its vast and vulnerable commerce, England is not peculiarly qualified to resist those temptations, or bear meekly with those insults by which its pacific purposes must be tried.

We have neither space nor time left for further observations. In such a crisis of European liberty, and indeed of human fortune, we could not think of letting another number of our work appear, without saying one word on the topic that fills all bosoms and engages all tongues-and yet, what have we to say that has not been said and felt already in every corner of the land? -what, that shall not appear but a feeble echo and a formal response, to that deep voice of English justice and generosity, which has spoken aloud in the high places of our government, and resounded in the humblest of our abodes? Never certainly, in our remembrance, has any public cause been met by a feeling so profound and unanimous;-and if we are indeed to abandon the high and holy office, which we held of old, of championing the independence of Europe and the cause of national freedom, it will not be the fault of our people, but of their rulers-or rather of their necessities. Our poverty, it seems, and not our will, is to consent to the humiliating desertion of such a right and a duty. If it indeed be so, we shall have more cause than ever to curse that profligate waste of our resources,—that lavish and guilty throwing away of our means, which has reduced us to such pitiable weakness. But we firmly believe it to be otherwise; and with a rigid economy, and a wise administration, we have no doubt at all that we may not only do with effect, all that our own interest, and that of mankind, loudly call on us to do, but retire from our ended and honourable task with increased vigour, and renovated honour, and improved means of prosperity.

SO

PRESENT POLICY AND FUTURE FATE OF ARBITRARY

GOVERNMENTS.*

It is curious, for middle-aged persons like us, to look back on the public history of the last thirty or thirty-five years-on the hopes and disappointments, the fears and deliverances, the revolutions and restorations, which have filled that eventful period-and on the strange concatenation and dependency of events by which these results have, in so many instances, been effected the fatal triumphs, the glorious disgraces, the disasters that have proved the means of unexampled prosperity! We suppose it is the close of another year which has led us into this vein of meditation; and, though it is to the present condition and immediate prospects of the world, rather than to its recent history, that we now wish to call the attention of our readers, we cannot well enter on the subject without indulging ourselves in a brief retrospect of the causes which have brought us into this condition, and set these prospects before us.

The drama opened, it must be confessed, with a brilliant and startling flourish the new series of the world's annals was ushered in with a most captivating prospectus-all old prejudices to be dispelled, and all old tyran

1. Remarks on the Declarations of the Allied Powers from Verona. By an Englishman. 8vo. 2. Britannia's Letters to a British Prince, on the Holy Alliance. 8vo.

3. The Domestic Policy of the British Empire, viewed in Connexion with its Foreign Interests. 8vo-Vol. xxxix. page 281. January, 1824.

nies overthrown-the whole race of man to be emancipated and regenerated -all formal distinctions and fantastic privileges to be abolished, and every one made free to enter on the open career of honour, on the strength of his virtues and talents alone! The work began, too, with intrepidity and vigour enough, and there was as little want of energy in the execution as there had been of boldness in the design. But the scene was soon overcast. Rash and extravagant experiments were made in all the branches of legislation a passionate and presumptuous spirit of innovation took place of the sober spirit of reform-old principles were brought into question, as well as old prejudices, and the best established maxims of morality and religion were treated with the same irreverence as the mere arbitrary institutions of less instructed men. Where all standards of opinion were thus destroyed, and all authority exploded, there could, of course, be no umpire in the disputes which ensued, but force. Men's doubts, accordingly, were first solved by their passions or their interest, and then their dogmas were imposed on others by violence and terror. The most atrocious crimes were committed with the most revolting effrontery, and the effects of mutual distrust and apprehension were to render all alike cruel and perfidious. They proscribed that they might be safe from proscription, and set the example of treachery as their only chance of not being betrayed. Obscure men were thus raised, one after another, and at least as much by their fears as their ambition, to precarious and lawless power, from which they were successively swept down, unlamented, by the turning of the bloody tide; till at last a more vigorous system of military rule overawed the sanguinary factions, and imposed silence on their crude and turbulent speculations.

Still there remained the force and the talent that had been sublimed from the heated multitude in the course of the great experiment; and the scene, though it had lost much of its attraction, had certainly lost nothing of its terror. The revolutionary armies over-ran the world, and her diplomatic agents over-reached it. The old tyrannies, nearly as hateful, and far less strong, crumbled before their blows, or melted in their lightnings. Some truckled, and were insulted-others bullied, and were trampled out of existence, and the greater part ended with courting the alliance, and receiving the contemptuous mercy of that more potent and enlightened tyranny, which either swallowed up all the rest, or spared them at its pleasure. The whole Continent of Europe then presented a spectacle at once humiliating and frightful-unbounded insolence on the one hand, and unmeasured servility on the other; -while all the talents and energies which had been conjured up by the revolutionary crisis, and fostered by its incredible successes, were turned entirely to the purposes of a cold-hearted and remorseless ambition. An immense power, intellectual and physical, had been generated in the course of these contentions; in the first place ,undoubtedly by the sudden liberation and expansion of plebeian talent and ambition in the revolutionary countries, and afterwards by the audacity which was inspired by the spirit of the times, leading men every where to cast off the trammels of old opinions, and to venture on new and bolder methods, with an assurance that nothing was impossible to the daring. But this mighty power was from the beginning more terrible than majestic; and, it is miserable to think, was never once employed in any noble or generous Its aspect from first to last was rapacious, insolent, vindictive; and, with the means of regenerating the world, contemplated no higher end than that of subduing it. Nothing was safe from its violence, nothing

sacred from its injustice. The wrongs it did were aggravated by insult, and the complaints they provoked answered by mockery and derision; national independence was trampled on, and national honour profaned.

At last vaulting ambition overleaped itself," and the scorner of mankind found, that intimidation had not extinguished the thirst for revenge. The giant who brooded over the centre of Europe could not grasp both the south and the north with the utmost stretch of his hands. The obstinate valour of England, with Spain, yet unspoiled of her spirit by legitimacy, baffled him in the one-the elements, with the stars in their courses, fought against him in the other. The love of national independence, the sense of national honour, revived in the intermediate regions. The downcast sovereigns took advantage of the season-and, recollecting how their subjects had been beguiled by the fair promises of the first revolutionists, and how bitterly they had resented the breach of them, addressed themselves at once to their pride and their hopes,-protested against the despotism of the prevailing system, and held out its continuance as the only bar to the universal adoption of liberal institutions. The appeal was not made in vain. There was no longer disaffection in their armies, or deficiencies in their contingents. One spirit of zeal animated all parties. For the first time there was an honest concert among the sovereigns themselves, who had at last discovered, that it was their first interest to put down the common foe, and that by nothing but a sincere union could this be effected. They banded, therefore, against him from the East and from the West; and at length succeeded in bearing to the earth that enormous fabric of military power by which they had so long been oppressed.

Then, for a brief season, there was exultation, and good humour, and symptoms of cordiality between subjects and rulers,-charters were granted, and constitutions promised; and professions zealously made of a design to separate the gold that had been brought to light, and tried in the fires of the revolution, from the dross with which it had been debased. But this was a transient and deceitful gleam; and a deeper darkness soon settled on the world. The restored governments, forgetting how much of what they deplored had been owing to their own vices and misconduct, manifested a vindictive jealousy of all that had been done against them; and seemed inclined to provoke a repetition of the insurrections by which they had suffered, by returning to the very follies and abuses by which they had been mainly produced. The dread, however, of the past, the ultimate bad success of the former experiment, and their own continued concert, enabled them to do this with safety; and they used the power which they had thus regained neither with moderation nor mercy. Their charters were revoked-their promises broken-their amnesties violated the most offensive pretensions were openly put forward-the most revolting prejudices countenanced-the smaller states were relentlessly sacrificed-and the greater ones, made more formidable by their union, assumed a tone of dictation unknown in the history of the world-and used it to proclaim the most slavish doctrines, and to announce their purpose to maintain them at the point of the sword.

Upon this system they have since acted and so far as they have gone, they have been successful. Arbitrary government is now maintained all over the continent of Europe, more openly in theory, and more rigorously in practice, than it was before the French Revolution was heard of; —and political freedom is more jealously proscribed, and liberal opinions more

vindictively repressed, than in any period of modern history., "The wheel has come full circle:"-and after the speculations and experience of thirtyfive years, we seem at least as far from political improvement as we were at the beginning!

And is this indeed so? Has the troubled and bloody scene passed before us but as a pageant, to excite our wonder and be forgotten? Has this great and agitating drama no moral? Have the errors, and crimes, and sufferings of thirty years taught no lessons?-have the costly experiments in which they have been consumed ascertained no truths? Have the statesmen and philosophers who directed the stormy scene, or the heroes who gave it movement and glory, lived and died in vain? Is political truth a chimera, and political science a dream? Are the civilised nations of Europe in reality unteachable?—or has the progress by which they have advanced beyond the condition of barbarians already attained its limits-and is what remains of their destiny to be fulfilled in painful attempts at improvements that are never to be attained, and impotent struggles with abuses that must for ever recur?

We will not believe it. The affairs of mankind do not revolve in a circle, but advance in a spiral; and though they have their periods of obscuration, as well as of brightness, tend steadily, in spite of these alternations, and by means of them, to a sure consummation of glory. There is, we are firmly persuaded, a never-ceasing progress to amelioration; and though each considerable movement is followed by a sensible re-action, the system moves irresistibly onward; and no advance that is made is ever utterly lost. The years on which we have been looking back have left indelible traces behind them, and both truths and errors have been demonstrated, by experiments a great deal too impressive to be speedily forgotten. The losers and the winners have both been taught by events of the utmost moment and authority. The governments that have been restored to their old forms have not been restored by any means to their old condition; and though the dispositions of the rulers may be the same, the circumstances in which they are placed are essentially different. They feel this, too, in spite of themselves; and begin already to accommodate themselves to the new necessity. A great lesson, in short, has been taught to all nations. They who receive it most willingly will profit the most by it; but its first lines, at least, are impressed on the most reluctant, and must produce a corresponding change on the conduct of all. It is to the nature of this change, and of the other changes to which it must ultimately lead, that we wish now to direct the attention of our readers.

It would be shutting our eyes to the objects that press most importunately upon them, not to admit, that the first and immediate effect of the change to which we have alluded is unfavourable to political freedom. It is a fact no less certain than lamentable, that the governments of continental Europe are at this moment more truly arbitrary in principle and practice than they ever were before; and that it is most likely that they will continue for some time to be administered on these principles. That part of the world is now in its aphelion from the Star of Liberty, and has not yet, perhaps, reached the point of greatest obscuration; but we still believe, not only that it will in due time emerge into greater brightness than ever, but that its orbit is even now converging rapidly to the centre from which its illumination proceeds. To explain this, it is necessary to consider, very briefly, what the

circumstances are which have thus recently strengthened the hands of absolute monarchy.

The first, undoubtedly, is the intimate union they have formed among themselves for the purpose of supporting these principles, the discovery they have made, that it is better for them to fight together against the liberties of their people, than to fight with each other for the mere enlargement of their dominions. The detestable conspiracy into which they have entered, under the blasphemous name of the Holy Alliance, is the great cause and support of the tyrannical maxims upon which each now thinks he may safely proceed to administer his government; and so long as they look upon increase of personal power, and security in practical tyranny, as of more value than mere increase of territory, or of foreign influence, so long, it is not impossible, that this impious confederacy may continue.

Another great source of the strength and present safety of these governments is, the general diffusion of improvements in the art of war, and the maintenance and equipment of armies; by means of which a much smaller force is capable of keeping in awe a larger population, and at the same time a limited revenue enabled to maintain more numerous forces.

These, we think, are the immediate and occasional causes of the confidence and apparent security with which arbitrary power has been recently proclaimed as the only legitimate spring of European government. But there is another and a more ominous cause, which is only beginning to operate, and threatens to exercise a more durable influence in support of the same system, though still more likely in the end to counterwork the purposes for which it has been called into action,-and this is, the improved knowledge and policy of the absolute governments themselves, and their gradual correction of all abuses which do not tend to maintain their despotism, a topic which both deserves and requires a little more development.

Tyrannical governments have hitherto been singularly ignorant and prejudiced; and more than one half of the abuses which make them odious in the eyes of their subjects have had no immediate connexion with political rights or institutions, and might have been safely redressed, without at all improving the constitution, or increasing the political consequence of the people. Their great danger has always been in the superior intelligence of the people, with whom the policy of their rulers has usually been a subject of contempt, as well as of resentment, and who, in their plans of reform or resistance, have uniformly had a most mortifying advantage, in point of contrivance, combination, address, and prudence. A new era, however, we think, is now begun as to all these particulars ;-and though it is impossible that either the oppressors or the oppressed can ever prove a match for freemen in the virtues and talents which are the offspring of liberty alone, it is nevertheless true, that the eyes of the rulers have at last been opened on their own nakedness and weakness, and that great efforts are making, and will be made, to secure to the cause of tyranny some part of those advantages, which the spread of intelligence and general multiplication of talents have lately conferred on all other institutions. The effects of this will soon become apparent in every department of their proceedings. They will employ better casuists and more ingenious sophists to defend their proceedings -they will have spies of more activity and intelligence, and agents of corruption more crafty and acute, than they have hitherto thought it necessary