re
perfectly respect the boundaries of his neighbors; and go on the road
that was his own, anxious to tread on no man's toes if he could avoid
it: a Sovereign who, at all times, strictly and beneficently confined
himself to what belonged to his real business and him. 2. That
apparently, therefore, he must have considered Poland to be an
exceptional case, unique in his experience: case of a moribund Anarchy,
fallen down as carrion on the common highways of the world; belonging to
nobody in particular; liable to be cut into (nay, for sanitary
reasons requiring it, if one were a Rhadamanthus Errant, which one
is not!)--liable to be cut into, on a great and critically stringent
occasion; no question to be asked of IT; your only question the consent
of by-standers, and the moderate certainty that nobody got a glaringly
disproportionate share! That must have been, on the part of an equitable
Friedrich, or even of a Friedrich accurate in Book-keeping by Double
Entry, the notion silently formed about Poland.

Whether his notion was scientifically right, and conformable to actual
fact, is a question I have no thought of entering on; still less,
whether Friedrich was morally right, or whether there was not a higher
rectitude, granting even the fact, in putting it in practice. These are
questions on which an Editor may have his opinion, partly complete for a
long time past, partly not complete, or, in human language, completable
or pronounceable at all; and may carefully forbear to obtrude it on his
readers; and only advise them to look with their own best eyesight, to
be deaf to the multiplex noises which are evidently blind, and to think
what they find thinkablest on such a subject. For, were it never so
just, proper and needful, this is by nature a case of LYNCH LAW; upon
which, in the way of approval or apology, no spoken word is permissible.
Lynch being so dangerous a Lawgiver, even when an indispensable one!--

For, granting that the Nation of Poland was for centuries past an
Anarchy doomed by the Eternal Laws of Heaven to die, and then of
course to get gradually buried, or eaten by neighbors, were it only for
sanitary reasons,--it will by no means suit, to declare openly on behalf
of terrestrial neighbors who have taken up such an idea (granting it
were even a just one, and a true reading of the silent but inexorably
certain purposes of Heaven), That they, those volunteer terrestrial
neighbors, are justified in breaking in