justice permit us to forego the form of judicial apprehension, and, approaching the offender in disguise, to strike him, with a blow that levels him and all around him in the same death together? Should this be done at an hour when wakeful guilt may take the alarm, but sleeping innocence is sure to suffer?

It may be said that these suppositions are irrelevant-that they do not apply to the most common and serious case, that of outrages in which the native authorities are implicated. But here too justice must admit the existence and force of difference of national character, and of possible provocation. It must also ascertain the degree of implication.

Now, we would ask, what are these native authorities, supposed to be thus implicated? Are they governments, or not? If governments, should we not treat them as such, and require, mutually, that international offenders be delivered up or punished? If not, and in the western sense perhaps they are not governments, can responsibility be taken justly from the "authorities," such as they are, and fastened on the multitude? These subjects, if we please to call them such, suffer much from their irregular rulers. Shall they also be required to suffer in their stead?

But it may be objected that all this is irrelevant also. That all are more or less implicated—that society, in these regions, is an association to plunder for the common benefit—that expediency requires that examples should, from time to time, be made that offenders cannot be apprehended, and that the only possible mode of punishment, is by a sudden, disguised, and undiscriminating stroke.

Let us put the argument, then, on the footing of ability and expediency, and consider, not what can be done justly, but what our means permit, and our interest demands. Is there any then among these petty governments beyond the reach of the American government? And if our national honour requires what one sloop cannot perform in a manly manner, should we not send a larger force? If we could apprehend no criminal, might no prisoners, no hostages be taken? And if it were, in the last resort, necessary to punish the innocent for the guilty, should it not be done, for effect's sake, in a judicial manner, and under a show, at least, of justice?

But it may be objected here that the weakness of these tribes is their defence. That if warned of the approach of a chastising force, they escape to the jungle, and evade all pursuit. But do they leave no pledges behind? Would not the sequestration of their abandoned goods, or the destruction of their villages and boats, do something towards compensating the loss of the property of our citizens, and preventing future attacks? Should this first measure prove insufficient, would not the privilege of an indiscriminate massacre be still open, as a last resort?

Again, if severity were both easy and justifiable in these cases, what are we to think of the expediency of attempting to produce, by retaliation, on the Eastern Islanders, "a lasting, and wide, and beneficial impression?"

As to the matter of duration, it is certainly true, that a blow will be felt and remembered in proportion to its severity. The wretched will never forget the stroke that made him so. But if you would render an effect extensive among the broken and rival tribes of Eastern Islands, you must first bind them together by those fine cords of common feeling, which carry impressions through all the members of society, with us, with electrical quickness and force. And why desire to produce effects that shall be lasting and extensive, if they must be misinterpreted, or injurious, or unjust? What security have you, when aiming to produce these "effects," that the Diak will not suppose you are collecting "trophies," or the Malay that you

are glutting revenge? What more likely, when the guilt you would punish is severed from its deserts, by the undiscriminating nature of the stroke.

Besides, commerce is, in its nature, essentially voluntary and peaceful. Our merchants send property to the ends of the earth, not for safe keeping, but for gain. Security is necessary on its way. But security would be too dearly purchased by the destruction of friendly intercourse. We therefore deprecate all retaliatory measures, and all severity, beyond judicial reparation. We fear those wide and lasting effects spoken of, must cease to be felt before peaceful intercourse can be resumed, and that then, this purchased blessing, this new security, will be as if never pos sessed. We fear, too, for this reason, that the same measures will prostrate the high enterprises of our country's benevolence toward the East.

But will a mild conciliatory mode of dealing, give to our future intercourse with South-Eastern Asia, the requisite security.? We contend, that this result is in a considerable degree to be effected, by the very use of the just and wise measures we have advocated, at the times and places of collision. It cannot be said that our past security has resulted from severe measures, since they have been scarcely resorted to, except in a single and recent instance. Our argument is directed against individual views of this subject, unsanctioned by official practice. And when we remember, that our intercourse has been carried on with South-Eastern Asia so long with so few embarrassments, is it not highly probable that it will come to be conducted with perfect security, when it receives, for the first time in the history of our nation, a kind, public regard?

Hitherto our government has taken no measures to inform itself of the political and general condition of that part of the world. It has never come in peace to make itself known there. Our national flag has hardly ever been seen there. It has ap peared, perhaps, in a single instance, to see that justice was done to its citizens; but when to see that justice was done by those citizens? What additional security would be given to American intercourse with the East, if its merchant colours were associated, in the mind of every native prince, as they float in the mild breezes of his island dominion, with the protective care of a just and powerful nation!

Our conclusion from this argument is, that justice and expediency both require the adoption of watchful, judicial, and yet conciliatory measures, by our government, towards these insular kingdoms, in contradistinction to a system of retaliation and force. Christian nations, after neglecting to make common their peculiar blessings, for so many centuries, owe forbearance at least to those unhappy societies of men, whose degradation they have refused to elevate, nay, cooperated to produce.

It is evident, from the work before us, that there are vast openings for enterprise in South-Eastern Asia. The higher objects of Christian philanthropy, are identified' there, with the establishment of political relations, and the gains of commercial intercourse. We will not direct statesmen and Christians what they should do in this case. But, as merchants, we will say, had we assigned to us, in perpetuity, the advantages of the commerce of the East, the diffusion of knowledge, the exertion of benevolence, and the support of missions there, are the measures to which we should feel directed, by a regard to pecuniary interests. To society, Providence has made such an assignment.

A word of criticism and we conclude this review. This work is written in an easy, unpretending style, sometimes rather carelessly, generally without ornament, We are told in the preface, that the writer has been unable, since his return to this country, to give the benefit of revision to what was written abroad under many unfavourable circumstances, and particularly in ill health. Our extracts furnish some specimens of good description. There are in the volume other highly impressive VOL. XVII.-NO. 33.

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passages. But, on the whole, and without the explanations of the preface, we should say, there is not so much effort exhibited in the book as was due to the greatness of the subject, nor so much talent as might have been expected from the author.

Regarded as an individual contribution, it is certainly respectable. It is by no means complete, nor have we to depend, in future, on any individual contribution, for a complete view of this subject. Now that Eastern Asia is attracting so much attention among our countrymen, and is thrown open to a kindred sentiment and enterprise in Great Britain, we may look for a succession of publications on both sides of the Atlantic.

The two nations are pledged to the great work which no other can accomplish, of civilizing and Christianizing the East. The work demands an accomplished and powerful instrumentality, in every step of its progress. For this, we look to British and American intelligence and piety, under Him, "without whom agents cannot be qualified, nor agency successful."

The Life of the Emperor Napoleon. With an Appendix, containing an examination of Sir W. Scott's "Life of Napoleon Bonaparte;" and a notice of the principal errors of other writers, respecting his character and conduct. By H. Lee. Complete in four vols. Vol. I. New York: 1835.

We cannot say, that as Americans, we derive much pleasure from the contemplation of this work. There is something we do not relish in the spectacle of a citizen of these United States, the proper foe of despotism by his very birth, proclaiming himself with a loud voice the champion of one who was the absolute personification of arbitrary power, and entering the lists, with the object of making an impetuous onset upon the most formidable antagonist of the despot. True it is, this antagonist is not the friend of republics; but it is the cause, not the foe, which imparts a character to the contest. The aristocrat who essays to destroy the pernicious illusions with which unhallowed sway is encircled by the glare of military glory, performs a labour far more republican in essence than that of the democrat who endeavours to strengthen and perpetuate the imposture. The tory baronet advances much stronger claims in this instance to the gratitude of every advocate of the rights of man, than the American whig. We are aware, indeed, that a sort of ill-defined idea exists, that from the fact of Napoleon's not having been what is technically styled a legitimate monarch, but, to use a favourite phrase, a child of the revolution, sprung from the people, his cause is in some degree identified with that of republicanism. So far, however, from this being the case, the very circumstance indicated must render his tyranny doubly obnoxious. There may be some excuse for the offspring of a royal line, reared and pampered in the belief that "he is the state," if his conduct be impelled by such conviction; but none can be adduced for the man who has learnt to sympathize with his fellow creatures as his equals, and tramples them under foot when elevated above them by fortune, forgetful or heedless of the lesson, and hearkening only to the dictates of inordinate selfishness. Such a man is a traitor as well as a tyrant. As a child of the revolution, Napoleon was guilty of political parricide as well as of the worst species of usurpation, for he it was who strangled that parent, by subverting all the beneficial ef fects which he himself, in an especial manner, might have enabled it to produce. That injustice has been done him by Sir Walter Scott, is an impression with which, prevalent as it is, we cannot bring ourselves to coincide. Rarely has a work been more sinned against than sinning, than the production of the great novelist;

one cause of which, we apprehend, was the very circumstance of the author's being the great novelist. "Scott's last romance" was so taking a phrase! It furnished so smart a piece of ready made wit, that the temptation to use it was irresistible; and we all know how strong an impression a current mot always makes upon the general mind. We grant that the extravagant anticipations which were naturally awakened in reference to the life of the greatest warrior by the greatest writer of the era, were by no means completely answered, and that occasionally national partialities and political prejudices are strongly exhibited; but whilst, in a literary point of view, it is undeniably a work such as few other pens of the period were capable of inditing, it is also, on the whole, we do not hesitate to affirm, one which renders ample justice to the character of its subject. For our own part, we must confess, we closed the volumes with the suspicion that Sir Walter had sometimes allowed a desire of being impartial to get the better of his judgment, and had exercised a degree of leniency, as well as indulged in a strain of encomium, not always to be justified. Every thing, of course, depends upon the idea which the reader entertains of the emperor. If his enthusiastic admiration of his genius blinds him to its concomitants, he will doubtless be prompted to anger by the picture which is offered to his eyes; but if his vision be sufficiently strong to resist the dazzling influence of the warrior's exploits, to penetrate through the glitter and the prepotence of his intellect to the darkness and the feebleness of his morale-if he beholds in the light which he casts, not the genial radiance of the sun diffusing cheerfulness and vitality over the face of nature, but the lurid glare of a comet shooting madly athwart the firmament, and bearing pestilence and ruin in its train—if he contemplates in his career not the course of a majestic stream, on whose banks the laughing flowers "drink life and fragrance as it flows," and whose very inundations are a source of fertility and fruitfulness, but the rush of a fearful torrent sweeping away every thing that it encounters with remorseless violence-if, in a word, he perceives not an illusion but a reality, he will regard the deep shadows of the portrait as an evidence of the limner's fidelity and truth, instead of deeming them the offspring of a teeming imagination, and propensity for fiction.

Be this, however, as it may—even supposing that Sir Walter's volumes are replete with the errors imputed to them, is it so unusual a thing to mistake, are men so rarely liable to err, that he must be accused of wilful perversion and falsehood? Why should his motives be impugned any more than those of the writer who chaunts an invariable pæan to the immaculate glories of the man of destiny? Is not such an individual entitled to form and express an opinion upon any subject, however repugnant to the sentiments of others, without rendering himself obnoxious to the foulest charge? Of all persons, indeed, who have communicated their thoughts to the world, Sir Walter Scott is one of the last whose objects should be vilified. Misled he might be by the fervour of his fancy-deceived he might be by the influence of prepossessions-but that he ever would knowingly have prostituted his pen to the propagation of calumny and lies, is an idea which we could not allow even to enter our mind. It requires a melancholy conviction of the frailty of human nature, to believe that a man whose whole life was spent in sustaining and emblazoning the cause of virtue, whose other productions all bespeak the utmost kindness of heart and elevation of soul, who has done more to delight and refine his fellow beings than almost any "light of the world" that has ever been granted to it by a beneficent Providence, could have been capable, by any possibility, of such miserable baseness. It would be far better for the interests of humanity, that some even unmerited blots should be suffered to remain upon an escutcheon already stained to a repulsive degree, than that a spot should be thrown upon one attractive

to the eye and inspiring to the mind by its unsullied purity and brightness. The name of Napoleon is not more glorious than that of Scott, notwithstanding the assertion of Mr. Lee-an assertion, by the way, which smacks more of the major than the author. Which of the two "demi-gods of fame" would men be most willing to erase from the records of existence? by the oblivion of whose works would they most lose? which has produced the greatest happiness and benefit, the victory of Austerlitz or the story of Waverley? who has reflected the greatest glory upon his species, the scourge and the destroyer, or the blessing and the creator. The one swept from the face of the earth myriads of fellow creatures, entitled as much as himself to the breath of life, formed by the same hand and endowed with the same attributes-the other peopled it with beings who seem to be in constant communion with us of the most intimate and beneficial kind, warning us from evil, enticing us to good, friends and instructors illumining our thoughts, vivifying our feelings, and exalting our sentiments-the one spread desolation and death, the other exhilaration and good-the one combined with a towering mind a petty soul, the other presented a rare example of a beautiful intellectual and moral pre-eminence. No man can leave a glorious name, though master of the world, who is passion's slave: "Puissant dominateur de la terre et de l'onde

Il dispose à son gré du monde,
Et ne peut disposer de soi"-

and such inability to command himself must prevent every right-thinking and rightfeeling person from desiring to wear him in his heart of hearts. The monument erected by Napoleon is one of human woe, drenched with the tears of the widow and the orphan, which "smells to heaven;" but frail as it is offensive, every day undermines it and threatens its fall-whilst that of Scott, constructed with materials equally beautiful and durable, the admiration and gratitude of the world, is cemented and strengthened by the passage of years, and can only at last perish when sound sentiment and judgment shall be destroyed. If we could suppose (and why may we not?) that the spirits of the departed are conscious of the effects of the actions which they performed in this inferior state of existence, what difference must there be between the feelings of such beings as those about whom we speak! Contemplating the almost universal and absolute dominion of the proudest character which the productions of his mind exert, hearkening to the enthusiastic strains of grateful panegyric which are ever rising, like incense, from all quarters of the civilized world, perceiving that the knowledge and the appreciation of his works will extend with the advance of information and refinement, to the confines of the earth, and that his name will continue to be an object of praise and benediction to millions and millions yet unborn, until the globe itself which they will inhabit shall be dissolved -conscious of all this, with what rapture must not the spirit of Scott be forever filled! How sad the contrast presented by the spectacle which offers itself to the spirit of the conqueror! No "grateful memory of the good," the richest reward of noble deeds, no blessings save such as can impart no satisfaction to one from whose eyes the delusions of mortality have been removed, are wafted towards him-he beholds the efforts of mankind engaged in effacing the effects of his exploitsthe throne to which he had waded through slaughter, overturned, "no son of his succeeding" the nation whose near prospect of freedom he had blasted, straining again to accomplish its holy purpose the fields which he had ensanguined with his victories, resuming their verdant hue, and once more putting forth their fruit-the countries which he had prostrated before his footstool, again erect, and repairing the evils he had inflicted-all his great works, in fine, destroyed or daily disappearing, until naught but the recollection of them will survive, which, itself, will soon serve