sire of calm repose, which, to use the words of a great writer, was the atmosphere in which despotism liked to breathe-following, as he had said the cant of their ancestors, the allies declared at Aix-la-Chapelle, that their object was to secure the tranquillity of Europe that their fundamental principle would be, never to depart from a strict adherence to the law of nations: "faithful to these principles," (continued this halfsermon, half-romance, and half state paper,)" they would only study the happiness of their people and attend carefully to the interests of morality." Here, again, following the example of the autocratic Catherine, the partitioner of Poland, who, having wasted and divided it, province after province, sent in hordes of her barbarians, who, from the rising to the setting of the sun for one day, were engaged in shedding the blood of its innocent and unfortunate people; and not content with this work of indiscriminate slaughter, renewed the carnage, and continued it throughout the ensuing; and after this, a Te Deum was sung, to return thanks for her success over the enemies of Poland. That mild and gentle sovereign, immediately after these outrages upon humanity, issued a proclamation, in which she said "The empress assures the Poles, and desires them to believe, that she possesses for them the solicitude of a tender mother, whose heart is filled with kindness for all her children." Who could, or who dare, doubt that she was what she so described herself, and who could, after the experience of the last year, dispute the purity of the intention of the allied powers towards Spain?

But after this declaration of the object of future congresses, came the stipulation, which he should like to see some German statist, some man versed in the manufactory of state-papers, compare with, and reconcile to, the recent notes got up at Verona, not unlikely by the very hands which had produ ced the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. The stipulation was this:-"Special congresses concerning the affairs of states not parties to this alliance, shall not take place, except" (and here he should like to know how Spain had brought herself within the exception)" except in consequence of a formal invitation from such states." How would any German statist reconcile these contradictions? Here the interference in the internal affairs of Spain was not only not " by special invitation" from, but was in downright

opposition to, the will of Spain. Thus were those holy allies opposed to their own principles; and by such was the attempt now made to crush the independence of a brave people. But it was not in the case of Spain alone that the consideration of these papers were important-they furnished natural grounds of fears to all independent governments; for he should be glad to learn what case it was (upon the doctrines now advanced) to which this principle of internal interference might not be extended-upon which the authority to comment, criticise, and dictate might not be assumed? The house was not aware of the latitude to which the interference of those armed legislators might be extended :-the revolt of the colonies was one alleged cause, the weakness of an administration another. Russia, forsooth, was

anxious

anxious to see Ferdinand surrounded with the" most enlightened and most faithful of his subjects"-by men, of course, who would be every way worthy of himself. So that, according to these wise men of Verona, (and this was a consideration which should be looked to,) an inefficient administration would be a just ground of interference. The principle did not stop here" ruinous loans," let that be marked, formed another ground, and "contributions unceasingly renewed." What were these but taxes which were called for year after year? All these were instances in which the principle of interference might apply to countries besides Spain; and perhaps (for it was not out of the wide range of this principle) agricultural distress would appear to the wisdom of those high powers as just a ground as any other. But, to complete all the reasons assigned to Spain, on the 7th of July, blood was seen to flow in the palace of the king and a civil war raged throughout the Peninsula." It was true, blood had flowed, and a disposition to treason was excited in some quarters; but who was the cause? An ally. It was produced by those cordons of troops which were posted on the Spanish frontier, armed with gold and steel, and affording shelter and assistance to those in whose minds disaffection had been excited. Blood had been shed but would it not be supposed by any person unacquainted with the fact, that this was blood shed in an attempt to dethrone Ferdinand, or an attempt to introduce some new and unheard-of form of government? But what was the fact? A few persons were killed who had mutinied against, the es

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tablished government-the govern ment which the Emperor Alexander himself had recognized as legitimate in 1812; and this he had now the audacity to call the "shedding of blood by Spaniards in the palace of the king." As well might he accuse the people, the parliament, and the crown of England, of "causing blood to flow in the palace of the king," on account of their ordering their sentinels to fire on every person whom they might find attempting to assassinate the sovereign, as accuse the Spaniards of such a crime, on account of the events which happened in July 1822. He should pass over the different phrases about “ disorganized philosophy," "dreams of fallacious liberty," and "venerable and sacred rights," with which the Prussian note was crowded to repletion; and should pass on to the Russian note, which objected to the Spaniards their want of the "conservative principles of social order" or, in other words, of despotic power, and to their not falling in with the scope of those grand truths, which, though they were ever in the mouths, were no where explained by any one of the three sovereigns. The Austrian note talked of the solid and venerable claims which the Spanish nation had upon the rest of Europe; prayed it to adopt a better form of government than it had at present; and called upon it to reject a system which was at once powerful and paralyzed.". It would be disgusting to enter at any length into papers at once so odious, so iniquitous, and so abominable. There was but one sentiment held regarding them out of the house, and he merely noticed them now to call forth a similar expression

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expression of feeling from the house. Monstrous and insolent, and unjustifiable as all of them were, he considered that of Russia to be more tnonstrous, more insolent, and more unjustifiable than all the rest; Russia, a power that was only half European-that with all her colossal mass of physical strength was still quite as much Asiatic as she was Europeanwhose principles of action were completely despotic and oriental, and whose practice had, unfortunately, always been of the same barbarous and anti-European description. In all these precious documents there were, with a mighty number of general remarks, mixed up with a wondrous affectation of honest principles, there were a great many words covering ideas that were not altogether clear and intelligible, or, if they happened to be so, only placing their own deformity in a more hideous and detestable light still, though such was the case, the meaning of the whole for argument there was none to be found from the begin ning to the end of them-the meaning of the whole was as plain as plain could be they spoke but one language to Europe and to Spain, and that language was this-"We have 100,000 hired mercenaries, and we will not stoop to reason with men whom we have determined to crush as slaves, or annihilate as freemen." He admired the parallel frankness with which this haughty language had been met by the Spanish government: the papers which it had sent forth were plain and laconic, and spoke this language: "We are millions of freemen, and will not stoop to reason with men who threaten to enslave us." They hurled back the

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threat to the quarter from which it issued, caring little whether it was from the Goth, the Hun, or the Calmuck; with firmness they met the craft of the Bohemian, and with courage the savage ferocity of the Tartar. If they found leagued against them the tyrants by which the world was at present infested, they might console themselves with this reflection, that wherever there was an Englishman, either of the old world or of the new--wherever there was a Frenchman, with the exception of that little band which now swayed the destinies of France in opposition to the wishes and interests of its gallant and liberal population-a population which, after enduring the miseries which the revolution had entailed upon it, and after wading through the long and bloody wars into which that revolution had precipitated it, was entitled, if ever any population was, to a long enjoyment of the many blessings of peace and liberty— wherever there was an Englishman or true-born Frenchman-wherever there was a free heart or virtuous mind, there Spain had a ratural and an unalienable friend. For his own part, he could not but admire the mixture of firmness and forbearance which the government of Spain had exhibited. When the allied monarchs were pleased to adopt a system of interference with the internal policy of Spain-when they thought it fitting to descend to minute and paltry criticisms upon the whole course of its domestic government-when every sentence in their respective notes was a direct personal insult to every individual Spaniard-and when the most glaring attempts were made in their different manifestoes to excite rebellion in the country, and to

stir up one class of the community against the other, it would not have surprised him if some allusion had been made in the replies of the Spanish government to the domestic policy of the allied sovereigns; or if some of the allegations which had been so lavishly cast upon it had been scornfully retorted upon those who had so falsely and so audaciously brought them forward. What would have been more natural for the Spanish government, than to have asked his Prussian majesty, who was so anxious for the welfare and good government of Spain, and who had shown himself so minute a critic on its laws and institutions, to remember the many vows and promises which he had made some years ago to his own free people? What would have been more natural than to have suggested to him, that it would be more consistent with those promises to give his subjects a representative form of government, than to maintain at their cost, and almost to their utter ruin, a large standing army, for the purpose of ravaging the territories, or putting down the liberties of any neighbouring power? The government of Spain would have had a right to make this representation to his majesty of Prussia; for his majesty of Prussia owed much, very much, to its exertions: indeed, the gallant resistance which it made to the invasion of Bonaparte, formed a powerful diversion in favour of Prussia, when such a diversion was most necessary to its interests, ay, and to its very existence. Could any thing, he would also ask, have been more natural for the Spanish government, than to have asked the Emperor of Austria, whether he, who now pre

tended to be so just, when the interests of Ferdinand were concerned, had always acted with equal justice towards the interests of others? Could any thing have been more natural than to have suggested to him, that before he was generous to Ferdinand, he ought to be just to George; and that he ought to return to him the whole, or, at any rate, a considerable part of the twenty millions he had borrowed of him in his day of distress-a sum which, remaining unpaid, wasted the resources of an ally of Spain, and tended mightily to cripple and mutilate her exertions? He wished likewise to know what could have been more natural-nay, if the doctrine of interference in the internal concerns of neighbouring nations were at all admitted,-what could have been more rightful, in a free people, than to have asked him how it happened, that his dungeons were filled with all that was noble, and accomplished, and virtuous, and patriotic in the Milanese ?-than to have called on him to give an account of the ocean of blood which he had shed in his own dominions in the north of Italy?— than to have demanded of him some explanation of that iron policy by which he has consigned men, women, and children, not to exile or to death, but to a merciless imprisonment for ten, twenty, and thirty years-nay, even for life, without their being able to ascertain in the remotest degree the crime for which they were punished? Even the Emperor Alexander himself, tender and sensitive as he was at the sight of blood flowing in the precincts of a royal palace-a sight so monstrous, that if his language could be credited,

it had never before been seen in the history of the world, might have been taught a lesson, which even he might not have found overpleasant in the recollection; for the Emperor Alexander, however pure he himself might be, and however innocent his agents, was nevertheless descended from fathers and mothers who had dethroned, confined, and slaughtered husbands, brothers, and children. God forbid that he should impute the acts of violence which had been committed on the persons of various members of the present dynasty of Russia to their fathers and their brothers! but it did happen somehow or other, and by some inexplicable fatality, that those relatives had invariably reaped the advantage of the atrocities committed, and bad as invariably failed to bring the perpetrators of them to public justice. Under such circumstances, if he had had the hopour of being in the confidence of the imperial majesty of all the Russias, he should have been the last person in the world to have counselled his imperial master to touch upon so tender a topic-he should humbly have besought him to think twice or thrice, nay, even a fourth and a fifth time, before he ventured to allude to so delicate a subject-he should, with all proper deference, have requested him to meddle with any other topic-he should have desired hini to try every other point in the compass he should have implored him to try what he could say about Turkey, or Greece, or even Minorca, on which he had of late been casting many an amorous glance, before he adopted the peculiar phrase of "blood flowing in the precincts of a royal palace;" and, at any

rate, he should have advised him to slur it loosely over, instead of placing it, like an artful rhetorician, to form the principal point in his most effective climax. He found, likewise, in these self-same documents, another allusion, for which the Spanish government, had it been so inclined, might have read the holy alliance another severe lecture he alluded to the glib manner in which the three potentates talked of an individual, who, let his failings or even his crimes be what they might, must always be considered as a great and a resplendent character, who, because he was now no longer either upon a throne or at liberty, or even in life, was described by them, not merely as an ambitious ruler-not merely as an arbitrary tyrant, but also as an upstart and an usurper. This was not the language which these three potentates had formerly used, nor was it the language which they were entitled to use, regarding this illustrious individual. Whatever epithets others might have a right to attach to his conduct, their mouths at least were stopped: they could have no right to call him usurper, for in many of his usurpations they had been willing accomplices. The King of Prussia followed his fortunes with the most shame-faced subserviency, after the thorough beating he received from him in the year 1807. No sooner had he recovered the upright attitude of a man, than he took the first opportunity which chance threw in his way to fall upon his knees, and after much crouching and crawling in the dust, to beg from the blood-stained hand of Bonaparte no less a boon than possession of his Britannic majes ty's foreign dominions, the king

dom