1830.] Europe, and the Horse-Guards' Cabinet. 23 



for invasion, and the next peace will be dictated from the Persian capi- 

 tal. Persia, once broken down, and she may be broken down within 

 the next half dozen years, the route to India is open. Even at this mo- 

 ment the Czar could send troops to the Indian frontier sooner than a 

 British regiment could reach it from Calcutta. Russia is already the 

 arbiter of Asia. But her power in Europe, if less direct, is scarcely less 

 irresistible. Sweden was once her check ; it is now all but her vassal. 

 The reigning prince holds his authority only by her permission. And the 

 successor of that prince must bargain for his crown with Russia, or see 

 the son of the exiled king return, and himself driven out to wander 

 through Europe. 



Poland, the old counterpoise of Russia, is now her slave. A Russian 

 viceroy lords it over the ancient lords of Cracow and Warsaw, and the 

 knout performs the office of the sceptre. 



With Prussia her influence is of the strongest kind. The policy of 

 finding a protector against Austria, had always made a Russian alliance 

 popular in Prussia. But since the infamous partition of Poland, Prus- 

 sia, touching upon the Russian frontier, feels the stimulant, at once, of 

 hope and fear urging her to the closest connexion with the politics of the 

 court of St. Petersburgh. Family ties have added to the force of this 

 mutual interest ; and, in the event of a continental war, the whole power 

 of Prussia must be thrown into the scale of the Czar. 



The influence of England was once all-powerful with Prussia. The 

 latter years of the French war had united the two Courts in sentiments 

 of the strongest cordiality : but this feeling has been superseded by the 

 overpowering pressure of Russian interests. The first manifesto of Russia 

 against this country would be followed by a Prussian declaration of war. 



The kingdom of the Netherlands, which the Castlereagh cabinet actu- 

 ally erected, and which is bound by the very tenure of its existence to 

 England, is yet the perpetual object of Russian intrigue. The marriage 

 of the Prince of Orange to the sister of the Czar, was but a part of the 

 system of binding the Netherlands to Russia. In the event of hostilities 

 between England and Russia, if the first object of the Netherlands were 

 not neutrality, the Russian councils would be the law of the land. 



But a still more striking proof of the imbecility of the present cabinet 

 of Great Britain is to be found in the general confusion and restless tur- 

 bulence that now form the characteristic of the European governments. 

 The substantial policy of England is universal peace ; she can reap no 

 harvests from fields strewed only with the ruins of national prosperity ; 

 her commerce shrinks from regions where tyranny and popular turbu- 

 lence hold the alternate scourge. Her strength is in the strength ot 

 each, and her opulence in the wealth of all. Her supreme interest is in 

 the quiet, the virtue, and the good government of all nations. And yet, 

 at this hour there is scarcely a nation of Europe in which the conflict of 

 kingly fear and popular tumult is not either in preparation or actually 

 begtfn. Of France we have already spoken. The whole country is in 

 a state of public emotion, unequalled since the Reign of Terror. The 

 whole vast district of the Vendee is agitated by political tumult, 

 giving expression to itself not simply in election harangues and mob- 

 violence, but in the most extraordinary defiance of the armed power of 

 the State, in assassinations, in the burning of farms, and even of villages, 

 and in a palpable determination of shaking the authority of the clergy 

 and the king. 



