letters, that up to the end of October the British minister had been a consenting party to the annexation of Saxony; and that he had defended the annexation upon the ground that the king had been guilty of perpetual tergiversations, and ought to be sacrificed to the future tranquillity of Europe. Of the wishes and interests of the people of Saxony he made no mention. Austria, on the other hand, strongly protested against the annexation. For three months Europe was on the brink of a new war. France, having recovered a position of independence at the congress, demanded the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty to the throne of Sicily and Naples, and refused to consent to the degradation of the King of Saxony. The principle of legitimacy was violated, according to Talleyrand, by both these acts. Austria made common cause with France in the discussions upon Saxony. Opposed to these powers were the sovereigns of Russia and Prussia, united by personal friendship, and most potential in their military organisation. 'Secure me Saxony,' said Prussia, 'and you shall have Poland;' 'Secure me Poland,' said Russia, and you shall have Saxony.' In these questions Great Britain had no direct interest; but she had the great national interest to uphold, that the weaker states should not be absorbed by the stronger, and that some regard to the people should be shewn in those partitions of territory which the wars of a quarter of a century had rendered too familiar. There was a change in the policy of the British minister at congress. Before the end of 1814, England, France, and Austria were united in demanding the integrity of Saxony, and the independence of Poland. On the 11th of December, the Archduke Constantine, who had hurried from Vienna, called upon the Poles to rally round the protection of the Emperor of Russia; the Prussian minister declared that Saxony was conquered by Prussia, and should not be restored; Alexander, in revenge for the opposition of France, was resolved to support Murat on the throne of Naples. The rival powers began to look to war. There had been a million of allied men in arms to resist the aggressions of France, and to restore the just equilibrium of power in Europe. That these arms were now to be turned against each other was a more than possible event; it was an event to be instantly provided for and regulated by those whose mission was that of peace. In the treaty of Holy Alliance the rulers of Austria, Russia, and Prussia had solemnly engaged to 'remain united by the bonds of a true and indissoluble fraternity; and considering each other as fellow-countrymen, they will, on all occasions, and in all places, lend each other aid and assistance.' In a secret treaty concluded between Austria, England, and France on the 3d February 1815, an engagement was entered into to act in concert, each with an army of a hundred and fifty thousand men, to carry into effect the Treaty of Paris, in the manner most conformable to the spirit of that treaty; 'convinced that the powers who had to complete the dispositions of the Treaty of Paris ought to be maintained in a state of security and perfect independence, and holding it necessary, in consequence of pretensions recently manifested, to look to the means to resist every aggression.' When,

3

a year after the date of this treaty, Mr Brougham moved in the House of Commons for a copy of the document, Lord Castlereagh resisted its production, on the ground that it might be considered in the nature of an unfinished transaction, 'a mere historical fact,' that could have no influence on our actual affairs. He contended that the cordial cooperation of the allies in the events of 1815 was sufficient to shew that for all great purposes the spirit of strict alliance pervaded the powers of Europe. Thirty years have passed since this argument was employed. It was a good argument then, to prevent inconvenient disclosures; but there requires little to convince us now, upon the clear evidence of this 'historical fact,' that if Bonaparte had not leaped into the throne of the Tuileries in the spring of 1815, the peace of Europe might have been broken before it was consolidated. The 'historical fact' is not without its lessons even at the present hour. On the 7th of March, Prince Metternich received a dispatch announcing the hasty and mysterious departure of Napoleon from Elba. On the 13th the solemn declaration of congress was published, that Bonaparte was to be put down as the common enemy of mankind. The Congress of Vienna continued its deliberations; and whilst preparations for war were made on every side, the general treaty of congress for the settlement of Europe was prepared, and was signed only a week before the battle of Quatre Bras. The points of difference as to territorial limits were settled by mutual concessions. The principle of partition and readjustment of territory was established.

The definitive treaty of the Congress of Vienna was signed on the 9th of June. On the 14th the chancellor of the exchequer went down to the House of Commons, and said that he had contracted a loan that day for thirty-six millions, and he asked for a total amount for the supplies of the year-in addition to the permanent charges of thirty-seven millions and a half-of no less a sum than ninety millions. The resolutions of the chancellor of the exchequer were agreed to, with only one opposing speech, and without a division. On the 18th the battle of Waterloo was fought. On the 3d of July, Paris was in the occupation of the Anglo-Prussian armyLouis XVIII. was restored-Napoleon was banished to St Helena.

It is not within our province to trace the various political intrigues that followed the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne from which they had been hurled, partly by their own indiscretions, essentially by the reaction of that fierce military spirit which had held Europe in terror for a quarter of a century. There was once more to be a contest for power between England and Russia. England could repress the national hatred of Prussia, and preserve Paris from worse than useless outrage. She could even read France a great moral lesson' in the restoration of the works of art to their lawful owners. But England could not preserve the influence which would have secured France from the dangerous revenge of the ultra-royalists. Talleyrand, who had raised his country to the position which she occupied at the Congress of Vienna, was driven from the councils of that king who, a few months before, was

a powerless outcast. Russia, it is said, named his successor. The ministers of England did all that remained to them to do. The treaty of alliance, which accompanied the Treaty of Paris, was forwarded to the French minister with a note which contained sundry excellent lessons on the duty of uniting moderation with firmness, and rejecting imprudent or impassioned counsels. 'Indemnities for the past' were to be secured by France paying, by gradual instalments, seven hundred millions of francs-a sum not equal to the loan which the English chancellor of the exchequer raised in one day; 'guarantees for the future' were exacted by the presence of the army of occupation for a term of years, supported at the expense of France, and garrisoning her strong places, under the command of the Duke of Wellington. England, having lost her real influence in the government of France, retained the power of making herself odious. The terms granted to the French were in truth moderate. England, at the height of glory, had to pay penalties of longer duration, perhaps of greater severity, as the price of this tremendous conflict. The last three years of war alone had cost the country one hundred and ninety-seven millions.

Paris in the autumn of 1815 presented a scene even more remarkable than the Vienna of the preceding year. The conquered city was one universal theatre of gaiety and excitement. Here was no 'Rachel weeping for her children.' In some dark estaminet might a solitary soldier of the disbanded army of the Loire be heard execrating the presence of the foreigner. But the foreigner preserved an exact discipline. He paid for everything, and he had ample means of payment. It is from this year, 1815, that the greater part of the shopkeeping fortunes of Paris are to be dated.' The haughty nobles of Russia lavished their rents upon Parisian mistresses and gamblers. Hundreds of the great English families rushed to Paris to gaze upon the conquering armies, and to contend for the honour of a smile from Lady Castlereagh in her evening circle, or a bow from the great duke at his morning levee. All this was to end. The ministers and serf-lords of Russia had to return to a St Petersburg winter, and see how best they could persuade the Poles that their annexation was the triumph of their independence. The cautious diplomatists of Austria had to discover how the hot Italian spirits that had dreamt of liberty and national greatness were to sit down under the leaden sceptre of the German stranger. Prussian councillors of state had to meet the excited landwehr, who had rushed to arms under the promise of constitutional liberty; and to accommodate the differences of one set of subjects with the old German laws, and her new Rhine people with the French code. The smaller German states had to re-arrange themselves under the confederation. Sweden had to reconcile Norway. Holland had to amalgamate with Belgium-Protestant with Catholic, and interpret Dutch laws to a French race. Spain, which had put down the cortes, had to try if proscriptions could satisfy a people that had been fighting seven years in the name of freedom. Certainly these home prospects were not so agreeable to the managers

of national affairs as the reviews of the Bois de Boulogne, or the réunions of the Faubourg St Honoré. Perhaps to the English ministers, and to their admiring followers, there was less of apprehension than to the leaders of those states who had gained something more solid than the glory with which England remained contented. It was enough for her to believe that she had won security. She had proudly won the semblance of it; the one great enemy was overthrown. Still there might be some feeling-half fear, half disgust-at the thought of the House of Commons, with its searching questions, its hatred of continental alliances, its denunciations of broken promises, coming from a small but active minority. The lofty port and the cold politeness that befitted the table of congress would be there out of place. Two years of negotiation in the midst of victory would not be favourable to debating equanimity. Hard everyday business would have to be talked of instead of glory. There was but one

course:

They must either

For so run the conditions-leave those remnants
Of fool, and feather, that they got in France,
With all their honourable points of ignorance,
And understand again like honest men,
Or pack to their old playfellows.

-SHAKSPEARE: Henry VIII.

But if the plenipotentiaries of this country might return home a little imbued with the temper of despotic cabinets-if they could be accused of having too strenuously asserted the principle of legitimacy -if they had appeared to have contended too much for the claims of kings, and too little for the rights of the people-in one respect they had done their duty, and truly upheld the moral supremacy of England. They had laboured strenuously, and they had laboured with tolerable success, for the abolition of the slave-trade. In the Treaty of Utrecht, England protected her commercial interests-despicable protection!-by stipulating for a monopoly of the slave-trade for thirty years. In the Treaty of Paris, England wrested from France an immediate abolition of the traffic, and a declaration from all the high contracting powers that they would concert, without loss of time, 'the most effectual measures for the entire and definitive abolition of a commerce so odious.' This was something to set off against the remarkable fact that Great Britain, who had made such enormous sacrifices for the deliverance of Europe, had not a single commercial treaty to exhibit as a compensation for her prodigal disbursements of loans and subsidies. During the most stringent period of Napoleon's anti-commercial decrees, her commerce went on increasing. The people of Europe would have her commodities, and no fiscal power could shut them out. The merchants and manufacturers of England might expect that when all the rulers of Europe were assembled to deliberate upon the future welfare of the great European family, there would be some relaxation of that almost universal system of high duties and prohibition which denied to the continental nations the advantages of free marts for the products of British industry. The days of neutrals, and licences, and armies of smugglers, were gone. Our

CHAP. I.]

diplomatists came home with no treaties putting their country upon the footing of the most favoured nations.' The merchants and manufacturers would not have welcomed them if they had come with any treaty that went upon the principle of buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest. Even the Treaty of Versailles, which Pitt negotiated with France in 1786, would have been offensive to the parliament of England in 1816, for it was a treaty of mutual concession and liberality. Had Lord Castlereagh said to the House of Commons, 'I have made trade free,' he would have been hooted. The shipowners would have clamoured for their beloved navigation-laws. The land-owners would have driven him from office had he admitted the corn of Poland and the wool of Saxony. The colonial merchants would have impeached him for letting in the timber of Norway. The manufacturers would have been in open insurrection at the faintest rustling of the silks of France. As it was, the peace of 1815 was constructed without the slightest effort to secure its perpetuity by something stronger than conventions and protocols-by uniting mankind in a bond of common interests.

We request our readers to turn to the map of Europe, and to follow us in a few details which may save some after-trouble of reference and explanation.

Look, first, at the kingdom of France, as its limits were fixed in 1815, nearly the limits of 1790-the limits of the present hour. It is a noble territory, full of natural resources-a land that possesses all the elements of real prosperity—a country that must ever be one of the greatest powers of Europe-a military power, a naval power. The population of France, within the limits fixed by the peace, was in 1815 about thirty millions. But before the campaign of 1812, the empire of France embraced a population of more than fifty millions; the imperial domination extended over more than sixty millions. There were thirty-two millions of people, in 1815, to come under new laws and new governments.

The old provinces of the Low Countries severed from the empire, were raised up into the kingdom of the Netherlands under the House of Orange. The line which now separates Belgium and Holland was drawn after the revolution of 1830. In 1815 this was made a compact kingdom of five millions of inhabitants-an agricultural, a manufacturing, and a commercial kingdom, with noble colonies. The physical arrangement of such a state was admirable. But the moral overcame the material. The people would not amalgamate.

The Austrian Netherlands (Belgium), with all that part of Germany which lies on the left bank of the Rhine, were added to the old territory of France in 1801. The Rhenish provinces were, in 1815, bestowed upon Prussia-a fertile territory, an industrious people. By the Peace of Tilsit, Prussia was stripped of nearly one-half of her dominions. The Congress of Vienna restored her to her full sovereignty. But the congress did more for this great member of the European confederacy. Prussia one-half of Saxony. It gave her a slice of the Duchy of Warsaw, with a million of people. The map will shew better than words what the peace

It gave

5

of 1815 did for Prussia. It raised her from the depths of her humiliation after the battle of Jena, to take rank amongst the most important of European powers.

A territory larger than all Europe put togethera population forming one-fifth of the whole of Europe —this is indeed a mighty country, and one that would seem destined for universal monarchy. But the largest states are not always the strongest. Russia, by its ascendency at the Congress of Vienna, obtained the kingdom of Poland in undisputed sovereignty, with four million inhabitants. The Duchy of Warsaw was swept from the domination of France. The new kingdom had a constitution; but the old annexations of Poland to Russia were to continue under the absolute monarch. The fabric was too frail to endure.

Where vanished the French kingdom of Italy, with its six million inhabitants? Where all the lesser French incorporated states, Piedmont, Genoa, Tuscany, Lucca? The lord of the iron crown might indeed dream that the Mediterranean would become the French lake! Austria acquired the LombardoVeneto kingdom, with its four millions of inhabitants. Sardinia annexed Genoa to its territory, and became a more important state. The States of the Church were re-established. Naples and Sicily were restored to the old Bourbon branch. Tuscany was again a grand-duchy. Smaller states are dotted about the famed Italian land. Visions of ancient grandeur have sometimes precipitated its people into revolt; but the arrangements of 1815 have not been disturbed. Austria obtained as great a prize in the dismemberment of the French empire as Prussia and Russia. With a policy that was undoubtedly the result of the most skilful calculation, she sought no very considerable enlargement of territory to the north. She became mistress of the Adriatic, and carried her frontier to the Alps.

It is scarcely necessary for us to follow the minute territorial arrangements of the minor German states. The Germanic Confederation will require to be noticed when we have to trace its internal workings. It was not the least of the achievements of the Congress of Vienna, that the contending interests of a host of petty princes were harmonised into some semblance of nationality. One Germany to be defended by the confederation of independent states, raised up a formidable barrier to external ambition, whether of France or of Russia.

The last important territorial decision which it may be necessary to point out, is that of the annexation of Norway to Sweden. This was in accordance with the Convention of Kiel, in 1814, between Denmark and Sweden.

We are now writing of the settlement of Europe exactly thirty years since the final act of that settlement, the Peace of Paris, of November 1815.* From that time there has been no general war in Europe. Spain has passed through revolution upon revolution; the South American colonies have acquired independence without strength; Italy has in vain striven against the rule of Austria and Sardinia; Poland has succumbed more entirely to the power of Russia; Greece has been raised into a kingdom; the younger

The reader will please bear in mind, when dates are referred to, that this history was written in 1846.

branch of the House of Bourbon has obtained the throne of France, as was contemplated by some in 1815; Belgium has been severed from Holland. Yet with all these changes the five great powers have not drawn the sword from the scabbard to assault each other: this is not to be forgotten in estimating the value of the peace of 1815. Napoleon, at St Helena, said to O'Meara: 'So silly a treaty as that made by your ministers for their own country was never known before. You give up everything and gain nothing.' We can now answer, that we gained everything when we gained thirty years of repose. We gained everything when, after twenty years of warfare upon the most extravagant scale, the spirit of the people conducted that warfare to a triumphant end. The gains of a great nation are not to be reckoned only by its territorial acquisitions, or its diplomatic influence. The war which England had waged, often single-handed, against a colossal tyranny, raised her to an eminence which amply compensated for the mistakes of her negotiators. It was something that they did not close the war in a huckstering spirit-that they did not squabble for this colony or that entrepôt. The fact of our greatness was not to be mistaken when we left to others the scramble for aggrandisement, content at last to be free to pursue our own course of consolidating our power by the arts of peace. There were years of exhaustion and discontent to follow those years of perilous conflict and final triumph. security was won; we were safe from the giant aggressor. The people that had subdued Napoleon for it was the act of the people-would do the work that remained to them.

But

The imperial parliament had continued prorogued from the 11th July 1815, to the 1st February 1816. During this long and unusual interval of legislative business-for it had been the previous custom for parliament to meet early in Novemberthe foreign policy of the administration had been carried out without the slightest control from the representatives of the people. Sir S. Romilly writes in his diary of the 1st February: 'There has been no period of our history in which more important events have passed, and upon which the counsels of parliament-if they be of any utility—were more to be required, than during this long prorogation.' It may be doubted if the counsels of parliament could have been of any utility' in deciding the great questions involved in the irresistible triumph of the allied armies. Romilly was himself at Paris in October 1815. He laments over the unpopularity of the English in compelling the removal of the works of art from the Louvre; he doubts whether a peace of long duration could arise out of the occupation of France by foreign troops; he sympathises with those who bitterly complain of the perfidy of the allied powers. Mr Horner has similar views: the good fruits of the French Revolution were to be lost to France; the confederacy of courts and the alliance of armies were to subject the French to the government of a family that they despise and detest: that the people are the property of certain royal | families, was to be established as a maxim in the system of Europe; our army was degraded in being

the main instrument of a warfare against freedom and civilisation. If parliament had been sitting in the autumn of 1815, and had these been the general opinions of the opposition as a body, the Bourbons might not have been supported by the English diplomatists in their restoration; and the English army might have been withdrawn from the occupation of France, after the object had been accomplished for which England had professed to armthe overthrow of Napoleon. But parliament was not sitting in the autumn of 1815; and, what is more important, the opposition, as a body, did not hold these opinions. Two days before the meeting of parliament, Mr Horner writes: 'I fear we are not likely to go on very harmoniously in opposition; there are such wide and irreconcilable differences of opinion between those who, on the one hand, will hear of nothing but a return to all that was undone by the French Revolution, and who, in the present moment of success, declare views of that sort which they never avowed to the same extent before-and those who, on the other hand, think that the French people have some right to make and mend their government for themselves. You may expect

very soon to see a breach in the opposition; I think it cannot be averted much longer.' Mr Ward (afterwards Lord Dudley) attributes to the opposition motives which could belong only to a few, and which even in those few were mixed up with something higher: 'Opposition had staked everything upon Napoleon's success, and are grieved at his failure.' Had Napoleon succeeded, there might have been unity. He fell; and the great Whig party was broken for a season. It only recovered its power when it took deeper root in the popular affections. The triumph of the British arms was soon followed by grievous embarrassments at home. But the people, at the commencement of 1816, had little sympathy for those who were lamenting over the banishment of Napoleon. Even the chief Whig organ, the Edinburgh Review, complained of the strange partiality which has lately indicated itself for him among some of those who profess to be lovers of liberty in this country;' and ridiculed 'the sort of hankering after him which we can trace among some of our good Whigs.' The people had as little respect for those who grieved that France had to pay severe penalties for her long career of spoliation. The success of England was too recent the success was too splendid and overwhelming, not to throw its shield over just fears and reasonable complaints. It annihilated mere party hostility. The reaction was not yet come. fever-fit of triumph had not yet been followed by the cold torpor of exhaustion. For a little while the nation could bear even the presumption of those who claimed all the merit of the triumph, and almost appeared to forget that never was a government so supported by the people as the English supported their government during the Hundred Days. Mr Ward, a general follower of the administration, writes thus of the men in power in 1816: Their prodigious success-which, without at all meaning to deny their merits and abilities, must be allowed by all reasonable men to have been vastly beyond

The