My dear Martineau,

        I have seen with interest that your scheme of the National Review is resumed, and I am told that you and Walter Bagehot are the political editors. Supposing that your politics are not essentially different from those of the Westminster the Review is of practical interest to me, in spite of my unfortunate collision last year, for which I hope you have forgiven me. I wrote in the last Westminster the last article on the "Administrative Example of the United States," and in the forthcoming number I have written the second article on "International Immorality." I wrote them freely, and indeed could not comfortably take money from Chapman in his present circumstances, but I would much rather write for the National Review if I am admissible. . . . I value forms of government in proportion as they develop moral results in individual man; and if I now am democratic for Europe, it is not from any abstract and exclusive zeal for democracy, all the weaknesses of which I keenly feel, but because the dynasties, having first corrupted or destroyed the aristocracies, and next become hateful, hated, and incurable themselves, have left no government possible which shall have stability and morality except the democratic. In England my desire is to ward off this result, to which, I think, our aristocracy are driving fast by uniting their cause with the perfidious immoralities of the Continent.

        Your political prospectus seems to me to be delusive by its vagueness. I mean, that it is no sort of security after misunderstandings between editors and writers. I think it is liable practically to lead to the result that one man's mind seems undesirably to assume the authority of a confederation; . . . but where Truth is sought, this is not easily borne. Have you considered whether you may not do as the Revue des Deux Mondes, which admits independent essays with the writer's name signed? I value the convenience of anonymous writing, and I do not wish to see it destroyed; but it is undoubtedly abused and overdone, and I think every movement in the opposite direction has its use.