over valor, and Austria was saved by the sacrifice
of its independence. Incalculable have been the
consequences of this great and decisive move-
ment on the part of the Czar. Not less than
the capture of Paris, it has fascinated and sub-
dued the minds of men. It has rendered him
the undisputed master of the east of Europe,
and led to a secret alliance, offensive and defens-
ive, which at the convenient season will open to
the Russians the road to Constantinople.
At length the moment of reaction arrived in
France itself; and the country, whose vehe-
ment convulsions had overturned the institu-
tions of so many other states, was itself doomed
to undergo the stern but just law of retribution.
The undisguised designs of the Soeialit.ts against
propertyof every kind, the frequent 22.
revolts, the notorious imbecility and Restoration c!
trifling of the National Assembly, ^Sn'^^"
had so discredited republican insii- France by
tutions, that the nation was fully Louis Napo-
prepared for a change of any kind '^°""
from democratic to monarchical institutions.
Louis Napoleon had the advantage of a great
name, and of historical associations, which raised
him by a large majority to the Presidency ; and
of able counselors, who steered him through its
difficulties; — but the decisive success of the
coup d'etat of December 2, was mainly owing
to the universal contempt into which the re-
publican rulers had fallen, and the general
terror which the designs of the Socialists had
excited. The nation would, though perhaps
not so willingly, have ranged itself under the
banners of any military chief who promised
to shelter them from the evident dangers with
which society was menaced ; and the vigor and
fidelity of the army insured its success. The
restoration of military despotism in France \x-
1S51, after the brief and fearful reign of " liberty,
equalit}', and fraternity" in that ever changing
country, adds another to the numerous proofs
which history affords, that successful revolution,
by whomsoever efiected, and under all imaginii-
ble diversity of nation, race, and circumstances,
can end only in the empire of the sword.
But although the dangers of revolutionary
convulsion have been adjourned, at 23.
least, if not entirely removed, by Great in-
the general triumph of military crease of ex-
° .1 r-i .- i 1 ■. ternal danger?
power on the Continent, and its f^ajj, t^e ef-
entire re-establishment in France, fects of the
other dangers, of an equally form- ■'^Jiy,"''^''"" °'
idable, and perhaps still more press-
ing kind, have arisen from its very success.
Since the battle of Waterloo, all the contests in
Europe have been internal only. There have
been many desperate and bloody struggles, but
they have not been those of nation with nation,
but of class with class, or race with race. No
foreign wars have desolated Europe ; and the
whole efforts of government in every country
have been directed to moderating the warlike
propensities of their subjects, and preventing the
fierce animosities of nationality and race from in-
volving the world in general conflagration. So
decisively was this the characteristic of the
period, and so great was the dillieulty in moderat-
ing the warlike dispositions of their subjects, that
it seemed that the sentiment of the poet should
be reversed, and it might with truth be said —
" War is a game, wliich, were their rulers viise,
TA« people should not play at."
But this has been materially changed by the
consequences of the great European revolution
of 1848; and it may now be doubted whether
the greatest dangers which threaten society are
not those of foreign subjugation and the loss of
national independence. By the natural ell'ect.s
of the general convulsions of 1S48, the armies
of the Continental states have been prodigiously
augmented ; and such arc the dangers of their
respective positions, from the turbulent disposi-
tion of their own subjects, that they can not be
materially reduced. In France there are 385,-
000 men in arms; in Austria n« many; in Prus-
sia, 200,000; in Russia, 000,000 F'lfleen hun.
HISTORY OF KUROPK,
LUAT- 1.
d«rd ihi.usmnJ rcpular soUlion arc nnnycil on
â– .Ir rvMitiiuMit rcaily for mutual shuiirhfcr, nnil
.â– ,v ill;; only A ^i^;n^\l Imm llifir ri'spcctive
i.ii.M-ts to (liioi't Ihoir uniieil hostility n>:aiiist
any country which may Imvc provokcil their re-
•icnimont. ' Siioh have been tho results of the
French Revolution ol IMS, nnil the riso of
•• liherty, equaiitv, ami fraternity" in the centre
>f Kun)|>enn civiiiraiion.
l)is«^trolls lieyoml all prececlent have been the
eliccts of this revolutionary convul-
II-. ?i"..-.r sion, from which so much was ex-
v,-H i.r ihi« jiecteil by the ardent anil cnthusiast-
i;.M>:uiion on ic in everv counlry. upon the cause
' '" • '""•' "^ of freedom throughout tho work!.
Not only has the reign of repre-
sentative institutions, anil the sway of constitu-
tional ideas been arrested on the Continent, but
the absolute povernment of the sword has been
established in its principal monarchies. Austria
ha-s openly repudiated all the liberal institutions
forced upon her durinn the first throes of the
convulsion, and avowedly based the government
upon the army, and the army alone. Prussia is
more covertly, but not less assiduously, following
out the same system; — and in France, the real
Council of State, servile Senate, and mock As-
sembly of Deputies of Napoleon, have been re-
established ; the National Guard generally dis-
solved; and the centralized despotism of Lotiis
Napoleon promises to rival in efficiency and
general support the centralized despotism of
A igustus in ancient days. Parties have become
so exasperated at each other, that no accommo-
dation or compromise is longer possible ; injuries
that never can be forgiven have been mutually
inflicted ; the despotism of the Prfrtorians, and
a Jacquerie of the Red Republicans, are the
only alternatives left to continental Europe; and
the fair form of real freedom, which grows and
flourishes in peace, but melts away before the
first breath of war, has disappeared from the
earth. Such is the invariable and inevitable re-
sult of unchaining the passions of the people,
and of a successful revolt on their part against
the government of knowledge and property.
Still more pressing, and to ourselves formid-
25 able, are the dangers which now
DanpcrH of threaten this country, from the con-
Great Hriiain sequences of that revolt again.st
'" ^"""' "â– established institutions, from which
'.be reign of universal peace was anticipated
.'our years ago. Our position has been rendered
insecure by the very effects of our former tri-
umphs: we are threatened with perils, not so
much from our enemies as from ourselves ; it is
our weakness which is their strength; and we
owe our present critical position infinitely more
to our own blindness than to their foresight.
Insensibility to future and contingent dangers
has in every age been the characteristic of the
F-nglish people, and is the real cause why the
long wars, in which we have been engaged for
the last century and a half, have been deeply
checkered in the outset with disaster ; and to
this is to be ascribed three-fourths of the debt
which now oppresses the energies and cramps
the exertions of our people. But several causes,
springing from the very magnitude of our former
triumphs, have rendered these dispositions in an
especial manner powerful during the last thirty
ve^re: «ud '• is ihc copscquence of their united
influence which now renders the condition of
this country so precarious.
Tho Contraction of the Curreticy introduced
in 1819, and rendered still more
stringent by the acts of 1811 and cauJs'MrUch
18-15, has changed the value of have rendered
money fifty i)er cent.; coupled with the condition
Frec'Trnile in all the branches of ol. Great Pri-
• 1 . -.1 1 1 1 1 •• T .1 tiun so pre «-
mdustry. It has doubled It. In other ^joug.
words, it has doubled the weight of
taxes, debts, and encumbrances of every de-
scription, and at the same time halved the re-
sources of those who are to pay them. Fifty
millions a year raised for the public revenue,
arc as great a burden now as a hundrecl millions
a year were during the war ; the nation, at the
close of thirty-five years of unbroken peace, is
in reality more heavily taxed than it was at the
end of twenty years of uninterrupted hostility.
The necessary consequence of this has been,
that it has become impossible to maintain the
national armaments on a scale at all proportion-
ate to the national extension and necessities;
and it has been exposed, on the first rupture, to
the most serious dangers from the attacks of
artless and contemptible enemies. Our Indian
empire, numbering a hundred millions of men
among its subjects, has been brought to the
verge of ruin by the assault of the Sikhs, who
had only six millions to feed their armies; and
the military strength of Great Britain has been
strained to the uttermost to withstand the hostil-
ity at the Cape of Good Hope of the CafTres, who
never could bring six thousand men into the
field. In proportion to the extension of our
colonial empire, and the necessity of increased
forces to defend it, our armaments have been
reduced both by sea and land. Every gleam of
colonial peace has been invariably followed by
profuse demands at home for a reduction of the
establishments and a diminution of the national
expenses, until they have been brought down to
so low a point that the nation, which, during the
war, had a million of men in arms, two hundred
and forty ships of the line bearing the royal flag,
and a hundred in commission, could not row
muster twenty thousand men and ten ships of
the line to guard Great Britain from invasion,
London from capture, and the British empire
from destruction.
Still more serious, because more irremediable
in its origin, and disastrous in its
eflects, has been the change which Extraordina-
has come over the public mind in ry change in
the most powerful and influential t^ie national
part of the nation. This has mainly ""'"1'" **''•
p t • 1 r* respect,
arisen from the very magnitude of
our former triumphs, and the long-continued
peace to which it has given rise. The nation
had gained such extraordinary successes during
the war, and vanquished so formidable an oppo-
nent that it had come to regard itself, not with-
out a show of reason, as invincible; hostilities had
been so long intermitted that the younger and
more active, and therefore influential, part of the
people, had generally embraced the idea that
they would never be renewed. Here, as else,
â– where, the wish became the father to the thought,
the immediate interests of men determined their
opinions and regulated their conduct. The pa-
cific interests of the empire had increased sc
â– immensely duiing the long peace; so niany
Caat. l.J
HISTORY OF EUROPE.
9
fortunes and establishments had become depend-
ent on its continuance ; exports, imports, and
manufactures, had been so enormously augment-
ed by the growth of our colonial empire, and
the preservation of peace with the rest of the
world, that all persons interested in those branch-
es of industry turned with a shudder from the
very thought of its interruption. To this class
the Reform Bill, by giving a majority in the
House of Commons, had yielded the government
of the State. To the astonishment of every
ihmking or well-informed man in the world, the
doctrine was openly promulgated, to admiring
and assenting audiences in Manchester and Glas-
gow, by the most popular orators of the day,
that the era of war had passed away; that it
was to be classed hereafter with the age of the
mammoth and mastodon ; and that, in contem-
plation of the speedy arrival of the much-desired
Millennium, our wisdom would be to disband
our troops, sell our ships of the line, and trust
to pacific interests in future to adjust or avert
the differences of nations. A considerable part
of the members for the boroughs — three-fifths
of the House of Commons — openly embraced or
in secret inclined to these doctrines; and how
clearly soever the superior information of our
rulers might detect their fallacy, the influence
of their adherents was paramount in the Legis-
lature, and Government was compelled, as the
price of existence, in part at least, to yield to
their suggestions.
The danger of acting upon such Utopian ideas
has been much augmented, in the
Dangers ^^^® °^ '^'^ country, by the corn-
springing mercial policy at the same time
froiy the Free pursued by the dominant class who
Trade sys- ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ entertain them. If it
be true, as the wisest of men have
affirmed in every age, and as universal experi-
ence has proved, that the true source of riches,
as well 'as independence, is to be found in the
cultivation of the soil, and that a nation which
has come to depend fur a considerable part of
its subsistence on foreign states has made the
first step to subjugation, the real patriot will
find ample subject of regret and alarm in the
present condition of Great Britain Not only
are ten millions of quarters of grain, being a full
fifth of the national consumption, now imported
from abroad, but nearly half of this immense
importation is of wheat, the staple food of the
people, of which a third comes from foreign
parts. Not only is the price of this great quan-
tity of grain — certainly not less than filteen
millions sterling — lost to the nation, but«so large
a portion of its food has come to be derived from
foreign nations, that the mere threat of closing
their harbors may render it a matter of necessity
for Great Britain to submit to any terms which
they may choose to exact. Our colonies, once
so loyal, and so great a support to the mother
country, have been so thoroughly alienated by
the commercial policy of the last few years,
which has deprived them of all the advantages
which they enjoyed I'rom their connection with
it, that they have become a burden rather than
a benefit. One-half of our diminutive army is
absorbed in garrisoning their forts to guard
against revolt. Lastly, the navy, once our pride
and glory, and the only certain safeguard cither
ftgajnsl the dangers of foreign invasion or the
olockade of our harbois and ruin of our com-
mercc, is fast melting away; f )r the reciprocity
system established in 1S23, and the repeal of the
Navigation Laws in 1849, have given such en-
couragement to foreign shipping in preference
to our own, that in a few years, if the same
system continue, more than half of our whole
commerce will have passed into the hands of
foreign states, w"hich at any day may become
hostile ones.
To complete the perils of Great Britain, arising
out of the very magnitude of its gg
former triumphs and extent of its Dangers aris-
empire, while so many causes were ing from the
conspiring to weaken its internal change in our
111- IT -^ r -1 foreign policy.
Strength, and disqualiiy it lor with-
standing the assault of a formidable enemy,
others, perhaps more pressing, were alienating
foreign nations, breaking up old alliances, and
tending more and more to isolate England in the
midst of European hostility. The triumph of
the democratic principle, by the Revolution of
1S30 in France, was the cause of this ; for it at
once induced an entire change of government
and foreign policy in England, and substituted
new revolutionary for the old conservative alli-
ances. Great Britain no longer appeared as the
champion of order, but as the friend of rebellion ;
revolutionary dynasties were, by her influence,
joined with that of France, established in Bel-
gium, Spain, and Portugal ; and the policy of
our Cabinet avowedly was to establish an alli-
ance of constitutional sovereigns in Western,
which might counterbalance the coalition of
despots in Eastern Europe. This system has
been constantly pursued, and for long with
ability and success, by our Government. Strong
in the support of France, whether under a
"throne surrounded by republican institutions,"
or those institutions themselves, England became
indiflerent to the jealousy of the other Continental
powers ; and in the attempt to extend the spread
of liberal institutions, or the sympathy openly
expressed for foreign rebels, irritated beyond
forgiveness the cabinets of St. Petersburg, Vien
na, and Berlin. While the French alliance con-
tinued, these powers were constrained to devour
their indignation in silence; they did not venture,
with the embers of revolt slumbering in their
own dominions, to brave the combined hostility
of France and England. But all alliances form-
ed on identity of feeling, not interest, are ephem-
eral in their duration. A single day destroy-
ed the whole I'abric on which we rested for
our security. Revolutionary violence every day
worked out its natural and unavoidable result in
the principal Continental states. A military
despotism was, after a sanguinary struggle,
established in Austria and Prussia; the 2d De-
cember arrived in France, and that power in an
instant was turned over to the ranks of our
enemies. Our efforts to revolutioiMze Europe
have ended in the establishment of military des-
potisms in all its principal states, supported by
fifteen hundred thousand armed men ; our boast-
ed alliance with France, in the placing of it in
the very front rank of what may any day become
the league of our enemies.
When so many causes for serious apfrehiMision
exist, from the ellect of the changes wnich are
now going on, or have been in operation for the
last quarter of a century in European society) it
10
HISTORY OF KUIIOPE.
{Chap. 1.
.» coii«olut>n' 10 think lliat thrro arc sumo in-
jp lliu'nci's of on (i|i|Hisiio li'iiiU-ney,
Goi
(••Jiliirniaa«4 nu'tliiitoly to tlio iiuT('iist> uf hiimiui
Au»ir»lia. ^,.,|,|,i,u.^'s. or the oli-viilioii ul tlio
jIPIutaI luiiul. In the very front nuik ol iliis rute-
porv wo must plnoo the iliscovery ol' the -jold
mines olCaliliirnin nml Australia, wliiih promise,
in thfir ultimalc elli'i-ts, not only to ohvialc many
((â– the creati'sl evils under wliich society has
l>ni,' laliorod, hut to brinu about a new balance
i>r|o«er in every stale, and relieve industry from
the worst i>art of the load which has hitherto
oppressed it. This subject is neither so jrener-
ally appreciated or understood as its paramount
imjv>rianee deserves ; but it is every day forcing
itself more and more on the attention of the
thinkini.' j-'art of mankind, and, through them, it
will ere long reach the vast and unthinking
multitude.
Whoever has studied with attention the struc-
3]. ture or tendencies of society, either
Tcnilency to as they arc portrayed in the annals
undue u'l'"- of ancient story, or exist in the com-
Tn'^u'ie^Vatcr plif 'itf J relations of men around us,
stages of so- must have become aware, that the
cicty. creatcst evils which in the later
stages of national progress come to aillict man-
kind, arose from the undue influence and para-
mount importance of realized riches. That the
rich in tiie later stages of national progress are
c instantly
a common observation, which has been repeated
in every age, from the days of Solon to those of
Sir Robert Peel ; and many of the greatest
changes which have occurred in the world — in
particular, the fall of the Roman Empire — may
be distinctly traced to the long-continued opera-
tion of this f«rnieious tendency. The greatest
benefactors of their species have always been
regarded as those who devised and carried into
execution some remedy for this great and grow-
ing evil ; but none of them have proved lasting
in their operation, and the frequent renewal of
fresh enactments sufliciently proves that those
which had preceded them had proved nugatory.
It is no wonder that it was so; for the evils
complained of arose from the unavoidable result
of a stationary currency, co-existing with a rapid
increase in the numbers and transactions of
mankind ; and these were only aggravated by
every addition made to the energies and pro-
ductive powers of society.
To perceive how this comes about, we have
32_ only to reflect, that money, whether
Way in in the form of gold, silver, or paper,
*'"b'' "ll* ''' ^ commodity, and an article of
about.""^ ' commerce; and that, like all similar
articles, it varies in value and price
with its plenty or cheapness in the market. As
certainl r and inevitably as a plentiful harvest
renders grain cheap, and an abundant vintage
wine low-priced, does an increased supply of the
currency, whether in specie or paper, render
money cheap, as compared with the price of
other commodities. But as money is itself the
stinilard by which the value of every thing else
is measured, and in which its price is paid, this
change in its price can not be seen in any change
in itself, because it is the standard : it appears
in the price of every thing else against which it
is bartered If a fixed measure is applied to the
figure of a growing man, the change that takes
place will appear, not in the dimensions of the
measure, but iho man. Thus an increase in the
currency, when the numbers and transactions
are stationary, or nearly so, is immediately fol-
lowed by a rise in the money price of all other
commodities; and a contraction of il is as quick-
ly succeeded by a fall in the money price of all
articles of commerce, and the money remunera-
tion of every species of industry. The first
change is favorable to the j)roducing classes,
whether in land or manufactures, and unfavora-
blo to the holders of realized capital, or fixed
annuities; the last augments the real wealth of
the moneyed and wealthy classes, and proportion-
ally depresses the dealers in commodities, and
persons engaged in industrial occupations. But
if an increase in the numbers and industry of
man co-exists with a diminution in the circulat-
ing medium by which their transactions are
carried on, the most serious evils await society,
and the whole relations of its dillerent classes to
each other will be speedily changed ; and it is
in that state of things that the saying proves
true, that the rich are every day growing richer,
and the poor poorer.
The two greatest events which have occurred
in the history of mankind have been
directly brought about by a succes- influence of
sive contraction and expansion of contraction
the circulating medium of society, and expan-
The fall of the Roman Empire, errency^on
so long ascribed, in ignorance, to Rome, and on
slavery, heathenism, and moral cor- Europe in tlie
ruption, was in reality brought suitecntUcen
about by a decline in the gold and
silver mines of Spain and Greece, from which
the precious metals for the circulation of the
world were drawn, at the very lime when the
victories of the legions, and the wisdom of the
Antonines, had given peace and security, and,
with it, an increase in numbers and riches to the
Roman Empire. This growing disproportion,
which all the etlbrts of man to obviate its eiiects
only tended to aggravate, coupled with the sim-
ultaneous importation of grain from E^ypt and
Libya at prices below what it could be raised
at in the Italian fields, produced that constant
decay of agriculture and rural population, and
increase in the weight of debts and taxes, to
which all the contemporary annalists ascribe the
ruin of the Empire. And as if Providence had
intended to reveal in the clearest manner the
influence of this mighty agent on human affairs,
the resurrection of mankind from the ruin which
these causes had produced was owing to the
directly opposite set of agencies being put in
operation. Columbus led the way in the career
of renovation; when he spread his sails across
the Atlantic, he bore mankind and its fortunes
in his bark. The mines of Mexico and Peru
were opened to European enterprise : the real
riches of those regions were augmented by fab-
ulous invention ; and the fancied El Dorado of
the New World attracted the enterprising and
ambitious from every country to its shores.
Vast numbers of the European, as well as the
Indian race, perished in the perilous attempt,
but the ends of Nature were accomplished.
The annual supply of the precious metals for
the use of the globe was tripled ; before a cen-
tury had expired, the prices of every species o/
Chap. I.J