found myself, with beehives-if a beehive gets too weak, and unable to defend itself, all the beehives from the parishes around rush into it, and take the last drop of honey from it, and enrich themselves at its expense. Now, if this nation happened to be a nation of quakers, who did not choose to defend themselves, and would let everybody put in his hand and help himself at his discretion, what would be the result? That the Emperor of Russia would not be the only assailant; every barbarous and uncivilized nation of Europe would crowd around the rich and fertile shores of our native land, and very soon you would not have a roof-tree to shelter you, a breath of free air to draw, or a blessing to bequeath to your children, and your children's children.

But you answer, and you justly answer, "The horrors of war are so terrible, that we are surprised that you, as an ambassador of peace, can sanction them." I answer, "I do not sanction them; I sanction the defence of my country, and the discharge of the duty of the chief magistrate of the realm, in defending that country; and if war emerge, and the Emperor of Russia is wounded, or his army scattered, as I pray they may be, the guilt is his, the responsibility is his."

Besides, I do not think it is fair, in any one belonging to the Peace Society, to draw frightful pictures of the horrors of war, and then say, "Come and sanction this." Such a person tells you what took place at Inkermann and the Alma; but he neither looks above, nor beyond, nor beside the mere physical suffering; he does not exaggerate the physical suffering, but he excludes the relieving moral elements, that take from the battle-field half its horrors, and show, that a price was paid upon that field, not inadequate to the great blessings it was given to secure. Martyrs die terribly; but the moral glory of a martyr's death makes him count, and us regard, his sufferings, as nothing in comparison; and sustained by the conviction that we are right, and knowing that we must pay the terrible price, in order to vindicate the right, and to put down the wrong doer, the nation has voted, almost to a man, that it will pay the terrible price, rather than submit to the threatened and more terrible bondage. Our friends of the Antiwar and Peace Societies point to what every one must witness in our streets-the dark and sorrowful procession of thousands, who have had Christmas, 1854, anything but a merry one; and they say, "Look at that-see what war is." I

answer, War has done all this, and frightful is the guilt of that man whose heel first struck out the spark that has kindled flames, that have left, in their black footprints, so sad and dreadful consequences; but rather, let ten thousand more of our fathers, and our mothers, and our wives, and our sisters, be clothed in sackcloth, than that the whole of this great nation should be clothed in the sackcloth of Russian slavery. The grave into which our dead and gallant troops have been gathered, is indeed deep and wide; but since it must be, we are prepared to bury on the field thousands more, rather than that this whole nation should descend into the dark and gloomy sepulchre of superstition, of iron thraldom, and of darkness; the gilded cross, and the whited covering of which, do not conceal the wickedness and moral corruption that are within. We have paid much, and we are prepared still to pay much, that a barrier may be put up to resist that which the most competent judges declare would be our ruin, and to maintain that which, we are all competent enough to tell, is alike the glory and the happiness of our land. It is not that we love war-we love peace and we so love peace, that we are prepared to go to war, in order to assert, maintain, and spread that peace.

But you ask, perhaps, "Are you not seeking simply to prop up the crescent-the old, decrepit, and tottering empire of Turkey?" If this had been the object of the war, as far as policy was concerned, I never could have gone into it. I do not think the Turks are worth fighting for; I do not think those poor miserable men that left their redoubts, ran and ate the Highlanders' dinners in their tents, are worth fighting for; and therefore, if the war had been merely for the defence of Turkey, I should not have been here for one moment as an apologist of it. I look upon Turkey in Europe as simply the wall between Northern barbarism and Western civilisation; and whether that wall be made of mud, or of stones, or of brick, or of Parian marble, I do not care. It is not the wall that we fight for ; but it is the spot on which the battle is fought that decides whether Russian barbarism or Western civilisation shall prevail throughout the world. It is not to keep his broken door together, that the owner of the house drives off the robber; but it is to defend his property; and the threshold happens to be the scene of the conflict, whether the owner or the robber shall obtain the victory. I believe that Turkey, as a Mahometan country, is gone. You know that

those who have studied the pages of prophecy told you, twenty, and many of them thirty years ago, that the Turkish empire in Europe, the overflowing streams of the great Euphrates which subsided in that land, were soon to be dried up; and not more than twenty years ago the exhaustion of the Euphratean flood, or of the Turkish empire in Europe, began, as was predicted distinctly by hundreds. This very year Sheik Al Islam is deposed, the property of the Mosque is confiscated, the Sultan was bowing like a European, as English ladies were introduced to him in the palace of our own ambassador, the dead are buried at Pera, close by the graves of the faithful Moslem. There is a complete revolution in Turkey; and I believe that when the miserable and sensual Turk has crossed the Bosphorus, and arrived within the sunnier climes to which he legitimately belongs; and when the nine millions of Christians, enlightened, instructed, shall occupy that splendid empire of which Constantinople is the capital, there will be a nobler bulwark against Russian aggression than ever has been presented, or can be presented, by an effete and worthless Turkish and Mahometan empire.

But to show that war, in certain circumstances,