1831.] The State of Europe. 115 



of his high allies, would stand in a different position, and the peace might 

 be honoured as policy, which would have been scorned as fear. 



The last accounts "from the seat of war are unpromising to the good 

 cause. The jiower of Russia is gigantic, contrasted with the narrow and 

 shattered strength of its heroic victim. The population of Poland, in 

 its present Hmits, is probably not a twentieth of the population of Rus- 

 sia — its finance is nothing, and its trade is entirely at a stand. The 

 Russian armies are said to be concentering for the assault of Warsaw, 

 and, by a more calamitous fortune, Warsaw itself has been the scene of 

 an extensive Russian conspiracy, in which the prisoners of war, amount- 

 ing to 13,000, were to have risen on the citizens. But the conspiracy- 

 has been detected, its members are under arrest, and the popular spirit 

 has shewn its sincerity by evincing the strongest indignation against the 

 traitors. Some attempts of this kind were to be expected. Russia is 

 barbarian still, and barbarism is even more ready at corruption than the 

 sword. In all the wars of the continent, a bribe, if it be but of the 

 suitable magnitude, is one of the most potent instruments of war and 

 policy. It would be curious to know the sums disbursed privately 

 during the Turkish war. But we may rely on the fact, that gold was 

 more powerful than steel, and that the fall of the Turkish fortresses was 

 as much owing to the enemy in the pocket as the enemy at the gates. 

 Independently of the power of direct corruption, among the idlers of 

 Warsaw, among the former dependents on Russian office, the pensioners 

 of the palace, the gentleman usher tribe, all who lived on the bounty, 

 or ministered to the indulgences, or expected the favours of the govern- 

 ment, the whole locust generation of the capital, there must be a crowd 

 of individuals to whom the return of the old despotism would havp been 

 more desirable than all the prosperity and freedom of all the nations of 

 the earth. In those classes corruption makes its native nest, and they 

 are habitually fit for every mean artifice, and malignant invective, and 

 treacherous machination, against national honour and virtue. The con- 

 spiracy, however, has been broken up, and the attempt seems to have 

 only animated the people to the more vigorous attachment to the hope 

 of independence. 



But they have found an ally more resistless than all the force of man. 

 The formidable disease, which has already ravaged the south of Russia, 

 has begun to spread at once to the north and the west. It has entered 

 St. Petersburg, and is said to have produced such terror there, that the 

 principal inhabitants were flying for their lives, and the imperial family 

 had left the palace. But its more startling direction has been the Aus- 

 trian Polish provinces. Of the return from Gallicia of about six and thirty 

 thousand seized within a very short period, the tremendous proportion 

 of thirteen thousand have died ! The terror has spread to Berlin, and 

 even to Vienna; and the cry of the people is, that while the war con- 

 tinues it will be impossible to arrest the progress of this terrible visita- 

 tion by the usual means.' For what cordon can be preserved in the midst 

 of fighting armies ? In the present circumstances every skirmisli operates 

 as a conductor of the contagion, every prisoner, every deserter, is liable 

 to bear a new infection from the field. Tlie insurrecti<m in tlie provinces, 

 every thing in the shape of public excitement, all jjublic assemblage 

 propagates the pest, and whether the war spread into the Austrian and 

 Prussian provinces, or the insurrection be formed tiiere, or jjrisoners be 

 there confined, or fugitives suffered to make their way over the frontier, 



Q 2 



