the statesmen of a forty years' peace. This last-mentioned peril, being too great and too obvious to be passed over, became the immediate cause of war; and yet its significance and its danger depended on a succession of events spread over a previous century. It might have been no more than the occupation of a good commercial station by a civilised power instead of an effete barbarism, and a benefit rather than a danger to the rest of Europe. Why are the integrity and independence of the Ottoman empire become so important to us, bound up as they now are with the last hopes of the countrymen of John Sobieski? Not as the beginning, but as the consummation of Russian encroachment. We know not any rule of morals or of policy which requires us to rejoice in the terms of peace being limited to the prevention of the final iniquity. We see no grounds for self-righteous exultation in the fact that we have not sought to dismember or to degrade the empire of the Czars. We can only see that, having deferred action too long, we are obliged to content ourselves with staving off the last danger, and to put up with insufficient securities obtained at the price of gigantic efforts. Will Europe derive such an amount of security from the results of the present war, if now brought to a close, as might fairly and reasonably be expected? We cannot think that it will. We subscribe to the condemnation which has been passed by others on the cant phrase, that a great country should not wage a little war. The proper answer to it is to quote Johnson's line on the subject of driving fat oxen. But the results of a great war should be of commensurate importance. The agencies which it sets in motion are too vast and too rarely available, as well as too solemn and too grievous, to be used without extracting from them all the good that they can yield. We should not lay down our arms in such a war merely because we have got what will do, if something that will do better is within our reach. In virtue of the precious blood which has been spilt, it is the right of the combatant to run some risks in order to complete his work. The Eastern danger arises from two causes: the aggressive spirit of Russia, and the weakness of Central Europe. We are aware that some whose opinions are entitled to respect deny the existence of the first. They rely on the quiet acquisitive character said to belong to the middle classes there as here, and are content to await the progress of commerce and the growth of riches as sufficient antidotes to the ambition of the house of Romanoff. To us this appears a most uncertain speculation. What we really know is, that ever since the Czars have lived at St. Petersburg they have pursued one undeviating course of aggression with a united nation at their backs. They have not been provoked to it by the attacks of their neighbours, allured to it by the exigencies of their commerce, or impelled to it by the pressure of barbarous tribes seeking a livelihood and settling down into quiet citizens when they have found it. Whatever travellers may report of the inoffensive talk and habits of the bourgeoisie, history teaches-is teaching at this very momentthat the habitual condition of the country is to follow an ambitious and grasping Czar with a kind of religious enthusiasm and faith in destiny. We take a long run of events to be the best evidence of the real tendencies of a nation, and lay little stress on the psychological deductions of travellers. But if we attached more weight than we do to these latter, our opinion would for practical purposes remain unaltered. It will not do to reason as if the house of Romanoff were now for the first time trying their 'prentice hands at the career of ambition, in the face of a rapid increase of commercial tendencies all over the globe. The question is not of founding but of completing their edifice. The arid plains of the interior are passed. The Russian frontier is within a few days' march of Vienna. The next step, if it is ever made, will add wealth and luxury to a barbaric empire, which has already reached the limits of mere barbaric conquest. Moreover, the Romanoffs are not in the main rash or foolhardy people. In the present instance they have miscalculated; but generally they bide their time, invade countries ready for their yoke, and keep what they overrun. They have corn and wine and cattle within their own boundaries, and endless capacities for subsisting a vast population. Proprietors may be distressed by the compulsory enlistment of their serfs, and may be rendered unable to purchase the luxuries furnished by the manufacturing nations; but Russia does not rely at bottom on her foreign commerce, or the money which foreign commerce brings. She will not quake, her monarchs will not tremble in their citadels, on account of monetary crises, although the want of pecuniary resources may from time to time induce a pause, as at present. She can afford to move slowly. She need only ask at each pause to be allowed to remain where she is. That too large a part of what she asks in this respect will be granted now is the unsatisfactory feature in the approaching pacification. Turn now to the second source of weakness-the condition of Central Europe. What do we find there? In the north the straggling kingdom of Prussia, the rival of Austria, at present the stanch friend of Russia, and by reason of her anomalous boundaries presumably bent on consolidating her own territory at the expense of her southern neighbours; in the middle, the battle-fields of Europe; in the south, shivering, bankrupt, po lice-ridden Austria, the Fouché of states, ready to play the jackal to any great power which will abet her in corrupting and enslaving the population of that Danube valley which holds so much of the youngest blood of Europe. No one can deny these facts; no one can deny the dangers which they imply; and yet, strange to say, those are called "visionary" who would have their bearing on the Russian war duly considered. The Russian war, we admit, did not directly involve the reconstruction of Central Europe; but the position of affairs at the close of the last campaign would have justified every effort to remove those pressing dangers which impend over it on the side of Russia. One object was to invite Prussia to pursue her own aggrandisement by incarnating the liberal tendencies of Northern Germany, and by presenting herself as an independent and progressive power, able and willing to realise the best aspirations of German nationality. Another object was, to throw Austria on the task of really conciliating her subjects north of the Alps. The way to accomplish both would have been to destroy Russian domination in Poland. We are alive to the difficulties and dangers of such an attempt. We are aware that to make it would have been to some extent to walk by faith rather than by sight. We do not forget that if a peace is practically concluded before these pages see the light, we shall be open to the reproach of discussing schemes no longer placed within the choice of politicians. But our object here, as throughout this article, is to give voice to the widelydiffused feeling, which we share to the utmost, that the contemplated peace will be unsatisfactory, because the tone of public men gives us no assurance that its shortcomings are unavoidable. This feeling must be expressed with all plainness, for England cannot relapse into indifference to foreign affairs; and a new and more worthy policy ought to be inaugurated by a healthier and better-educated popular sentiment. We have already expressed our conviction that it would have been a wise audacity to attempt to regenerate Poland. Our belief that it could have been done has been fully confirmed by recent events. Looking to Russia's antecedents, we cannot believe that her actual disasters, balanced as they were by some successes, would alone have induced her to sue for peace. Some blow nearer to the heart of her power must have been felt to be approaching. The threat of an invasion of Poland must have determined her submission. Such a threat must have had a double force. Russia must have felt, on the one hand, that its execution would annihilate the schemes of Peter and of Catherine; she must have felt also, that to avoid the danger by making peace would probably insure her dominion in Poland for ever. We have admitted that there would have been some audacity in the stroke; but that fact seems decisive as to its necessity. If the national light is now flickering in its socket, where will it be twenty-five years hence, if the interval is employed in the deportation of the patriotic, the corruption of the nobles, and the relief of the serfs? Poland will then, in good truth, be "a menace to Germany," and Russia may find rich consolation for the loss of a navy, in having troops at Vienna ready to meet her on the Bosphorus when she marches to it through the rich provinces of Asia Minor. The greater risk has been run, in order to avoid the less. The make-shift policy has been followed. The smallest possible sacrifice of vested interests has been preferred to the righting of great wrongs, and the removal of pressing dangers; and that too when (humanly speaking) the last opportunity was presented. Why is all this? Is it only owing to the difficulties of the French Emperor? If it be so, a large share of our own responsibility is removed; but his calculations must have been largely affected by the spirit in which English ministers have looked at public affairs. Their words and their acts (not now only, but in the year 1848, when the game was much more in our hands than it is now) persuade us that they have been actuated by that baneful system of motives summed up in the polite phrase, 66 consideration for the situation of Austria." The worst conservatism-the conservatism of abuses and of shams; the worst policy-the policy of the ostrich when it hides its head in the sand; the worst morality-the morality which seeks to cheat the devil in the dark; the worst caution-the caution which ever turns the eye of mistrust and jealousy to the upright and generous side; every form of political cowardice, faithlessness, and hollowness, is implied in that fatal Austrian leaning which disfigures our whole policy. There are elements of barbaric grandeur in Russia, and universal empire is, after all, a regal dream; but Austria's prayer is but to be let alone, to work evil, to destroy freedom, to corrupt public virtue, to fetter thought, to enslave conscience, and to maintain an uneasy supremacy by fomenting the discords of her own wretched subjects, pitting one against another, and, if need be, setting each to slaughter his neighbour. Labra movet, metuens audiri: Pulchra Laverna, That this is an Austrian peace, concocted by Austria, promoted by Austria, to be followed by a closer alliance between Austria and France, is enough in itself to awaken every suspicion of its real adequacy. The world can hardly see a more anomalous and mischievous position than that now occupied by Austria. Her aspects are so multifarious, the elements of her strength and her weakness are so complex, that the only thing which can at all times be safely predicated of her is, that she may at any time be convulsed and rendered dependent. At the same time, her weakness cannot be reckoned on. Her opportunities of throwing a weight into the political scales are far too great to be intrusted to a nation presenting no moral guarantees for independence. Every state whose mission it is to hold keys and to maintain limits (SavoyPiedmont, in the wars of the seventeenth century, forms a notable instance) is open to bribery on the right hand and on the left, and must be expected to temporise and vacillate, promoting the interest now of one of its neighbours, now of the other. But however unfavourable such conditions of existence may be to the minor political morals of the boundary-state itself, they are attended with comparatively little danger to the commonwealth of nations in general, where, as in the case of Savoy and Piedmont at the period to which we refer, that state is at one within itself, able to defend itself, and not able to bring vast forces into the field on any side. It is required of it that it maintain a certain stedfast isolation amid its ever-changing alliances, and be prepared to dare all and to risk all when its own nationality is at stake. To this end it must be essentially military; and it follows that if compact and military, it must also be small, or it would cease to be a mere boundary-state, and would take its place among the great powers. But Austria has not these characteristics. She is a fallen great power. She is talked of as a boundary-state, a state limiting its ambition to self-defence, because her independence is endangered by internal decay. She can within certain limits still act on a great scale, show an imperial front, and affect the likeness of a kingly crown. Such a part she will not resign while she has a neighbouring, a sympathising, and a powerful ally, able and willing to hide the patches in her purple, and to support her while he uses her. It is our firm conviction that Austria has been for years, and will continue to be, the tool of Russia; and that while England follows in the wake of Austrian diplomacy there will be no safety for Europe. Austria is no longer an empire of the first class, and she has not one of the qualities necessary in a mere boundary-state. Two topics will be urged in opposition to this view. First, it is said that Austria has repeatedly shown an unexpected vitality, and more particularly in her last great crisis. We apprehend that these appearances are illusory. There never was a time when there was a more general opinion than now that Austria cannot keep Lombardy for ever; and it was only in |