“8. The congress decides that the committee be instructed to draw up an address to all nations embodying the resolutions of the congress; and that this address shall be presented to the various governments of Europe and America, and particularly to the president of the French republic.”
There was one political effect produced by the assemblage; the fact that the French government allowed it, and that the Archbishop of Paris patronised it, led to a general impression in Europe that the policy of Louis Napoleon would be peaceful. It is probable that in giving his permission for the convention he calculated upon such an effect, which suited the purpose of the hour, and comported with the necessities of his régime. The policy of the French president towards Great Britain was peaceful and friendly. In various minor matters he endeavoured to gain the confidence of the English government. He had implicit faith in the honesty and goodwill of the English foreign minister, who believed Napoleon to be a necessity, and counselled his cabinet to maintain amity with him. The British ambassador to the French republic was treated with more marked respect than the minister of any other power delegated to it, and citizens of the United Kingdom were treated with the most marked consideration in France whenever the emperor found opportunity of showing it. As a proof of his goodwill, a souvenir of his residence in London, and the courtesies which, when an exile, he had received there from the Army and Navy Club, he presented that body with a superb piece of Gobelins tapestry, and a letter couched at once in the most respectful and cordial terms. In greater matters, he appeared anxious to secure the sympathy of Great Britain: difficulties arose in the East, which engaged the attention of English politicians very much, and the English Foreign-office was officially led to consider that reliance might be placed upon the co-operation of France. Events, in a few years, brought this feeling more thoroughly and practically to the test.
STATE OF GERMANY.
The condition of Germany much interested the English government and people. The contests between the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark threatened to call for the interference of Germany on the one hand and Russia on the other, and to involve England in embarrassing questions. The attempt of the German democracies, triumphant in 1848, to fuse the powers of Germany into a whole, a new Germanic empire, also involved questions of great intricacy, and which, however England might desire to keep aloof, tended to affect treaties in which she was concerned. The union of all Germany as one authority would introduce a new element into European relations, disturbing the balance of power. Russia and France had much to apprehend from such a union; England but little, so long as the united German power abstained from invading the territory or independence of the Scandinavian nations. United Germany, possessing popular liberty, would be a natural ally of England, and a counterpoise to France, whose ambitions England had had so often to check, and a counterpoise to Russia also, whose aggrandising policy was so menacing to England and to Europe.
The disagreements of the German people as to the respective merits of monarchy and republicanism, but more especially on social questions, rendered the union of Germany politically impossible. The jealousies of Austria and Prussia were equally fatal to such a project. The houses of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern were competitors for the prize of German empire; and this, rather than the welfare or union of Germany, engaged their subtlety and energy. An Austrian archduke became vicar of the German unity, and, unless so far as there appeared any probability of his securing the supreme authority for the royal family of Austria, his object was to humour the German parliament at Frankfort, and gradually to wear it out, restoring things to their original condition. When the royal houses of Austria and Prussia found that neither could obtain a permanent supremacy, they concerted together for the purpose of breaking up the parliament, and in the meantime, of practically preventing any invasion of the independence or separate prerogative of the individual states and their governments by the central representative power which the revolution had set up. Accordingly, on the last day of September a convention was signed at Vienna, by Austria and Prussia, for the establishment of a provisional central power for Germany. This was shortly after ratified by both courts. The first article was for the purpose of giving the archduke vicar an opportunity of resigning his authority to the provisional central power.
“1. The government of the Germanic confederation, in concert with the vicar, agree on a provisional form or interim, during which time Austria and Prussia assume the administration of the central power for the German confederation, in the name of all the governments of the confederation, until the 1st of May, 1850, unless this power cannot be transferred to a definite power before that period.
“2. The object of the interim is to maintain the German confederation as a union founded on the right of the states appertaining to the German princes and of the free cities, to having preserved the independence and the integrity of their states comprised in the confederation, and to having maintained the internal and external security of Germany.
“3. So long as the interim lasts, the affair of the German constitution is left to the free concertation of the individual states.
“It is the same with those affairs which by art. 6 of the federative act, belong to the full assembly of the diet.