24 Europe, and the Horse- Guards' Cabinet. [JULY, 



The kingdom of the Netherlands is convulsed w-ith civil and religious 

 discord. The king has been compelled to adopt the hazardous measure 

 of proroguing his parliament, and sending home the popular opposition, 

 to throw fresh fuel on the flame. Fierce and brutal bigotry has reinforced 

 the popular resistance. The popish priesthood have begun those quar- 

 rels, which it is their first triumph to create in all protestant govern- 

 ments. Liberalism has joined with monke"ry in this attack upon the 

 throne. The desire to be united once more with France is openly 

 avowed in the journals. The result is the necessity of prosecuting those 

 journals, and of depriving their writers of the means of inflaming the 

 popular passions. Some of the principal journalists of the Netherlands 

 are already under sentence of the law, and banished. Prussia has offered 

 to be their jailor, and those Netherlandish incendiaries may look upon 

 themselves as fortunate if they escape the dungeons of Magdeburgh, or 

 the casernes of Spandau. But the tumult has not died with their de- 

 parture. New disturbances have taken their place, and bigotry, jaco- 

 binism, political corruption, and foreign treachery, are preparing a bed 

 of torture for the monarchy of the Netherlands. 



Turkey is already in a state of revolution. Though the shape of the re- 

 volution is not European. The Turk knows nothing of elections, popular 

 harangues, or libellous newspapers Of those, of course, his revolution 

 will exhibit no signs. But he knows a great deal of devastating a coun- 

 try for a hundred square miles, of burning villages, of living at free 

 quarter, and of cutting off the heads of Viziers and Sultans. At this hour 

 the whole nation is in a ferment. The Turk, the haughtiest of men, has 

 seen his country trampled by the invaders whom, of all invaders, he most 

 hates. He has seen a Russian garrison in Adrianople, the ancient capital 

 of his Greek conquests, and still almost his Sacred City. He has seen 

 Constantinople at the mercy of the Muscovite, his fleets destroyed, his 

 money carried off to the Russian Treasury, his military name trodden 

 into the dust, the key of his supremacy surrendered by the free naviga- 

 tion of the Bosphorus, and all his ancient and lofty prejudices insulted by 

 the new-fangled affectations of European arts, discipline, and manners. 

 He now sees a new kingdom erected out of the wreck of his empire, and 

 his slaves turned into his scoffers and his equals; Egypt, withdrawn 

 from his sceptre by fraud, and the Barbary states on the point of being 

 torn from his allegiance by force. The Turk is galled from top to toe. 

 Every wind that blows from every quarter blows on his uncovered 

 wounds. He sits among mankind the Job of the latter ages, but with no 

 wisdom among his friends, and no patience in himself. The opulent gather 

 their wealth, and fly into Asia. The beggared sharpen their scymitars, 

 and prepare for revenge. Rich and poor abhor Russia, fling out invectives 

 against the treachery of European alliances, and curse Mahmoud. Eng- 

 land alone looks on. The Russian robs, the Greek slaughters, the Austrian 

 prepares to plunder. The Frenchman tries his skill on an expedition 

 against the Mahometan of Africa, before he ventures his head against 

 the Mahometan of Greece or Asia. England still looks on, with folded 

 arms, and sees the grand outwork of her Mediterranean and Indian power 

 hourly crumbling down she waits for Chance, and rejoices in a little 

 knot of men to whom every change will have the interest of surprise, and 

 whom every change will find only more intriguing and more impotent, 

 more presumptuous at home, and more puzzled throughout the circum- 

 ference of the globe ! 



