in the struggle of nations; if the freedom of conducting commercial affairs in such a manner that every seventh year shall bring the whole trading interests of a country to the very verge of bankruptcy; if the balancing of the influence of the several classes so badly, that at length the lower threaten to swallow up the upper in a wild flood of irreligion and anarchical spoliation; if the system of "_propter vitam vivendi perdere causas_" be adopted as the acme of perfection--if all this be considered fit and proper, then let a constitutional monarchy be preached up as the model for every nation under the sun. But we cannot wish so ill to any of our fellow-men as to advise them to relinquish present good, however small, for the prospect of such evil, however seductive. We do not approve of plying the poor Red man with fiery liquors till his tribe becomes exterminated; and in the same way we would withhold the intoxicating draught of self-government from the lips of those people who hitherto have sucked in their milk, as babes, at the hands of others. To us it is a bad sign that the Italians should be calling out for representative assemblies, and for national guards. They are not fit for the former, nor can they be so for the next hundred years--we should not congratulate them even if they obtained these dangerous tools, wherewith to play at the hazardous game of legislation: and as for national guards, they do not want them, inasmuch as nobody is going to invade them; and if an invasion were made by a northern nation, we know, by long experience, that the national guard would be perfectly useless. The Italians "don't fight;" they bluster and talk big, like the Spaniards, and run away ere the first shot is fired. Ten thousand Germans or Frenchmen, may march from one end of Italy to the other without meeting any man that dares fire at them, except from behind a rock or a stone wall. The Italians must be made of sterner stuff, before they take upon themselves the responsibility of bearing arms.