1829-] al the Commencement of thé Session. 115 
word, sweep her eommerce from the ocean, shut up her ports, and cut 
off her intercourse with her colonies ; and which, when the struggle 
comes at last on the land, can show that the British soldier is made of 
the same materials as the British sailor. 
Spain and. Portugal are too eagerly employed by dissensions at home 
to think of hostilities. 'The monks are the masters of both: the monks 
hate the freedom, the religion, andthe knowledge of England ; and des- 
perately would they show their hate, if they dared. But their daggers 
are for other breasts ; the spirit of jacobinism keeps the spirit of monkery 
in employment too anxious for foreign mischief. One devil has been 
called up to controul the malice of another. They are fit antagonists, and 
will rend each other with fang and talon, until their work is done, until 
the Peninsula is sunk into the final degradation of a wilderness scattered 
over with a few superstitious slaves ; or startles the world by the brief and 
bloody supremacy of a jacobin.empire. 
Austria lies in that massive tranquillity which has characterized the reign 
of the house of Hapsburg. But of all the continental states, she is the 
most essentially bound to the alliance of England ; by her position in the 
midst of the great military powers ; by the absence of any source of rival 
ambition ; and by the habits of old connexion, and combined struggle 
against Napoleon. She has all the strength of passive power ; her military 
position is impregnable, unless betrayed by negligence or imbecility ; her 
troops are brave, and she can recruit her armies from an immense extent 
of territory filled with a hardy population. 
There has not been a moment since the close of the revolutionary war, 
when the politician would be entitled to calculate more securely upon 
the general peace of Europe. Even the late disturbances of the military 
states have only assisted this probability. The interval since the fall of 
Napoleon had been long enough for a generation to start into public life, 
who knew nothing of the miseries of war. Manisa restless animal ; and 
in every continental nation, there was a rapidly rising tendency to 
recommence the scene, where their fathers had sufiered so deeply. But, 
as if for the express purpose of checking this hazardous tendency, there 
is scarcely an European nation, which has not, within a short period, had 
a trial of war, not sufficient to draw the blood fatally, yet more than 
enough to teach them the misery that can be inflicted by the sword. 
The Turkish campaign has given the armies of Russia a trial of war, 
that has palpably checked the passion of her people for tampering with 
military glory. The French soldiery were beginning to exclaim against 
the indolence of peace. The expedition to the Morea, slight as its losses 
may have been, has palpably answered the purpose of checking the insane 
love for laurels; and every man now on the Greek soil is exclaiming 
against the folly that sent him from home. If Belgium, a power of 
great importance to England, has suffered herself to be drawn into the 
views of Russian ambition, she has had a trial of war in the East, which 
will long disgust her armies. 
There is the additional security against European war, that is to be 
found in the interior disturbance of the continental states. It is aremark- 
able characteristic of the times, that insurrection, open or concealed, is in 
the bowels of every kingdom of Europe. The most formidable enemies 
of the Spanish and Portuguese thrones are notoriously active within 
their own realms, sometimes defying them in the field, and perpetually 
menacing the royal authority. In France, the spirit of disturbance lives 
Q 2 
