If that position were held by a living instead of a dying power, that power would be master of the Continent.

No one state would ever be permitted by the rest to reach such an ascendency; and the next alternative of a division of the territory after the manner of Poland, was fraught with almost as much danger.

The only hope for the peace of Europe was to keep in its integrity this crumbling wreck of a wicked, crime-stained old empire.

Such was the policy now inaugurated by Russia, Great Britain, Austria, and Prussia; and such in brief is the "Eastern Question," which for more than half a century has overshadowed all others in European diplomacy, and more than any other has strained the conscience and the moral sense of Christian nations.

We wish we might say that one nation had been able to resist this invitation to a moral turpitude masked by diplomatic subterfuges.