tired out with the role of the modern Attilas and Tamerlanes which the Czars affect at its expense, will only be too happy to find a tranquil occupation in an honest industry employed for its advancement at home, and the advantage of its peaceable neighbours. It will cease to be the scourge of God of those latter times, and Europe will not be in the necessity of keeping up immense armaments by land and sea, at an enormous cost of treasure, to watch the Baltic and Black Sea. Then, and then only, will be re-established the true balance of power, for the tranquillity and prosperity of the human race, and a final peace, thus solidly secured, and the freedom of trade which will be its result, will more than compensate the expenses of a just, honorable, and providential war.

ART. VII.-THE WAR AND THE FUTURE.

1. Speech of Lord Palmerston, at Romsey. Reported in "The Times," October 6th, 1855.

2. Speech of Sir Archibald Alison, at Glasgow. Reported in "The Times," October 13th, 1855.

3. Letter of Richard Cobden, Esq., M.P. Addressed to Edward Baines, Esq., Editor of "The Leeds Mercury." 4. "The Times." Monday, November 5th, 1855.

The first act of the tremendous war-tragedy in the East is over! The varied scenes of fearfulness that crowded on each other during the past eleven months have been appropriately wound up in one grand concluding climax of terror and destruction. Mad and desperate assault-as desperate and as fierce resistance-murderous checks and most murderous advances, the last furious and convulsive agony of the sanguinary siege, and then the melting away of the foe-the half-astonished, half-exhausted pause of the victors-then lurid cloud after lurid cloud and thunder after thunder from wide-wasting explosions of forts and magazines,-Heaven's artillery meanwhile commingling in the horrid din-and when the burly has sunk and the vision at length has cleared, and men's minds have resumed their powers, the gallaut and

undaunted enemy seen to have withdrawn in safety to the opposite shore, and Sebastopol at length in our hands,—such have been the tremendous accessories that went to make up the final grand and mighty tableau in the first part of the titanic contest in the East.

While yet there is a pause-while we are awaiting and wondering at the tardy telegraph-while, in short, all Europe is in anxious attention and expectancy-there may be a fitting moment to glance at the dim shadows of the future, and try to shape them out as they may presently reveal themselves to all. To make even a step in this direction it is indispensable that we should have at least a general idea of the position and relations among themselves of the various nations whose destinies must be influenced and ruled by the great events which there is so much reason to believe to be approaching.

England and France stand together even more firmly and cordially than before; the stamp of considerable successes having given as it were fresh strength and ratification to the bond which has so happily united them for the last two years. Both have suffered, and suffered deeply, in the waste of blood and treasure-the blood of their bravest and best, and the stored and harvested wealth of a long peace and world-wide commerce. But life, and vigour and power are unabated with either, and more than all, the high and generous purpose, the firm and strong will, and unflinching and most determined perseverance, these are theirs even more eminently and fully than ever. And whoever may join them, whoever may hold off, or whoever may oppose, onward those two great nations -the leading nations of the world--will most certainly go, until what it may without too much boldness be called, their high and heaven-decreed mission be accomplished, and Europe and civilization be, for at least another half century, secured against the insolent menaces and the fell and grasping designs of the barbarians of the north.

Russia, the other great leading party in the Eastern struggle, has suffered still heavier loss in men and money, and a loss beyond all calculation in moral power and prestige, by reason of her defeats. But she is resolute, most fiercely resolute, aud unbending still. And the signal discomfiture of our early hopes and expectations, founded on the stories, predictions, and pretentious calculations of some of our writers, who led the public to believe that Russia was far inferior in resources

and military genius to what, to our heavy cost, we have found her, suggests and enforces moderation and caution in judging of her present condition, and trumpet-tongued reminds us of the golden maxim, "Never despise your enemy!"

Austria holds the Danubian Principalities, and holds aloof from the great debate in arms that is to settle not only their important destiny, but that of the Empire with which they have been connected. Loud-tongued and direly wrathful are the organs of public opinion in England in their denunciations of Austria, because she has not thrown in with the allies in their struggle. Cowardice, duplicity, and slavish obsequiousness and subserviency to Russia, are the least of the compli mentary phrases which are used in her regard, and he would be a bold man indeed who, at least in England, would venture to say a word in her defence. In Ireland we are but too apt to borrow our opinions of foreign countries and foreign events from our British neighbours, and therefore in Ireland too there is, at least to some extent, a danger of coming in for some share of the obloquy in which Austria is held, if even a suggestion be thrown out that she may turn out to have been harshly judged and inconsiderately condemned. Even at the risk specified, we avow we are of the latter way of thinking.

Against one leading and favorite charge upon Austria, that of having by her military cccupation of the Danubian Principalities, set free a Russian army to go to swell the battalions opposed to us in the Crimea, may well be set the fact that by the step in question she really liberated the left wing of our army, and enabled us to make up something of a respectable force for the Crimean expedition. Had our soldiers been doomed to a campaign in the pestilential marshes of the Dobrutscha, the destruction of life amongst them would have been far speedier and more extensive than in the worst months of the leaguer of Sebastopol, while the seasoned and acclimatized Russians would have lost far less in proportion. And we should not have had in aid of our fast diminishing and outnumbered army, either the protection of lines and entrenchments as in the Crimea, nor anything approaching to the powerful degree of assistance and co-operation we received there from our French allies. The number that perished in one not very protracted reconnaissance of theirs in the Dobrutscha, in the early summer of last year, was unprecedented even in some of the severest trials of their African experi

ence; being in fact in a ratio that would have very speedily rendered their army ineffective, had it gone on.

If these considerations have failed of producing their proper effect, or in truth have been completely ignored and passed over by the press and platform denunciators of Austria in England, there is little to be wondered at in the circumstance of an equal disregard of other considerations deduced from the subsisting effects upon the former country of the Italian and Hungarian struggles in the melancholy and disastrous year 1848. Something, nay, perhaps a great deal, of self-reproach should mingle with the feelings that a recall of those events to memory would excite. In those struggles, especially in that of Hungary, the waste of military resources, including under that term the waste of money-the sinews of war-was enormous, and to this day Austria suffers heavily in consequence, and is likely so to do for some time to come. But the movements in her Italian and Hungarian dominions, which caused this terrible waste had not merely the loudly expressed sympathies of the British public, but were indisputably stimulated to a certain extent, and to a certain degree aided underhand by the British ministry of the day. They were thus rendered the more obstinate, and more weakening to Austria, without diminishing in the least the overwhelming and finally prevailing chances against their ultimate success.

There is a retributive justice in the course of the affairs of nations, as in those of individual men: Great Britain was accessary to the weakening and hampering of Austria, and now in Great Britain's need, she finds to her cost that her policy in this respect was only too successful. Austria is financially and strategetically if we may so use the word, unable to assist her. The exchequer of Austria is at too low an ebb to supply the wasteful stream of a war-expenditure, and the unsettled state of things in Hungary, and northern Italy, detain large bodies of troops in those territories, which else might have been available for the purposes of the allies. It should too, be recollected in connexion with this point, that Austria has to guard herself upon her Russian and her Prussian frontiers, the former of 300 miles, and the latter augmented by the frontiers of several smaller German states in amity and league with Prussia, whose duplicity, disigningness and undeniable leanings towards Russia, render her dangerous to the peace of Europe, and especially dangerous to Austria.

It cannot assuredly be necessary at this age of the world to go into any detail of proofs to show the connivance of England, with the revolutionary party in Austrian Italy, (as elsewhere) and her hostility to Austria. The facts are patent, established and incontestable, and indeed are made rather the subjects of glorification by the organs of English public opinion, than of attempted concealment or regret. In the following brief ex tracts from a very interesting German work translated by the Earl of Ellesmere, and entitled Military Events in Italy, 18481849, there are passages relative to the conduct of English ministers, and England herself, towards Austria, which we cannot forbear quoting, coming as they do from a publication and an author thus spoken of by Lord Ellesmere in his editorial preface:

"Among numerous works on the subject of the military transactions of 1848 and 1849, which have appeared in the German language, I have met with few which do not refer to the narrative here translated as one of great merit and high authority. A Swiss by birth, the author may claim exemption from the stronger though excusable partialities, which might be expected to influence an Austrian, or a Piedmontese."

With this brief introduction and recommendation, we proceed to give the extracts to which we have referred:

"Lord Palmerston in 1848, declared himself, in the name of England, in favor of all the innovations at issue in Northern Italy; and bestowed upon the cabinet of Austria the ironical advice, that it should assist the struggles of the states of Italy engaged in the pursuit of reforms.

*

The chiefs of the party of Young Italy and their subservient agent Charles Albert the Sardinian King, were encouraged in their projects against Austria, by the apparent manifestation of increasing ill will towards her, on the part of some great powers-of England in particular.

Those indeed who had reckoned on advantage to the cause of revolutionary Italy from the elevation of Louis Napoleon to the Presidency of France, found themselves disappointed. The majority of the French nation had suffered too recently and too severely from civil conflict, and had too much reason to tremble for the security of property at home, to allow themselves to be hurried rashly into a great foreign war. It was nevertheless certain that should Piedmont recommence her game against Austria when and how she would, France would not allow either her suppression as an inde pendent state, nor even the transference of any, the slightest portion of her territory as a consequence of her eventual defeat. So far at least the Italian democrats could rely upon France, but they saw reason to place firmer reliance upon England.