"Although the petty rule of my life has been never to trouble myself about what the world calls 'politics'--(a fine word, by the by, much easier expressed than understood)--yet, I must own, I am always happy when I see a nation enjoying itself, and melancholy when I observe any large body of people suffering pain or imprisonment. But of all sorts of imprisonment, that of the mind is, to my taste, the most cruel; and, therefore, when I consider over what immense dominions the Emperor of Russia presides, and how he governs, I cannot help sympathizing most sincerely with those innocent sufferers, who have the misfortune to be born his subjects; for if a Russian Prince be not freely permitted to go to Paris, in what a melancholy state of slavery and debasement must exist the minds of what we call the lower classes? "As a sovereign remedy for this lamentable political disorder, many very sensible people in England prescribe, I know, that we ought to have resource to arms. I must confess, however, it seems to me that one of the greatest political errors England could commit would be to declare, or to join in declaring, war with Russia; in short, that an appeal to brute force would, at this moment, be at once most unscientifically to stop an immense moral engine, which, if left to its work, is quite powerful enough, without bloodshed, to gain for humanity, at no expense at all, its object. The individual who is, I conceive, to overthrow the Emperor of Russia--who is to direct his own legions against himself--who is to do what Napoleon had at the head of his great army failed to effect, is the little child, who, lighted by the single wick of a small lamp, sits at this moment perched above the great steam press of the 'Penny Magazine,' feeding it, from morning till night, with blank papers, which, at almost every pulsation of the engine, comes out stamped on both sides with engravings, and with pages of plain, useful, harmless knowledge, which, by making the lower orders acquainted with foreign lands, foreign productions, various states of society, &c., tend practically to inculcate 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace--good will towards men.' It has already been stated, that what proceeds from this press is now greedily devoured by the people of Europe; indeed, even at Berlin, we know it can hardly be reprinted fast enough.