been provoked to it by the attacks of their neighbours, allured to it by the exigencies of their commerce, or impelled to it by the pressure of barbarous tribes secking a livelihood and settling down into quiet citizens when they have found it. Whatever travellers may report of the inoffensive talk and habits of the bourgeoisie, history teaches-is teaching at this very momentthat the habitual condition of the country is to follow an ambitious and grasping Czar with a kind of religious enthusiasm and faith in destiny. We take a long run of events to be the best evidence of the real tendencies of a nation, and lay little stress on the psychological deductions of travellers. But if we attached more weight than we do to these latter, our opinion would for practical purposes remain unaltered. It will not do to reason as if the house of Romanoff were now for the first time trying their 'prentice hands at the career of ambition, in the face of a rapid increase of commercial tendencies all over the globe. The question is not of founding but of completing their edifice. The arid plains of the interior are passed. The Russian frontier is within a few days' march of Vienna. The next step, if it is ever made, will add wealth and luxury to a barbaric empire, which has already reached the limits of mere barbaric conquest. Moreover, the Romanoffs are not in the main rash or foolhardy people. In the present instance they have miscalculated; but generally they bide their time, invade countries ready for their yoke, and keep what they overrun. They have corn and wine and cattle within their own boundaries, and endless capacities for subsisting a vast population. Proprietors may be distressed by the compulsory enlistment of their serfs, and may be rendered unable to purchase the luxuries furnished by the manufacturing nations; but Russia does not rely at bottom on her foreign commerce, or the money which foreign commerce brings. She will not quake, her monarchs will not tremble in their citadels, on account of monetary crises, although the want of pecuniary resources may from time to time induce a pause, as at present. She can afford to move slowly. She need only ask at each pause to be allowed to remain where she is. That too large a part of what she asks in this respect will be granted now is the unsatisfactory feature in the approaching pacification. Turn now to the second source of weakness-the condition of Central Europe. What do we find there? In the north the straggling kingdom of Prussia, the rival of Austria, at present the stanch friend of Russia, and by reason of her anomalous boundaries presumably bent on consolidating her own territory at the expense of her southern neighbours; in the middle, the battle-fields of Europe; in the south, shivering, bankrupt, po lice-ridden Austria, the Fouché of states, ready to play the jackal to any great power which will abet her in corrupting and enslaving the population of that Danube valley which holds so much of the youngest blood of Europe. No one can deny these facts; no one can deny the dangers which they imply; and yet, strange to say, those are called "visionary" who would have their bearing on the Russian war duly considered. The Russian war, we admit, did not directly involve the reconstruction of Central Europe; but the position of affairs at the close of the last campaign would have justified every effort to remove those pressing dangers which impend over it on the side of Russia. One object was to invite Prussia to pursue her own aggrandisement by incarnating the liberal tendencies of Northern Germany, and by presenting herself as an independent and progressive power, able and willing to realise the best aspirations of German nationality. Another object was, to throw Austria on the task of really conciliating her subjects north of the Alps. The way to accomplish both would have been to destroy Russian domination in Poland. We are alive to the difficulties and dangers of such an attempt. We are aware that to make it would have been to some extent to walk by faith rather than by sight. We do not forget that if a peace is practically concluded before these pages see the light, we shall be open to the reproach of discussing schemes no longer placed within the choice of politicians. But our object here, as throughout this article, is to give voice to the widelydiffused feeling, which we share to the utmost, that the contemplated peace will be unsatisfactory, because the tone of public men gives us no assurance that its shortcomings are unavoidable. This feeling must be expressed with all plainness, for England cannot relapse into indifference to foreign affairs; and a new and more worthy policy ought to be inaugurated by a healthier and better-educated popular sentiment. We have already expressed our conviction that it would have been a wise audacity to attempt to regenerate Poland. Our belief that it could have been done has been fully confirmed by recent events. Looking to Russia's antecedents, we cannot believe that her actual disasters, balanced as they were by some successes, would alone have induced her to sue for peace. Some blow nearer to the heart of her power must have been felt to be approaching. The threat of an invasion of Poland must have determined her submission. Such a threat must have had a double force. Russia must have felt, on the one hand, that its execution would annihilate the schemes of Peter and of Catherine; she must have felt also, that to avoid the danger by making peace would probably insure her dominion in Poland for ever. We have admitted that there would have been some audacity in the stroke; but that fact seems decisive as to its necessity. If the national light is now flickering in its socket, where will it be twenty-five years hence, if the interval is employed in the deportation of the patriotic, the corruption of the nobles, and the relief of the serfs? Poland will then, in good truth, be "a menace to Germany," and Russia may find rich consolation for the loss of a navy, in having troops at Vienna ready to meet her on the Bosphorus when she marches to it through the rich provinces of Asia Minor. The greater risk has been run, in order to avoid the less. The make-shift policy has been followed. The smallest possible sacrifice of vested interests has been preferred to the righting of great wrongs, and the removal of pressing dangers; and that too when (humanly speaking) the last opportunity was presented. Why is all this? Is it only owing to the difficulties of the French Emperor? If it be so, a large share of our own responsibility is removed; but his calculations must have been largely affected by the spirit in which English ministers have looked at public affairs. Their words and their acts (not now only, but in the year 1848, when the game was much more in our hands than it is now) persuade us that they have been actuated by that baneful system of motives summed up in the polite phrase, "consideration for the situation of Austria.' The worst conservatism-the conservatism of abuses and of shams; the worst policy-the policy of the ostrich when it hides its head in the sand; the worst morality-the morality which seeks to cheat the devil in the dark; the worst caution-the caution which ever turns the eye of mistrust and jealousy to the upright and generous side; every form of political cowardice, faithlessness, and hollowness, is implied in that fatal Austrian leaning which disfigures our whole policy. There are elements of barbaric grandeur in Russia, and universal empire is, after all, a regal dream; but Austria's prayer is but to be let alone, to work evil, to destroy freedom, to corrupt public virtue, to fetter thought, to enslave conscience, and to maintain an uneasy supremacy by fomenting the discords of her own wretched subjects, pitting one against another, and, if need be, setting each to slaughter his neighbour. Labra movet, metuens audiri: Pulchra Laverna, That this is an Austrian peace, concocted by Austria, promoted by Austria, to be followed by a closer alliance between Austria and France, is enough in itself to awaken every suspicion of its real adequacy. The world can hardly see a more anomalous and mischievous position than that now occupied by Austria. Her aspects are so multifarious, the elements of her strength and her weakness are so complex, that the only thing which can at all times be safely predicated of her is, that she may at any time be convulsed and rendered dependent. At the same time, her weakness cannot be reckoned on. Her opportunities of throwing a weight into the political scales are far too great to be intrusted to a nation presenting no moral guarantees for independence. Every state whose mission it is to hold keys and to maintain limits (SavoyPiedmont, in the wars of the seventeenth century, forms a notable instance) is open to bribery on the right hand and on the left, and must be expected to temporise and vacillate, promoting the interest now of one of its neighbours, now of the other. But however unfavourable such conditions of existence may be to the minor political morals of the boundary-state itself, they are attended with comparatively little danger to the commonwealth of nations in general, where, as in the case of Savoy and Piedmont at the period to which we refer, that state is at one within itself, able to defend itself, and not able to bring vast forces into the field on any side. It is required of it that it maintain a certain stedfast isolation amid its ever-changing alliances, and be prepared to dare all and to risk all when its own nationality is at stake. To this end it must be essentially military; and it follows that if compact and military, it must also be small, or it would cease to be a mere boundary-state, and would take its place among the great powers. But Austria has not these characteristics. She is a fallen great power. She is talked of as a boundary-state, a state limiting its ambition to self-defence,-because her independence is endangered by internal decay. She can within certain limits still act on a great scale, show an imperial front, and affect the likeness of a kingly crown. Such a part she will not resign while she has a neighbouring, a sympathising, and a powerful ally, able and willing to hide the patches in her purple, and to support her while he uses her. It is our firm conviction that Austria has been for years, and will continue to be, the tool of Russia; and that while England follows in the wake of Austrian diplomacy there will be no safety for Europe. Austria is no longer an empire of the first class, and she has not one of the qualities necessary in a mere boundary-state. Two topics will be urged in opposition to this view. First, it is said that Austria has repeatedly shown an unexpected vitality, and more particularly in her last great crisis. We apprehend that these appearances are illusory. There never was a time when there was a more general opinion than now that Austria cannot keep Lombardy for ever; and it was only in Lombardy that she re-subjugated a conquered population by her own strength. The chances of conciliation are even more precarious than those of repression. But little augury for the future can be drawn from any present tranquillity in Hungary. Nationalities are long in dying, and the great kingdom of Hungary, with its wealth, its warlike population, its language and its literature, would in any case require generations to assimilate it with the Duchy of Austria. The weariness of a vanquished people, the enforced good behaviour of masters who have conquered by foreign aid, may give a long interval of peace. There was a long peace in Italy in the eighteenth century. Meanwhile, what Carlyle calls the "organic filaments" of freedom are alive. Galileo may make a formal retractation of his doctrines; but he laughs in his sleeve as he taps his foot upon the earth and whispers," It moves for all that." The quiet expansion and contraction of unseen iron-girders will loosen the masonry of the strongest buildings. With the present rapid diffusion of mental activity and political information, we find it difficult to believe that Austria is firmly seated on her Hungarian any more than on her Italian throne. She will want extraneous help yet. But then it is said (and very confidently) that Austria has an intense hatred and dread of the subjugators of Hungary, that she feels the humiliation of such aid, and will take care to be independent of it in future. We share no such confidence. It is not in the power of the Court of Vienna to be independent. It was not the empire which was obliged and humiliated; the empire was subdued. The fatal favour was not the reduction of an insurgent province, but the salvation of the house of Hapsburg when the total dissolution of its power was imminent. As long as that house keeps any hold on its dominions, it must ward off dissolution at any price and with any assistance. Our wishes that it may even now seek safety in the attachment of its own subjects are stronger than our hopes. We, on our side, have our scepticisms, and among them is an incapacity to anticipate the repentance of the Hapsburgs. It will be asked whether it is better that Austria, supposing her to be necessarily dependent, should be taught to rely rather on France than on Russia. That the realms at present cursed with her sway should be liable to be trodden by the armies of either is a great evil; but we think that there is much less danger from France than from the aggressive suzerainty of Russia. Besides the brotherhood in legitimacy and the steady policy of Russia, it seems likely to be easier to secure a European combination against France than against Russia. Russia herself will always retain power enough in the East to keep France in check |