everywhere. Russia had the same illimitable ubiquity for Napoleon. And Spain again is so singularly placed with regard to France, a chamber within a chamber, that she cannot be approached by any power not maritime except on French permission. Manifold are the defensive resources of nations beyond those of military systems. But for the Roman empire, a ring fence around the Mediterranean lake, and hemmed in upon every quarter of that vast circuit by an _indago_ of martial hunters, nature and providence had made it the one sole available policy to stand for ever under arms, eternally 'in procinctu,' and watching from the specular altitude of her centre upon which radius she should slip her wolves to the endless circumference. Mr. Finlay, in our judgment, not only allows a most disproportionate weight to vicious taxation, which is but one wheel amongst a vast system of wheels in the machinery of administration, and which, like many similar agencies, tends oftentimes to react by many corrections upon its own derangements; but subsequently he views as through a magnifying glass even these original exaggerations when measured upon the scale of moral obligations. Not only does false taxation ruin nations and defeat the possibility of self-defence--which is much--but it cancels the duties of allegiance. He tells us (p. 408) that 'amidst the ravages of the Goths, Huns, and Avars, the imperial tax-gatherers had never failed to enforce payment of the tribute as long as anything remained undestroyed; though according to the rules of justice, the Roman government had really forfeited its right to levy the taxes, as soon as it failed to perform its duty in defending the population.' We do not believe that the government succeeded in levying tribute vigorously under the circumstances supposed; the science and machinery of administration were far from having realized that degree of exquisite skill. But, if the government _had_ succeeded, we cannot admit that this relation of the parties dissolved their connection. To have failed at any time in defending a province or an outwork against an overwhelming enemy, _that_ for a prince or for a minister is a great misfortune. Shocking indeed it were if this misfortune could be lawfully interpreted as his crime, and made the parent of a second misfortune, ratifying the first by authorizing revolt of the people; and the more so, as that first calamity would encourage traitors everywhere to prepare the way for the second as a means of impunity for their own treason. In the prospect of escaping at once from the burdens of war, and from the penalties of broken vows to their sovereign, multitudes would from the first enter into compromise and collusion with an invader; and in this way they would create the calamity which they charged upon their rulers as a desertion; they would create the embarrassments for their government by which they hoped to profit, and