ski cries to Heaven and mankind for vengeance? Is the peril so
great? so imminent? Is Hannibal _ante portas_? Has the French fleet
dispersed Secretary Welles's five hundred and eighty-eight vessels of
war, broken the Southern blockade, and appeared before our Northern
harbors? Are all Jeff. Davis's bitter complaints against the English
cabinet but a sham, covering a deep-laid conspiracy with treacherous
Albion? Is Emperor Maximilian quietly seated on the throne of Montezuma,
and already marching his armies upon the Rio Grande? The talk of foreign
intervention has been going on for years, and not a threatening cloud is
yet to be seen on our horizon. Both England and France deprecate the
idea of hostile interference in American affairs. It is _Russia_ that
is _menaced_, an alliance with her can serve only herself, and her
artifices have caused all the foolish clamor that threatens to disgrace
this country.

And then, accepting aid is not forming an alliance, still less an
alliance _defensive_ and _offensive_. Not to speak of examples too
remote, every one familiar with the historical characters of the men,
will know that neither Pulaski, Franklin, Ypsilanti, or Garibaldi would
ever have so degraded his cause--the cause of liberty--as to promise to
the despot, whose aid he desired, a compensatory assistance in trampling
down a people rising for freedom. No _innocent_ man attacked by
assassins will promise, with honest intent, to one who offers to save
him, his assistance in continuing a work of murder and resisting the arm
of justice.

For it must be supposed that nobody is foolish enough to believe that
Russia would offer us her aid--say, against France--without requiring
from us a mutual service; that merely in order to inflict a punishment
on Louis Napoleon for the recognition of the South, or the establishment
of monarchy in Mexico, she would, still bleeding from the wounds
inflicted by the Polish insurrection, madly launch her armies upon the
Rhine, or start her hiding fleet from behind the fortified shelters of
Cronstadt and Helsingfors, make it pass the Sound and Skager Rack,
unmindful of the frowning batteries of Landscrona and Marstrand, pass
the Strait of Dover, and the English Channel, and enter the Atlantic,
quietly leaving behind Calais, Boulogne, Cherbourg, and Brest, and all
this with the certainty of raising a storm which might carry the armies
of France and her allies into the heart of Poland, and ultimat