27 APRIL 1861, Page 10

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE CONSERVATIVE FORCES OF THE CONTINENT.

MITE old blind Toryism which refused to believe in change is passing away unregretted, but there seems some dan- ger that it may be succeeded by another form of blindness at least as fatal to accuracy of perception. So rapid is the current of events, so dramatic the tone of modern politics, that surprise, change, effect, sudden and disastrous political overturns, are actually expected by the mass of politicians. There is a credulity of change creeping among us which im- pairs all foresight, and intensifies disturbance by creating a permanent situation of suspense. The smallest fact, so that it do but indicate change, is accepted as the herald of the largest consequences. Austrian securities rise and fall with speeches in a Carinthian Diet. An outbreak of Gari- baldi's temper is held menacing to the unity of Italy. A street riot in Kiev is supposed ominous of the dismember- ment of the Russian Empire. We are in danger of forget- ting that change is abnormal, that the usual course of things, once established, is to keep on existing, that the death of a State in particular is an event of the most rare and extraor- dinary occurrence. Nature has not turned Whig, though most men in spite of themselves are becoming revolutionary. A man does not die the quicker because there is a daily bul- letin of his health, nor do States perish more rapidly because the telegraph records day by day the symptoms of decay. The worst Government in existence is still, so long as it exists, buttressed by all kinds of props, by the incalculable strength derived from habit, from ignorance, from the orga- nization only Governments can possess. The Empire of Austria, for example, is said to be dying, tied, doubtless, is in distress. But those who watch eagerly or fearfully for its dissolution, who expect it, as it were, to die to-morrow, overlook facts which telegrams do not report, but which nevertheless are of some consequence in the cal- culation. They forget, for example, that the military strength of the empire is still almost unbroken. Its armies were defeated in Italy, but Austria is a mine of soldiers. What with the blind fidelity of the German peasantry, the strin- gency of the conscription, the military colonies of the frontier, and the unbroken devotion of the aristocracy, men are forthcoming in multitudes. It is not many months since Solferino, but Austria has five hundred thousand efficient soldiers once more round her standards. A section of these men are supposed to be disaffected, but they obey; and the disaffection is, we suspect, partly imaginary. The Continent always supposes Ireland to be disaffected, but the enemy or the rebel who opposes an Irish soldier is bayoneted all the same. Half a million of men trained as Austrians are trained is a terrible force for any people, or aggregate of peoples, unless maddened by suffering, to encounter, and there is no proof of any such bitterness of feeling among the mass. They may hate the reigning House, but it is not clear that they do, and if they do not, physical power is with the rulers, and not with the educated who dislike them.

Nor is it quite certain that the educatedAustrian population is at all prepared to see the Empire pulverized. The non- Hungarian provinces seem to regard that idea with strong trisfavour, and the non-Hungarian population, though not so conspicuous ae its rival, has the advantage in numbers, and —the Magyars excepted—in civilization. We naturally enough think the hankering of the Emperor after the Con- cordat, the favour shown to the clergy, the preference still displayed towards the aristocracy, all mistakes tending to precipitate the change the Emperor would avoid. To the mass of Tyrolese, Bohemians, and Germans, whom we call Austrians, those defects seem merits, or at all events part of the natural order of things, as little to be quarrelled with as rheumatism or the gout. Men do not upset Governments in sport, and under an administration like that of Austria, till the people are actively hostile to the Government, the Go- vernment is strong. In India the British Government uses armies most effectively, every individual soldier in which had rather on the whole that Government took itself away. Even in Hungary the popular leaders evidently think the issue of combat dangerously doubtful, and while a Government is able to beat, or is supposed able to beat, half its subjects .iwopen war, that Government is in no danger of immediate ' atrophy. So in Poland. Western Europe listens for a rising in some section of Poland, as if the first movement were to be decisive of the issue. Yet how often has Ireland risen, and Ireland is incomparably stronger relatively to England, than modern Poland relatively to Russia. The telegraph tells us of Polish 6mentes, but it does not tell us that the population of Russian Poland, Jews excepted, capable of bearing arms, is less than the nominal strength of the Rus- sian army, Still less does it tell us that every Russian, how.

ever opposed to his own Government, agrees with it that Poland must be retained, that any destruction of Poles is preferable to the loss of position Polish freedom would in- volve. To watch the telegrams from Warsaw as if they in- volved revolution, is as accurate as to watch the telegrams from Ireland during a monster meeting, with the same anti- cipation.

It is just the same in Italy. People are so expectant of change that they study Garibaldi's diatribes as if Garibaldi were a power co-ordinate with the King's Government. They forget that the revolution has been made by the edu- cated classes, who, admiring Garibaldi, have twice pro- nounced for Cavour ; that the Parliament is as strong as the Parliament of Great Britain, and is emphatically Cavour's Parliament. The heroic leader is the chief of a party, perhaps of a great party, but the nation which listens to him still obeys its King. The telegraph, and in a less degree the special correspondents, mention naturally only the powers and people in motion. The immense quiescent mass which adheres steadily to authority is unregarded. A foreigner might argue form the debates that opinion in England was still unsettled about Italy. Yet English political leaders know that there never was a point on which the nation, which holds its tongue but is obeyed, was so unanimous. We suspect there is some error of the same kind in the popular view of American politics. We hear what Mr. Seward, and Mr. Douglas, and Mr. Crittenden say, but no one tells us what the nineteen millions they are supposed to re- present are saying. It is quite possible that the silent people of the North intend to maintain the Constitution, and quite certain that if they do, the talk about peaceful changes, and pacific secession, and the dissolution of the United States, is talk merely. So, too, above all, in Turkey. In this direction the belief in coming change is so strong that the smallest rumour of revolt in a corner of one of the four largest empires of the world, is believed to presage immediate dissolution. The public, we believe, is actually surprised that Turkey exists after revolutionists have landed in Spezzia. The telegraph does not inform them that one-half the population of Turkey do not even know that the empire is in danger, do not see any conceivable reason why the Sultan should not be obeyed now as he was obeyed- before the memory of man in those regions. The public hear of financial distress, and caimes which ought not to be issued, and bonds which ought to be, but are not, and they look for the immediate collapse which would follow a European bankruptcy. They do not hear that Oriental empires do not depend upon finance, that the Sultan is obeyed from other motives than pay, that a warlike race still numbering millions means to be exterminated before Turkey ceases to exist. The death throe of the Turks will be one of the most terrible spectacles ever presented in Europe, and is as little likely to be brought on. by Greek emeutes as that of England by a Tipperary riot. All events tend to the destruction of Turkey, as they tend perhaps to the dissolution of the Austrian Empire, but the state of sus- pense produced by the feverish rapidity of intelligence is to a large extent unwarranted. Patients do not die faster because their symptoms reach us hourly, and many an empire, supposed to be now moribund, will live to distract the atten- tion of our sons.