1831.] The Stale of Europe. 117 



right or wrong, every thing that called itself a monarch on the con- 

 tinent. The Flemings have now another reason for their aversion ; they 

 have fought the Dutch and beat them. They have fought the Dutch 

 troops of the line with peasants and apprentices, and they have beat 

 Mynheer without mercy. Of course, the breach is now irreconcileable. 

 So much for the partition policy, so much for handing over nations, as if 

 they Avere as transferable as the polite notes of the " high cpntracting 

 parties." But the age of those guilty and tyrannical fopperies is past, 

 and we may live in hopes that diplomacy will at length learn, that men 

 are not to be sold like sheep, that sovereigns are not to be imposed upon 

 nations, like overseers on the helpless of a workhouse ; and that ancient 

 feelings, manly hopes, and the love of country, are not to be demolished 

 at a dash of the diplomatic pen. The secretary-age is over, and hence- 

 forth it must be taken into consideration, even in the cabinets of Austria 

 and Berlin, that the old definition of man, as a transferable commodity 

 by cabinet bills of exchange, must be given up, and man be allowed to 

 be a creature of flesh and blood, capable of likings and dislikings, and 

 much more safely led than driven. 



The Flemings have a right to congratulate themselves. We as much 

 abhor disturbance for disturbance sake, as the most worshipful of state 

 functionaries. But we have no power to overlook the facts, that the 

 Flemings fought and conquered their masters ; that, if their debates want 

 order and elegance, there has been at least as much sound sense in them, 

 as in the proclamations of the Prince of Orange, or even in the ukases of 

 the lord of all the Russias ; that more of men's minds has been suffered 

 to come out, even in those rambling debates, than in all the polished 

 conferences of all the well-dressed courts of Europe ; and thus the very 

 tinkers of Brussels might set a lesson of political honesty to three-fourths 

 of the JMetternichs in existence. 



One point, there is, of the highest importance. In all the present 

 changes of the continent, there is nothing of unprovoked insurrection, 

 and nothing of sanguinary outrage. Nothing of the furious bigotry 

 that, to our national shame and sorrow, puts the knife and the firebrand 

 into the grasp of that wretched fanatic the Irish peasantry ; and nothing 

 of the mob or party butchery of the French revolution of 1793. The 

 French of July 1830, rose by compulsion. Their infatuated king him- 

 self blew the trumpet. His mad " ordinance" was a declaration of war, 

 and the rising of the people was against a national enemy. In England, 

 if any government had been rash enough, which we think impossible, to 

 issue a royal proclamation announcing in summary words that — the liberty 

 of the press was abolished — that parliament was dissolved, and the 

 arbitrary pleasure of the king ; and — that the whole system of repre- 

 sentation was as arbitrarily changed for the express purpose of returning 

 a submissive parliament : we leave any man of common sense to say 

 what would be the consequences by the time his majesty's mails had car- 

 ried the news a twelve hours' journey through the land. " Absit omen." 

 Those things will never be necessary here, for the constitution bars out 

 the sacrilegious hand that would pluck away its jewels ; and while the 

 Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury exist, the rights of the nation are 

 guarded by a fence of more than triple steel. But in France, the act 

 was done ; the nation rose neither to retaliate nor to riot, but to defend 

 itself, and its efforts closed, as it ought to close, in tlie expulsion of the 

 Bourbons for ever. That deed at lea.st is completed. And the Duchess 



