Matters grew worse and worse till there came the explosions of 1830, driving out of France the elder branch of the Bourbons, detaching Belgium from Holland, and causing the final extinction of the old and once powerful kingdom of Poland, followed by revolutions more or less successful in Spain and Portugal. Force soon triumphed for the moment, but still Europe, to use the figure so hackneyed at the time, was a smouldering volcano, till the fearful eruptions of 1848 struck well-nigh aghast the whole civilized world, and conservatives thought that the day for social order and regular authority had passed away, never to return. Anarchy seemed fixed in France, the imperial family in Austria fled to Innspruck, and the Hungarians in revolt, forming a league with the rebellions citizens of Vienna and the Italian revolution, brought the empire almost to its last gasp; the king of Prussia was imprisoned in his palace by the mob, and nearly every petty German prince was obliged to compromise with the revolutionists. All Italy was in commotion; the Holy Father was forced to seek refuge at Gaeta, and the infamous Mazzinian republic, with the filibuster Garibaldi as its general and hero, was installed in the Eternal City. Such had been the result of the repressive policy of the Holy Alliance, when Louis Napoleon was elected president of the French republic.
It is true, in 1849 the revolution was suppressed, and power reinstated in its rights in Rome, Naples, Tuscany, the Austrian dominions, Prussia, and the several German states; but everybody felt that it was only for a moment, for none of the causes of uneasiness or dissatisfaction were removed. The whole of Europe was covered over with secret societies, working in the dark, beyond the reach of the most powerful and sharp-sighted governments, and there was danger every day of a new outbreak, perhaps still more violent, and equally impotent to settle European society on a solid and permanent foundation, because the revolution was, save on its destructive side, as little in accord with its tendencies and aspirations as the Holy Alliance itself.
The cause of all this uneasiness, of this universal agitation, was not in the tyranny, despotism, or opposition of the governments, or in their disregard of the welfare of the people more hostility to them; for never in the whole history of Europe were the governments of France, Italy, Germany, and [{221}] Austria less despotic, less arbitrary, less respectful of the rights of person and property, less oppressive, indeed more intelligent, or more disposed to consult the welfare of the people—the French, Prussian, and Austrian systems of universal popular education proves it—than during the period from 1815 to 1848; and never in so brief a period has so much been done for the relief and elevation of the poorer and more numerous classes. The only acts of government that were or could be complained of were acts of repression, preventative or punitive, rendered necessary by the chronic conspiracy, and perfectly justifiable, if the government would protect itself, or preserve its own existence, and which, in fact, were not more arbitrary or oppressive than the acts performed in this country during the late rebellion, by both the general government and the confederate government, or than those practiced for centuries by the British government in Ireland. Nor was it owing entirely or chiefly to the native perversity of the human heart, to the impatience of restraint and subordination of the people, who were said to demand unbounded license, and determined to submit to no regular authority. Individuals may love licence and hate authority, but the people love order, and are naturally disposed to obedience, and are usually far more ready to submit to even grievous wrongs then to make an effort to right them.
The cause in France was not that the Bourbons of either branch were bad or unwise rulers, but that they retained too many feudal traditions, claimant the throne as a personal estate, and, moreover, were forced upon the nation by foreign bayonets, not restored by the free, independent will of the nation itself. Their government, however able, enlightened, and even advantageous to France, was not national; and while submitting to it, the new France that had grown up since 1789 could not feel herself an independent nation. It is probable that there is less freedom for Frenchmen in thought and speech under the present régime than there was under the Restoration or even the King of the Barricades and his parliament; but it is national, accepted by the free will of the nation, and, moreover, obliterates all traces of the old feudal distinctions and privileges of caste or class, and establishes, under the emperor, democratic equality. Individuals may be disaffected, some regretting lost privileges and distinctions, and others wishing the democracy without the emperor; but upon the whole the great body of the people are contented with it, and any attempt at a new revolution would prove a miserable failure. The secret societies may still exist, but they are not sustained by popular sympathy, and are now comparatively powerless. The socialistic theories and movements, Saint Simonism, Fourierism, Cabetism, and the like, fall into disrepute, not because suppressed by the police, but because there is no longer that general dissatisfaction with the social order that exists which originated them, and because the empire is in harmony with the tendencies of modern European society.
In Italy the cause was neither hatred of authority nor hostility to the church or her supreme pontiff, but the craving of the people, or the influential and controlling part of them, for national unity and independence. In feudal times, when France was parcelled out among feudatories, many of whom were more powerful than the king, their nominal suzerain; when Spain was held in great part by the Moors, and the rest of her territory was divided into three or four mutually independent kingdoms; when England was subject to the great vassals of the crown, rather than to the crown itself; when Germany was divided into some three hundred principalities and free cities, loosely united only under an elective emperor, with little effective power, and often a cause of division rather than a bond of union between them; [{222}] and when the pope, the most Italian of all the Italian sovereigns, was suzerain of a large part of Italy, and of nearly all Europe, except France, Germany, and the Eastern empire, the division of the peninsula into some half a dozen or more mutually independent republics, principalities, or kingdoms, did not deprive Italy of the rank of a great power in Europe, or prevent her from exercising often even a controlling influence in European politics, and therefore was not felt to be an evil. But when France, Spain, Austria, and Great Britain became great centralized states, and when in Switzerland, Holland, the British Isles, Scandinavia, and North Germany the rise of Protestantism had weakened the political influence of the pope, these divisions reduced Italy, which had been the foster-mother of modern civilization, and the leader of the modern nations in the arts of war and peace, in commerce and industry, in national and international law, in literature, science, architecture, music, painting, and sculpture, to a mere geographical expression, or to complete political nullity, and could not but offend the just pride of the nation. The treaties of 1815 had, besides, given over the fairest portion of the territory of the peninsula to Austria, and enabled her, by her weight as a great power, to dominate over the rest. The grand duke of Tuscany was an Austrian archduke, the king of the Two Sicilies, and even the pope as temporal prince, were little less, in fact, than vassals of the house of Hapsburg-Lorraine.
Italy felt that she was not herself, and that she could be herself and belong to herself, own herself, as our slaves used to say before they were emancipated, only by expelling Austria and her agents from Italian territory, and uniting the whole peninsula in a single state, unitarian or federative, under a single supreme national government. For this Italian patriotism everywhere sighed, agitated, conspired, rebelled, struggled, was arrested, shot, hung, imprisoned, exiled, and filled the world with its complaints, the story of its wrongs and sufferings. It was not that Italy was badly governed, but that she was not governed by herself, was governed by foreigners, or at least by governors who would not, or could not, secure her national unity and independence, without which she could not become the great European power that she aspired to be, and felt herself capable of being. The Fenians do not agitate and arm against England so much because her government in Ireland is now—whenever it may have been formerly— tyrannical and oppressive, as because it is not national, is not Irish, and offends the Irish sense of nationality, far stronger now than in the time of Strongbow or that of the confederate chieftains. Through the armed intervention of Napoleon III. in 1859, and the recent alliance with Prussia against Austria, Italy has no got what she agitated for, national unity and independence, though at the expense of great injustice to the dispossessed sovereigns, and is free to become a great European power, if she has it in her, and her chronic conspiracy is ended. She has obtained all that she was conspiring for, and is satisfied: she has gained possession of herself, and is free herself to be all that she is capable of being.
The Germans, also, were uneasy, discontented, and conspiring for the same reason. The Bund was a mockery, formed in the interest of the sovereigns, without regard to the people or the national sentiment, and in practice has tended far more to divide and weaken, than to unite and strength the German nation, both on the side of France and on that of Russia. Germany, in consequence of the changes effected in other nations, was, like Italy, reduced to a geographical expression. Austria in the south was a great power, Prussia counted for something in the north, but Germany was a political nullity. The Germans aspired to national unity, and attempted [{223}] to obtain it in 1848 by the reconstruction, with many wise modifications, of the old Germanic empire, suppressed by Napoleon I. in 1806, but were defeated by the mutual jealousies of Prussia and Austria, the withdrawal of the Austrian delegates from the Diet, and the refusal of the King of Prussia to accept the imperial crown offered him by the Diet, after the withdrawal of Austria. What failed to be legally and peaceably effected 1848 and 1849, has been virtually effected by Prussia in this year of grace, 1866, after a fortnight's sharp and fierce war, not because of her greatly overrated needle-gun, but because Prussia is more thoroughly German than Austria, and better represents the national sentiment.
The success of Prussia must be regards, I think, not only as breaking up the old confederation, and expelling Austria from Germany, but as really defecting German unity, or the union of all Germany in a single state. The states north of the Main, not as yet formally annexed to Prussia, and those so of that line, as yet free to form a southern confederation, will soon, perhaps, with the seven or eight millions of Germans still under Austrian rule, in all likelihood be absorbed by her, and formed into a single military state with her, and transform her from Prussia into Germany. It is most likely only a question of time, as it is only a logical sequence of what has already been effected. Austria ceases to be a German power, and must seek indemnification by developing, as Hungary rather than as Austria, eastward, and gradually absorbing Roumania, Herzegovina, Bosnia, Servia, and Bulgaria, and placing herself as an impassable barrier to the advance of Russia southward in Europe. This she may do, if wise enough to give up Germany, and to avail herself of the vast resources she still possesses; for in this she would probably be aided by Great Britain, France, and Italy—all deeply interested in preventing Russia from planting herself in Constantinople, and gaining the empire of the world. Turkey must fall, must die, and European equilibrium requires a new and powerful Eastern state, if the whole of Europe is not to become Cossack.
The independence and unity of Italy, and the union of Germany in a single state, had become political necessities, and both must be effected as the means of putting an end to what European writers call "the Revolution," and giving internal peace to European society. No doubt they have not been thus far effected without great violence to vested rights; but necessity knows no law, or is itself law, and nations never have been and never can be arrested in their purposes by vested rights, however sacred religion and morality teach us to hold them. National and popular passions can be controlled by no considerations of right or wrong. They sweep onward and away whatever would stay their progress. If the possessors of vested rights opposed to national union, independence, or development, consent to part with them at a just ransom, the nation is ready to indemnify them liberally; but if they will not consent, it will take them all the same, and without scruple.
I say not that this is right; I pretend not to justify it; I only state what all experience proves that nations do and will continue to do in spite of religion and morality. Ahab was willing to pay a round price for Naboth's vineyard, but when Naboth refused to sell it at any price, Ahab took it for nothing. But these political changes, regarded as accomplished and irrevocable facts, and setting aside the means adopted to effect them, and the vested rights violated in obtaining them, are not morally wrong, and are in no sense threatening to the future peace and progress of European society, but seem to be the only practicable means that were left of preventing it from lapsing into certain barbarism. They seem to me to have been needed to render the [{224}] European governments henceforth able to sustain themselves by the affections and good sense of the people, without being obliged to keep themselves armed to the teeth against them. International wars will, no doubt, continue as long as the world stands, but wars of the people against authority, or of subjects against their rulers, may now cease for a long time to come, at least in the greater part of Europe. The feudal system is everywhere either swept away, or so weakened as to be no longer able to make a serious struggle for existence; and save Ireland, Poland, and the Christian populations of the East, the European nations are formed, and are in possession of their national unity and independence. The people have reached what for ages they have been tending to, and are in possession of what, in substance, they have so long been agitating for. The new political order is fairly inaugurated, and the people have obtained their legitimate satisfaction. Whether they will be wiser or better, happier or more really prosperous, under the new order than they were under the old, we must leave to time to prove. Old men, like the writer of this, who have lived too long and seen too much to regard every change as a progress, may be permitted to retain their doubts. But changes which in themselves are not for the better, are relatively so when rendered necessary by other and previous changes.