had examined the case, and had decided that the laws of the United States against the slave trade were unconstitutional, and that therefore Capt. Corrie was unlawfully detained in custody. Putting this opinion in practice, they proceed to discharge Capt. Corrie, and thus are brought in direct collision with the general government.

What an outrage would all this seem on the rights of the government! What a trampling on the constitution! What a palpable usurpation of authority! The sanctity of the supreme law of the land must be preserved, and the whole force of the government employed to put down this resistance, this rebellion, this practical nullification. Such would be the feeling at the north in this supposed case; and have we not the moral courage to adhere to principle, although the application of the principle may bear hardly on ourselves?

The supposition we have made might be extended to a variety of cases; for every law is a restriction upon some man's interest, or feelings, or passions, and these must be subordinated to the law. The government which cannot enforce its commands, but may be checked and resisted by the will of any individual or organization of individuals, is no government, but confusion and anarchy. Obedience to law is the only bond of union among men in organized communities.

-"untune that string,

And hark, what discord follows! each thing meets

In mere oppugnancy:

Force should be right, or rather right and wrong

Should lose their names and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power,

Power into will, will into appetite;

And appetite, a universal wolf,

So doubly seconded by will and power,
Must make perforce a universal prey,
And, last, eat up himself."

We have alluded to the case of Captain Corrie. What a contrast is this case to that of the men in Ohio! In one we see a grand jury finding a bill of indictment; a petit jury trying the cases and convicting the offenders; and the court

inflicting upon them the penalty of the law. Their friends sympathize with them as honest men, unjustly convicted, and their counsel, exhausting every legal means for their relief, apply to the Supreme Court of the State in hopes of obtaining the liberation of their clients. But this is all. No one doubted that the men would be convicted and sentenced, if guilty; many feared that they would be convicted and punished by partisans, whether guilty or not; and many now think the conviction an unjust one. But how is it in the case of the slave traders? No one doubts their violation of the law. They openly boast of it and proclaim their determination to continue it. Did any one at the north or south suppose that these slave traders would be convicted? Only one of them, we believe, and he not a southern man, has been put on trial. This is a gross perversion of law and justice, equally great and dangerous when done by juries as when done by courts. Many are ready to cry out against the Oberlin men, punish them, punish them, insisting with solemn dignity on the majesty of the law, and the necessity of its rigid enforcement, not reflecting that their violation of law, if any, has occurred from an error on the side of mercy and liberty. How many of these very men dare open their mouths, when the laws are openly violated with impunity, in favor of slavery and oppression, by the slave trade! And this is not all. If a northern freeman proclaims these facts and endeavors to convince the reason, to kindle the feelings, and arouse the action of his fellow citizens, how many are there, with loud professions of hostility to slavery, ready to say, "He is an agitator."-"I am tired of hearing Mr. A. preach so much on slavery." "It is better to let slavery alone." "Its power would have decreased before this, if it had not been attacked."

At the close of our Article, already extended, we can only say to such persons, perhaps if you will examine your feelings thoroughly, you will find that you are not so much opposed to slavery as you have professed to be. Your opposition may be after all only theoretical, never to be put in practice. If you think again, you may perceive that it is from the action,

or rather the inaction, of just such professed opponents of slavery as yourself that the people of the south are so united in support of the system, and are so determined and successful in their efforts to extend it. It is not impossible that you may come to the conclusion that this privilege of hunting slaves on the free territory of the north, sanctioned by Congress, the courts and the people, and by yourselves, if you have not manifested your opposition to it, has emboldened the slave traders to seek their prey, more securely and at less expense, in Africa itself.

While these sheets are passing through the press we learn that the particular case, which has called forth this discussion, is ended by the discharge of all the prisoners. We rejoice in this issue. Although this trial is ended, the questions involved are not settled; they may arise again to-morrow. Is the fugitive slave law constitutional? May it consistently with the dictates of conscience be obeyed or disobeyed? May its execution be resisted by force? On what principles shall trials for its violation be conducted? Shall there be one answer to these questions at the north and another at the south? Under our general government shall those who violate the fugitive slave law be punished, and those who violate the law against the foreign slave trade go free?

ARTICLE VII.-ITALY AND THE WAR.

History of Piedmont. By ANTONIO GALLENGA. London: Chapman & Hall. 1855. 3 vols. 12mo.

The Sub-alpine Kingdom, or Experiences and Studies in Savoy, Piedmont, and Genoa. By BAYLE ST. JOHN. London: Chapman & Hall. 1856. 2 vols. 12mo.

ONCE more, after so many disappointments, the Italians are encouraged to hope for the independence and regeneration of their country. And there is an auspicious omen for the realization of their hopes, in the fact that they are so nearly ananimous upon the great essential point-the necessity, first of all, of breaking the yoke of the Austrians, and expelling them from their borders. We believe their cause to be a just one,none the less just indeed, because it happens to have been espoused by so selfish and ambitious a man as the present Emperor of the French. And though they should be again doomed to disappointment, even though the struggle now going on in Italy should only result in a change of masters, still we should hail such a change as a decided improvement upon their present condition. For the Bonapartes in our estimation are better than the Hapsburgs; and the despotism that springs from the present age, that takes note of its progress and breathes though reluctantly its spirit, and which appreciates the existence and rights of nations, no less than of dynasties, is far preferable to that monstrous mediaeval thing, which sits enthroned upon the heart of Europe, and lives upon the dismemberment of Poland, the disorganization of Germany, and the subjugation of Hungary and Italy. There is a strong bond of sympathy, too, between the French and the Italians. This sympathy springs from affinities of language and manners, if not of race, and from historical associations, and it much better fits the French for exercising the supremacy in the Peninsula, than the Austrians, against whom the

hearts of the Italians have been poisoned, by so many years of misgovernment and oppression, such as they never experienced, even under the rigorous rule of Napoleon the First.

It has been very much the fashion for those in power at Vienna, to deprecate all discussion of the mode in which the Austrian government treats its Italian subjects, as an unwarranted interference with the sovereignty of the Emperor over the possessions secured to him by the treaties of 1815. But it was the infraction of those treaties by the Austrian government itself, that precipitated the war. It flung those treaties to the winds, when, on the 26th of April last, it sent to the government of Sardinia the menacing summons to disarm. This ill-advised step called forth a protest from the cabinets of London, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, while the Sardinians and their allies girded themselves for the trial of the great question, as to the further continuance of Austrian domination in Italy.

Let us look, a moment, at the Italian policy of Austria and see what there is about it that makes it so odious. By the treaties just mentioned, the Hapsburgs were restored to the sovereignty of that part of Italy held by them previous to the French Revolution, with the addition of Venice and the adjacent territories.* The wars and convulsions that followed the Revolution had shaken the Italians out of their lethargy, and kindled among them the national spirit, and the desire for free institutions. But the policy pursued by the Austrians, on their restoration, was not at all suited to this change in the Italians. The Emperor Francis, a weak and timid creature, gladly gave up the reins of government into the hands of Prince Metternich. Metternich was the guiding spirit of absolutism in Europe, until finally, in 1848, his day of reckoning came. He ruled Lombardy and Venetia with a rod of iron. He ground the Italians into the dust, by his forced loans, his military conscriptions, and his unequal and unjust taxation.

The population of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, according to the Gotha Almanac, 1859, is 5,503,473. The population of the kingdom of Sardinia, which comprises the island of Sardinia, Savoy, the cradle of the reigning house, situated on the French side of the Alps, and Piedmont, is 5,167,542. The entire population of Italy is estimated at about twenty-five millions.