490 PALMERSTON POLICY. 



delays of a deliberative assembly will wonderfully serve this new tem- 

 porising strategy of King William, who, it is now evident, has been 

 playing, and with triumphant success, the game of the Imperial 

 autocrat. 



In Spain, where,as in every other despotic government, Liberalism, 

 emanating from the Sovereign, is but a fortuitous accident transient in 

 operation, the young Queen has lost the ephemeral power of which 

 she made so noble a use, and is now but nominally regent. That two 

 days reign of liberal ideas, astonished at germinating, even for an 

 instant, upon the absolute soil of Spain is over. The cadavre of the 

 absolute king, dead for liberty, lives yet for despotism, like those de- 

 ceased sovereigns, whose deaths are carefully concealed, and whose 

 coffins still reign for the profit of a few favorites. Even thus does 

 the Camarilla of Aranjuez, turn to its own advantage the long agony 

 of Ferdinand, and dictates to him a posthumous re-action. With the 

 ministry that has just risen upon Spain, like a star of evil augury, 

 all hopes of seeing revered the ancient franchises of the nation, and 

 the convocation of the Cortes, have vanished. The re-action has com- 

 menced the voice of our ambassador has been derided ; and in such 

 a Court, who can say where the re-action will end ? 



In Portugal, which Napoleon considered as a colony of England, 

 we are now hated both by Liberals and Absolutists, and with just rea- 

 son too; for in whatever way the struggle now pending may be de- 

 cided, the result will be equally disastrous to that ill-fated country, 

 and she may with justice lay her ruin at the door of Great Britain 

 that in turn has encouraged and deceived supported and abandoned 

 both parties at present struggling for mastery upon her soil. 



In Germany, our ascendancy is completely eclipsed. As if the 

 Germanic liberties were not sufficiently curtailed by the decrees of 

 the Diet, they are now proceeding in detail, to the work of mutila- 

 tion, not daring, by some remains of respect for human opinion, to an- 

 nihilate them at a single blow. They are taking them one by one. 

 Wirtemberg and Hesse* have been the first victims, the turn of Ba- 

 varia and others will come next. 



There now remains the East, which, not without design, we 

 have reserved for the last place, that East, pregnant with events 

 threatening the future independence of every state in Europe. If any 

 thing were wanting to prove the decline of our European influence, 

 it would certainly be the powerless effect of our intervention in the 

 affairs of that section of the East, which our tardy policy has rendered 

 a complete " embroglio." The Russian fleet rides at anchor beneath 

 the walls of the Seraglio, and the influence of that power triumphs in 

 the Divan. Where is the fleet that should have given weight to the 

 remonstrances of our minister the display of energy that should 

 have brought the Sultan to have thrown himself into the arms of the 



* The position of the Electoral Colleges in these two States is precisely simi- 

 lar to that of the French Electors, after the famous proclamation of Charles X. 

 But, notwithstanding all the fine things that were declaimed last year, at the 

 Crown and Anchor Tavern, upon the public spirit of the Germans, we are 

 convinced that the only thing that will drive them to extremities is an 

 ordonnance against the pipe- 



