Things being in this state, we must congratulate ourselves upon having attacked them before they became more dangerous for us-for delay would only have rendered our relative situation worse, and prepared us greater obstacles. . . There is another reason which renders further successes and a more decided superiority in our favour indispensable, if we wish to obtain the object of the war. When the Emperor commenced it, Europe was informed that his Majesty would abstain from conquest, and would only require to be indemnified for his expenses, and be assured of a moral guarantee for the freedom of his commerce. It is natural that the Cabinets, far from being disposed to give any latitude to these general expressions, must desire to circumscribe their effect within the narrowest possible results. Let us now suppose, that when the Sultan partly surpasses their hopes, by his resist ance, when some of them may still indulge in the idea of our weakness-we advance the conditions judiciously expressed by your Excellency in your confidential note, they will all raise their voices against our enormous pretensions, and all, without exception, will find them hard, and perhaps unjust. I say, without exception, because in that case I neither except France nor Prussia. These two courts have without doubt a friendly and kind policy towards Russia, and will not arm against her; but their desire of peace is such, and the necessity they feel of seeing an end put to the complications which the continuation of hostilities may cause, is so pressing, that they will consider it incumbent upon them to disapprove of everything that can delay a conclusion so desirable in their eyes-as soon as the Sultan shall have consented to re-establish the state of things, ante bellum, and to cede that which public opinion has already sacrificed to us-the fortresses and the Asiatic littoral of the Black Sea. The destruction of those which exist on the right bank of the Danube and on the face of the Balkan will be looked upon as having for its object the almost immediate overthrow of the Ottoman empire. They will appeal to our promises-they will refuse to admit our expla nations-and thus will be formed throughout Europe a desire more or less vehement, it is true, and with difference of intention, but, nevertheless, in the main opposed to what we are under the necessity of obtaining.'-Ibid. Thus it would appear that the strength which the Ottoman empire was deriving from the new organizations' effected by the Sultan, and the interest with which the consolidation of that empire inspired the cabinets of Europe in general,' formed a sufficient reason, in the estimation of all the counsellors of Russia, why that strength should be destroyed, and that consolidation prevented. With what interest, then, must the hostilities of the Egyptians have inspired the cabinet of St. Petersburg! How fearful is the policy which could find, in the internal amelioration of of a neighbouring and comparatively feeble nation, and in the sympathy with which the whole civilized world regarded its progress, an adequate reason for attacking and crushing it! But all the injurious intentions of Russia were to be frustrated by what is called a demonstration!-by the presence of two or three ships at Vourla! Of all modes of producing irritation and demonstrating our own weakness,-showing the will without the courage to strike,-these petty demonstrations are assuredly the most effective. If a naval demonstration must needs have been made, why should it be confined to a single sea?—and why had we not a fleet to make it with such as Old England has been used to see bearing her flag in triumph on the ocean?—such a fleet as once saved Egypt, and might still save Turkey. If we are to make demonstrations, let them be such as our enemies will not smile, nor our friends hang their heads, to behold;-let them be worthy of the nation that makes them, and such, at least, as may produce some other feeling than contempt and derision. The time was when the clink of a caulking-mallet in the dockyards of England disturbed the slumbers of sovereigns; but these times have gone by, and England, like her ships, is out of commis sion. She must be officered anew-and, though we have not hesitated to state our belief that the Conservative leaders in Parliament are by no means anxious to see the present Administration cashiered-we do not hesitate to express our own opinion that, whether we look to domestic or foreign questions, the time is at hand when all the Conservative energies of the country must be concentrated on a vigorous effort to bring about that result. We are loth to stoop from high matters to the lowest of the low-but we must say that we think the Conservatives will be very much to blame if they do not make good use of the sentiments of unutterable scorn and disgust which have been within these few weeks raised in every class of the community-save one or two knots of filthy intriguers and a herd of base expectants-by the development of a set of jobs more outrageous to the Crown-the Peerage and the people-than was ever before brought home to any set of persons assuming the name of statesmen. NOTE NOTE On a Pamphlet entitled 'Newton and Flamsteed, by the Rev. Wm. Whewell, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge.' We have a sincere respect for Mr. Whewell-he is a man of vigorous abilities and large attainments, a capital college tutor, and sometimes a very successful writer; but college tutors are apt to conceive rather an overweening idea of their own authority, and they must not be too much surprised if they find themselves occasionally mistaken in the pleasing notion that the world at large is ready to accept their dogmatic assertions with the humility of the striplings over whom they are accustomed to predominate. Mr. Whewell's Remarks, if they had been worthy of appearing at all, ought to have been addressed, not to the Quarterly Review on Mr. Bailey's work, No. 109, but to Mr. Bailey himself; but Mr. Whewell may have had reasons for the course he preferred. This, however, is nothing; we regret, quite as sincerely as Mr. Whewell, that he was not able to find one lover of truth to take the task off his hands; for, if the case he advocates be indeed that of the truth, he has miserably failed in his attempt to make it out. His first thrust, and it is a pretty hard one, is aimed at Whiston. 'We find no one speaking of Newton as Flamsteed does, except Whis ton, whose judgment is perfectly worthless; for he was a prejudiced, passionate, inaccurate, and shallow man, as might easily be shown.' These are ugly words, but let us see how the fact was. Whiston is always described as a man of great integrity, of uncommon parts, and more uncommon learning: Bishop Hare characterizes him as a man of unblemished character, and rigidly constant himself in the public and private duties of religion. We all know that he was Sir Isaac Newton's deputy in the Lucasian Professorship, and was afterwards his successor, at Sir Isaac's own recommendation. If therefore he was the worthless, shallow person that Mr. Whewell would have us believe him to be, surely it was highly culpable in Sir Isaac to palm such a man on the university. But the secret history of the enmity against Whiston is his conscientious departure from the doctrine of the Church of England, and his adoption of the principles of Arianism; for which he was cited before the proper authorities, and afterwards expelled the university. Whereas (as Bishop Hare justly remarks) if he had been orthodox in his opinions, he would probably have been cried up as the ornament of the age, and no preferment would have been denied him.' Mr. Whewell is next pleased to favour us with the startling assertion that Newton's importunities to obtain Flamsteed's Observations excited no sympathy in Flamsteed,' because Flamsteed was uncon scious of the nature of the then existing crisis in the history of astronomy' he never fully accepted Newton's theory (of gravitation), nor comprehended its nature.' That, if he did not comprehend its nature, he was not likely fully to accept it, we must admit; but in refutation of Mr. Whewell's Mr. Whewell's audacious dictum, we must also beg the non-undergraduate public to consider, not two, or twenty, detached expressions in the writings of a very indifferent writer, which honest Flamsteed certainly was, but the whole tenour of the correspondence between him and Newton. That correspondence has no meaning at all, if it does not clearly prove that no man then living understood Newton's theory better than Flamsteed, and that Newton himself had no suspicion, from first to last, that the greatest practical astronomer of his age was a dunce. Flamsteed objected to Newton's combining Cassini's observations of the Comet of 1680 with his own, observing 'It was not only an injury to me, but the nation, to rob our observatory of what was due to it, and further to bestow it on the French.' On this Mr. Whewell says, With these feelings we can easily imagine that Flamsteed might wish to secure what he conceived due to the character of himself and the nation' &c. Might? who can doubt the honour and honesty of those feelings of Flamsteed-unless indeed he does not understand them? Again, Mr. Whewell says it is highly probable that Flamsteed, a pious and serious man, was disgusted with what he heard, truly or not, respecting Halley's profaneness and infidelity.' Mr. Whewell cannot be ignorant that Halley was a self-convicted infidel, and that he lost an honourable and lucrative situation by being so-and therefore it seems more than probable that Flamsteed was disgusted with him. He was also very much disgusted with the committee, who disposed of his Observations contrary to his wishes; and admits that he called them the robbers of his property.' But so they were; for until he delivered them, for the use of the public, in a state worthy of his reputation as an observer, that reputation-the most valuable property that poor Flamsteed possessed-was filched from him. That at this altercation Newton betrayed marks of great irritation, Mr. Whewell is not disposed to deny; but he has great doubts that the obnoxious term 'puppy' was used by Newton; and when Flamsteed says he only desired Sir Isaac to restrain his passion, keep his temper, &c..' Mr. Whewell is pleased to call to his recollection Sir Anthony Absolute, and talks about the demeanour of a very angry man-far too angry to allow us to accept literally what he asserts'-in other words, Mr. Whewell intimates his own opinion that Flamsteed has recorded a lie. Mr. Flamsteed was a clergyman-a devout and pious clergyman-and so, we doubt not, is Mr. Whewell; but we cannot compliment him on the decorum of this passage, which, after all, appears to make out Flamsteed's case. If Mr. Whewell's prejudice had not blinded him, he must have seen clearly that it was not Flamsteed's intention to overcharge the description, since he employs the mildest term which flowed from Newton's vocabulary- Puppy was the most innocent of them,' he says. If therefore Puppy were not the term used, Mr. Whewell is driven to the dilemma of substi tuting a harder name. But can the public be brought to consider the whole whole of this extraordinary scene a mere fiction, solely because Mr. Whewell does not believe it? Mr. Whewell, with his usual bad fortune, now touches on the delicate affair of the sealed packet confided under a solemn pledge to the care of Sir Isaac Newton-which packet was nevertheless broken open, and the catalogue it contained put to press under Halley's direction. It must be recollected,' says Mr. Whewell, that any assumption on the part of Flamsteed, that he might deal with the observations made in his official capacity of Astronomer Royal, as if they were his private property, could not be allowed by the guardians of the Institution.' It is not true that Flamsteed ever made any such assumption,-it is not true that he ever considered them as if they were his private property'-though they actually were so just as much as the excellent Bridgewater Treatise written by Mr. Whewell is its author's private property. But the 'Guardians of the Institution' could never have done right in giving a pledge and then breaking it-and Flamsteed was perfectly right in believing, what afterwards proved to be the case, that his character as an observer was likely to be endangered by the negligence or wilful errors and misprints in his catalogue, if its publication were confided to the care of his quondam friend Halley. But we are told that the sealed packet, being thus national property, the seal was declared to have been broken by the Queen's command'! What a paltry, pitiful subterfuge! The Queen's command! How often is the name of royalty thus abused! Mr. Whewell, good innocent man! knows nothing of such tricks, or he would have seen that the pretended authority of the Queen was only a cloak for the depredation. But what can be said-what palliation can be found-what justification can be adduced-for the conduct of Newton in placing the 175 sheets of MS. observations in the hands of Halley to be printed in a garbled manner, with the erroneous places of the moon annexed? Surely this could not be for the benefit of astronomy; and Flamsteed might well exclaim that it was the height of trick, ingratitude, and baseness.' The two last pages of this pamphlet are meant to bear with cruel and crushing weight on the article in our last Number. The attack is made by an appeal to the Preface to Halley's edition of the Catalogue'-the surreptitious, stolen edition, adorned with Halley's own preface, which Mr. Whewell has not the candour to call Halley's. Mr. Whewell, after abusing us for leaning on ex parte authorities, rests his mighty charge against us on an appeal to this preface of Halley's, and invites the reader to decide whether Newton's philosophical and moral character do not come out from this examination (of Halley's preface) blameless and admirable, as they have always been esteemed by thinking men.' Who ever uttered one syllable against either Newton's moral or philosophical character? Not the Reviewer, nor Mr. Bailey,-with the exception of the unhappy incident of the sealed packet and the transactions connected with it-on which Mr. Bailey |