^ t THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1879. A LECTURE Delivered in Aid of the Toronto Newsboys' Home^ FEBRUARY 7th, 1871, BY GOLDWIN SMITH. TORONTO : ADAM, STEVENSON & CO. 187L vourru i • MAR 3 .1 1965 GLOBE PRINTING COMPANY, 26 k 28 KING ST. EAST, TORONTO. THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1 87 O. Ladies and Gentlemen : The subject which I am to liave the honor of bringing under your consideration to-night is the European crisis which com- menced in 1870, and has been closed, as we trust, for the sake of bleeding humanity, by the fall of Paris. This crisis, in itself, is military ; but in its causes and its concomitants we see the action of all the great forces and tendencies which in this more than eventful age seem to be casting humanity in a new mould. We see the decline of dynastic institutions, and, at the same time, the recoil of society from an uncertain future, and the erection of new empires as safeguards against anarchy ; strug- gles for independent nationalities, contrasted with a growing union of the nations under the influence of mutual knowledge, literature, science, and a common morality superior to sectarian divisions ; the desire of liberty expressing itself in the abolition of governments of force, and in the demand for the extension of the suffrage ; the counter desire of fraternity expressing itself, Oi'ten extravagantly, but still significantly, in communistic movements and trade associations; the great development of indnstry and the growing ascendancy of industrial interests contending against the outbreaks, less frequent now, but still fierce, of the spirit of war ; social and political science, slowly winning its way amidst the surging of political and social pas- sion. We see deeper than all — the source, in tnith, of all the 4 THE EUROPEAN' CRISIS OF 1870. other throes and convulsions of humanity — a leligious move- ment more momentous, apparently, and more \inlimited than the Reformation ; while in this case, also, there is a reaction proportioned to the gi-eatness of the movement — humanity in alarm and perplexity, flying back from what appears an abyss of doubt to the ancient fanes, and the current of thought run- ning in one direction to an extreme Rationalism, and beyond; in the other direction, to the Infallibility of the Pope. Thesud leu declaration of war by the Emperor of the French was compared to **a thunderbolt out of the blue." But the thunder-cloud out of which that thunderbolt fell, and which had long been lowering over Europe, was that great French army without employment, with no threatened frontier to defend, no disatiected provinces to hold down, full of traditions of Napo- leonic glory and plunder, each of its soldiers dreaming of the Marshal's baton, which he carried in his knapsack, and its offi- cers weary of inaction, poorly paid, and many of them in debt. The existence of such an anny has never failed to bring on war; and until the French army was reduced or destroyed, there was no hope for Europe of secure peace. This thunder cloud again rose, plainly enough, from the char- j, "ter and history of the French people. The German historian Mommsen, after describing the ill-combined, ill-conducted, and ineffectual resistance of the Celts of Gaul to Caesar, says, in con- cluding — "Every page of Celtic history confinns the severe saying of one of the few Romans who had the judgment not to despise the so-called barbarians — that the Celts boldly chal- lenge danger while future, but lose their courage before its presence. In the mighty vortex of the world's history, which inexorably crushes all peoples that are not as hard and flexible as steel, such a nation could not permanently maintain itself; with reason the Celts of the continent suffered the same fate at the hands of the Romans as their kinsmen in Ireland suffer down to our day at the hands of the Saxons — the fate of becom- ing merged as a leaven of future development in a politically superior nationality." The historian proceeds to notice features of the ancient Celtic character which remarkably identify it THE EUROrEAN CRISIS OP IHTO. ft with the French and Irish character of the present tlay, and ends with the sentence: "It is and remains at all times and places the same indolent and poetical, irr^^soliite and fervid, in- quisitive, credulous, amiable, clever, but m a political point of view, thoroughly useless nation ; and therefore its fate has been always and everywhere the same. " This is a stein judgment. I do not believe in the vortex theory of the world's history, or in the inexorable crushing of all races and men who are not as hard and flexible as steel ; those who take this view of the world and the Power that rules it, the Mommsens and the Huxleys, do so, I venture to think, because they have not observed the ph'^nomena of spiritual life, in which the Autiior of our being reveals himself in a very different character fr-.r- Jiat in which he is revealed in the physical world or in the natural history of man. Nor is it tnie e^en that the politically wt^ak are politically worthless; they at least try dif- ferent forms of political organization, and enable us to choose and hold fast that which is good. But it is true that the Celt is politically weak, and his weakness has brought great disasters 01 himself and on mankind. Europe was fiiially passing from feudalism and medieval Ca- tholiciom to a more advanced state of civilisation, and more rational forms of belief, by a process quiet and gradual, but visible enough to the eye of history, and among the organs of which were not only philosophers and jurists, but enlightened sovereigns and statesmen. Suddenly France, with Celtic im- pulsiveness and self-confidence, rushed to the front of the move- ment, and undertook not only to refoim herself — which wo\ild have been a sufficiently arduous task — but to regenerate man- kind. Not only the philosophic Parisian, but the sledded Polack and the swart Afiican were, in the twinkling of an eye, to become new creatures ; and this was to be the work of glorious France, or rather of the glorious Frenchman who was speaking. The moral capital for this extensive moral undertaking consisted of a hatred of the past, and the sentimental philosophy of Rous- seau. Hatred of the past, however fierce and indiscriminating, does not enable us to construct the edifice of the future : and a ^ THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. philosophy, the author of which had himself gone mad with egotism, proved powerless to control the selfish passions, the subordination of which to the common good is the only road to social regeneration. There was a deluge of Celtic rhetoric, rising often to the highest pitch of eloquence ; there were thea- trical crashes of destructive legislation ; very soon there was a Bedlam, which cruel selfishness and susj)icion speedily con- verted into a slaughter-house, where thousands of helpless vic- tims of both sexes were butchered with a levity more frightful, if possible, than the atrocity itself — not, be it remembered, by peasants brutalized with oppression, but by orators and poli- ticians whose lips all the tirn"i distilled the honey of Rousseau. This fit of Celtic delirium was followed by the fit of Celtic depression ; by the renunciation not only of human regen- eration and brotherhood, but of national self-government ; by the ascendancy of a gang of political adventurers more profli- gate and cynical than those of the English Restoration ; and, finally, by abject submission to a military tyrant who made up to the Celt for the loss of the liberty, to which he is little attached, by gorging his love of military glory, and lead- ing him to the plunder and oppression of other nations. Not that Frettch ambition had ever slept ; in the first transports of revolutionary philanthropy, in the very honeymoon of universal love, France began to encroach upon the covenanted rights of the German Empire ; and the first countries which welcomed the French as deliverers speedily felt the truth of the saying, that the brotherhood of French revolutionists was a brotherhood of Cain. "What Napoleon was we now fully learn for the first time, just as the Napoleonic dynasty is meeting its doom, from the work of M. Lanfrey ; as to which it is hard to say whether it will do more good, by showing the slavish world what an idol it has worshipped, or harm, by teaching villains how high vil- lainy may rise. What moral force, what foundation for self- government, could there be in a nation which first tamely allowed such wretches as Robespierre and Couthon to riot in its blood, and then as tamely allowed Bonaparte to sweep off its children by hundreds of thousands to the shambles of his THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OP 1870. 7 personal ambition ? Glory was henceforth the ruling passion, in which all other passions and all other aspirations were ab- sorbed, which took the place in France, not only of political, but we may almost say of spiritual life. Of this passion every government in turn was compelled to make itself the organ as the condition of its own existence. When Napoleon's brilliant Tun of success against the wooden armies and effete strategy of the old monarchies came to an end, and the trodden nations rose and struck him] down, the autocrats who unhappily ruled the hour set up the Bourbons as a dynasty of peace. The Bourbons at once proceeded to pander to the war spirit by augmenting the army and invading Spain. They were succeeded by Louis Philippe, a bourgeois King, who really desired peace, but who found himself obliged to keep up the same monstrous standing army, to conquer Algeria, to quarrel periodically with the European Powers, to pave the way for the renewal of French designs on Spain by the Spanish marriages, and, in a fatal hour, to bow down to the hostile principle by bringing home and en- shrining in the heart of Paris the remains of Napoleon. Mean- time the war spirit was being flattered and inflamed by the whole tribe of literary sycophants : in popular philosophy by Michelet and Quinet, the propagators of the pregnant phrase, ^'holybcij-^nets of France;" in song by Beranger, who lived, it was said, to shed tears over the consequences of his own writings ; and in history by Thiers, whom Justice has sent in his old age begging from door to door among the nations against whose peace and honor he had laboured throughout his whole life to excite the vanity and rapacity of his countrymen, for help in the calamity brought on in no small measure by his own tongue and pen. Louis Philippe fell less from any fault of his home government than from the contempt which he had incurred by his policy of peace. There followed an ephemeral Republic, which, without the shadow of a provocation or a pretext, invaded and crushed the sister Republic of Rome — an act not to be forgotton when attempts are made to shift the guilt of French aggression from the people to its rulers. But upon the cradle of the Republic fell the shadow of the returning Empire, and soon bayonets 8 THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. replaced a Bonaparte on the military throne. To allay the alarm and avoid tlio hostility of the European powers, the Em- pire proclaimed itself j)eace, and it at once proceeded to fulfil: the law of its being by involving the world in war. First came the Crimean war, then the Italian war, then the Mexican war, then the intrigue with Merlin, masked by professions of the greatest friendship for Austria, whicdi brought on the Austro- Prussian uar. Tlie eniperor was led, by a natural miscalcula- tion, to hope that as he had found the Austrians very tough^ Von Moltke and the Prussians would find them still tougher; that both combatants would be exhausted by a long war, and that he and France would then be at liberty to help themselves to any additions of territory which might be suggested by French geography and theories respecting the inheritance of the Carlovingian Empire, based on the nolion that the great Karl was a Frenchman, But here Napoleon III. caught a Bismarck, and drew upon himself a rebuff which deeply wounded the military spirit of France, while with the growth of German unity, under Prussian leadership, grew the maddening convic- tion that on that side the familiar gate of French ambition: would be for ever closed. There can be no doubt that from this moment, though the usual peace homilies continued to be preached from the throne, and halcyon times for Europe to be predicted eveiy New Year's Day; though flattering hints of a general disarmament of Europe, to be initiated by the French Empire, were even from time to time thrown cut, war had been resolved on in the councils of France, and was deferred only till the Chassepots could be made. But another influence conspired with wounded military ambition to bring on war. Atheist as Napoleon I. was always and in all things, ut- terly regardless or apparently unconscious as he was through? his whole career of the existence of a God above him, or of a voice of God within him, he never showed his atheism more than in restoring for his political purposes the Koman Catholic Church while he affected to whisper in the ear of Ger- man philosophers his historic doubts about the existence of Christ. That Cliuich, alarmed by the growing ascendancy of a THE EUROPEAN. CRISIS OF 1870. 9 Protestant power, found an organ of its fears in the fair partner of the Emperor's throne, a thorough daughter of Spain, at once pleasure-loving and devout, and equally loyal to bonnets and reliquaries, to crinolines and confessors. Bavarian priests as well as Hanoverian exiles breathed earnest entreaties and told flattering tales. The large array vote against the plebiscite, given, as it must have been, in spite of the most powerful coercion, showed that deUy was dangerous to the dynasty. A pretext was found, or perhaps made, which might isolate Pms- sia from Germany, and war was declared. There was scarcely a shadow of opposition. Since the restoration of the Empire the priest had been helping the prefect to lead the people of the provinces in the way of devotion to the war god of the Imperial regime. Erckmann-Chatrian novels, though noble works of humanity, could not reach the heart of a peasantry who did not read ; the Liberals were most of them as much animated by jealous hatred of Prussia, and as hungry for the Rhine frontier, as the Emperor himself. Commerce, no doubt, mourned in secret ; but I always felt, when Mr. Cobden and other English statesmen whom I respected, reckoned on the growth of French commerce as a security for peace, in the first place, that com- merce could not control the passions of t^e array or the policy of a Government resting on military suppon ; and in the second place, that it was with France as with other nations and with man — however great her material prosperity might be, she could not live by bread alone ; besides bread she would want military glory. The Protestant clergy of France alone openly spoke against war, for the same reason, probably, wh'ch led the Jesuits to speak for it. Amidst bacchanalian enthusiasm the army set out for its little military festival — its promenade to Berlin. "From Paris to Berlin" was chalked by the soldiery on railway carriages, which a friend of mine saw brought into GeiTOany full of the flower of the French troops as prisoners. The heir of Austerlitz and Jena thundering from the car of Napoleonic conquest, and with the Imperial InfJmt terribly tranquil at his side, rushed to the Rhine ; but at the Rhine he paused. There was a legand among the Egyptians that the Assy- 10 THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. , '" lians had once come down with overwhelming power, but that the gods of Egypt had sent in the night a swarm of mice, the most insignificant of animals, which gnawed through the bowstrings of the Assyrians, so tliat when they rose to battle their might was gone. The bowstring of the French Emperor had been gnawed through by administrative corruption, the humble but blessed antidote of despotic power. It was touching to see how he who had been false to everybody was overwhelmed with sur- prise at finding that everybody had not been true to him. If the St. Amauds and the Fleureys and the LeBoeufs were always true to the Bonapartes, when would the honest part of the world get its own ? And so they are gone at last, these Bonapartes, after ruling France in the spirit, if not in the flesh, and disturbing Europe for three-quarters of a century. They are gone, after sacrificing to their selfish ambition such holocausts as I believe have been offered to no other Molochs in history. In the latter days of the elder Napoleon, when he was staking his last conscript on the gaming-table, the hand of some parent or wife wrote on the lofty column which supports his statue in the Place Vendome : ** Wretch, if all the blood thou hast shed could be brought to- gether in this square thou mightst drink without stooping. " The success of the Bonapartes was due, in part, to their being not imperfect characters, embarrassed by a half-stifled con- science, but thoroughly bad men, acting in entire harmony with the immoral forces of their time, without fear of God, without pity for man. In the pamphlet just published by the ex-Em- peror there is not one trace of remorse or of humanity ; the hundreds of thousands that this man has sent to bloody graves or to captivity ; the misery and shame that he has brought on the millions confided to his care, have no place in his thoughts, which are occupied with his own selfish game alone. I once saw a letter of the late Lord Brougham, giving an account of a conversation which he had held with a French oflScer who had accompanied Napoleon I. in his flight from Waterloo, The officer had told Lord Brougliam that, seeing Napoleon deeply dejected, and thinking that his dejection might partly be caused THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. ^v by his liaving seen his old companions in arms all slaughtered before his face, he had addressed to him some words of comfort • founded upon this supposition. The answer, given with a coarse oath, proved to the oflBcer that he was mistaken, and he recorded his conviction, that had the scene been ten times more heart- rending it would not have touched a heart utterly engrossed by self. Think of the horror, the agonies that Napoleon must have seen upon a hundred fields of battle. Think of the thousands of mere boys whom, as his conscriptions became more cruel, he must have seen, with their boyish faces, weltering in their blood to satisfy his devouring egotism ; yet no thought of mercy ever came near his heart, and he staked his last conscript as coolly as his last franc. The career of the Bonapartes measures not only the slavishness but the credulity of mankind. They varnished their despotism with democracy ; stamped its coins with Empire 'on one side and Republic on the other, and .thus fooled the world into believing taat it was not as the old empires and monarchies, bnt something popular and enlightened — something which be- longed not to the past but to the future. When they were hard pressed, and in want of money and blood, they ordered the band to strike up the Marseillaise. But they governed more arbi^ trarily than any occupant of an ancient throne whose autocracy was at all tempered by established iLsage and tradition ; they made parliamentary forms the means of divesting despotism of its responsibility without limiting its power ; they excited the barbarous and reactionary spirit of war to a height unparalleled in history ; they restored aristocracy in the persons of their gen- erals and their bureaucrats, whom they decorated with feudal titles ; they lestored the priesthood, and used it as their help- mate in suppressing intelligence and freedom ; they gagged the press ; they waged war on moral culture, and systematically ma- terialized education ; they trampled on the sanctity of marriage to ally themselves with royal houses ; they shot a poor German bookseller for publishing something inconsistent with the respect due to kings ; they surrounded themselves with an amount of tasteless pageantry and slavish etiquette which would have been scorned by the heir of an old royal line, if beneath tLe robe of a 12 THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. king he had, in any measure, kept tlie heart of a man. They almost officially identified their Empire with a system more ob- solete, and belonging more to the past, than the most antiquated and effete of Christian monarehios — with the heathen Empire of the CiBsars, the penal necessity of the corrupt Roman Republic. A glorious ideal for mankind I In the same way the plundering raids of Napoleon I. on f2urope were represented, and have not yet ceased to be represented, as not mere conquests, but missions for the propagation of some invaluable principles. But the nations on whose nationalities Napoleon trampled, on whom he levied his war contributions, whose homes his soldiery plundered and dishonored, found the process so like conquest that they rose as one man, and sent the missionary of civilization to St. Helena. The Bonapartes are gone, and notwithstanding all we hear from Europe, it seems hardly ])Ossible that they should return. It is true that in a most official -ridden country they have ap- pointed all the officials for twenty years, so that they must have a large and active party on their side. It is tnie also that the fatal obstinacy of the Republicans, or rather their want of moral courage in refusing to make peace, has thrown the disasters of Empire somewhat into the shade. Nor can we set a limit to the possible effects of extreme dejection among the French people. But the army, on which the power Of the Bonapartes rested, is- in the dust, and even if the dynasty should be restored, it may be Bonaparte, but it can be Napoleonist no more. What will come in France it would be rashness to attempt to predict. The peasantry is sunk in ignorance, and probably knows no name but that of Napoleon 1. The priesthood, by the law of its nature, prefers any form of despotism to any form of freedom. The middle classes have hitherto been in favour of a constitu- tional monachy; but they are timorous and little capable, at such a crisis, of impressing their will upon the nation. Among the artizans of Paris and some other great cities there is a party of strong Republicans, but one which has so much outrun the general sentiment, and is so tainted by its past excesses, that its appearance on the scene is at once the signal of reaction. Itt the provinces, when I was last there, seemed to reign a political THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. 13 apathy, the result of abortive revolutions, which would have bowed in silence to a central power if it had proclaimed Nero or Nebuchadnezzar. Centralization, indeed, has been so complet e under all forms of government — Republican as well as Imperial — that there is no political life or volition left anywhere but at the centre ; and this is one cf the grave dangers of the situation. There are pretenders, eager and restless; but not one of them, so far as I could see, has any hold upon the affections or even upon the memory of the nation. Nothing has any root in the rever- ence of the people. Between the present and the past a deep gulf has been opened. I stood with some French peasants before a chateau which had been dismantled at the time of the Revolu- tion. The peasants could not tell to whom the chateau had belonged: they had some dim legend about some great lord who shod his horses with shoes of silver. To their gi-andfathers, perhaps to the fathers of some of them, the centre and cyno- sure of village life, to them the chateau was as the tombs of the Pharaohs. To go to the foundation of all, the religion of one sex is ulramontanism, that of the other materialism ; the moral fibres of the educated classes, if we may judge from the popular litera- ture, is so wasted and deadened as to crave for stimulants which a healthy moral nature would reject with abhorrence ; and, to repeat an expression which I heard used by Montalambert, Im- perial education has killed youth. The new citizen army is almost as col pletely shattered as the army of the Empire, «nd it is such a motley mixtiire of Vendean peasants with Red Republican artizans that its it political tendencies can hardly be divined. On the other hand, the siege and fall of Paris may have had a decentralising effect, and have forced the provinces in some measure to think and act for themselves. Such are the elements of a political chaos, out of which, by the mere need of a government, some order will, no doubt, with more or less convulsion, be evolved. The Republicans are not strong, and they have thrown away their own chances by failing at once to identify the Republic with peace. But they have twice held power, and their influence can hardly be prevented from telling to some extent in the result. If I were to speculate I should 14 THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. say that things point on the whole to a monarchy, really if not nominally elective; and I believe it will be well for France if the King elected is the Due d'Aumale. We must all deeply pity the French people; but we have no reason for accusing the justice of Heaven. Fiance took the sword, and she has perished by the sword. Her people has been a people delighting in war; witness her history, her literature, her art, her public ceremonies and festivals, everything through which the character and sentiment of a nation can be expressed. It would be at once tedious and repulsive here to rehearse the annals ol^ her criminal ambition, of her wanton wars of con- quest, of her universal mischief-making, of her hj^ocritical patronage of discord and disunion in other countries, of her efforts by intrigue or violence to prevent other nations from attaining the national unity to which they had a right, and which she had herself attained. This last attempt upon the national life of Germany crowns and concludes a long series of attempts of the same kind. We are told that, though her offences against humanity have been great, much must be for- given her, because she has loved much ; but history answers that not a single instance can be produced in which her inter- ference in the affairs of other countries has been disinterested, however loving her professions may have been. She has pro- mulgated almost officially the insolent doctrine that no neigh- bouring nation should be allowed to increase its strength, even by internal consolidation, without forfeiting to her a portion of its territory as a security for the continuance of her supremacy; and it is in attempting to apply this doctrine by demanding from Germany the forfeiture of the Rhine provinces that she has come into fatal collision with the justice which rules the world. By keeping up an enormous standing army, merely from motives of vanity and ambition, when her own territory was threatened by no human being, she has compelled all the nations of Europe to maintain forces proportionate to hers, and to endure in peace half the evils, moral as well as material, of war. It is impossible to separate her case from that of the government of her choice — the government whose military i THE EUROPE\N CRISIS OF 1870. l§ policy she had just ratified by an overwhelming vote. She deifies Napoleon I. for his conquest and oppression of Germany, and there can be no doubt that had Napoleon III. succeeded in playing over again for her the part of his uncle, he would have rooted his dynasty in her heart. The terms imposed on her by the victor are hard, but less hard than she would herself have imposed; for it is certain, and indeed avowed on her part, that besides annexing the Ehine provinces, purely German, and to which she had no sort of claim, she would have insisted on destroying the new-born unity of the German nation, and re- ducing Germany again to that state of division and weakness which would make it once more the sport and slave of her am- bition. And now she has been taught by a stern but merciful power, in the only way in which she could be taught, to abstain from regenerating and plundering mankind, to cultivate her own ample and lovely heritage, to use her own rare and gracious gifts, and to leave other nations to the free development by which the purposes of Providence are to be fulfilled. It is generous to sympathize with the vanquished; but the merits of a cause are not changed when Heaven declares itself upon the side of the right. What will be the political future of France is a question of intense interest, but it is -lot of the same overwhelming impor- tance which it lately was. The leadership of Europe has been transferred to other hands — it has passed from the Celt, who with all his graces, cannot lead, to the Teuton, who, with all his want of graces, can. It seemed as though the spirit of freedom and self-government displayed in all the colonies of the Teutonic race had failed in Germany, its original seat. But this appa- rent failure was due, not to the character of the people, but to the accidents of their history. In England, under the feudal system, there were no great fiefs. In France, the great fiefs, at first almost indc ^jendent, were in course of time re- annexed to tlie Crown, which, in this way, and with the aid of other influences, became despotic. In Germany, the great fiefs became a group of petty despotisms, supporting each other against political progress, and supported from without by 16 THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870, Austria, with her Croat legions. Shut out from the political sphere, the Teutonic spirit in Germany found scope in the ^ph^re of thought, and produced Luthers instead of Crorawells. The cannon of Napoleon shattered the petty governments, and in the war of liberation against the French oppressor, Germany came forth as a nation. It is not commonly noticed that the sufferings and humiliations which followed Jena, called forth among the Germans not only a great display of patriotism, but, as is usual with noble natures in misfortune, a great develop- ment of moral and spiritual life. The Holy Alliance once more rolled the stone to the mouth of the Sepulchre ; but the Ger- man nation still lived within. Its first aspiration, however, was not political freedom but national unity, and the famous song, ** What is the German Fatherland ?" was the voice of the German heart. This was manifest when I was in Germany in 1847 ; and therefore I was not disappointed or dejected when in 1848 the Democratic movement failed. The German people were not ripe for i^, nor was democracy the object on which their hearts were set. Their hearts were set upon unity, which, as they so fervently wished it, was sure to come ; for in this age the moral forces are the strongest, and there is nothing that can stand long against the will of a whole people. And now unity has come, though, perhaps, not altogether by the means or in the way which the highest morality could have desired. Military Prussia, however, was the indispensable nucleus, as military Piedmont was in the case of Italy ; and the character of Count Bismarck — a singular compound of the military oli- garch and the arbitrary bureaucrat with the recklessness of the German student and the visions of the German professor — though somewhat sinister and politically dangerous to his na- tion, was the only sort of character that could both have dreamed the dream and have made it come true. The plottings between Bismarck and the French Emperor, before Sadowa, belong to the ** night side" of diplomacy, and make us long for the good time when the councils of governments and nations shall no longer shun the light ; but though Austria was wronged here, her position in Germany as an intrusive power of THE EUROPEAN CRI3IS OF 1870. • it reaction was itself a standing wrong. The process was com- pleted by the policy of Napoleon III., who gave the half-solidi- fied fluid just the necessary shock, the result of which showed ^. that the tendency in favor of unity was deep and spontaneous, , and, therefore, that its fulfilment was good. Germany is now the great power of Europe. If she is a ' moral power she will be the guardian of European peace and ' progress ; if she is an immoral and aggressive power, no doubt a great peril in.pends over the nations. But I see no ground in her history, in the character of her people, or in her present ' conduct, for such a fear. In history, the rejjroach of Germany t has been rather passiveness than a tendency to aggression. In ' the present war she has taken arms to save her life. While the ^ manifesto of the French Emperor was a heathen gasconade, the ' manifesto of King William was the utterance of a Christian and a moral being, addressed to a people who did not delight in war, but required him who called them to amis to show them, that war could not be avoided. Th.^ soldiers of France were spoiling, as the phrase is, for the fight ; but among the Germans, as I have been told by a most tnistworthy eye-witness, sadness was everywhere mingled with resolution, and tearful leave-takings filled the land. Such men are not likely to follow the drum of ambition. They are not Turkos and Zouaves, hired butchers and marauders, but citizens armed in defence of their country, and when they are wounded their country bleeds. It is true that, not content with merely parrying the blow aimed at her life, Germany has followed up the aggressor, struck him to the earth, disarmed him, taken from him the frontier fortresses, Avhich he used as sallyports of invasion, inflicted on him such penalties as will make him beware of assailing her, or any other nation, for the future ; and, it is true, that the penalties have risen in amount in proportion to the length of the resistance, and the increased expenditure of German blood. When the Sikhs invaded our Indian empire, did not we, after repelling the inva- sion, pass the Sutledj and extinguish the source of war? If Lahore had held out, should we not have bombarded Lahore, aa "WB did bombard Lucknow ; and would not the agony have 2 18 THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OP 1870. as great in Lahore as it was in Paris? The bombardment of such a city a.-> Paris is the direst of the dire necessities of war — it seems the Germans felt it so, for they paused long. But would it be possible, in the midst of Europe, to allow an im- mense fortress and arsenal, where war is always brewing, itself to be above the laws of war? In the mid career of victory, with the grand prize within their grasp, the Germans offered an armistice at the instance of powers friendly to France ; and the French rhetoricians replied that France would sweep the barba- rian from her sacred soil. They accused England, when she pleaded for the armistice, of a perfidioiLs attempt to save the German armies from imminent destruction. That haze of -inglorious rhetoric in which France has delighted to live, has doubled her calamities by blinding her to humiliating truth. I^et all nations in which rhetoric is a great power take warning from her example. To expect that the Germans would ground their arms because France had become a Republic, even if she had really become a Republic, would surely have been childish. The Germans have bitter reason to know that a Frenchman, Imperialist or Republican, is a Frenchman still. Now that the duty of war has been done by compelling Paris to surrender, the victors seem not regardless of the duties of lnunanity ; nor is there any appearance of unmanly or unchristian exultation over the fallen, though there is pride in great achievements, and joy at a great deliverance — a deliverance, as the world will one day own, not of Germany only, but of all nations. War is an evil teacher, and no doubt this war will for a time leave its traces on German character, and on the bearing of Germany towards her neighbours. "We see something of this already in the attitude of Count Bismarck. But I have little fear that honest, kindly, broad-faced Germany will ever become a stronger France. Nor do I fear that she will relapse in politics, and become a power of reaction ; though in this respect also the war is likely for the time to have some injurious elFects. Alarmists ci*y out that King William has been made an emperor. The Germans have conquered under a king ; and I should not as a Liberal think better of them, or hopejnore from them, if they were THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OP 1870. 19 ungrateful to the king under wliom they have con<|ueretl. But the good old Tory William, and his Tory Bismarck — if Bis- marck is still a Tory — will be gathered to their fathers ; and Sedan and Gravelotte will be numbered with the past. The military oligarchy and the strong bureaucracy of Prussia have hitherto found their justification and their moral support in the irrepressible conflict which impended over the nation ; victory in that conflict, while it absolves them for the past, withdraws the ground of their existence for the future ; and Prussia is now to mingle, in a united Germany, with elements undrille*! and unregulated by Berlin. The political institutions of a nation are sure, in the end, to take the mould of its character ; and the mind of Germany is so free, and so earnest in its freedom, that self-government must, at no distant time, be hers. Ever since I was able to think of these questions, I have looked with incr»»asing hope and sympathy on German progress, for this reason, among others, that it was sustained by a sound morality, personal and domestic. Much has been said, since the German victories in this war, about the wonder-working influence of German schools ; and all the nations of the world .seem to be rushing to school, that they may learn there how to cut their neighbour's throat. Much, no doubt, is due to the influence of the German school, but I sus- pect at least as much is due to the German home. I belit ve this to have been the case, especially, in those parts of a soldier's duty in the performance of which he is sustained by duty alone, without the stimulus of excitement, without the spirit-stirring trumpet or the pomp of war ; and in which the superiority of the Germans to the French has been so marked. Though not slavishly orthodox, at least not so reputed, the Germans as a people are religious ; and they are accordingly derided as psalm- singers by the partisans of France. Ever since the days of Gustavus Adclphus, when the Zouave and the psalm-singer have met, the psalm-singer has won. So it is, those who fear God most, generally fear death least; and, when all has been said about intelligence and needle-guns, the main thing in batt must be not to fear death. Barbarians, too, the Germans are ill THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. called ; and it seems to be thought that, by calling them so, they can be made so ; but real civilization consists not in polish of manner, nor even in literary culture, but in purity of affec- tions, in self-control, in submission to the moral law. Before, however, Germany takes up ix>Utical questions, wis- dom counsels her to place her unity out of peril. The Bavarian priest still stands in the way. But the Catholicism of South Germany is mainly Austrian ; the whole of Germany at first showed itself Teutonic by accepting the Reformation; and therefore tlie vitality of Bavarian Jesuitism and Ultramontanism • is not likely to be great nor its resistance permanently strong. A liberal movement, of which the great Roman Catholic theo- logian, DoUinger, is a distinguished organ, has already com- menced. It is not improbable that the German provinces of Austria, and perhaps those grasped by Russia in the day of German weakness, may one day fall back into the Fatherland ; while, on the other hand, as the Germans will not care to incor- porate alien elements, Poland has a better chance of being restored by Germany than ever she had of being restored by France. It is for soldiers to speak of military details, and to estimate military results. Bat we may safely say that the destruction, so swift and entire, of such a military power, and the capture of three great armies belonging to the most military of nations, and under renowned commanders, on their own soil, by forces not very greatly exceeding them in number, are feats unpara- lelled in the history of war. It seems that to achieve such re- sults some new force must have come upon the scene. The new force appears to be that of an armed and mobilized nation, rail- roads furnishing the means of putting the mass in motion. For the first time, perhaps, since the Northern tribes came down upon the Roman Empire, the whole power of a people hsui ap- peared in the field of battle. It has been said that we have b^un to see the end of standing armies. The heart of Europe leaps up at the thought But this war can hardly be said to have proved that science and training are less necet^ary than they were before. What it has proved — and this is something- — THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. H is that the citizen-soldier who fights for his home, and from a sense of duty, is, when trained, more tlian a match for the Zouave. This, however, we may gladly note : that, partly from the fact that those who hleed and die, on one side at least, are citizens, not mercenaries ; partly from the fnghtful scale on which the work of destruction has been carried on ; partly from the distinctness with which, by the exertions of the press, the image of the field of carnage has been brought under our view ; partly, we may hope, from the growth of civilization and hu- manity, a tincture of sincerity has at length been infused into the conventional language of (.'hristendom about the horrors of war. The efforts made to relieve the suflTering are a practical in- dication of the improved feeling ; and perhaps this is the best hope held out by these events of a possible discontinuance of the soldier s trade. To glance briefly at the other nations which have been affected by the T\ar. The most faj^hful ally of England, it seems, had formed a secret plan for the annexation of Belgium, in defiance of England's guarantee. England will learn for the future, while she maintains the necessary business relations with all govern- ments, whatever their origin and character, never again to clasp any hand but that of honor. Belgium is an object of the high- est interest to Europe and humanity, not only as an example of a country advancing happily under free institutions, but because her independence, securely enjoyed in spite of her weakness un- 'der the {legis of international morality and public law, is an effective protest against natural frontiers, inevitable suprema- cies, manifest destinies, and all the formularies of rapine in which great powers embody their fancied right of gratifying their greed and vanity by swallowing up their smaller neigh- bors. It is needless to rehearse what humanity owes to small States — to Judea, Athens, the Italian and Flemish cities — which Assyria, Persia, and the great fe'idai monarchies respect- ively thought it their manifest destiny to annex. As among men so among nations — you have often a giant body with a pigmy soul, while, on the other hand, in the narrow material compass of a small State may live rare qualities, high aspirations, 22 THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. and great hopes ; great hopes, perhaps, not only for the small State itself, })Ut for its colossal neighbor, whom it may be the means of saving, by its independent exaniple, from the domiua* tion of some political vice or error as huge as her mighty frame. While the science of politics is experimental, every independent experiment will be in itself of value to mankind. I reckon it a drawback upon German unity that it may involve, if not the ex- tinction, the enfeeblement of such centres of life as Weimar, Munich, and Dresden. The case of Belgium is especially sig- nificant, because her nationality is guarded neither by a differ- ence of language nor by a strongly marked frontier. But any frontier is strongly marked enough if behind it there is the resolute desire of national independence. If the question is raised wliether any country is capable of being a nation, the decisive answer to that <|uestion must be sought, not in geo- graphy and etlinology, not in political economy or military science, but in the hearts of the young. , i Italy has seized the opportunity' of forcing out the disuniting wedge which was kept in her heart by the piety of Voltairean France, and of closing up into a united nation. But the annex- ation of Rome is an event of far more than Italian significance. The patrimony of St. Peter is seized, in defiance of the Papal thundei's, and of the protests of all devout Catholics, by a Catholic power, while the other Catholic powers look calmly on. Excessere omncs adytis arisque reliciis Di quibus imperium hoc stelerat. The Catholic monarchies will soon feel the recoil, for if they have propped the Papacy, the Papacy has propped them. Will the spiritual power of Rome be increased, as some Catholics hope and as some Protestants fear, by the loss of the temporal dominion ? This question must be answered by another ques- tion. Is Rome a spiritual power? Has she not rested for support on the reactionary kingdoms of the world, purchased that support by making Christianity a religion of reaction, crept to the ear of kings where kings were left, and where there were no kings accumulated wealth and electoral influence with an THE EUROPEAN CRI8I8 OF 1870. 23 anxiety which showed that she deemed them essential to hor existence ? has not the patrimony of St. Peter Wen the princi- pal portion of the fund out of which slie has rewarded her zealous servants with earthly emoluments and titles of earthly rank ? The Pope does not think the loss of the temporal dominion a gain, nor do the priests, nor does Antonelli, wlio is perhaps the most sagacious judge of all. No, the fatal hour is come : the Papal despotism is f '>out to fall and make way, if Christianity l)e true, for the union of Christendom, '^o doubt tliere has been of late a great development of titramontane doctrine and of the ecclesiastical authority of the Pope. This is traceable to the same cause which has led to the loss of the temporal domin- ion, and which will lead to the dissolution of the whole system ; the defection of the Catholic powers. "While the nations and •their governments were faithful liegemen of the Church, the 'priesthood of each nation could afford to maintain a certain measure of national independence, and there were Gallican and even Spanish liberties. But now that the faith of nations and governments is waxing cold, and their allegiance is being grad- ually withdrawn, the priesthood everywhere is thrown for sup- port upon its ecclesiastical centre, and a Papal dictatorship is the natural result. To the Jesuits it is a further inducement that power vested in the hands of a single person is more amen- able to their manipulation. Thus was brought forth the Dogma of Papal Infallibility, which has already produced a palpable re- action among the more rational Catholics, and which, if Truth holds her throne in the heart of man, is assuredly the beginning of the end. On the very day, I believe, on which the Jesuits triumphed in the ratification of Papal Infallibility, they achieved another great success by setting in motion the armies of the eldest son of the Church for the destruction of the great Protest- ant power. What oracle was it that assured the sons of Loyola -of victory? Will they recognize the judgment of Heaven in the answer to their prayer ? Protestants must rejoice. But I can understand the appre- •hension with which M. Guizot, a Protestant, but a statesman, jegards the fall of the Roman Catholic Church, for the religion li THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. of that Churcli is the only moral law of uneducated millions^ find amidst the aberrations of u revolutionary era, it upholds for the masses — not on very rational grounds perhaps, but still it upholds — some of the fundamental principles of civilization, especially the natural relations between the sexes, and the sanc- tity of marriage. It must be allowed, too, that though as a corporation it is greedy of money, as a religious system it pro- tests against the worship of Mammon in a Mammon-worshiping age. Still truth is truth ; and to maintain or spare, for indi- rect or secondary objects, a religion which was not true, and which was directly injurious to spiritual life, would be a policy not less shallow than immoral. Spain has elected her King. Perhaps she had better have faced the future. The roots of mouanhy in the heart of her people have been twice torn up already, and they are not likely take to hold again. She is far less centralized than France, possesses far stronger foundations for local self-government, and in that respect is fitter for a Republic. On the other hand, her peasants are ignorant, and, though they saw the confiscation of the monastic property with indid'erence, are still priest-ridden ; the bigotry of her priesthood is a by-word, and political enlighten- ment is confined to a party in a few great cities. Her reputed weakness is suoh, that in the HohenzoUern quarrel her indepen- dent right to choose her own King was absolutely ignored by France. Still she has cast of!' the grave-clothes of the Inquisi- tion and of the absolutism of Philip II ; and it is not unlikely that a union with Portugal may soon greatly increase her power And now — let me as a loyal Englishman speak the truth, for the truth alone is patriotic — now is the time to win her heart by restoi'ing to her the Spanish fortress, the sight of which in foreign hands so deeply wounds her pride, and which, though it is undoubtedly by treaty ours, and though it will always keep its place in the records of our glory, is, I believe, admitted to be no longer of the same military importance that it once was. What England wants is an open Mediterranean ; and for thia the friendship of a revived Spain is a better security than the- famous rock, past which any enemy can now steam at his wilL THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. 25 The fear that, if we gave up Gibraltar, France would wrest it out of the hands of Spain, and retain it in her own hands, may now be said to be at an end. Depend upon it, there are high quali- ties yet in those Spanish peasants who formed the bands of Cortes and Pizarro, and who, sixty years ago, deserted by everybody, bereft of everything, made a more desperate resist- ance to the French than the French have made to the Germans. It is true they had the advantage of being poor. Had Spain been under the influence of wealthy traders, anxious for a com - mercial connection with France, and for the influx of French capital, such men would perhaps have sold for thirty pieces of s:lver the national independence, for which the peasant shed his blood. ! s .;» ^>^ ? fj^H^n % f Austria has not attempted to avenge Sadowa. Had she done so, it is doubtful whether her German provinces would have obeyed her call to arms. But it is due to her to say that she seems to have learnt wisdom from her calamities, and to have entered decisively on a better path. Driven from her fatal position in Italy and Germany, she has put off" the charac- ter of a demon of reaction, which that position imposed on her ; and she has broken her compact of darkness with the Pope. Moreover, the task which she has on her hands at home is arduous enough. The line bdla gerant aliiy tu fdix, Austria nube aptlj expressed the manner in which the difl"erent parts of her heterogeneous empire originally came together. They were united merely by the intermarriage of their princes. To this accidental bond, however, a bond of a stronger kind was added, so long as the Austrian Empire formed a confederation of the countries of Eastern Europe against the inroads of the conquer- ing Turk. About the middle of the last centur}'^, the danger from Turkey being at an end, this ground of union was with- drawn ; but at the same time the Austrian Government at- tempted to deprive the provinces of their provincial liberties and to fuse them into a centralized and despotic empire. This attempt brought Austria to the brink of ruin. Now a better policy has been embraced, and the Austrian statesmen, instead of trying to centralize the provinces despotically, are trying to- 26 THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. unite them constitutionally, and with due respect for provincial liberty and self-government. The construction of a composite nation is difficult, but it is not impossible ; witness Switzer- land, composed of Grerman, French and Italian cantons : and we have reason to wish Austria success, not only because her aims seem now to be high and good, but because the countries of Eastern Europe may need a confederation against Russia as much as they once needed a confederation against the Turk. Taking advantage of the confusion in Europe, the Russian Bear has once more shown his teeth, and begu.n to draw himself towards his prey. It is needless to say that what he wants is not the free navigation of the Black Sea for honest purposes, which he has already, but liberty to collect the instruments of aggression. The Turk has dons him no wrong ; but as the Turk is a misbeliever and he is a Christian, he thinks himself enti- tled to rob the Turk of his land. I greatly prefer Christianity to Mahometanism ; but I doubt whether St. Paul would have thought a robber Christianity better than the Mahomet&nism 01 an honest Turk. In Russia the masses are like the antedilu- vian elephant, which was found preserved in ice in Siberia ; they are fanatically devoted to the mummy religion of the Byzantine Empire ; they keep the unreformed calendar, which their Government has just forced on Poland ; they look up to their sacred Czar as their religious head, no less slavishly than the Mahometan looks up to the Commander of the Faithful. This is Moscow ; but in St. Petersburg sits the aggressive bureaucracy of Peter and Catherine, studying the chart of figgrandi/ement, and using the devoted peasantry as food for the cannon. The pirate vessels of Borneo were manned by fanatical Dyaks, who collected heads for their gods, and com- manded by sharp Malays, who collected plunder for themselves. As to the Turkish Empire, its end is near. It has undergone the fate of all the conquering hordes of the East, which, the impetus of conquest over, sink into corruption, and are overrun in their turn by fresh hordes, or broken up by rebel satraps ; but the interest of humanity requires that, in place of the Turk ^should come, not a Russian pachalik, but free nations. A THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. 27 glance at Russia on the map will show how serious the peril to civilization is ; and railroads have now mobilised the mass which was immovable before. I was against the Crimean war, because it seemed to me that, though Nicholas showed the Cossack and the fanatic, the knot on that occasion was one which diplomacy ought to have untied. But now, when an Attempt is made, on pretexts which can only be regarded as insolent irony, to trample the faith of tret^ties under foot, the high language of Lord Granville seems to me to be alone consis- tent with honour and worthy of the country. Europe will probably be relieved from this peril of barbarous myriads wielded by despotic power as soon as political life is kindled among the Russian people ; and the flame already begins to play round the most inflammable points such as the Universi- ties, whence it will probably spread to the rest. In the mean- time, whatever makes war more seientific and more a matter of intelligence diminishes the effectiveness of the stolid masses which Russia drives to the field : so that in what seems hei least benificent work science is really benefitting civilization. But our great preservers in this case also are the mice that gnaw through the despot's bowstring. Some English travellers in Siam were invited by the King to see an elephant hunt, but no sooner had they come upon the ground than their dragoman made them lie down flat upon their faces and remain in that posture till the hunt was over, telling them that it was death to look upon the King. Afterwards the King sent to ask how they had been pleased with the hunt. The dragoman answered for them at once that they had been delighted. "How could you tell such a lie ?" said one of the Englishmen. ** Know, stranger," replied the dragoman, "that our King lives not upon meat and drink only, but upon lies ; and if I had not told that lie I should have lost my head. " Fortunately the King of the Northern Siam is fed upon the same food. When the Empress Catherine went on a progress, they carried about a wooden vil. Jage, and set it up at successive points on her road, that she might think the desert through which she passed was populous. "When any part of the Czar's machinery of aggression falls into the hands of his enemies, facts consoling to humanity appear. 28 THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OP 1870. Last, not least, in our thouglits, is our own country— for ours she is and will ever be, whetlier we are destined always to remain politically a part of Ikt, or wliether we are destined iji the course of time, with the power of self-government, and with the capacity for uniting hiw and liberty with which she has en- dowed us, to show oui"selves lier true sons, and add the bright- est gem to her crown of honor by founding a great British nation here. Ours forever will be her constitution, unchanged in its essence, though moulded to the needs of a new world. Ours for ever will be her history — not a tale of to-day or yester- day, but the record of a thousand years — chequered, yet noble, and full of high examples and heroic forms ! Ours will be her Westminster Hall and her Westminster Abbey ; the wise tra- ditions, the famous names, the proud memories, and the glorious monuments of our fatherland. England has stood neutral, and has received the highest compliment to her neutrality — the abuse of both the combatants. The English Government interceded for an armistice in favor of France ; the English people and press generally have of late sympathized with France ; the utmost efforts have been made to- send supplies to the starving French people ; and therefore the life of an Englishman is not safe, we are told, in the streets of Paris. The Frenchman cannot bear that the Englishman should be exempt from his disasters, and the witness ( f his reverses- Would that England could have won a glorious crown of hu- manity by boldly putting her veto on this most wanton and horrible war. But you know as well as I do what impediments there are at home to a daring course of action abroad. I cannot blame the Government for having declined to act ; I only regret that when they spoke they did not hold the language of a firmer and more intrepid morality. The opinion seems to prevail in some quarters, that because England did not take pait in this war she has become a third rate, or, according to some authori- ties, a fifth rate power, and has lost her place in the councils of Europe. The wish is father to ibi thought, and the thought may lead to dangerous delusions. Belgium does not think that England has become a third rate power, when she loudly ex- THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. §|^ presses lier gratitude for English protection. M. Guizot does not think that England has become a third rate power, wlien he earnestly solicits English intervention in favor of peace. In one sense English power has declined. Great Britain no longer occupies the exceptional position which she occupied at the close of the struggle against Napoleon ; the immense authority which accrued from the part played by her in that struggle could not last when the impression of her achievements had faded away. In the meantime the power of other nations, then weak and depressed, has greatly increased, and other navies have arisen to share the dominion of the sea, which lialf a century ago was held by England ;uoue. Thus relatively her power has declined, and the knowledge of this fact, and the sight of the host of enemies by which she is threatened on every side, and of the internal difficulties, social and economical, with which she has to con- tend — I am told by one who can hardly fail to be well iu^rmed that at the present time there are in London a quarter of a million people on the brink of starvation — ought to make all who have claims upon her for her aid and protection charitable to her shortcomings, and considerate in their exactions. More than this : as these burdens and difficulties can hardly be expected to decrease, all who have hitherto relied ui)on the British con- nection will probably, at no distant time, find themselves called upon, not to take any inconsiderate step, but deliberately to forecast their future, and to endeavor to mould their own des- tinies, under the penalty, perhaps, of drifting into some havea where they would not be. One may say this, and, at the same time, remain fully alive to the obligations which the present connection imposes upon the honor of England, and fully sensi- ble that it would be a thousand times better that her career of glory should close, if close it must, in defeat and disaster, than in the betrayal of her plighted faith and the desertion of a friend. Eelatively, the power of England has declined ; positively it has not declined, but increased. It has increased with her pop- ulation ; it has increased with her wealth ; it has increased with the advancing skill of her workmen, and with the growth in her ithip-yards of great masses of highly trained labour, organized 30 THE EUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. imder leading firms, so as to be readily available for a great emergency. A great military power England has never been. I do not suppose that she has ever put fifty thousand soldiers of her own on any battle-field ; though now her volunteer system is beginning to supply her for the purposes of defence with a citizen army capable of indefinite augmentation. But at the commencement of the war with Russia, she sent to sea an im- mense fleet with extraordinary rapidity, and the display of her naval power in the review at Spithead after that war, seemed at the time to convince her rivals that she was still the queen though no longer the despot of the ocean. Probably she could now, on an emergency, very speedily send to sea fleets equal to any two of the existing navies of the world. The Russian war, coming after forty years of peace, found the military administra- tion out of order ; but before the end of that war the efficiency of the machine had been restored, and the Abyssinian expedition has since shown that the improvement has been sustained. At the Alma, at Inkerman, at Balaklava, as well as in the Sepoy Mutiny, the British soldier proved that his fighting qualities remained what they had always been. But the Crimean war ■was a distant war ; it was a diplomatic war ; it hardly came home in any sense to the people ; it affords no measure of the efforts which England would make, or of the strength which she would put forth, if she were lighting for her life. Her com- merce no doubt would suff"er in a war with a naval antagonist ; her merchant navy would be to a great extent shut up in her ports ; and then her war navy would swarm with seamen thrown upon it for bread. The commerce of England is a hostage in the hands of her enemies, which once killed leaves her free ; and it is the same with her wealth, her credit, her luxury, her love of peace ; these are things which make her unwilling to go to wai, but Vvhich she must and will fling aside when the strug- gle for existence once begins. Want, perhaps famine, might visit her people ; but fiimine does not make a nation less formid- able in war ; it is the most effective recruiting sergeant ; wit. ness the hosts which while famine prevailed in the country filled the camps of revolutionary France. It must" be owned THE EUROPEAN CRIBIS OP 1870. 31 that the Goveniment of England is not very strong, nor is its attitude very imposing. Power is still mainly in the hands of the aristocracy, and the aristocracy, through no special fault of its own, htis undergone the common doom of aristocracies, which even the greatest of them all, the Roman aristocracy, did not escape ; having lost the military character which lielonged to it in the feudal times, and become merely a privileged class sub- ject to all the influences of wealth, luxury, and a social position assured without exertion, it has degenerated, and has ceased to be capable or worthy of leading the nation. This the nation feels, and the consequence is a general appearance of disaffection to the Government and of a want of devotion to the country. But upon any violent shock from without, upon any great dis- aster, a change would quickly ensue. Even the miscarriages in the Crimea were enough to make men talk seriously of revolu- tion With more serious miscaniages and extreme peril revo- lution would come. The Sepoy mutiny proved that in the social strata below the aristocracy there was an abundant reserve of force, and that England at her extreme need might yet pro- duce another Cromwell. If she had one, peril would call him to the front ; and placed at the head of a revolutionary Govern- ment, he would find himself wielding masses of starving but not unwarlike people, with unlimited command of all the appii- -^ ances of war. One far less great than Cromwell could hardly fail in such circumstances to deal his enemy some Jieavy blows. England is commercial and pacific. She is pacific not only because she is commercial, but because the grovving morality and intelligence of her people incline her to peace. Not only from fear or weakness, but from deliberate conviction, and from the ix'icreasiug ascendancy of popular and industrial inter- ests in her . m councils, she is disposed to lay aside the old policy of interference, and to abstain from meddling in what is called the council of nations — that is, in dynastic squabbles, diplomatic bickerings, disputes touching the succession to the throne of Spain, and wranglings about an imaginary balance of power. But as in the case of Prussia, which refused to take part in the Russian war, and was said on that occasion to have be- 3i,. THE BUROPEAN CRISIS OF 1870. come a third rate power, and to have lost her place in the countil of nations, so in the case of England. It does not follow that^ from her present neutrality, or from her general tendency to non-intervention, that political capital made by forcing her to fight for honor and for life would not be dearly earned. I am a bad judge of irfilitary situations and probabilities ; but there is one thing which I believe I may say without misgiving : if war is forced upon us — Tory, Whig, and Radical, aristocrat and dem- ocrat, landowner, merchant, shopkeeper, mechanic and peasant, Englishmen of the mother country, and Englishmen of the Colonies — we shall be found a united people. This is not an agreeable subject ; but when the spirits of violence and rapine are abroad, it is sometimes necessary to assure ourselves and the w^orld that we arc not their helpless prey. We have touched upon the principal points of this great sub- ject ; and, whether you have agreed with me or not, whether your comprehension of the subject, or of any part of it, has been in any degree assisted or not, you know at least that you have done good by coming here. You have aided a beneficent institution, and one not altogether alien to the theme of my lecture, since it is intended to assist some of the humblest members of that great corporation, the rise of which is one of the wonders of our age, and which by the almost instantaneous diffusion of intelligence over t A a continents has made us all, from day to day, almost eye witnesses of this mighty struggle, thereby not only gratify- ing curiosity, but sending through humanity a common ray of thougnt, a common pulse of sympathy, and making one heart and one intellect for the world. Amidst all these storms and earthquakes, amidst the flashing and thundering of the cannon that lays empires in the dust, charity, with robe unstained by blood, pursues in confidence her gentle course. The issues of the mighty events which we have been contemplating, for good or for enl. are still wrapt in night ; but it is certain that you have aided a good though humble cause by contributing to the support of the Newsboys' Home.