persuade himself that God neither exerts any providence here, nor any retribution hereafter; and therefore the ambitious man may pursue power, and the voluptuary pleasure, to any excess, or in any form, without apprehending either present compunction, or future punishment. Whether he succeeded in convincing himself of the soundness of his doctrines, is very doubtful; that he has not gained many converts may be inferred from this—that the merited unpopularity of his philo sophical works has contributed to that neglect and disrepute into which his political treatises have undeservedly fallen, and left a stigma upon his name, which his splendid talents have tended rather to expose than palliate in the eyes of posterity.

ARTICLE X.

Les Cours du Nord dévoileés; ou, le Secret de Töplitz. Par un Ancien Ministre résident à la Diète de Francfort. Paris

Decembre 1835.

UNDER this pretending, and somewhat affected, title, we have been surprised to meet with one of the ablest pamphlets, on the foreign policy of France, and its relations to the great Northern coalition, which has issued from the press of that, or any other, country. We are not prepared, indeed, to assent to all the positions which the author attempts to establish with regard to the objects of the congress, which was so mysteriously convoked, and so secretly conducted, last autumn, in the depths of Bohemia. Yet, they may be looked upon as ingenious suppositions, which deserve more attention than is usually bestowed on political prognostications,-because they evidently proceed from the pen of one, who has a close knowledge, and probably some actual experience, of the intrigues which he describes. We may be mistaken as to the immediate ends of the meeting of the three sovereigns; but the light which our author throws upon their ulterior designs, and the contrasts which he draws between the efficiency of their diplomatic agents, and those of the French government, furnish new and important information, to awaken the attention, and strengthen the policy, of western Europe. In the article on the Prussian Commercial

League, in our last number, we described the influence which Russia has long exercised over the German confederationthe skill with which, as early as the year 1828, she pointed out "le rôle de la Prusse”—and the tenacity with which she has forwarded her continental system, in the presence of changes which threatened the peace of Europe. The apathy, with which France and England have viewed the policy of the Northern courts, is now dispelled; every day brings us fresh tokens of the rising anxiety and indignation of the English people; and the meeting, which took place at Töplitz, has furnished grounds for endless conjectures and increased apprehension. We are tempted to give the passage, in which the author of the pamphlet before us describes the relations of France and England to the Northern powers, under these cir

cumstances.

"When the three sovereigns of the North met at Töplitz and at Kalisch, the journals of all parties, in France and in England, were equally at a loss to determine the motives and the object of that mysterious meeting. It was the first time in the history of European diplomacy, that two powers, which had heretofore boasted of a preponderating influence, found themselves shut out from a solemn congress, by the sovereigns of three great continental nations. The Quadruple Alliance had indeed been secretly concluded by the respective ministers of France and England, but its object was explicitly avowed after the treaty had been ratified. The formation of an exclusive congress by the Northern powers, for the express purpose of discussing secret questions, if it does not amount to an act of hostility towards their two great allies, cannot but be regarded as a certain proof of the distrust and ill-will which the sovereigns of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, bear to those of England and of France. The complete ignorance of the cabinets of St. James and of the Tuileries, as to the questions which were agitated at the Congress, is the most disgraceful part of the occurrence. The language which has been held by the Emperor Nicolas to the municipality of Warsaw, and the attitude of the Northern powers-emboldened by their recent conference-has excited the indignation and the alarm of the press in England and in France. And the public demands with impatience some explanations on the subject of the intrigues which have been so obscurely carried on at Töplitz-explanations, which it is the duty of the well paid minister of Foreign Affairs, and of the ambassadors, who receive such ample salaries, to communicate. Previously to the opening of this celebrated congress, and during its continuance, these great statesmen lay, as it were, stretched along, with their ears to the ground, to catch the faintest sound from the mine which was being prepared at Töplitz. But it will not be difficult to demonstrate that we shall derive no information from their reports.

"What generous citizen can contemplate the journeys, the excursions, and the frequent interviews of the allied sovereigns of the North, without a feeling of grief and anxiety? A feeling which will be increased from day to day, when he reflects on the vague and inadequate opinion which is entertained in the West of Europe of the dangers which threaten it from the East.”—(p. 1—3.)

The author goes on to state his opinion that the conferences of Töplitz, from which the agents of the British and French cabinets were excluded, sufficiently attest the loss of their former political influence, and the inability of those governments to oppose, or to anticipate, the aggressions and the designs of their adversaries.

The origin of the two great systems, which absorb all the interests and all the accessory questions now agitated in the movement of European politics, may be traced to the years 1820 and 1823. The former of these systems received its. impulse from the influence of England; and at the time of the sentimental Spanish campaign of the Duc d'Angoulême, it was foreseen that the hopes of the liberal party, throughout Europe, depended on the maintenance of a coalition between the constitutional powers of the south, destined to counteract the absolutist influence of the Holy Alliance, which the Emperor Alexander had succeeded in forming to serve the purposes of his mystical ambition. At that time, the policy of the Restoration presented a fatal and insurmountable obstacle to an alliance, which might have seconded the influence of England in behalf of the liberties of Europe.

The second system, on the contrary, which was headed and directed by Russia, was followed with constancy by the Restoration. So much had been said of the magnanimity of the Emperor Alexander, during the transactions of 1816 and 1818, that the elder branch of the Bourbons conceived itself to be indissolubly wedded to the policy of Russia. At one time this feeling was so strong, that the Count Pozzo di Borgo, who was then the Russian ambassador in Paris, may almost be said to have belonged to the French cabinet; he was consulted on the affairs of state, as if he had been one of the ministers; and ample means were at his disposal for maintaining the preponderance of the system, and the interests of the government which he represented.

In the year 1828, during the campaign of the Russian army on the Balkan, this devotion of the French cabinet to the policy of Russia was peculiarly manifest. It is impossible that a cabinet of tolerable sagacity should not have discerned the object of the Czar's ambition. The lances of the Cossacks pointed to Constantinople-as the term of their expedition;

and France was as much interested as England, in preventing Russia from obtaining the supreme command of the Bosphorus. But the Count de Laferronays, who was entirely devoted to the interests of Russia, was at that period minister of foreign affairs in France: and the Duc de Mortemart, who was no less imbued with Russian principles and feelings, was the representative of France at the court of St. Petersburgh. Under this two-fold influence, no attention was paid to the wellgrounded remonstrances of other powers; it was in vain that Prince Metternich solicited the French government to accede to the league which had naturally been formed between the cabinets of Vienna and of London; it was in vain that the Duke of Wellington seconded the representations made by the Austrian cabinet;-the minister De Laferronays was deaf to these observations. In the meantime, Count Pozzo di Borgo did not cease to allure the French government by every possible means-by hopes which could never be realised-and by hints that the frontiers of the Rhine might perhaps be the recompense which France would receive for the support she gave to Russia. M. de Laferronays rejected the co-operation of England and of Austria at that critical juncture; and the policy of France remained blindly subjected to the designs of the cabinet of St. Petersburgh.

Whatever may be thought of the errors and the strange illusions of the Prince de Polignac, it must be admitted that his accession to the head of affairs was marked by a signal alteration in the foreign policy of his country. The political capacity of the Prince de Polignac was certainly very circumscribed; but he had acquired a certain experience in the transaction of business, and he derived, from his long residence in England, and his intimacy with British statesmen, a tendency which was decidedly more in harmony with the policy of St. James, and more opposed to the projects of Russia, than that of the Comte de Laferronays. To counteract this propensity, Charles X. was in the habit of dictating dispatches to the Prince Jules, whom he always treated more as his private secretary than as the prime minister of France. The King preserved his intimate connexion with the Emperor Nicolas. He displayed much coldness and much ingratitude to the English cabinet; and he forgot that when his brother, Louis

XVIII., received the Order of the Garter upon his restoration in 1814, that prince had said, that, "after God, he owed his 66 crown to the Prince Regent."

Whilst the influence of France was thus subjected to the direction of Russia, by the base or misguided policy of the individuals who were at the head of affairs, the efforts which England had made in the cause of the liberal communities of Europe, were paralysed by the defection of her neighbour. The battle of Navarino was the finishing stroke of that pernicious system, which destroyed so many irreparable bulwarks in the East. The excitement, occasioned by the Greek insurrection, was successfully encouraged by Russia; Germany became the theatre of fresh intrigues, which gradually, but powerfully, affected the policy of all her numerous sovereigns, -the language of her press-and the liberties, or hoped-for liberties, of her people; whilst years were allowed to elapse, before the diplomatic agents of France either resisted or discovered the boundless activity of the Northern powers. The statement of the different means pursued by the powers of the North, and those of the West, is forcibly and judiciously given in the pamphlet before us.

"It cannot be doubted that the younger nations of the North exercise all their faculties, and employ all their resources, with a view to the acquisition of future preponderance; whilst the states, which are in possession of advantages long-since acquired, continue mechanically to tread in the same antiquated

routine.

"A new era in European diplomacy commenced at the time when the sovereigns, combined against France, saw themselves compelled to call to their aid the opinions, feelings, prejudices, and passions of the people, and to give a new impulse and direction to public opinion.

"Most of the diplomatists quitted the solitude of the cabinet, which, till then, had been their exclusive retreat, and mingled with the people, for the purpose of taking into their own hands the management of the public press, and directing the tendency of the literature of the day. The insurrection in Spain, in 1808; the insurrection in the Tyrol, in 1809; the battles of Aspern and Eslingen, in the same year, where the Austrian Landwehr combatted for an idea-a principle so contrary to the spirit of the Austrian army in the preceding campaigns; the adventurous expeditions of Schill in Thuringen, of Daremberg in Westphalia, and of the Duke of Brunswick, who penetrated as far as Lubeck, at the head of three thousand volunteers, for the purpose of exciting the north of Germany, and the arrival of a legion of German volunteers in Spain, to fight against Napoleon, were the first effects of the new political levers, which the cabinets of the North employed. What then ought to have been the policy of their political rivals at such a crisis? They should have studied thoroughly the tendency of the spirit of the time, in order to have unravelled the thread of the machinations