20 Europe, and the Horse- Guards' Cabinet. 



laughed at the letter and its writer, sent out their expedition, walked 

 over Greece, and would have been masters of it till this moment, but for 

 the volatility of the national character, which found a more tempting 

 conquest in the attack on the Barbary States. So much for the diplo- 

 macy of the Premier. 



Now for another example. Portugal was laid under ban ; Don Mi- 

 guel was declared an outlaw by the diplomatic honesty of the cabinet. 

 Yet did we see Don Miguel creeping to the, foot of the Downing-street 

 throne, or Portugal soliciting law from the British fount of national ju- 

 risprudence ? The Don laughed at us ; the Portuguese scoffed at our 

 interference : they exiled our friends ; they entered into correspondence 

 with our enemies ; they burlesqued our little pageant of a little queen ; 

 they finally forced us to send her back to her nursery at the same mo- 

 ment when they forced us to send them a minister under the name of a 

 consul; and, at this hour, the only tie which prevents Portugal from 

 abandoning our connexion altogether is its own interest our paying 

 it the most exorbitant price for the worst wine in the world. 



We have now gone the whole range of British foreign alliance, with 

 but one exception ; and there, too, we have been baffled and turned to 

 ridicule. Need we name Austria, and the negotiations with Prince 

 Metternich relative to the Greek sovereignty ? Lord Aberdeen makes a 

 brilliant figure in those transactions : yet what is Lord Aberdeen but the 

 mouth-piece of the Premier ? or does any man, capable of knowing his 

 right hand from his left, believe that this Scotch Peer and Reviewer ven- 

 tures to stir a step but by word of command ? We ask, has Austria been 

 sincere ? No man will believe any thing of the kind. We ask, has not the 

 British cabinet been duped ? Every man believes that it has. Has not 

 the Premier himself been foiled even by Prince Leopold ? Has he not 

 been pledged, and committed, and recommitted ? and is not his whole 

 sagacity now worthily employed in backing out of the whole transaction ? 

 Not the softest smile that ever thawed the ice of Sir Robert Blifil Peel's 

 official tisage, not the most sanctified glance that the saintly Mr. Goul- 

 burn ever threw up to heaven in the paroxysm of an anti-catholic ha- 

 rangue, would now shake our convictions that the Minister has been 

 defeated on every point of his boasted foreign policy. 



The state of Europe is at this moment the most singular in the annals 

 of diplomacy. There is no war ; but there is no peace. There is no 

 rebellion ; but there is no obedience. There is no revolution ; but every 

 continental throne trembles. A popular spirit of insuborcjination has 

 arisen, without a popular knowledge of the principles of ratibnal liberty; 

 and all Europe is fevered by a restless anxiety for rights which none of 

 all its monarchies can concede without ruin, and none of its nations can 

 possess without a total change of the habits, laws, and feelings of the 

 people. 



In such a crisis, the rank of England ought to be conspicuous. She 

 ought to take the lead, by little less than a law of nature, when intelli- 

 gence, freedom, and religion are the objects of discussion. Her great 

 instrument of dominion is mental ; and, in the struggle of opinion, all 

 nations would instinctively bow to the acknowledged supremacy of the 

 first intellectual nation of the world. But, thanks to the wisdom which 

 has thrown us into the hands of a military cabinet, no nation now 

 appeals to us for any other decision but that of the sword ; and as we 

 cannot fight everywhere, nor call every question to the arbitration of the 



