This pamphlet is a republication of eight letters, originally addressed to the public through the columns of the Edinburgh News. The author tells us, "they were written for the purpose of illustrating the great conflict with Russian autocracy in which Britain is now engaged;" and which he thinks, "if prolonged or extended, as is possible, if not probable, cannot fail eventually to become a war of races and principles."

His first letter is introductory. In this, the author remarks that, "among the elements which complicate the political problem of the present age, not the least important is that of Race." While this was of historical importance when the Roman civilisation of the West was falling beneath the strokes of the Gothic sword, it afterwards sunk during many centuries "into a mere affair of heraldry and pedigree;" for, as he truly says, "till the period of the first French revolution, political arrangements superseded all considerations of hereditary peculiarity in the masses over whom distinguished princes bore sway." The possibility of a movement of the Pan-Sclavonic Race was altogether lost sight of. At the close of the eighteenth century, however, dynastic power declined in the midst of its convulsions, and popular influence necessarily and proportionately increased; and this disturbance of dynastic and popular equilibrium he attributes to "the troublesome question of race, which had undergone a resuscitation from the death-like slumber of a whole millennium, and in a state of increasing activity and importance has ever since continued to attract the attention of politicians, and the notice of men of science."

And here, at the very threshold of our author’s talented lucubrations, the theories of his political science come into collision with the testimony of God. He is correct enough in saying that, at the close of the eighteenth century there was a resuscitation from a death like slumber; but we can by no means admit that it was either a resuscitation of the troublesome question of race, or a resuscitation from a death-like slumber of a whole millennium. His position is that of "thinkers on passing events;" the contrary to theirs is "a revelation which God gave to Jesus Christ, that he might show to his servants things that should come to pass." This revelation teaches God’s servants that the resuscitation at the time indicated by our author, was a political resurrection of two classes, in which is incarnated a testimony against the secular and ecclesiastical dynastic tyrannies of papal Europe, which had been previously subjected to a death-sleep of one hundred and three years, four months and seventeen days. It was the resuscitation of an interrupted testimony throughout the papal world unconfined by racial peculiarities. The Gaul, the Italian, the German, the Spaniard, and the Pole, all raised a testimony, which, from that time to the present, has been a cause of terror to the dynasties which oppress "Europe’s discontented democracy," and now operates to embarrass all their movements in the existing war. The resuscitated testimony was militarily manifested in Napoleon’s hosts of all races and nations—a military democracy, of which he was chief, and which, while standing upon its feet, excited great terror in them which saw them.

In regard to the future, our author thinks that "the impending wars of Europe are obviously to be not only dynastic—not simply in the old sense of the term national, but also racial." We should have no objection to this opinion, if the word "racial" were superseded by a word expressive of the two classes unconfined to race, above referred to. We see these classes, without respect of race watching their opportunity, and preaching a submergence of race in the interests of a common liberty for all peoples. The views of these classes take no colouring from the conceits of politicians and men of science, cosily speculating in their easy-chairs and morning-gowns upon ethnology, philology, and national proclivities; which, to the masses, moved like the forest by the Spirit of God, are all moonshine. "Liberty, fraternity, and equality," sets at nought all distinction of race, and points to the United States of North America, where men of all races and every clime (even Negroes in some of the States) enjoy the rights of a common citizenship and humanity. It is true, we hear of a Pan-Sclavonia; but that belongs to the outside barbarian region, and by no means traceable to the "resuscitation" of races "from the death-like slumber of a whole millennium." What exists organically of Pan-Sclavonia is a new creation, not a resurrection, and which is destined under the Russian autocracy to establish a PROTECTORATE over Italian, Iberian, Gaul, German, Magyar, Pole, Scandinavian, Turk, Kirghese, Persian, Greek, Moor, &c. —a commingling of heterogeneous nationalities in one Sclavonic Protectorate—"even mixed with miry clay," for a judicial manifestation of divine wrath in its Assyrian overthrow.

"The age," says our intelligent author, "of merely regal supremacy is passing;" by which, we understand him to mean that a coalition between Sclavonia within the Austrian and Turkish Empires, and Sclavonia within the Russian, will overshadow the fair valleys and cultivated plains of Europe, exercising imperial supremacy over its tottering thrones. This is, no doubt, true. The European kingdoms are weak, not because of racial incompatibilities, for these are no novelty; but because of the antagonism between their governments and peoples, whose ideas are opposed to their mal-administration and oppressive institutions. It is revealed that the dynasties shall give themselves to a superior, who shall strengthen them against their peoples. More regal supremacy will, therefore, pass under imperial supremacy; so that kings and emperors will for a time suppress the liberties, disappoint the hopes, and arrest "the once fondly anticipated progress of universal man."

Thus much his reasonings are tinged with Bible truth, from which, also, he has in some way derived the idea that the Saxondom of Britain, America, and Australia, "rising on the world’s wide seaboard," has been providentially developed "as a counterpoise to the systematised despotisms and army-girt monarchies" of the Continent. No doubt of it; for "God, who hath made all nations of men, hath determined the bounds of their habitations," with reference to a certain purpose not admitted into the ethnology of "politicians and men of science." The Saxondom of Britain is Ezekiel’s merchant-power of Tarshish, raised up of God to antagonise the Sclavonian Gog, when, not contented with the West, South, and North, he covets Judea and the farthest Ind. Mr. Jackson seems to perceive clearly that the British and Russian dominions have been providentially raised up, the one to Sclavonianise Europe, and the other to confine it to certain limits. This seems to be the leading idea of his racial speculations. So far he is sustained by the Bible; which also sustains him in the supposition that "the battle may be for western kingdoms," before the question of the east is settled. His words are, "the conflict on the Danube may at the shortest notice be transferred to the banks of the Elbe or the Rhine, and instead of eastern principalities, the battle may be for western kingdoms."

This battle will doubtless precede the fall of Turkey. The mission of the Russian autocracy is to organise an Imperial Protectorate in these latter days, answerable to the feet of Nebuchadnezzar’s image. This is the first stage of its enterprise; the next is to cause the forces of the image to march against the power then occupying Egypt and the holy land. "He shall enter into the countries and overflow and pass over." This shall he do before "he enters into the land of glory." This is the order of things noted in the Scriptures of truth, in respect to the Northern power. In overflowing or invading the countries, he will pass over them, and not be turned back. The western kingdoms will be invaded, and as the result of the conflict, the French empire will merge into a toe of the Sclavonian feet, to which nine other toes will also be attached as the kingdoms of its protectorate. Thus, "the battle for western kingdoms" will make the eastern an occidental question, change the face of Europe, and postpone the fate of Turkey and the Principalities to a more convenient season.

The key to Mr. Jackson’s interesting speculations on the peoples of Europe is found in his "confession of faith." "We avow our belief," says he, "in the primal, and, therefore, in the final brotherhood of humanity," not believing in an aboriginal diversity of races. No believer in Moses could come to any other conclusion than that "God made of one blood all nations of men." If he had made them of different bloods there would have been a primal or "aboriginal diversity of races." We should have had an Adam and Eve for the Negro race, another Adam and Eve for the Caucasian race, and a different pair from either for the Mongolian, and so forth. No, the diversity of race is not difference of blood; but as Mr. Jackson truly observes, "races are what they have been made by the long succession of circumstances to which they have been subjected." Had we reliable records of this "long succession of circumstances" in its operation upon each racial diversity, or the cerebral organization of the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, we might be able to define what particular influences, acting for a specific time upon a succession of family brains would produce a Negro in the family of Ham, a Scythian in the family of Magog, and a Frank in that of Gomer. Notwithstanding "all the scientific and historical data of modern times," Mr. Jackson thinks that the origin of the diversity is "destined to remain for a considerable period a debatable question." Left to ethnologists ignoring revelation, the question never will be settled; for their "science" does not recognise the general condition from which "the long succession of circumstances" itself originated. Revelation alone can solve the matter. "If all these families of mankind started from the same point, whence comes it that they are now so differently situated?" This is the question which scientific ignorance propounds, and cannot answer to its own satisfaction. Revelation, however, proclaims that God created man a "very good" living creature, and "upright;" but that by transgression of the divine law, he diverged from this condition into a state of sin and death, in which he sought out for himself "many inventions" which were not upright. These evil inventions, based upon sin, or transgression of law, became the sources of the circumstances which, in process of time, grouped themselves into systems of things under which those attached or devoted to the inventions ranged themselves by a sort of attraction of aggregation. The influence of these evil systems became a law to flesh and blood, creating physical habitudes, which in process of time gave peculiar individual expression to the evil influences which originated them. Hence the evil incarnate became deeply marked in the form of the features of the head and face, producing an African expression of diabolism, a Mongolian, Caucasian, and so forth. These "forms of humanity" became high or low (and low indeed, is the highest, in comparison of what is attainable under the influence of good), in proportion to their retention of the original ideas with which God, from time to time, inspired the human race. Where in his wise arrangements, he left a section of it to its own uncontrolled animation, it assumed the lowest form, as in the case of the New-Hollander. Hence, also, the diversities among what are called "civilised" men. Compare the cerebral and facial form and feature of a papal Celt of Erin with that of Milton or Sir Isaac Newton; the former is the physical ugliness of incarnate popery; the other, the physical beauty of high intellectual and moral cultivation. Sin, then, is at the bottom of racial diversities; so that when sin and its prevailing consequences shall be eradicated from degenerate humanity, physical racial diversities will disappear, and nationalities based upon this diversity, and mankind in its totality once more reflect the divine image and likeness of God.

God does not predicate human destiny upon human racial antecedents. We cannot, therefore, give in to Mr. Jackson’s "final brotherhood of humanity" as a consequence of a primal confraternity. His words already quoted are, "we avow our belief in the primal, and therefore, in the final brotherhood of humanity." There never will be a final brotherhood of humanity as a consequence of a primal one. Monarchy, not "brotherhood," was the original condition of the world. God made Adam king of all terrestrial living creatures. "Let man have dominion," said he, "over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." When this was spoken there were no brothers. Brothers did not appear in the world until it was constituted upon a foundation, the elements of which are found in the judgment passed upon the transgressors of the divine law. Primogeniture was then established as the hereditary line of the monarchy. This was illustrated in the case of Cain, the first-born of Adam. When hot anger possessed him and his countenance fell, because more respect was paid to his brother’s offerings than to his, the Lord inquired of him, "Why art thou wrath? And why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not have the excellency? And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule (or be king) over him." If, by "brotherhood," our author means a socialistic republican fraternity, no such brotherhood ever existed primally, nor will it ever obtain in our planet, save in the brains of visionary and impracticable politicians, and as a disturbing element in the kingdom of the Beast. A monarchically brotherhood of nations, however, with a particular nation that shall have the excellency, and unto which shall be the desire of all, and which shall rule over all the rest, is a future constitution of the world plainly revealed in the Scriptures of truth. There was such a primal brotherhood of individuals in the family of Adam, which may be regarded as a type of the national brotherhood to obtain in the family of the second Adam, when he shall possess the excellency as the first-born of Jehovah. This, however, will not be a consequence resulting from the primal unity of race. The natural tendencies of mankind are to be the oppression and destruction of each other, after the example of Cain; and no diffusion of science of which its professors are capable can fit mankind for a higher civilisation than they have hitherto attained.

The five letters which succeed the introductory one, "present in a condensed form the more important facts which attach to racial progress in general." Their contents are thus exhibited in their captions: —Letter 2, The Italian, Iberian, and Gaul; Letter 3, The German, the Magyar, and the Pole; Letter 4, The Muscovite; Letter 5 The Anglo-Saxon, and the Scandinavian; Letter 6, Turkey and the East. The contents of these are presented "with an especial view to illustrate the probable results and necessary tendencies of that great conflict of peoples and faiths, which now impends upon us, as the stern necessity of Europe’s political futurity." The summation of these probable results and necessary tendencies are the subject-matter of the last letters, which bring out our author’s purpose, which he has devised according to his good pleasure and the principles of his racial speculations. In Letter 7, he reveals to us The Language and Lords of the Future, and, in Letter 8, Empire and Its Possessors. But, after all said, his lucubrations yield only hypothetical probabilities and tendencies, which may answer very well to amuse the readers of The Edinburgh News, who, if they are like the generality of newspaper patrons in the two worlds, know nothing of the demonstrable certainties of the Scriptures. Our author will bear with us, we trust, in this plainness of speech. From the perusal of his pamphlet we have greater admiration for his ability and varied information, and scientific attainments, than for the intrinsic excellency of his "science" or system. This is mere thinking of the flesh, apart from the revealed purpose of the world’s ruler—mere speculation, which fails to evolve even probabilities and tendencies to minds enlightened by the thinking of the Spirit. If Mr. Jackson’s probabilities and tendencies were to ultimate in accomplished facts, God would be made a liar, and his word deceit. We do not suppose it is Mr. J’s purpose to demonstrate this; but it is nevertheless true, that if his theory were established as "Europe’s political futurity," God’s purpose is circumvented and evaporated into air of the rarest tenuity. By way of illustration, hear what he says of the Lords of the Future:

"To Britain, then, and her world-wide Anglo-Saxon colonies, with their tremendous powers of absorption, do we look as the central stem of humanity’s ulterior growth. To this land of the free, and home of the brave, with its great and noble people now rapidly engirdling the globe, must we have recourse as the probable, nay, humanly speaking, the alone possible agents of amalgamation, the sole possessors of the united prerequisites of colonial extension and mental culture. As a race, active, energetic, enterprising, and courageous, endowed in an unequalled degree with the capability of transplanting their institutions and language into every quarter of the globe, already in possession of all the great maritime outposts of the world, powerful in Europe, dominant in America, and irresistible in Asia, increasing in an unexampled ratio among themselves, and absorbing with invincible force the emigrants from almost every other civilised nation, what people can claim to be their superiors? In all the manifold advantages of possession and prospect indeed, whither shall we proceed to discover their equals?"

And again: "The Anglo-Saxon and their expanding tongue are at once an earnest and a prophecy of that glorious, but as yet imperfectly revealed time, when political and ecclesiastical usurpation being abolished, and the petty disposition of caste annihilated, every sire shall be the prophet, priest, and king of his own household, and earth shall know no holier or more majestic sound than the true English ‘Father.’"

The author’s "final brotherhood of humanity" does not appear to be very near; but seems to be a post-imperial probability. The present order of things is to pass away, and a new imperial organization to spring up.

"Wilful blindness alone, indeed," says he, "can close its eyes to facts so patent, and thus avoid the rather startling conclusion that we are on the verge of a new era, that the established is decaying, and the new is already preparing for emergence. . . . . We have said that every grand epoch has eventuated in an empire. . . . Every great empire has been the political incarnation of the spirit of its age, and has come commissioned to carry humanity to a more advanced stage of civilisation, by the concentration of its resources, moral and physical, upon a facial point. . . . This is an industrial age, . . . in which merchants and manufacturers are rapidly supplanting the men of the sword and their effete descendants, the territorial aristocracies of birth and title—an age in which LABOUR, that Promethean giant, is destined to be liberated from his bonds, and march to his predestined throne as God’s best and noblest representative in the great work of creation. . . .The destiny of Russia is not to give birth to the new, but to gather up the fragments of an old era. She is the representative, and will be the grave of monarchy, aristocracy, priestcraft, and caste. . . . . Who, then, it may be said, is her antagonist and rival for this portentous office of the world’s leadership? We answer without hesitation, BRITAIN. . . . We revert, then, to Saxondom as the necessary seat of the next great empire; the providentially appointed site, not of a political predominance of force, but of a moral supremacy of influence and example. And to its people do we look as the temporal saviours of their race, the predestined Israel of the world’s gigantic futurity. . . . The New Jerusalem will be London, the great moral centre of Saxon humanity."

An universal Anglo-Saxon empire with Labour upon the throne, and foggy London for its capital, is the summation of our author’s probabilities and tendencies!!! The stone-hearted, narrow-minded, money-power of Britain the imperial ruler of the nations! And every father of a family its prophet, priest, and king! These are the flights of our author’s fervid imagination—oratorical embellishments suited to the self-complacency of the unequalled people who know no superiors, to whom these letters were addressed! O thou Anglo-Saxon paragon of flesh and blood! Well might Paul say to thee, "Be not wise in thine own conceit!" Truly, with a prophetic eye, he foresaw the hallucination of the Gentiles in the era of the fulfilment of their times. Our author’s speculations are elements of this; very complimentary to Anglo-Saxons, and gratifying to their vanity; but utterly at variance with the purposes of God revealed in the Scriptures of truth. There we are taught that when the bottomless pit shall have become the grave of the Russian power and impiety, an universal Israelitish dominion with the Lord Jesus and his brethren upon "the throne of the house of David," and Jerusalem, now oppressed by the Ottoman, for its capital, is the certainty of the future, which cuts up and sweeps overboard as rotten carcasses into the sea of everlasting oblivion all the "probabilities" and "tendencies" flitting across the brains of those who have more admiration for the scientific and ethnological thinking of the flesh, than for the heart-stirring revelation of the high thoughts and purposes of God. The gospel preached to Abraham was not that, in British Saxondom with Labour upon the throne shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; but, in thee, Abraham, and in thy seed. With the talented and respectable author of this pamphlet we have no acquaintance; but this we can affirm with certainty, that if he had known and believed "the gospel of the kingdom" preached by Jesus, and after him by the apostles, he never could have written it; and further, that if he should ever have the happiness of coming to the understanding of it, and do himself and God the honour of obeying it from the heart, he will be diligent to gather together all unsold copies of the edition, and follow the example of the conscientious and unselfish Ephesians, who burned 50,000 pieces of silver’s worth of human foolishness before all. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed over the published thinkings of flesh, unenlightened by the truth of God. Wishing our author a happy deliverance from "the wisdom of this world," and a thorough indoctrination and baptism with "the foolishness of God," I subscribe myself his sincere well-wisher, the

EDITOR.

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