PEACE ASSOCIATION.

ONE of the most peculiar, useful, and glorious political habits of Englishmen, is that of associating for a certain end; of forming a body which is to receive funds, appoint officers, become what foreigners call a propaganda, and meet in public to instruct the public, and encourage each other by expressions of feeling and of eloquence, or by argumentative discourses, destined to spread conviction through the press. These means of peaceful and argumentative agitation form one of the noblest products of our free constitution. And it requires a country of much steadiness and wisdom in the practice of freedom to enjoy such an institution without the certainty of its being abused. Other countries have been more free than England, at least in the theory of their charters. But none, save the United States, have ever been able to enjoy the benefit of political associations and it may be doubted whether, in the United States, it is not grossly abused and turned to evil.

There are, however, more ways than one of neutralizing, or bringing into discredit the power of association. It may be turned, for example, into treason; at a time, too, when all the objects to be obtained by the most successful treason are to be obtained by constitutional and pacific efforts. This is the Irish and the French way of destroying or annulling the right of association. There is also another way for instance, that of employing the grave extreme of political association for idle, for trifling, or for needless purposes. There are associations which we could name, got up with no higher aim than merely to kill the leisure or gratify the vanity of individuals. The efforts of some single person, who has marked out himself as the paid secretary, who has succeeded in becoming such, and whose activity perpetuates the association for no better reason and to no greater end, have sufficed in a majority of cases to originate them.

ably-worked agitations, that any country has seen. Its very success, and the political elevation of all engaged in it, has tempted a variety of able and of liberal men to institute similar associations without well considering whether the aim justifies such means, and whether the very principles and habits of political association may not be weakened by its application to unfit objects.

The Peace Association, whose congress at Paris now attracts public attention, is certainly one of the boldest yet attempted, since its sphere is not merely confined to England, but extends all over Europe. We may, nevertheless, doubt if its members are quite conscious of the degree of political boldness necessary to the right discharge of their self-appointed functions. They must beware, that for the sake of tolerance or favor they are not led to flatter princes and make light of popular interests. That may be the path of peace and toleration to them, but it is not so for the great mass of the people whom they would relieve. Preach mutual peace to France and to England. None will gainsay it. For what possible good or right would come of a war between the two countries? But will you at the same time and in the same breath preach peace to Poland, and to Hungary, and to Italy? What can peace mean, in an exhortation to the people of these countries, but submission? If the Peace Association preach that, it will be justly despised. On the other hand, to preach justice, mercy, and truth, in respect of popular rights, to a Czar of Russia or an Emperor of Austria, is a mission more for a war society than for one of peace. Is not, indeed, the new holy alliance a war congress in direct opposition to that of peace? Does it not found its right and permanence upon bayonets and bayonets only? Is not the very principle of the new league of government, to which France has disgracefully adhered, the maxim that the army is the true and only support of government, and that the one half or one third of the male population should be kept idle, in arms, in uniform, and in pay, in order to support a chief governor and a dozen politicians in the task of coercing the rest.

Of these trifling associations, however, there are fortunately but few and unimportant. Public opinion does justice by them. There are others which have filled the world with their success and their fame, which have enlisted all that was generous, liberal, able, and eloquent in their ranks, which have overwhelmed the public with their appeals, nay more, which have beat down powerful opposition, even that of the prevailing political party, and which have won their way despite of every obstacle in Parliament, and every hesitation on the part of the most practical and eminent men. Such was the Anti-Slave-Trade Association. Yet what have been its results? Glorious some, but doubtful others. For it disdained to attempt less than the utter destruction of abuses, which an association of less power and zeal might more wisely have remained content with the resolution to miti-nent peace for the future.

gate and correct.

Since the palmy days of the Anti-Slave-Trade Association, we have had those of the Anti-Corn-Law League, one of the most just, most noble, and most

Armies, in fact, are now avowedly kept for the purposes of police, and not only for police at home, but abroad. Russia would invade Hungary and govern Poland. Austria has stipulated to do the same by Bavaria. The King of Prussia is the great police magistrate of Germany. What is Louis Napoleon but a general of gendarmerie, not only for his own purposes in France, but to do the cardinals' bidding in Rome? If it is this power of mutual oppression that the association whose congress has met in Paris purposes to abet, then give us a war and resistance association, as something more frank, more manly, and more for the interest of humanity at present, and of perma

The wars now prevailing in Europe are those of dynasties against nationalities. We doubt its being in the power or within the scope of the Peace Society either to persuade dynasties to give up those nations which abhor them, or to persuade (arise for exercising it during the siege; not a sinnationalities to forget what is most riveted in the gle condemnation to death or exile bore witness to

popular affections. The only solid basis on which to establish peace, would be the allowance to each nationality to develop itself according to its nature and its tendencies. Let there be a French, a German, an Italian, a Sclavonian, and a Russian empire. Each would be too strong to fear the other, each too content to desire conquest. But the will of the nation in these and other things should prevail over the interests and caprices of a dynasty. A dynasty is warlike. A developed nation is never so, unless when provoked or oppressed.

FALL OF ROME.

[The following private letter has lately been published in England. We copy it from the New York Tribune. It is a good commentary upon the late events, and-like everything he has done or written-is honorable to Mazzini.]

a severity which it would have been our right to have exercised, but which the perfect unanimity which reigned among all the elements of the state rendered useless.

I affirm that, except in the case of three or four priests, who had been guilty of firing upon our combatants, and who were killed by the people during the last days of the siege, not a single act of personal violence was committed by any fraction of the population against another, and that if ever there was a town presenting the spectacle of a band of brothers pursuing a common end, and bound together by the same faith, it was Rome under the republican rule. The city was inhabited by foreigners from all parts of the world, by the consular agents, by many of your countrymen; let any one of them arise, and under the guarantee of his own signature, deny, if he can, the truth of what I say. Terror now reigns in Rome; the prisons are choked with men who have been arrested and detained without trial; fifty priests are confined in the Castle of St. Angelo, whose only crime consists in their having lent their services in our hospitals; the citizens the best known for their moderation are exiled; the army is almost entirely dissolved, the city disarmed, and the "factious" sent away even to the last man; and yet France dares not consult in a legal manner the will of the populations, but reestablishes the Papal authority by military decree.

ROME has fallen! It is a great crime and a great error. The crime belongs entirely to France; the error to civilized Europe, and above all to your England. I say to your England, for in the three questions which are now at issue at Rome, and which it is vain to attempt to stifle by brute force, England appears to me, and did appear to us all, to be especially concerned. Three questions, the question of principle, of international right, of European morality-the political question, properly so called, the balance of power in Europe, influence to be preserved or obtained and the religious question, -all were, in fact, raised already in Rome before the entrance of the French. The question of principle is, thank God, sufficiently clear. A population of more than two millions of men having peacefully, that of appreciating and defining for themselves solemnly, and legally chosen, through a constitu- their own life, and governing themselves in actional Assembly, regularly elected, a form of gov-cordance with their own appreciation of it. And ernment, is deprived of it by foreign violence, and I cannot believe that it is well for you or for Eu

forced again to submit to the power which had been abolished; and that without that population having furnished the slightest pretext for such violence, or made the slightest attempt against the peace of neighboring countries.

The calumnies which have been for months systematically circulated against our republic, are of little importance; it was necessary to defame those whom it had been determined to destroy. But I affirm that the republic voted almost unanimously by the Assembly, had the general and spontaneous approbation of the country; and of this the explicit declaration of almost all the municipalities of the Roman States voluntarily renewed at the time of the French invasion, with out any initiative on the part of the Roman government, is a decisive proof. I affirm that with the exception of Ancona, where the triumvirate were obliged energetically to repress certain eriminal acts of political vengeance, the republican cause was never sullied by the slightest excess; that never was there any censorship assumed over the press before the siege, never did the occasion

I do not believe that, since the dismemberment of Poland, there has been committed a more atrocious injustice, a more gross violation of the eternal right which God has implanted in the people

rope that such things can be accomplished in the eyes of the world without one nation arising out of its immobility to protest in the name of universal justice. This is to enthrone brute force where, by the power of reason, God alone should reign -it is to substitute the sword and poniard for law-to decree a ferocious war without limit of time or means between oppressors rendered suspicious by their fears, and the oppressed abandoned to the instincts of reaction and isolation. Let Europe ponder upon these things. For if the light of human morality becomes but a little more obscured, in that darkness there will arise a strife that will make those who come after us shudder with dread.

The balance of power in Europe is destroyed. It consisted formerly in the support given to the smaller states by the great powers; now they are abandoned. France in Italy, Russia in Hungary, Prussia in Germany, a little later perhaps in Switzerland; these are now the masters of the continent. England is thus made a nullity; the "celsâ sedet Eolus in arce," which Canning delighted to quote, to express the moderating the movement, a mighty pathway for the human function which he wished to reserve for his coun- mind. She has not understood that one bold try, is now a meaningless phrase. Let not your word, "respect for the liberty of thought," op

Vatican. She has not felt that the struggle in her promises. We could not admit-we, the Rome was to cut the Gordian knot of moral ser- elected of the people-that they should be called vitude, against which she has long and vainly op- upon to express a second time what they had posed her biblical societies, her Christian and evangelical alliances; and that there was being opened, had she but extended a sisterly hand to

the press may be deemed, it will be found insufficient for its purposes. This is manifest, from the fresh experience of only a few days.

De Lesseps, the late French envoy at Rome, arraigned before the council of state at Paris, has included in his defensive memoir, to that tribunal, some curious particulars of the attempt of the American charge d'affaires, to mediate between the French commander and the Roman rulers.

It is my intention to report to you, in some detail, the whole Lesseps case. His copious memoir possesses historical interest; it discloses a singular game between the French ministers, on one hand, and a semi-envoy plenipotentiary on the other; the one having ends which they wished to veil, and selecting an agent whose political predilections and associations might serve as a blind; the other, exerting himself, while he believed the ministry strong, according to the sense in which he supposed they wished him to act; but, as soon as he learned that the Constituent Assembly disavowed, and voted an order of the day to rectify, the proceedings of the military expedition, turning

tries, and of no small convenience for the world. We are told that M. Segnier, of the French Institute, a practical savant of the first order, is about to be appointed director-general of the French magnetic telegraph, and will, before he enters on his functions, repair to the United States, to become acquainted with your wires and railroads. You have received from me some account of his recent similar errand to Great Britain.

From the same-23d Aug.

Within the three days past this capital has experienced a strong sensation from the various most important news, of which you will have the details in the London papers. The surrender to the Russians of the Hungarian general, Georgey, with a large part of his army, thirty or forty thousand men, seems to decide the struggle. The AustroRussian forces appear to have been victorious in every direction. Few of the better-informed observers here entertained hope of the success of the Hungarian cause, but still fewer expected so sudden and abrupt a catastrophe. The contest was

short round, violating his instructions, conceding with two of the most powerful empires in the everything to the rulers of Rome, and seeking to world. Prussia would have thrown herself into please only the majority of the Constituent Assem- it if it had been protracted. A declaration on the bly. The National, his former patron, was so side of Hungary by England (which has never deeply irritated by his first course, that it repre- been in the least probable) could not have materisented him as having literally lost his reason. ally influenced the case. Russia, Austria, and His singular evolutions and self-contradiction, Prussia had too much staked on the issue, to dewhich so quickly followed the news of the Assem- sist through the fear of any British hostilities. bly's vote, rendered the allegation of the National With France on their backs, the result might so specious, for his friends, family, and the public in general, that his wife set out in all haste for Rome, to nurse the crazed negotiator. She arrived there the morning after he had departed for Paris with his treaty, by which he truly con

have been different, but the yawning gulf of bankruptcy, and the dread of revolutionary paroxysms at home, would alone have sufficed to restrain the French government. In the legations of the northern powers at Paris, a uniform confidence in the

demned the French forces to a result as bad as the Austro-Russian league has prevailed to a degree

Candine Forks. He performed the journey from that could well beget despondency in the most Rome to Paris in four days and a half-the great- zealous advocate of Hungary; in the French de

est speed known at the time. The ministry had recalled him by telegraph, before his treaty reached them; which, naturally, they at once rejected. A recognition of the Roman republic was the reverse of their whole scheme. It is not uncharitable to infer from all particulars, that the negotiator colluded with the Triumvirate and their privy council, against the French army before Rome, and the cabinet at Paris. He has never been more than what you call a smart man; his official notes were so feeble and so vulnerable in the topics, that they seem to have been concerted with the Roman republic and its French scribes, for the purpose of enabling it to frame victorious and impressive replies, which were immediately transmitted to the Roman committee of the Mountain in Paris, and their common organ, the National.

partments of war and foreign affairs there was also an unfeigned, though somewhat fretting, assurance of the inevitable triumph of the league.

Our lion in this capital now is the Peace Congress, which was opened yesterday. Multitudes have repaired to the Rue de Rivoli, to see the fifty Quaker families, reported to be inmates of its hotels. All the journals furnish articles more or less civil to the congress, though with very different measures of faith and honor. The Debats has some semi-ironical paragraphs. It observes, "To choose Paris as the centre of a crusade in favor of universal peace, is to carry the war into the very focus or hearth of the enemy."

Louis Philippe is in the enjoyment, in England, of good health and spirits. He is free now, and his nature and his habits before he mounted a throne were such as that he may rejoice in his enlargement.

You will see that the French government has authorized an Englishman, Mr. Jacob Brett, to establish a sub-marine electrical telegraph across The clever literary critic of the London Mornthe channel between Calais and Bologne and Do-ing Chronicle observes of Mr. Samuel Elliot's

He is to bear all expenses, and retain his work on the Liberty of Rome, &c. : "This proprivilege for ten years in case of success, which, duction, on a first hasty perusal, appears to be truly, would be of vast importance to both coun- characterized by great learning and ability, no less