inquiries that have been touched upon in these remarks. Whether a vessel can be forfeited by decree of an Admiralty Court must depend on the statute under which the Court proceeds and the extent of its application. Whether existing legislation on the subject may require to be supplemented, extended, or recast, in order to effect that result, may need to be considered. But the power of the government meanwhile to protect the national interests against foreign invasion, by such and so much force as may be found necessary in the emergency, is a power incident to sovereignty, and to be exerted upon the responsibility and within the just discretion of the Executive. There are three methods by which the Bering Sea question can be settled, and by one or other of which it must soon be disposed of: first, by putting a stop without further debate to the depredations of individual foreigners upon the breeding seals; second, by conceding to these foreigners the right to destroy the fishery, and withdrawing further remonstrance; third, by continuing the discussion with Great Britain of the abstract questions supposed to be involved, until the extermination of the seal is completed and the subject of the dispute thereby exhausted, for which we shall not have long to wait. If the last course is taken, the credit of it will be due less to the administration charged with the conduct of our foreign relations than to the public sentiment which it represents and by which it must be guided. THE AGE OF WORDS HISTORY has given names to many ages in the life of the world; ours is the age of words-those cheap and easy substitutes for thought: invented, the witty Frenchman said, to conceal thought; he might better have said, to conceal the want of it. Never since the creation has there come upon the earth such a deluge of talk as the latter half of the nineteenth century has heard. The orator is everywhere, and has all subjects for his own. The writer stayeth not his hand by day or by night Every successive day brings forth in the English tongue more discourse than all the great speakers of the past have left behind them, and more printed matter, such as it is, than the contents of an ordinary library. Human utterance has become so constant, so multiplied, diffused, reported, and repeated, so typed, stereotyped, telegraphed, published, and circulated; all conceivable subjects are so discussed, considered, amplified, and reconsidered, in speeches, books, pamphlets, magazines, reviews, and millions of newspapers, that there is no escape anywhere from the ceaseless flow. Whatever is, is attacked; whatever has been, is denied; whatever is to be, is loudly predicted; whatever ought to be, is set forth by a thousand voices, each variant |