an army of a million, and who turn and revile a people who have stood as aloof from their contest as we have from the war of Troy?  Or is it an outcry made with malice prepense?  And is the song of the New York Times a variation of the Herald tune?—­“The conduct of the British in folding their arms and taking no part in the fight, has been so base that it has caused the prolongation of the war, and occasioned a prodigious expense on our part.  Therefore, as we have British property in our hands, we &c. &c.”  The lamb troubled the water dreadfully, and the wolf, in a righteous indignation, “confiscated” him.  Of course we have heard that at an undisturbed time Great Britain would never have dared to press its claim for redress.  Did the United States wait until we were at peace with France before they went to war with us last?  Did Mr. Seward yield the claim which he confesses to be just, until he himself was menaced with war?  How long were the Southern gentlemen kept in prison?  What caused them to be set free? and did the Cabinet of Washington see its error before or after the demand for redress?* The captor was feasted at Boston, and the captives in prison hard by.  If the wrong-doer was to be punished, it was Captain Wilkes who ought to have gone into limbo.  At any rate, as “the Cabinet of Washington could not give its approbation to the commander of the ’San Jacinto,’” why were the men not sooner set free?  To sit at the Tremont House, and hear the captain after dinner give his opinion on international law, would have been better sport for the prisoners than the grim salle-a-manger at Fort Warren.

* “At the beginning of December the British fleet on the West Indian station mounted 850 guns, and comprised five liners, ten first-class frigates, and seventeen powerful corvettes. . . .  In little more than a month the fleet available for operations on the American shore had been more than doubled.  The reinforcements prepared at the various dockyards included two line-of-battle ships, twenty-nine magnificent frigates—­such as the ‘Shannon,’ the ‘Sutlej,’ the ‘Euryalus,’ the ‘Orlando,’ the ‘Galatea;’ eight corvettes armed like the frigates in part, with 100- and 40- pounder Armstrong guns; and the two tremendous iron-cased ships, the ‘Warrior’ and the ‘Black Prince;’ and their smaller sisters the ‘Resistance’ and the ‘Defence.’  There was work to be done which might have delayed the commission of a few of these ships for some weeks longer; but if the United States had chosen war instead of peace, the blockade of their coasts would have been supported by a steam fleet of more than sixty splendid ships, armed with 1,800 guns, many of them of the heaviest and most effective kind.”—­ Saturday Review:  Jan. 11.

I read in the commercial news brought by the “Teutonia,” and published in London on the present 13th January, that the pork market was generally quiet on the 29th December last; that lard, though with more activity,