for the vain name of ruling the Indies, will find the wealth of the Indies pouring into her territories in a fertilizing shower, instead of merely rolling through it, as it now does, like a mountain torrent, and leaving no marks of its passage, but barrenness and desolation.

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CHAP. IV.

ITALY AND GREECE.

THE late events in Italy are like those in Spain, too recent and too notorious to require particular mention in so general a sketch as this. The friends of liberty were disappointed by the feeble resistance which the Neapolitans opposed to the invasion of Austria. No doubt the cause was betrayed by some of the principal pretended patriots; and this is the best apology that can be offered for the easy discomfiture of the rest. Even this, however, is but a poor excuse; and the shameful defection of so many of the chiefs, proves that the higher classes of society in Italy are as corrupt and unprincipled, as the mass of the people are uninformed and wretched. In such a soil it may well be doubted whether rational liberty and the institutions fitted to secure it, will ever be a spontaneous growth.

Que peut-on au milieu de ce peuple abattu?

Benjamin est sans force, et Juda sans vertu. Nevertheless, as the spirit of political improvement gains ground in Europe, it will probably exercise a beneficial influence upon the character of the Italians, as well as upon the policy and disposition of the cabinets which have recently suc

ceeded in foiling their attempts; and the ability to organise a better system at home will grow up, in the gradual progress of events, under the operation of causes which may be expected at the same time to remove the hostility of foreign powers to its establishment.

The unjust interference of these powers has, however, after all, in this as on former occasions been the real cause which has checked the efforts of the Italians, and entailed upon them a continuance of all the evils under which they labour. It is true that a long course of misgovernment and oppression has depraved, in a great measure, the whole frame of society; but, as was observed in regard to Spain, the stability and vigour of the established institutions has been sapped to an equal or greater degree. We see this plainly enough in their utter incapacity, through the whole extent of Italy, to execute the first and most indispensable function that devolves upon governments—that of protecting the property and persons of the citizens from violence. Hence, although the movement in a better direction might at first be feeble, the resistance of the governments would be feebler still; and the slightest force could hardly fail to overcome it, as happened in fact at Naples. Thus if the country were left to itself, it would find, in the state of degradation and decay to which it had sunk, the antidote as well as the poison; and the people would have had the opportunity of acquiring in

formation respecting the principles of good government in the practical school of experience, the only one in which they can be studied with effect. They might have fallen into errors or committed excesses at the beginning, but would finally have worked out their own salvation, had they not been stopped short in their progress, and condemned to another period of hopeless oppression, by the interference of the Christian allies.

It is difficult to speak of the proceedings of these allies in regard to Italy with the moderation which usage has appropriated to the discussion of public measures and characters. Precisely similar, in their essential features, to the aggressions of Bonaparte, and to the partition of Poland by the same powers, they are yet more odious than either, because they are masked by hypocritical pretences of religion and justice. The Austrian government, incapable of alleging even the possibility of actual danger from the revolution at Naples, was compelled to seek a pretext for invasion in the supposed irregularity of the manner in which it was effected. It was the work of secret societies and a revolted army. What then? Was it for Austria to regulate the manner in which the people of the Sicilies should reform their institutions? But mark the impudence of these pretences. Secret societies and revolted troops were the great machines employed by the German powers, and Austria among the rest, in shaking off the yoke of

Napoleon. Not only so; but this very society of Colliers, which is denounced as seditious and impious, was founded under the patronage and encouragement of the allied powers, and for objects precisely similar to those for which it has now been employed. Is it admissible for powers which respect either the public or themselves, to insult, in this way,.common sense and consistency, by denouncing their own proceedings as criminal, when imitated by others, and condemning, as treasonable, institutions of their own foundation? If we even wave all these considerations, and state the language of the allies in the form most favourable to them, it would amount to this: You are pursuing an object which we think injurious; you have adopted one political system, and we another; we will force ours upon you at the point of the bayonet. Shame itself ought to have arrested them in such a project, when they remembered that their only pretext for the long wars they had waged against the French revolution, was the disposition shown by France to force her political systems upon other nationssystems at least as plausible as that of the allies, and maintained by those who propagated them with at least as much honesty. The conduct of the French convention, in this particular, is denounced by Martens as monstrous; but circumstances alter cases; and this worthy publicist, in his capacity of member of the German Diet, would probably have applied a much