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THE EUROPEAN EQUILIBRIUM.

BODY of neighboring nations, which have reached nearly the same stage of culture, and with no system of confederation to bind them together, must of necessity have occasional collisions with one another. Let some of them be feeble and others powerful states, the fear of strong neighbors will induce the feeble to combine together for mutual defence; or they will unite under the hegemony of one strong state against the arts and power of another which they regard as more to be dreaded. Their various commercial interests; the feeling of brotherhood in race, or of remote relationship; their fellowship in religion; in short, every thing which in the course of ages creates national character, will act partly to separate them, partly to make them feel their need of each other; the small states from age to age will appear on different sides, but on the whole most of the states will have a traditional line of consistent policy, suggested by their interests and seeming dangers.

The dangers which a circle of homogeneous states will dread will not all spring from human agency, the selfishness and ambition of other states, as a direct result; but changes also not due to human agency, which throw power into the hands of other states without their seeking it, or take away power from a part of such a circle, will excite apprehensions. To prevent the dangers from a neighbor's relative growth of power coalitions will be formed, in the design not only of aiding a state which is unjustly attacked, but of preventing attacks as far as possible, by showing that the coalition is ready to assist its individual members against the schemes of stronger states.

The necessity of maintaining what is substantially the pres

ent state of things has given currency to the figurative expression of the political balance of power. Nations at a given time are weights in a scale which balance one another; but as in the balances, when a heavy weight is added, there is a disturbance, so among the nations whose political actions tell on each other, measures which one or more of them take may result in the elevation or depression, in the prosperity or calamity, of the others. To prevent this is said to be to keep the balance of power or the political equilibrium; the nation which is strong enough to prevent or produce a change is said to hold the balance; and another phrase, to admit a nation to a participation in the European equilibrium, denotes that the interests of this state are of too great weight to be left out of consideration, when the general European interests are brought into compu

tation.

That a balance or something like it will fairly represent the interests of a continent like Europe, scems to be inferred from what has happened at different eras on a scale smaller than that of a continent. Among the Greek states, the contest for the hegemony-whether among the Doric states, between Sparta and Argos, or, on the larger Panhellenic scale, between Sparta and Athens, was no accident nor result of race merely, but must be referred to a general cause, acting whenever small independent states live side by side. This is shown strikingly by the unwillingness of Sparta to allow Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian war to be destroyed: probably it was looked upon as a future ally when Thebes should become too strong. The history of Rome, it is true, shows no such balance of power: she subjugated in detail the states of Italy, and either incorporated them among her citizens, or put them into the position of dependent allies. The Latin states found it to be for their advantage to have a close union with that enterprising community, which was near to them in race and political traditions. But the states less closely allied with Rome in these respects rather strove for incorporation in and equal rights with the central governing republic, than for independence. The great social war, which tested the strength of Rome more than any other event of purely Italian history, was ended by a compromise, which added to the security that there would be no further

occasion for contending with Italian enemies. Outside of Italy, there was no possibility that any other league should arise, except of a defensive nature, against the wide-embracing, all-subduing republic. Rome employed its new subjects to aid it in extending its boundaries, but never thought of forming leagues on equal terms with nations or tribes outside of Italy. It was as solitary in its advances as the spider is when he spreads his web from one bush to another.

The balance of power thus far appears in the form of a leading state in a confederation opposing another leading state in another confederation, similar in some respects, but unlike in others. Athens, by the part it played in the great Persian war, had an opportunity to put itself forward as the head and protector of a number of small maritime states, to which the aid of a great land-power could be of no great immediate use. Its institutions, culture, dialect, all its ways of thinking, made it the natural rival to Sparta in a country like Greece, split up into a multitude of small commonwealths. Yet Sparta, having conquered Messene and humbled Argos, was unquestionably the strongest military power in the country, as well as the natural head of the Dorian communities. Some of these feared Athens, and thus made the military resources of Sparta strong. Some of them had also important commercial interests. By their aid the head of the sea-states, which had offended some of its allies and formed mad schemes of remote conquests, was beaten on land and by sea; so that at the end of the Peloponnesian war its supremacy in every thing save culture and art was forever extinguished. It may, therefore, be well asked whether this was a fair instance of balance of power. We incline to call it so, especially for the reason that after the humiliation of Athens, Thebes in its turn strove to acquire the hegemony, with no such good historical grounds as Athens had in its favor, and aided only by the fear that many of the former allies of Sparta had-that she had grown too great for their safety.

Italy, just before the dawn of the modern period, presents to us struggles for self-preservation against foreign claims of powerful sovereigns, which are much clearer instances of an attempt to secure an international equilibrium. The restorations.

of the old Roman Empire under Charlemagne and Otho I., the former a deliberate movement of the popes to provide for the safety of the Roman See, brought no union with them, but only the right of a foreign suzerain to interfere in Italian affairs. But the protector became too mighty for the protected religious monarch. Hence everywhere either an anti-imperial party was encouraged in the cities by the popes, or the partisans of the emperor reduced to a minimum the ecclesiastical influence in those city-states where his faction had been predominant. Machiavelli sets forth strikingly the policy of the pope; how he wanted "to ride on two anchors," and how, in order to secure this end, he mainly spread strife and "infinite woes" through the peninsula. In the end, Lombardy was, on the whole, with the emperor, Tuscany with the pope; Venice was outside of both influences, so far as to maintain an independent position; and the South of Italy belonged to foreign kings, whom the pope sought to make his vassals. In the course of this long contest, which filled Italy with misery, but everywhere developed unnatural cunning and intelligence, the great aim was originally a reasonable one-to prevent a foreign prince, at first favored by the pope and always acknowledged by the best Italians to have some sort of authority, from stretching that power unduly. In the end, when the towns had every one its own political interests and parties, and when the emperors became little more than a name, the political factions gained an independent condition which was quite aside from their early design. This dualism in Italy can scarcely be called a balance of power, unless the name be restricted to its movements in the first struggles between the popes and the emperors.

When, however, in the times just before the Reformation, foreign sovereigns sought to make good their pretensions in Lombardy and Naples, and the Italian powers of importance were reduced to three or four-to Venice, Florence, Milan, the Papal States, and Naples, with Genoa-there arose what may be called an Italian equilibrium. The disturbance grew principally out of the invasions of the peninsula by Charles VIII. and Louis XII. of France. The desire to retain independence and the existing order of things led to combina

tions, in which the popes naturally took a leading part. The foreign powers France and Spain were of course on opposite sides, while the Italian powers passed over from one side to the other. In 1508 we find all the Italian powers united with France for the destruction of Venice; but soon afterwards fear of France led to a new league for the purpose of getting rid of the influence of so troublesome a power as France in the politics of the peninsula. This purpose, however, was not fully effected until the battle of Pavia brought the person of Francis I. into the hands of his great rival, Charles V.

In this chapter of history, at the close of the medieval period, we see arrangements dictated by self-preservation, which are modified and thwarted by the personal schemes of one or another of the parties. It was all-important for the properly Italian powers that the French kings should have no control in Italy; and yet the League of Cambray in 1508 united these powers, under the influence of the pope, for the destruction of Venice, which if effected would have rendered the independence of the Italian states much less certain. Here we find that taking place which will always happen in political combinations one member will have feebler interests at stake than another, and will be tempted to add its weight to the opposite scale. We cannot expect that the motives of sovereigns and the interests of nations can act in history exactly as the weights act in the balance; a series of historical changes is constantly going forward; men die, and others, with the spirit of a new age, come to the helm of affairs; nations come to have or to think that they have new interests, so that the equilibrium is subject to a continual disturbance.

The first instance of an equilibrium in the great European world is owing to the rise of the House of Hapsburg, which, after Charles V., divided into two lines-the Spanish, holding in its hands, together with Spain and the foreign dominions of Spain, the Low Countries, and extensive parts of Italy; and the Austrian, which then held, and long continued to hold, the office of German Emperor. These naturally united to protect and defend the family interests, and found allies in the nations most devotedly attached to the Catholic Church; while France stood over against them, supported by

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