things is produced by a reaction of artificial powers against the overwhelming torrent of civilization; and, like all unnatural and convulsive efforts, it demonstrates weakness and not strength in the quarter where it appears. We find in the history of Europe but few traces of this system, previously to the reign of Bonaparte. It was he who first invented and put in practice this vast machinery, which envelops, like an invisible net, every individual in Europe; and it is from him that the present most christian sovereigns have received the discovery as a legacy. It is wonderful that this consideration does not strike them with more force; wonderful that they should make use, without hesitation or scruple, of this mode of government, when they know that the anguish and despair, produced by the operation of it in the hands of its author, was the only effective engine of resistance they were ever able to employ against him. How can they avoid perceiving that the same opinions and feelings, which were arrayed against Bonaparte, are now opposed to them; that the very individuals, who were most active in stimulating the people to resist him, are now languishing in prison or in exile by their order, for professing the same doctrines they held before? In Germany, as in Spain, the patriots, who, in the worst of times, had

rendered the most important services to the royal families, are many of them withering in banishment or dying in dungeons, because they had the courage to shew, by their conduct, that they were inspired by a wish to serve their country, and not by blind devotion to the person of a despot; and the same result that happened in Spain must occur sooner or later in Germany. No power of congresses or gens d'armes can ultimately succeed in nailing this iron mask upon the fair face of civilized

Europe, as a permanent system. The political scene is constantly shifting, its actors are constantly changing their relations to each other, and if, as there is reason to fear, the cause of liberal principles in Germany has not sufficient internal force to make head against the overwhelming mass of foreign influence which now crushes it to the earth, it will infallibly derive relief and assistance from the effect of new political combinations that must happen in the course of events. If one accident does not produce them, another will. The affair of Naples threatened dissolution to the holy alliance, and had the cause of liberty been well supported in Italy, would have completed it. The struggle in the Turkish empire now holds out a new prospect of the same desirable occurrence. Should this also fail, something else will finally

succeed, as the suppression of eleven insurrections in the Spanish peninsula only made the triumph of the twelfth more perfect and brilliant.

Of the different European governments, Germany, the only powerful nation, which is organized in the form of a confederacy, most naturally offers itself as an object of comparison with the United States; and the contrast between the situation of the two countries illustrates very strongly the excellence of our institutions, and the advantages of our position. The blessings we enjoy, and which we never prize sufficiently till we have had the opportunity of ascertaining their value by contrast; these blessings are secured to us by two principal causes, one geographical and the other political. The first is our distance from other nations of superior power, and the second our internal union. Of these propitious circumstances, which may well be regarded as the peculiar favours of Providence bestowed upon our country, the one gives us complete security from foreign violence, without the ruinous resource of standing armies, hardly less dangerous, when necessary, than the evil they are intended to remedy; and the other establishes our domestic politics upon the basis of perpetual peace. We may see in Germany, as in a mirror, what would have been our situation, if we had not possessed the first of these

securities; and what it would be, if we should ever deprive ourselves of the other. Of the bounty of nature, thank God, no human efforts can bereave us ; and we may hope, that the sacred tie of our union will hold us together, as long as the vast Atlantic shall sever us from Europe. If, in an hour of madness, we ever dissolve it, we should then see, as in Germany, our states arrayed against each other in a perpetual succession of internal wars, our militia converted into standing armies, our presidents and governors into hereditary despots, our learned and upright magistrates into an insulting and oppressive aristocracy, and our free and happy population into wretched peasants and personal slaves. We should even lose the security we now derive from our remote position in regard to Europe. Foreign powers would obtain a footing among us, by flattering our sectional passions and interests, and would play us off against each other. Our welfare, like that of Germany, would be sacrificed to their cupidity and ambition; and we should find ourselves entangled in a web of various oppression, which it would be at once impossible to shake off, and torment and death to wear.

CHAPTER VI.

Russia, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

In purely despotic or autocratic governments, the body politic is the sovereign. L'état c'est moi-'I am the state'-was an observation of Louis XIV; and de facto the remark was just. In such countries the only political changes are those, which occur in the person of the ruler, either by the succession of a new incumbent to the throne, or by an alteration in the character and habits of the existing one. For a length of time to come no other changes can occur in Russia, where the mass of the nation is in too uncivilized a state to aspire after better institutions, or to admit their introduction by rulers, who know their value. Violent alterations in the line of succession have been frequent; and within a few years there has been a considerable apparent change in the policy and dispositions of the reigning emperor, which has had, and will continue to have, a very important influence in the general politics of Europe.

The emperor Alexander has been pronounced, till lately, by general acknowledgment, a sincere friend of liberal political principles. They were transmitted to him by hereditary descent from his illustrious grandmother, the great Catherine; and