That Prussia will not use the tremendous force she has thus acquired to fight for empty name or mere gloire, or marshal her battalions for deadly conflict, simply because some foreign ambassador has refused to take off his hat to one of her kings' mistresses, may be readily conceded; and, taking the transfer of military ascendancy from Paris to Berlin, so much in the interests of peace has doubtless been gained. But what guarantee have we that Prussia will not use her vast accession of power to augment her material interests and enrich the populations who have confided their fortunes to her management? The military and naval supplies are raised by taxes, over which neither parliament—the Reichstag, nor the Federal Council—the Bundesrath, has the slightest control. The chief corner-stone of English liberty is the dependence of the executive on Parliament. If it cannot get the supplies from the legislature, down it goes. But in the adroit charter lately manipulated at Versailles, there is no executive beyond the Prussian monarch and his chancellor, and the military taxes of the Empire find their way into their exchequer, without any check or hindrance, quite as if the process was a law of nature. The great doctrine of ministerial responsibility, without which not even the shadow of constitutional liberty can be inaugurated, finds no place in the charter of the new federal Empire. It is true that any extraordinary levies or augmentation of the armaments of the Empire would have to receive the sanction of the new German legislature. But when we remember that the military resources of the Empire are already developed to the utmost, that the normal military organization of the Empire enables Bismark to exhaust its last thaler, employ its last musket, and call out its last man, it would appear a mockery to hold out this provision as a guarantee of the influence of the popular element in the new constitution. It does not improve the situation, when we remember, how resolutely the popular element in the Prussian Chambers was set at defiance by the King and his Minister, upon the refusal of the majority to endorse the increased armaments which they demanded, to enable them to appropriate the Duchies, and afterwards to fight Austria. Bismark suspended the Prussian Constitution for four years, to carry out his policy of blood and iron. A despotic charter, in the hands of Liberal ministers, might be modified in favour of progress. But with a despotic charter in the hands of a despotic minister, we see little hope for the future pacification of Europe. France is under the heel of Germany, and Germany under the heel of Prussia. That that power will henceforth champion the liberties she has hitherto done her best to repress; that she will voluntarily renounce the plundering policy which has been the predominant feature of her character for a policy of justice and rectitude; that she will hereafter woo peace with the same ardour with which she has up to the present wooed the sword, is what we most devoutly wish, but which we cannot bring ourselves to believe.
In fact, Prussia has by no means fulfilled the destiny which she avows it is her honest mission to accomplish. She is called by Providence to unite the whole of Fatherland under her sceptre. But the German kingdom still remains divided. The edifice of German nationality still requires the copestone for the completion of the structure. The words which her sovereign addressed to the German people on the day when he accepted the imperial crown at Versailles, are strikingly significant of her pretensions, 'The Empire,' said the king, or rather Bismark, who spoke in his person, 'has been in abeyance some sixty years. We are summoned to undertake its re-establishment.' In 1806, the dissolution of the old Germanic Empire followed as a natural consequence of the Confederation of the Rhine. The Emperor of Austria, at the dictation of Napoleon, then renounced the title and regalia of the empire which had fallen to pieces, but which King William now takes it upon himself to revive. 'Accordingly,' says this monarch, 'we and our successors to the crown of Prussia henceforth shall use the imperial title in all the relations and affairs of the German Empire; and we hope to God that it may be vouchsafed to the German people to lead the Fatherland on to a blessed future under the auspices of its ancient splendour.'[240] As an earnest of this intention, Alsace and German-speaking Lorraine, together with a portion of French-speaking Lorraine, brought under the German flag, is an important revival of the old kingdom on its western frontier. This is a rich slice to commence with. But the resuscitation of the Empire with the western limb of the Austrian monarchy, and nine millions of Germans left out, is like the resuscitation of Greece without either Athens or Thermopylæ; or the play of Hamlet, with the part of the Prince excluded from the programme. The union of Fatherland would be a mockery, and the revival of the Empire a nullity, without the annexation of those provinces which constitute the birthplace and cradle of its history. Accordingly, when the Germanic Confederation was set up in 1815, as a substitute for the old diet, the German provinces of Austria were deemed of such importance as to confer upon her the leading voice in its councils. It is not, therefore, likely that some forty-two millions of Germans will long remain united, without endeavouring to include, under the same hegemony, the nine additional millions now clamouring for admission outside. Already, within the German provinces of Austria, committees are established, with a view to afford their Northern brethren a fulcrum for realizing the desired event. In Glatz, Salzburg, Innsprück, Linz, and Vienna, fêtes were prepared to celebrate the recent triumphs of their German compatriots, which the Hohenhart ministry was obliged to suppress by force. But even despite of the Government, numerous meetings have been held in which the warmest eagerness for German unity and for federal union with Berlin has been expressed. Indeed, the Austro-Germans who formerly aspired to lead Fatherland, now live in subordination to the Sclaves, whose influence in the Austrian Chambers, by mere force of numbers, is paramount to their own. They, therefore, seek union with their heroic countrymen, with all the more ardour, as it would release them from the ascendency of a race whom they despise. Guided by the aspirations of his countrymen, Bismark will find a much easier passage across the Inn to the Leitha than across the Rhine to the Moselle. The work of German nationality has advanced so far that we must doubt, if Prussia remained indifferent to the prize, that the fusion would not be accomplished by the very momentum which the movement has already acquired. But with Prussia, true to the grasping instincts of her house, clothed with the enormous prestige of her recent victories, and throwing all her energies into the struggle, Austria can no more resist the absorption than a wave of the Eider could resist being swallowed up in a ground swell from the German Ocean.
The limits of the revived Empire on its Southern frontier will, doubtless, be such as to enclose those provinces in which the Germans form the principal element. These comprise Upper and Lower Austria, including Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, and the Tyrol. Some two millions occupy the north and western frontiers of Bohemia. In the north-east of Moravia, and the eastern part of Austrian-Silesia, there are some seven hundred thousand more. But the proportion of the German to the Sclavonic populations of Bohemia and Moravia is only one-fourth; so that these provinces cannot be annexed to the German Empire without giving the doctrine of nationality its coup de grâce. But Moravia and Bohemia constituted integral portions of the old German Empire. They were, also, reclaimed as such by Austria, on the construction of the Germanic Confederation in 1815. There are besides strategical reasons. For the Austrian Archducal province, with its three millions of Germans, would be blocked up between the Czechs and Magyars, while Bohemia would extend like a wedge into the bowels of the Empire. We are afraid, that when the question comes to be settled, both Bohemia and Moravia will find themselves eaten up, sandwichlike, by the German populations on the north and south frontiers, and assimilated into the political body which is already dominating Europe.
But the necessity of increased outlets for German industry, and of further materials for the expansion of her commerce, will be as powerful a stimulant for the growth of Prussian Cæsarism as the principle of nationality. Germany having achieved her national unity, will require free access to the seaboard of the German Ocean. She will require ships and colonies. The possession of Holland would place all these requirements at her disposal, and enable her to fructify her home commerce a hundredfold. Professor Newman sees such advantage to both parties in the annexation, that he is anxious the union should be accomplished; he rather naïvely adds that Prussia will withhold her hand, because she would not wish to be hampered with Java or Surinam, and the other possessions which alone impart to Holland its significancy. Twenty millions of colonial population, however, would be a prize as glittering to the Germans as the Dutch seaboard at home; and, therefore, no one was overwhelmed with surprise when its annexation was mentioned as one of the overtures made by Bismark to the French Emperor in return for Prussian acquiescence in the French seizure of Belgium. Nor can it excite wonder that the French Emperor refused as promptly as his uncle, when the Russian Alexander offered to France both Syria and Egypt in return for allowing him to seize Constantinople. But now there is no France to block the way, and Holland is entirely at the mercy of Berlin. The House of Nassau had its representative in the Germanic Confederation, to answer for the interests of Luxembourg. Why should it not have its representative in the Bundesrath at Berlin, and sacrifice its independence, to bask in the splendour of the new Empire? If the four millions of Dutchmen do not fall in with these suggestions so readily as the five millions of Bavarians, they will be found as incompetent as the Bavarians would have been, to oppose the high behests and the colossal interests of a race of fifty millions, who threaten to rule the world. The Netherlands were an important limb of the old Germanic Empire. The Dutch section of it is identified with Germany by military traditions. Her language and religion are Teutonic. In resuming possession of this territory, the revivers of the old imperial domination would not meet with anything like the difficulties they have to encounter in incorporating the eastern frontiers of France.
The absorption of Holland, by so powerful a country as Germany, would deal a heavy blow at our own naval supremacy. But this danger is the least of those which are ahead. For Prussia does not appear alone upon the scene of action; and there are prizes for her to seize, which require the support of an ally who has herself a direct interest in the spoil, and who is troubled with as few scruples as Prussia herself. There cannot, we think, be a doubt that Prussia entered upon the recent campaign with a secret understanding with Russia, of armed intervention on the part of that power, in case of certain eventualities arising out of the war, unfavourable to Prussia. The two combatants had not measured swords at Spicheren, before this treaty was suddenly announced, and as boldly denied. The cordial greetings of the two courts, moreover, during the progress of the war; the shout of rapture which every French disaster drew from the Emperor Alexander; the indiscreet announcement of the Emperor William, that he would never forget that he owed it to the attitude of his Imperial nephew that the war did not assume larger dimensions, and the conferring on each other, at the conclusion of the campaign, military honours; all these things tend conclusively to prove that, in league with Prussia, there is a power still more formidable to the liberties of mankind. Had it not been for this assurance of support from Russia, it would have been perfect madness for Prussia to leave her eastern frontier exposed to the inroads of Austria, when that power was counting her chances as to throwing in her lot with France. Had Austria moved a musket, Russia would have poured her troops through the defiles of the Carpathians, and given her another enemy to encounter. Bismark was, therefore, enabled to leave Saxony as much unprotected, as were the Rhine Provinces in the war of 1866. When France was prostrate; when she was expiring under the terrible effects of the blow which she had recklessly invited, but which the connivance of Russia enabled Germany with collective force to deal; that power plainly exposed her cards, and showed the interests she had in the struggle. In the month of November, Gortschakoff startled London by announcing the intention of Russia to repudiate the treaty of 1856. Within a little time afterwards, the Prussian Prince of Roumania declared he could no longer support his position as Turkish feudatary; but must convert his government into one of independent sovereignty, or retire from it altogether. About the same period, as if to bring the repudiation of treaties in fashion, Bismark announced the resolution of Prussia to withdraw from the guarantee of 1867 protecting the neutrality of Luxembourg. If two of these difficulties have been transitionally arranged, the compromisers have only deferred the real solution of the question they involve, to a more convenient opportunity. It is very ominous for England, that Europe, at present, is virtually in the hands of two potentates evidently acting in concert with each other, who can place two millions and a half of fighting men in the field; and that both have shown a disposition to complicate affairs in the East, to the spoils of which each possesses peculiar pretensions, as well as peculiar means of realizing those pretensions in the amplest manner.
The interest of Russia in driving the Turks out of Europe is traditional. She believes in it as a mission to which she is called by divine Providence. It is not merely an affair of conquest, but a matter of religion. For this she exists as a nation, bound to execute the task at all hazards, and to intermit no opportunity of bringing it about. With Prussia it is merely a question of arithmetic. But the gain to her, were the struggle only partially decided in her favour, is such as to overpower even an Oriental imagination. The conjoint export and import trade of Turkey may be set down at forty millions annually. Of this trade England has, at present, the lion's share. The rest is mainly divided between Italy, France, Austria, and Russia. Prussia and Northern Germany enjoy little or next to nothing of it. Turkey, to them, might as well not be in existence, except for the wealth it pours into the coffers of their neighbours. Formerly Russia has been prevented from dealing with the 'sick man' by the protectorate of the Western Powers. England and France have been repeatedly offered ascendancy on the banks of the Nile, in return for permitting Russian ascendancy on the shores of the Bosphorus. But, besides the principle of equity, which no English minister dare contravene, it would have been an absurd policy, in exchange for an African or Asiatic province, to place our trade in the Levant in jeopardy, by allowing Russia to instal herself in Constantinople. But Russia has now an accomplice who can help her to the booty, who is troubled with no moral delicacy, and who would gain a large revenue out of the transaction. Prussia, by laying her hand upon the north-western limb of European Turkey, would command the navigation of the Danube, and divert a large stream of Oriental commerce to the capitals of Germany. Provinces which are at present rich, even in their uncultivated state, would, colonized by Prussia, become the granaries of the world. The Italian portions of the Empire are gone from it irretrievably: but Germany can indemnify herself by expansion in an eastern direction. If, therefore, no extraneous force intervenes, we look forward to the establishment of a Prussian sovereignty, extending from the Euxine to the Adriatic, and owning no limit till it tops the crests of the Balkan. The scion of her house, who has already converted the Principalities into a Prussian arsenal, is in an admirable position to direct her energies towards this object. While Russia operates on the Asiatic frontier, the Prussian Hospodar, backed by German battalions, and reinforced with ordnance from Berlin, has only to put out his hand, and Bosnia and Servia are in his grasp. With the iron and steel of the Vosges, with the copper, lead, and silver mines of Carinthia and Carniola, with the silks and carpets of Shumla, and the grain of Servia and Roumania, Germany would possess a trade with which the commerce of Italy in the Middle Ages, or the colossal industries of England in the nineteenth century, would be dwarfed in comparison. Would she resist the prize within her reach, if the tempter at her ear instigated her to take it as her share of the spoil? The Ottoman Empire may be said to derive the very breath of its existence from the jealousy of the great Powers. The States of the West had an instinctive dread of the great Empire of the North, besides a mutual mistrust of each other; and, therefore, the fairest plains of Europe were allowed to remain in possession of those who had no ambitious instincts to gratify, and no foreign predilections to indulge. But now the state of affairs is profoundly changed, and Turkey finds herself at the mercy of two military despots, who are acting in concert, without any protection from their cupidity, but what their own mistrust of each other may happen to oppose.
Up to 1866 five great Powers existed in Europe. But we cannot conceal it from ourselves, that in the interim of a few years, three of these have either been neutralized or practically effaced. Since the battle of Kœniggratz it would be idle to say that Austria is of any account in Europe. The blow she received at Solferino was a prelude to the loss of Venetia, and the loss of her Italian possessions is only a prelude to the stroke which will drive her completely out of Germany. When empires rise, they accomplish the task of expansion with difficulty and labour, but when they sink, everything appears greased to impel the wheels along the declivity of descent. Austria has ceased to be an empire, and will soon find it difficult to maintain an independent sovereignty. When her Germans imitate her quondam Italian subjects in attaching themselves to their own nationality, the Magyar and multifarious Sclavonian tribes will alone remain, whose respective interests are so antagonistic, that anything like union under one sceptre, without being tempered by the influence of less excitable races, will be difficult in the extreme. At present, her possession of nine millions of Germans, is much more a source of weakness than of strength. Prussia, in any scheme of annexation she may contemplate, or in any object she may have in view, has only to show that it is for the interest of Fatherland, and Austrian Germany is at once alive to the necessity of paralysing the action of its own Government, and assisting the Prussian project. During the late war, it was manifestly the interest of Austria to have flung in her lot with France, but had she done so, the first enemy whom she would have had to encounter would have been her German subjects. The mode in which she clung to our garments during the struggle, and like a child with its nurse, interceded with us to interfere between the combatants, when she dared not interfere herself, was a glaring instance of the timidity arising out of her weakness. When we remember the boldness of Metternich before Napoleon I., and how Maria Theresa, yet bleeding from the loss of Silesia, confronted the united hostility of France and Prussia, we are astonished at the pusillanimity which Austria displays, even in her present stage of decrepitude. In 1866, though backed by nearly all the military forces of the Confederation, she suffered herself to be prostrated by Prussia, and her imperial mantle to be stript from her in a few weeks. It is therefore not from such a Power that any help can come, when Prussia in the name of Germany finds her way to the seaboard of the Northern Ocean, or when the Russian Emperor and his ally choose to realize any little plans they may have concerted, with a view of bringing Turkey within the sphere of European civilization.
The position of France is much more desperate than that of Austria, though the compact unity of her race holds out a better prospect of her recovering some portion of her former strength. This, however, if it occurs, will not be, at least, in our generation. We must, therefore, regard the course affairs may take during the next twenty years, as if she was not in existence, at least as a controlling power. It is not the effect of the material, so much as of the moral, ruin of the French nation which has to be feared. Before the German armies passed through the defiles of the Vosges, the corruption of the Second Empire had done its work in effeminating the character of a gallant people. The mode in which the Army of the Rhine left the capital of France for the frontier, animated with the spirit of conquest, and glittering with all the vain conceit of anticipated triumph, and the mode in which that proud host was rolled back, never halting for a moment until fortressed walls afforded them some respite from their pursuers, can be paralleled only by the bluster of those armies of old, who under Mardonius and Hippias came to wreck all the pride of Persia against the gates of Greece. The spirit of a nation must be entirely emasculated, its prowess gone, when the flower of its soldiery can surrender in masses of hundreds of thousands to an enemy in numbers hardly superior; and when the great body of the army can be allowed to be shut up for nearly two months in a fortress, without making any decisive attempt to cut through a line of weaker proportionate strength, and without the country so much as putting up a finger to relieve them. The capitulations of Sedan and Metz, consigning the famous Imperial Guard, which so often restored the fluctuating fortunes of France under Ney and Cambronne, and 300,000 soldiers to the hulks of Germany, there to be employed as beasts of burden and helots, make us almost blush at the name of Frenchmen. Such shameful surrenders are hardly equalled by the masses of barbarous Cossacks under Peter the Great, whom Charles XII. netted like shoals of fish in the Ukraine. If the Republican armies did not conduct themselves so ignominiously, it cannot be forgotten that the strategy of Chanzy and Faidherbe was disconcerted by the Mobiles flinging down their arms at the critical moment, and exhausting in a panic-flight energies which ought to have been employed against the enemy. Even in the Paris sorties, after the tide had spent its strength, more soldiers surrendered themselves than the Germans cared to make prisoners. It also speaks volumes for French military degeneracy, that the German armies were permitted, for four months, to go through the dilatory process of strangling Paris, by famine, without a single attempt being made to interrupt their two lines of communication with Germany, except a bold but abortive one by Ricciotti Garibaldi, when, had the country by foraging parties constantly directed its energies to this end, they might have placed the besieging armies in the same plight as the besieged. If the French justly complain of the physical prostration to which the plundering and huckstering propensities of the Germans have reduced France, this mischief is nothing in comparison with the moral prostration to which their submission to twenty years of a corrupt despotism has brought the country. The injury inflicted by the foreigner, they may in a few years partially retrieve, but the evil they have inflicted on themselves is likely to be of a far more permanent character. The fact is, France can never show her face in the arena of foreign diplomacy, much less appear in the front rank again, until she probes her weaknesses to the bottom, and eliminates the causes which have so powerfully contributed to cast the nation, like a bleeding and mangled carcase, under the heel of Prussia. Perhaps the most destructive of these, is the number of hostile factions into which her population is split, each clamouring against the other, with a hatred ever ready to burst out into civil conflict. In France, Republicanism is arrayed against Monarchy, and each of these parties admits of infinite subdivisions, arrayed against each other. Legitimist, Constitutionalist, and Imperialist, represent the monarchical element. But the Bonapartist entertains not a greater hatred to the Orleanist, than the Socialist entertains to the Conservative Republican. Then, the priest-party in the country has a thorough abhorrence of the free-thinking Democrat of the town. It cannot be denied, that during the late war, these factions did much to paralyze the energies of the country. The Republican party had little sympathy for the armies which were overthrown at Woerth, and sent into captivity at Sedan. The priest-party had as little sympathy for the raw levies which Gambetta sent to be mown down like unresisting grass, under Chanzy and Bourbaki. The energy of the nation was constantly divided against itself. Its heart was never thoroughly enlisted against Germany in any part of the struggle. The country wanted a common hope, a united faith, a solidarity of principle to champion it in the struggle. Until these miserable feuds are terminated, we see little hope for France. For, they reduce the country to the same state of imbecility, which rendered Poland, fifty years previous to her extinction, of no account in Europe. That they will entirely disappear we have little hope. But that they will be very considerably diminished by the galling chastisement which Prussia has inflicted, is what we try to believe, although the events which have transpired in Paris during the last fortnight, in which the bloodthirsty cruelty and aimless recklessness of the Paris mob have been met by the miserable irresolution, divided councils, and practical imbecility of the Versailles government, almost destroy all reasonable hope. It is just in proportion to the degree in which hatred of Prussia, and the desire of being revenged for the punishment she has recently administered, shall diminish the rancour of political factions and amalgamate all the feelings and strength of the country into one flood-tide of patriotism, that we must look for the political regeneration of France. Prussia, by the exorbitant demands she has imposed, has certainly done her utmost to bring about this result. She has purchased the triumphs and security of to-day, at the expense of future ages of misery and retribution. But it is not consolatory to think that, whatever may be her efforts, so low is the present position of France, that she must consent to remain a political cypher during the present century, and that her only means of recovering her position, even as a first-class power, and of directing her united energies and resources to that end, is by renewing the struggle with her relentless enemy.
That France in the school of adversity will unlearn much of the frivolity and self-glorifying spirit which has distinguished her people during the Second Empire, is another advantage which may be hoped rather than expected from her recent disasters—an advantage, indeed, which would confer as many benefits upon herself as upon the world. France, ever since the days of Louis Quatorze, has been too much accustomed to deem herself the arbitress of Europe. She had come to recognise it as her peculiar mission to open or shut the Temple of Janus, and give peace or war to the world. It was her boast that not a gun could be fired off in Europe without her consent. This had been repeated so often, in later times, that not only Frenchmen but mankind generally came to believe it. The consequence was, that when any restlessness was exhibited at the Tuileries, foreign nations began to look at their muskets, increase their armaments, and prepare for eventualities. Nor will anyone, who considers the exploits of the First Napoleon, the marvels he accomplished in the midst of a divided Italy and a dismembered Germany, regard the belief as having no foundation. But France, while trading on the splendid reminiscences of the First Empire, during the Second, completely lost that daring and resolute spirit by which those wonders had been achieved. While pandering to all the foolish vanities, and indulging in the hectoring and blustering swagger, generated by the victories of the First Napoleon, she had sunk in the slough of effeminacy all that martial dash, that burning ardour, and fearless courage which enabled her, against overwhelming odds, to nail victory to her standards at Marengo and Austerlitz. The delusion under which she laboured, was not surpassed by that of Greece, who, when debauched by her Asiatic conquests, imagined, in her struggles with the Roman Empire, that she possessed the prowess of the heroes who made such havoc with the Persian armies at Marathon and Thermopylæ. The folly, into which this delusion has betrayed her, can only be measured by the colossal nature of the task she undertook—a task before which even the adventurous genius of Napoleon would have quailed, that of defeating upwards of forty millions of Germans armed to the teeth, and united against her as one man. The result must open her own eyes to the hollow nature of her pretensions, quite as much as it has undeceived the world. She must now learn, if she would not be ridiculous, since she cannot bring her deeds up to the level of her words, to reduce her words to the level of her performances. She must for ever renounce all idea of military ascendancy in Europe—an idea, the realization of which has so often covered her with wounds, and now has eclipsed all her glory. The cultivation of a chastened spirit on the part of France, the abandonment of her levity, the manifestation of a proper sense of the humiliation to which she is reduced, will doubtless free the world from some nightmares, and powerfully contribute to the rehabilitation of the country. But the work is a question of time. The change cannot be perceptibly felt during the lifetime of the present generation; and in the interim, before she can exercise any marked influence on the course of events, the keys of Europe may be fought for, and the world's Empire given away.
When we contrast the past glories of France, the height of power she attained, or even the influence she might have exerted under wise rulers over contemporary events, with her present prostration and political eclipse, it is impossible to over-estimate the gravity of the crisis to humanity. A great force has been struck out of the nations. A power upon which during the last half century we leaned for the enforcement of order, and the progress of constitutional ideas in Europe, has been removed. She is, at present, as politically dead as if the Atlantic wave rolled over Limoges, and crested the Jura. Except England, which it is the fashion to decry as selfish and sordid, her Crimean and Abyssinian wars notwithstanding, France was the only nation in Europe that was chivalrous enough to fight for abstract right, especially when it was endangered among the Latin nations. It is owing to her that Italy has become free, united, and independent. The Poles always found in her the resolute champion of their interests. Russian ambition had nowhere a more uncompromising enemy than the great people whose political obsequies are now being celebrated by illuminations in Berlin. It is true, on a few occasions, led away by a false sense of her own interest, her Government refused to sanction the policy we recommended for its adoption; and in the case of the Egyptian suzerainty and the Spanish marriages, moved exactly in a contrary direction. But it may be safely affirmed that for the last half-century, under every government France has possessed, she has co-operated with our own, in resisting aggression, and promoting the triumph of constitutional principles in every part of Europe. Under the united flags of both countries, an independent kingdom was founded in Greece. From 1830 to 1833 she assisted us to establish Belgium, to promote constitutional government in Switzerland and Piedmont, and to guard the infancy of the constitutional monarchy of Spain. In 1839, we united our efforts to extinguish the feud between Mehemet Ali and the Porte. We also joined our protests, when Russia suppressed Warsaw, and Prussia and Austria extinguished Cracow, just as we sent in our united protests when these two powers made their raid on Denmark. Our forces fought together in 1827 to protect Greece from Turkey, as in 1854 to protect Turkey against Russia. The two Western nations were, as regards force, the complements of each other. What the one wanted to be complete, the other had. Singly, they were impotent to withstand any combination of despots; but united, they might have defied the world. Now France is a wreck, and we stand isolated in Europe. The head of the Latin nations lies shattered in the dust; and the people whose independence we assisted her to build up, are unable by themselves to lift an arm, or to afford any effectual barrier against aggression. Their sole resource now is in England, who stands alone, looking with dismay upon the effacement of the two allies, upon whom she mainly relied in her difficulties, and upon the alliance of two military monarchies in Europe who dominate the situation. It depends entirely upon the attitude of Great Britain during the next few years whether she surely shall participate in the fate of her allies, and abandon the world to a retrogressive policy; or whether the foyers of freedom and independence shall be kept alive in Europe; and whether the spirit of justice and rectitude, instead of that of rapacity and conquest, shall sway the intercourse of nations.