That it should ever have been considered a law of war that the captain or governor of a fort should be put to death by the conqueror for having attempted to hold an untenable place, is only one of those many instances where tyranny and overbearing force loves to clothe itself in the form of law or custom. The pretence of diminishing bloodshed is shallow enough. A general at the head of a great army is impatient at being detained before some insignificant town or fortress, and revenges himself by a sort of military execution on the bold man who has ventured to oppose him with so contemptible a force. Wallenstein, one of the proudest of men, and the least scrupulous of shedding blood, is said to have adopted, more systematically than any other general, this so-called law of war. If the same custom has never been introduced into naval combats, it is because there is not even the shallowest pretext on which it can be founded. A ship, however inferior in force to its adversary, if it have no chance of victory, may yet have a chance of escape. The governor of a castle--he and his castle are rooted to the earth: the sea-captain gives his walls and his artillery to the winds; he and his guns, by some skilful manœuvre, by some obstruction or crippling of his foe, may, after a brief encounter, get out of reach and out of sight. Many are the turns and tides of fortune in a naval engagement; all the accidents of navigation are added to those of war. There is no shadow of reason, therefore, for treating with peculiar severity the captain of a vessel who refuses to obey the summons of his more powerful adversary, but resolves to take advantage of whatever chance his skill, his bravery, and the various incidents of a sea-fight may afford him. We hold it, therefore, to be a fortunate circumstance, favourably influencing our national character, as well as preserving us from many of the calamities that attend on war, that we as a nation have been called upon chiefly to defend ourselves by means of “our wooden walls.”