eventually to escape the latter. But the prospect which such a supposition offers is one of which, as long as hope remains, the eye must shrink from the contemplation. It is assuredly not the less terrible, because the war in which France will be avowedly a principal will be waged on her part in the name of liberty. Liberty is a plant that will not thrive in artificial heat, but is the growth of its own inward energies, matured in free contact with its native atmosphere. In contemplating the threatened strife, a throng of tormenting questions press upon the mind. Will the high organization of the Austrian army and the strategic accomplishments of its commanders enable that highly centralised but ill-balanced and ill-consolidated Empire to encounter with success the greater and more varied resources, the loftier spirit, and the more daring energies of France? On the other hand, will the pacific temper which the French nation has latterly acquired, partly from the experience of suffering and partly in the pursuit of wealth, allow it freely to embark its fortunes in the war on which the Sovereign, not the people, has determined? If it does not cordially embrace the war, can the throne of the second Napoleonic dynasty survive the miscarriage of so gigantic a venture? If it does, and if success crown the operations of the French armies, then can we suppose that the nation will rest contented with having vindicated a liberty for Piedmont or for Italy which they do not enjoy themselves? That they will bear with equanimity a fresh addition of five or it may be ten millions sterling to their annual taxation? That they will not seek large territorial compensation, and thus add to that power which is already so great as to constitute almost a standing menace' to the equilibrium of the European Continent? Nay, even if we have boldness or credulity sufficient to meet these demands, can we hope that the well-ordered liberty of Piedmont will survive both the assaults of its despotic antagonist, and the assistance of its despotic ally? Or, if Freedom runs fearful risks on the standing point she has so laboriously and painfully acquired, is it more likely that she, the child and ally of peaceful reason, will make new ground amidst the frightful convulsions of an European war, and will build the stately temple of Order with one hand while she wields the sword with the other? And what in particular will be the fate of that hybrid Sovereignty, ever a marvel and now undoubtedly a monster, which at once oppresses and enervates Central Italy, and in the sacred names of the Gospel and the Saviour overrides every social right, and raises again the question whether government and law are indeed intended for a blessing or for a curse to mankind? It would be far easier to multiply these inquiries than to answer them. The boldest specu lator * lator is reduced to silence and to awe, and nothing is left him but the sad words of the prophet' Lo, a roll of a book; and there was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and woe.' * Even the outbreaking of such a war, however, and far less the prospect of it, cannot dispense us from the duty of considering the rights and wrongs involved in it. It is easy to give sufficient reasons why England should not enter into the arbitrement of blood; but it is easier still to show cause why she cannot sever herself from the moral and social interests of the contest which is to shake the European system from top to base and from centre to edge. Nay, more, why she should reserve to herself a perfectly unfettered discretion as to the future, and should even stand free to entertain at any time the question of a positive and perhaps decisive intervention. Either the aggrandisement of Austria at the cost of Italy, or the aggrandisement of France at the cost of Austria, would be an event which might impose determinate and weighty duties upon England. In what character these duties might have to be performed is a question at which we shall presently have to glance; and we shall strive to show that it is one of no less dignity than importance. The simple admission, however, that we must be interested spectators, and may at some period perforce be parties, requires us to consider whether the public opinion of England on the questions at issue is enlightened and matured in the degree which the magnitude and the urgency of the case require. The love of the Englishman for what he calls broad views is a motive power better suited to domestic than to foreign affairs. In his own sphere, he is fed with knowledge by his daily experience; and his abhorrence of subtlety and chicane, though it may sometimes make him judge with precipitation, is sufficiently guarded by sound information to prevent its hurrying him into any gross injustice. Although he can only well comprehend one idea at a time, yet, upon the whole, he knows when he ought to drop his favourite conception and bethink him of another in its place. Foreign affairs, in his normal state, he regards with indifference. But in the crises when they absolutely force themselves upon his attention, he takes them in hand with the earnestness and force that belong to him. Yet this uprightness of purpose, when it is not guided by carefulness and knowledge, may itself become the minister of injustice. For we often fail to discri minate between objects, which we hastily assume to be identical for no better reason than because they are presented to us in company. In the heroic struggle for national independence or existence, the power of concentrating on one idea the whole energies of the soul is a power of inestimable value. But where, as is likely to be more and more the case in European struggles, England is rather an arbiter than originally a party, what she requires beyond all things is the judicial temper; and, to play her part aright, she must neither grudge the labour necessary for exact discernment, nor be hasty to permit the entrance of passion as an auxiliary even in the cause of right. The ruder processes, the Lynch law, so to speak, which we commonly call in aid of imperfect comprehension, is ill adapted for the great, and at the same time nice issues, with which we are constantly presented in the vicissitudes of Continental affairs. Austria, even at her best, can never attract much of enthusiasm in England. Her best chances of popularity here have been much damaged of late years. In the eighteenth century, she was more than once the champion of national independence both in the temporal and in the spiritual sphere; and her internal government was found compatible with much of local liberty, and with the free development of local character. In all these respects she has of late been seriously changed. At the epoch when the policy of the Popedom was mild, she, notwithstanding, regarded that power with wakeful jealousy, and fortified herself by the Josephine code against its essentially aggressive action. In our own time, when Rome has become ten times more Romish, she has thought fit to purchase the most odious support in the most odious manner, and has offered up the dear-bought acquisitions of former and manlier generations by the recent Concordat, as a sacrifice to the genius of clerical ascendancy. In an age of sharpened appetite for freedom, she has waged war against local immunities, and strained every nerve of her system by centralizing its motive powers in Vienna. As to national independence, even if for the moment we set wholly aside the case of Italy, still she has but a beggarly account to render. The Russian war was a war for national independence in general, and for her own independence, after that of Turkey, in particular. Yet she hobbled through its several stages with the continual acknowledgment of obligations the same with those of England and France, and with a continual postponement of performance. She chose the part of diplomacy, and left others to fight battles which were preeminently hers. Larga quidem, Drance, semper tibi copia fandi Apart from the rankling of the old wound struck by Hun En. xi. 378. garian recollections into the heart of Russia, Austria found herself at the close of the struggle neither loved as a comrade and friend, nor respected as an honourable foe, but in the condition of the neutral angels of Dante: 'Che non furon ribelli, Nè fur fedeli a Dio, ma per se furo.' * Her policy with respect to the Danubian Principalities, to Servia, and to the navigation of the Danube, has won her no favour in this country, but has borne in English eyes the stamp of narrow and selfish views, together with the disposition at once to push the doctrines of legality to the uttermost point in her own interest, and to deal lightly with them in cases where they threaten to bring her within the reach of that capital evil-contagion from any institutions more liberal than her own. At the same time, a sentiment not unlike that which excited this country during the Russian war was enlisted on behalf of Austria, when we were told about the beginning of this year that the Emperor of the French had used menacing expressions to the Austrian Minister at his Court. We know not what may have been the views of our Government; but, so far as the people were concerned, the course which opinion manifestly took after this announcement was not due to any love for the Austrian Government or system, but to mistrust of Louis Napoleon, and to an impression that his words to M. Hübner savoured of that very spirit of brigandage which Russia had shown six years ago in the Menschikoff mission and in the invasion of the Danubian Principalities. The Emperor of the French has more than once boxed the compass upon the wheel of popularity in England. The coup d'état of December, 1851, was abhorred by the British nation as the most glaring and gigantic, and the most fatal because the most successful, violation of legality upon record. But time flowed on; and the total absence of all British causes of complaint against the hero of that unrivalled conspiracy, together with the palpable acquiescence, and more than acquiescence, of the French nation in their lot, wrought a gradual change. While we did not retract our objections, there was no place found for them in current feeling or action, and our humour gradually mended under the influence of good fellowship. At a later period, co-operation in diplomacy and war, brotherhood in the triumphs of the battlefield and in the afflictions of the camp, generated a feeling of close amity between the nations, such as absolutely required a symbol upon which to spend itself, and Vol. 105.-No. 210. *Inferno, iii. 32. naturally naturally found that symbol in the person of the Emperor. This is the best apology for the favour, largely sprinkled with adulation, that marked his reception here during the visit of 1856. But a turn of the wheel was to follow. As it was more and more perceived that the Eastern policy of the French Government and of the Palmerston Ministry did not move in parallel lines, a cooler sentiment crept in. Then came the famous epoch of the Orsini plot, the Walewski despatch, and the pitiable charges against England in the Napoléon III. et l'Angleterre.' On this occasion our faithful ally (and such he had, truly and strictly, been) dropped to a heavier discount than even at the time when he had seized his crown. Our vanity was, however, gratified when we found that he put up in silence with the nearly unanimous determination of every man, woman, and child in England, that, even under the strain of the great Indian convulsion, the laws of England should not be altered at his bidding. But, on the other hand, we were more or less disturbed from time to time with ugly rumours. His naval preparations were larger than we liked, and led us to extend our own. An impression went abroad that he meant to have a passage of arms with somebody; that he felt he had lost ground in France, meant to recover it, and thought this was the way; that the great question in the Imperial mind was at whose head his red right hand should discharge the thunderbolt; that England and Austria were the involuntary and unconscious competitors for the honour of his choice; and that with a laudable, perhaps a cold-blooded, impartiality, he was rather inclined to select England of the two, provided he could succeed in effecting the necessary Continental combination against her. The choice would have been natural in so far at least that our rival could present the plea of kindred institutions. In spite, then, of reiterated and somewhat inflated panegyrics from rather high quarters, the Emperor of the French was already the object of suspicion, or at least mistrust, in England, at the time when it was announced that he had used language indicative of a desire to pick a quarrel with Austria. It was almost a necessary consequence that the immediate occasion of the fray, when made known, should be interpreted by the light, and valued according to the estimate, of this anterior declaration. In due time we learned that the state of Italy was to afford the plea. From that moment Italian interests were viewed in England, not as they are in themselves, but as the ministerial instruments of French or rather of Napoleonic ambition. The purely disinterested or chivalrous adoption by one nation of the quarrel of another is a case so rare in history, that it never enters into the calculations of the Englishman as an hypothesis available |