CONDITION OF EUROPE. 337 



addressed to Frederick Passy, the eminent French political 

 economist, which is full of force and wisdom : — 



"As things stand, nations find their resources swallowed up by the insatiable 

 •exigences of the militarism in which they live 



" The interests of peoples are sacrificed to the most miserable and culpable 

 fantasies of foreign politics, and, unhappily, neither your fellow-citizens nor mine, 

 are able to understand the folly of this policy. 



' ' Both France and England possess a wide suffrage and democratic institutions, 

 but our policy remains pretty nearly what it was formerly, the real interests of 

 the masses are trodden under foot, in deference to false notions of glory and 

 national honour 



" I cannot help thinking that Europe is marching towards some great 

 catastrophe. The crushing weight of her military system cannot be indefinitely 

 supported with patience, and the populations, driven to despair, may very 

 possibly, before long, sweep away the personages who occupy Thrones, and the 

 pretended Statesmen who govern in their names." 



Well may it be said, that enormous thunder-clouds, heavily sur- 

 charged with ruin and war, hang over the whole horizon, and, it 

 may be, some apparently accidental flash will discharge them, 

 and set Europe in a blaze, involve Europe in a terrible conflagration. 



In view of such a stormy outlook over the sky of European 

 politics, it is to the thoughtful and sober-minded, and especially 

 to the industrial classes of every nation, that we must appeal, to 

 that Public Opinion which the Italians so poetically describe, 

 ■" the Queen of the World," more powerful, we believe, than all 

 Empires, Thrones, Governments, or Parliaments, for, as Lord 

 Palmerston justly observed : 



"Opinions are stronger than armies, and if they are founded in truth and 

 justice, will in the end prevail, against the bayonets of infantry, the fire of 

 artillery, and the charges of cavalry." 



At any moment, Europe may be plunged into a terrible war, and 

 the factories of indus~try and the hives of commerce will be emptied 

 of their hands, some of whom will go to swell that mournful pro- 

 <;ession of unemployed and starving mechanics ; some of them will 

 ■be summoned to occupy and defend the fortresses of war ; and some 

 of them, a vast multitude, will be called upon to perish on the 

 " battle-field of confused noise, with garments rolled in blood." 



Remember, we are rapidly approaching the close of the nineteenth, 

 and are entering on the dawn of the twentieth century, and 

 this is the humiliating position of Europe ! 



Her boasted civiHsation, her vaunted progress, her scientific 

 discoveries, her political, civil, and religious liberties, her free press, 



