296 POLITICS 



could not pretend to blame the King of Sardinia for assisting them. 

 We cannot wonder that such words as these spread in Italy like 

 flame, that people copied the translation from each other, weeping 

 over it for joy and gratitude in their homes, and that it was hailed 

 as worth more than a force of one hundred thousand men." 1 



The principle of the balance of power among nations, which the 

 Congress of Vienna applied with such mechanical fidelity, lapsed 

 into desuetude, giving way to the maxims of non-intervention and 

 respect for each people's sovereignty. 



Louis Napoleon's wish to interpose for the South in the American 

 Civil War, and Great Britain's unwillingness, which deterred him, 

 are remembered by all. On Prussia's seizure of Schleswig and Hoi- 

 stein in 1864, and of Hannover, Electoral Hesse, Nassau and Frank- 

 fort in 1866, powerful influences in England and France wrought 

 for intervention, but in vain. At the Schleswig-Holstein crisis, Lords 

 Palmerston and John Russell were for war, and bemoaned the timidity 

 of their colleagues; but Victoria was strongly against them and 

 prevailed. In Great Britain still louder cry for intervention was 

 heard, first when Louis Napoleon made himself Emperor, and again 

 as his fall became imminent; but both times the Ministry was im- 

 movable. Public sentiment in the fatherland demanded German 

 intervention in favor of Kriiger during the South African War, but 

 the imperial government resolutely held aloof. 



In fine, while the right of a nation, in certain cases, to interfere for 

 mere equilibrium's sake with a neighbor nation's extension schemes 

 may, perhaps, still be defended in abstract international law, the 

 corresponding practice in international politics is dead and buried. 



The last century also saw given up, or at least greatly decreased, 

 ideality of aim, whether in international or in national politics, part 

 result, perhaps, of the state's completer freedom from church influ- 

 ences. Natural rights are little pleaded any more. You must 

 claim acquired rights or get out of court. It is frankly admitted that 

 politics has its field right here in this actual earth and that earth is 

 not yet heaven. In politics now we do the best we can, then feeling 

 it a duty to be satisfied, provisionally, be the results never so far from 

 ideal. " Hope not for the republic of Plato," says Marcus Aurelius, 

 " but be content with ever so small an advance, and look on even 

 that as a gain worth having." 



It would be a mistake, however, to suppose current politics less 

 genuinely moral or humane than the politics of the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries, when it could be said: 



" Earth is sick 



And Heaven is weary, of the hollow words 

 Which states and kingdoms utter when they talk 

 Of truth and justice." 



1 Morley's Gladstone II, 15, 16. 



