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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

ment against them. Even in the Mahometan countries, however rude and brutal may be their outward forms, the essential state of things does not seem to be materially worse. There, as here, an individual, whose existence is wholly independent of political affairs, may probably vegetate at ease, except at the occurrence of some disastrous crisis, which may happen alike in Europe as in Asia; and if he has less security for his property, he also pays an infinitely smaller price for it. In both, if he attempts to step out of this circle and interfere in the slightest degree by deed or word with the action of government, his property, liberty, and life are instantly forfeited, and the only difference seems to be, whether the sentence is executed by Janissaries or gens d'armes, the bowstring or the bayonet.

But the difference in favour of Europe, and the consolation of the friends of liberty and humanity, lie in this-that the oppression, under which most of the christian countries are now labouring, is an accidental and transitory state of things, the agonizing effort of despotism to retain its hold upon the power that is slipping through its grasp by the. action of the great forces of nature, and which it is about as easy to control in this way, as it would be to throw a halter over the tempest. This state of

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

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