EUROPE AGAIN IN DANGER.
Tait new revolution at Vienna will be felt in every part of Eu- rope. It gravely modifies the whole view of Continental politics; and although we regard it on the whole with renewed hopes for the development of national energies and liberties, we cannot shut our eyes to the manifest dangers. Assuredly, the sane states- men of Europe will devise some General Congress to take coun- sel, or the crowned heads will finish the business of royalty without hope of redemption.
By exposing the utter feebleness of the Imperial Government, the flight of the Emperor casts loose the reins of government., leaving each province to rule itself: the empire is again dissolved into its elements, and Vienna ceases to be a great capital. The threats conveyed in the proclamation which the Emperor left be- hind him add spite to impotence. The intrigues of the anony- mous statesmen by whom the Emperor was surrounded, which had played off party against party in Austria to deceive all, had set race against race in the provinces, had outraged the official usages and decencies of Vienna in issuing proclamations signed by the lunatic hand of the Monarch and countersigned by no Minister—the intrigues which had disgraced the Imperial Court, reducing it to the am character of scheming adventurers—which had done all this, and failed—have stamped the Imperial Govern- ment with a character of worthlessness that nothing could re- trieve, even under the most triumphant restoration, except a change in the person of the Monarch and a thorough weeding of the Court.
But the fall will have its effect beyond the Austrian empire. In all Germany and Italy, the authority of Kings is newly shaken by the degradation of the royal class in the person of so great a potentate; a counterpoise, therefore, is removed from the agitation of the extreme demagogues, to the danger of true political de- velopment and freedom. In Berlin, the violent classes are gaining courage. The Sicilians will know that the Neapolitan Bourbon has a prop the less. France is already putting her "army of the Alps' on the move for action. The decency of Kin4ly authority has been betrayed by its impersonator at Vienna—has been tram- pled in the mud, and hunted away in ignominious flight : but Kingly authority has been the type of settled order throughout the larger part of Europe, and the possible consequences of its decline are formidable : in many provinces, the portent means not Repub- licanism, nor Communism, but anarchy—a renewal of the dark ages when Rome had disappeared. It is a mistake to talk of these popular outbursts in Europe as if they were the capricious excesses of a few individuals, wan- tonly wicked : they are the final explosion of causes long ma- turing; the immediate actors are themselves the sport of events ; some of those now borne along by the torrent of revolution have given, and still would give, all their sympathies to order. But there is no contending against such suicidal obstinacy as that which has possessed the Government at Vienna. Twice to be de- tected in attempting to cajole the people, the second time detected in more criminal conspiracies than before—twice to he defeated, twice to fly—is to shatter every hold on popular respect or tra- ditional affection. A few more such events might be fatal to Royalty throughout Europe ; might force the statesmen, like those of France, to "adopt the Republic"; and by rendering the restoration of Monarchy impossible, might plunge the whole of the Continent in that sea of troubles from which France has no rescue—the tentative efforts to reconcile Republican fancies with the existing Monarchical framework of society, and to construct an enduring commonwealth while the speculative citizens are fighting over disputed theories and seeking the bubble conviction in the cannon's mouth.
This is indeed a condition of affairs for the statesmen of Eu- rope to ponder diligently, and on broader grounds than those of established precedent or diplomatic etiquette. There is no prece- dent for the emergency, there is no etiquette for such a hurri- cane; forms are blown to the winds - and no guide can lead out of the chaos but the unerring clue oftruthful sincerity and hard- handed reality.
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