the proceedings from another side. "What to do with the Poles," was the provoking problem that broke in upon the game and marred it; bringing Russian threats to bear upon the deliberation, and with their dull pressure finally wear out the paroxysm of German enthusiasm. Had Poland existed as an independent state, the experiment at Frankfort would have been sheltered from the disturbance of St. Petersburg, and cleared from an obtrusive foreign element that artificial comit an gave plexity. The non-existence of Poland is the vassalage of Germany.

Her

The effect of a restoration on the Vistula would no doubt be to alter the present balance between the two great German states. Prussia, compensated for the loss of Posen at the expense of a few mediatised grand-dukes, would gain, not only in compactness, but in influence, by becoming purely German. political risks would be diminished; her probable future aggrandised. Austria, on the other hand, is, in the first place, less easy to compensate for the surrender of Galicia; and, in the next, is brought, by the reappearance of Poland, visibly nearer to the dangers that always menace her empire. A free nation on one side of the Carpathians cannot coexist with a suppressed people on the other: Vienna will not proceed far in the "assimilation of Hungary" in the face of an independent Warsaw. Indeed, we are astonished that this consideration did not occur to the "German Statesman" as fatal to his proposal that the Principalities be given as the equivalent for Galicia: provinces which a successful rising in Hungary would wholly cut off from communication with the rest of the empire, would be but insecure payment for the recognition of a free Poland. Western Europe will never consent, we trust, to prejudice the Hungarian cause by surrendering the Siebenbürgen to the Austrian embrace, and perpetuating the tyranny that now wantons at Bucharest and Jassy. It is time that the Viennese empire be stopped in its progress eastwards,-be cut off from Russian contact, and be brought within the salutary influence of Western opinion and civilised rivalries. So devoutly Catholic a state is unfit to govern countries of Greek or mixed religions; and we would rather see her extension further up the Danube than further down. Old as her evil ways are, we should not despair of amendment, did she act as a purely South-German power, from her own hereditary states as a centre. At all events, indemnification for Galicia must be so devised as rather to consolidate Germany than to distribute Austria.

If the restoration of Poland is a step towards German unity on the one hand, and towards Hungarian independence on the other, it releases the Danubian provinces from Muscovite in

trigues and periodic foreign occupation. Moldavia, lying between Hungary and Poland, Wallachia between Hungary and Turkey, would be able to develop their resources, and wield their institutions, undisturbed by the presence of aggressive states. There seems no urgent call for any change in their old relations to the Porte, which were faulty chiefly from sources of weakness and interference which would then be cut off. The three states, -Poland, Hungary, Turkey,-historically trained to common action in various combinations, would form natural allies; and each one of them having a separate and deepest grudge against Russia, their union, secured not less by moral than by material interests, would effectually bar the advance of a Tartar power upon Europe. It is the fashion with diplomatists of the conventional school to profess reliance on Austria as holding the Eastern Protectorate of the Continent. But except among sexagenarian statesmen and their blind followers, we venture to say there is not a well-informed politician in Europe who does not know the vanity of this reliance, and feel perfectly assured that the real alternative for the civilised world is, to succumb to "the paramount destinies," or to establish the cordon of free states. Whatever may ultimately become of the Ottoman Empire in Europe, the fate of Constantinople is, by their creation, rescued from prejudgment, and detached from the reversionary legacies of Peter the Great. Time is thus secured for the undisturbed operation of natural causes, political and ethnological, in the East; and the problem, removed from the presence of a dictatorial coercion, and surrounded by new and healthier conditions, cannot fail to receive a less fatal solution than we should otherwise apprehend. By that time Italy will be something more, we trust, than "a geographical expression ;" and the Mediterranean, no longer surrounded by one power and many weaknesses, will have escaped the risk of becoming either "a French lake" or an appendage to the Euxine.

With what double-quick time "the paramount destinies" may overtake the paralysed continent, if the present crisis be lost, one single consideration will show. Reconstitute Poland: and you compel Russia to furnish the barrier against herself; you recruit your battalions of defence from her own army of aggression, and gain a twofold strength. Neglect and abandon Poland: and then, despairing of the West, which has only pitied and betrayed her, she will turn to the East with avenging reconciliation, accept her "assimilation," and fulfil her destinies as the van-guard of attack on Europe instead of the rear-guard of defence. It is not to be supposed that sixteen millions of men, constituting the very pith of the Slavonic stem, imparting the vital force to any power that holds them,-men with a herit

age of historic recollections kept fresh by recent heroism and endeared by protracted exile,-men united in the belief of a great future for them, and restless because watching for its approach, -will be content to sink into negation and play no part upon the world. Deny a future to their country, and they will take it for their race. The Slavonic family numbers some eighty millions, protruded in distinct advance-posts into every state of Eastern Europe, but in Poland alone forming an unbroken and homogeneous mass. The whole of this family is possessed, as by a religion, with the belief that the next volume of the world's history is to be theirs; that as other tribes are frittered into disunion or wear out, their compact body is to move westward and take its turn of dominion. This exciting dream the Czar does not neglect to humour and sustain. While we poor sceptics are ashamed to appeal to any manly faith and generous enthusiasm, he reigns and conquers by the power of intense and ambitious superstitions. He turns to the South, and lifts the standard of the Greek cross. He turns to the West, and shows the banner of Panslavism ready to be unfurled. The oppressions of orthodox Christendom serve his purpose with the foreign Hellenes, and the aspirations of race with the Catholic Poles. Of the former weapon you have hoped to deprive him by securing to the Greek Christians their rights; you must turn the latter against him by giving the Poles a career. If you do not make haste to divide the Slaves politically, they will ere long flow together ethnologically, and sweep with a wave of irresistible advance over the lands of riper civilisation. In this form, if you provide no better, will come the answer to the indolent question of the political unbeliever-" But is there a Poland?" At the head of the Russian crusade, bearing the Panslavic flag, with Slovaks and Pomeranians flocking round them as they go, leaving the wreck of Turkey to Bulgarians and Serbs, exploding Austria by firing Croats, and Tschechs, and Dalmatians at once, they will bring their reply, "Yes, here we are!" In short, this people, scattered, oppressed, disappointed of its destinies, yet still a people with a memory and a hope is and must remain a power;-to-day, mainly in the hands of our enemy; to-morrow, if we will, our bulwark against him ;-but failing this, turning the next day into the retributive instrument by which he becomes the scourge of the world. Make of Warsaw a new Slavonic centre,-Western, Catholic, and free; and the old political and religious antagonism towards Moscow will suppress the incipient ethnological sympathy; will turn it from concurrence into competition; and direct the face of patriotic ambition eastward instead of westward. It has become the fashion to treat this opinion as the special crotchet of refugees and democrats. It

was not so regarded when it was last discussed by the assembled diplomatists of Europe; it is not so regarded, we are convinced, by any first-class statesman living now. The French Emperor and Lord Palmerston do not, we imagine, dissent from the judgment of Talleyrand, "that the one supreme question for Europe is the Polish; that the partition of that country is and must remain the presage and cause of endless disturbances; that only in its restoration is any security for the Continent to be found." They know the significance of Metternich's emphatic warning to Hardenberg,-" that posterity would never forgive this generation, if the opportunity were lost of limiting Russia by the re-establishment of Poland; and that Austria had better perish than permit the annexation of Warsaw." They see clearly enough the truth of Lord Castlereagh's assertion, that "if Russia is hereafter to wield a Polish national army as a new and most formidable instrument of war,"-" the adjacent powers cannot live in security and peace, in the presence of such a military power, when stript of their frontiers; nor will Europe feel satisfied with that equilibrium for its daily protection which requires its whole military power to be displaced and put in motion upon every aberration of a particular state from the line of duty." They know that time has detracted nothing from the justice of these sentiments. But financial necessity in the one country, parliamentary government in the other, has established a habit of political dependence on middle-class and moneyed opinion, an opinion sensitive to sacrifice, inapprehensive of historical relations, and sceptical of international dangers. Hence our statesmen fear to rely upon their own convictions; and act less on the policy they would ultimately approve than on computation of the support immediately at hand. At the present crisis this moral cowardice is, we believe, a complete mistake. Let them frankly ask support from the two nations for a bold and statesman-like enterprise in Poland, and party feeling and selfish discontent will be unable to show their heads. Let them ask no leave and no advice at Vienna and Berlin; and, if they only contrive to succeed, they will get plenty of support even thence. The pressure of Russia once lifted off, German sentiments will begin to return; the opinions of a better age of German statesmen will recover their weight; and the shuffling neutrality of courts be exchanged for the hearty good-will of peoples.

The policy which we have indicated could not fail to alter the attitude of the Northern as well as the German powers. In the absence of any counterbalancing state upon the Baltic ex

* Gervinus's Geschichte des 19ten Jahrhunderts, i. 209.

† Castlereagh Correspondence with the Emperor Alexander, p. 23.

cept the Prussian and the Scandinavian as at present defined, it is vain to expect active co-operation in the war from Denmark or Sweden. As on the Continent, so within the Sound, we encounter nothing but Russia at first-hand or Russia at secondhand;-but still every where Russia. Has she not a reversionary interest in the Danish crown? Does she not stand virtually at the gates of Stockholm? Is it forgotten by either, how she took Norway from the one to give it to the other, and awarded Finland to herself? Has she not, within two years, set her thievish eyes on Finmark, and despatched "summer travellers" to survey by stealth the lines of road, and take soundings in Fiords where the water is never frozen and the largest navy might always lie? In the face of a neighbour whose power and inclinations are alike unchastened, what help can these second-rate states dare to give us? King Oscar may well fear that Finland, if restored to him at the expense of a Russia otherwise entire, would be but a fatal gift, which no outside Atlantic alliances could enable him to hold; and which would never be repaid without a huge territorial usury, if not the forfeiture of a crown. But with a restored Poland at Riga it would be otherwise. The territories bordering on the Neva would be enclosed between two states with no probable causes of mutual collision, and with a common paramount interest in preventing the aggrandisement of the Czars. An advance on Finland could be taken in the rear from Courland. The whole group of countries now paralysed by a terror that is ubiquitous would breathe again, and be free both to develop their interior life and to ally themselves by their natural affinities. North Germany, now misrepresented by its courts and benumbed by its officialism, would assert its true genius again, and escape from federal intrigues and military drill into national existence. The lands of the Northmen and the Danes, so akin to our own in habits, language, and feeling, would join us in defending the freedom of the seas, in favouring the development of secondary nations, and checking any tendency to huge uniformity of empire. The countries of Luther, of Gustavus Adolphus, and of the Princes of Orange would own with us the deep pledges which their history and ours has given to the Reformation; and refuse to surrender the principles of Protestant civilisation to any returning sacerdotalism. And wherever, as in Sardinia, in Poland, (may we not add, in Italy and in Hungary?) the aspiration after political liberty has sprung direct out of the bosom of the old church without passing through the medium of a religious revolution the alliance of France, Catholic but not papal, with England, conservative though Protestant and free, against the living embodiment of hierarchical and military aggression, may well set at