and children, had died by the most horrible of deaths which humanity can endure! Other horrors which occurred besides during the blockade I pass over; the agonizing death of twenty thousand innocent and helpless persons requires nothing to be added to it! “Now is it right that such a tragedy as this should take place, and that the laws of war should be supposed to justify the authors of it? Conceive having been a naval officer in Lord Keith’s squadron at that time, and being employed in stopping the food which was being brought for the relief of such misery! For the thing was done deliberately; the helplessness of the Genoese was known, their distress was known; it was known that they could not force Massena to surrender; it was known that they were dying daily by hundreds; yet week after week, and month after month, did the British ships of war keep their iron watch along all the coast: no vessel nor boat laden with any article of provision could escape their vigilance! One cannot but be thankful that Nelson was spared from commanding at this horrible blockade of Genoa! “Now on which side the law of Nations should throw the guilt of most atrocious murder is of little comparative consequence or whether it should attach to both sides equally: but that the deliberate starving to death of twenty thousand helpless persons should be regarded as a crime in one or in both of the parties concerned in it seems to me self-evident! The simplest course would seem to be that all non-combatants should be allowed to go out of a blockaded town, and that the general who should refuse to let them pass should be regarded in the same light as one who were to murder his prisoners or who were in the habit of butchering women and children.” It is not intended to be suggested that the morality of the more virtuous and religious members of civilized communities is not superior to that of uncivilized races. But that such superiority can be claimed by the mass of the inhabitants of Europe is a proposition of which the evidence must be allowed to be doubtful as regards some—must be allowed, alas! to fail altogether as regards many—of those virtues of which our nature is capable!