state of things occur again, therefore, during the approaching struggle—should the commerce and industry of the country be prostrated, and the government be rendered incapable of prosecuting with the required energy a just war, to which we are bound alike by every consideration of national honour, sound policy, and good faith towards an oppressed ally—we must not be told that the suffering and degradation which will be brought down upon our heads are the results of a war expenditure merely, or have been caused by any natural interruption of our ordinary trading pursuits. The true cause of the calamity, it must become obvious to all the world, will be our dogged maintenance of an impracticable crotchet; and should the nation submit to be thus thwarted and fettered in its determination to maintain its high prestige—should it submit to sink down from its position as a leading power,—we may with reason be asked the question, “Of what avail is your possession of the noblest fleet which ever rode the seas in ancient or in modern days—of what avail is the possession of the best-disciplined and bravest soldiers which ever marched to battle—of what avail is your vast mercantile marine, your vast accumulations of capital, your almost limitless command over all the improved appliances which modern science and ingenuity have constructed for the purposes of war, if you cannot resent a national insult, or oppose the aggressions of an enemy, without commercial ruin, suspended industry, and popular disaffection and outrage being spread over the face of your whole empire?” We hope, however, for better things. We feel confident that a high-minded and honourable people will not submit to be thus stultified and degraded in the eyes of the world. We entertain, too, a reasonable hope that the unpatriotic faction, who would gladly involve the country in that degradation, will not be favoured in their unworthy efforts by the possession of the instrumentality—a suffering and dissatisfied working population—upon which they calculate to insure success. By the blessing of a bountiful Providence, clothing our fields and those of Western Europe and America with luxuriant harvests, we may this year be snatched from our position of dependence upon the growth of an enemy’s soil for the food of our people, and be enabled to enter upon a period of plenty and cheapness, instead of that scarcity and high prices of all the necessaries of life from which we have been suffering during the past twelve months—certainly without such suffering being attributable to a state of war, or to any but ordinary causes. THE PUPPETS OF ALL NATIONS.[1]