rejoicing that, as one effect of a temporising policy, the whole of this capital, these ships, and these sailors, had been released from all danger of loss or detention. But we cannot bring ourselves to consider it _decent_ in a gentleman holding an important office in the Government, whilst admitting, as he does, that we have been bamboozled by Russian diplomacy, to point triumphantly to this saving of “certain monies”—the property of private individuals, who made their ventures at their own risk and for their own profit—as in any sort balancing the loss of the national honour, which has been incurred by our tardiness in bringing decisive succour to an oppressed ally. Ill-natured people might suggest a suspicion that Mincing Lane and Mark Lane had been exercising too great an influence in Downing Street. And the public may hereafter ask of politicians, who thus ground their defence against the charges of infirmness of purpose and blind credulity, or “connivance,” as Mr Disraeli has, perhaps too correctly, termed it, upon this alleged saving of a few millions of the money of private adventurers—Will it balance the expenditure of the tens of millions of the public money which the prosecution of this war will probably cost, and which might have been saved by the adoption of a more prompt and vigorous policy in the first instance? Will it balance the loss of life—will it support the widows and orphans—will it lighten by one feather the burden upon posterity, which may be the result of this struggle? It would be a miserable thing should it have to be said of England, that there was a period in her history when she hesitated to strike a blow in a just cause until she had taken care that the offender had paid her shopkeepers or her merchants their debts! We pass over this part of the subject, however, as scarcely belonging to the question which we have proposed to ourselves to discuss. Our imports from Russia, upon the importance of which so much stress has been laid, were in 1852 as given below, from official documents. We have ourselves appended the value of the various items upon a very liberal scale; and we may explain that we select that year instead of 1853, for reasons which we shall hereafter explain.