THE MAP OF EUROPE.
SELDOM has a Ministerial crisis in England been of such Euro- pean importance as it is at the present moment. It involves much more than a simple change of men, whether for better or for worse. It hazards the Alliance and its best proceedings on the Continent, and threatens to undo all the most promising work that had been apparently accomplished by the late Government. For we have advanced far beyond the question of the Principalities, of Turkey, or even of the Crimea; it is now a question of Europe. Nor is it only a consideration for thopresent day; the true subject of anxiety is one that it has taken forty years to develop, and that may affect the world throughout the remainder of the century, if not extend into a far remoter future. At the termination of the long peace, we can now perceive that the position in which we actually eland is the true consequence of the position which this country consented, to occupy at the termination of the last war. Our dangers and our sacrifices now are the positive result of our mistakes then. And we are in the midst of another crisis where fresh mistakes may perpetuate and enlarge our dan- gers, while we lose the opportunity of in down the mis- chievous influences that we have assisted m setting up. It is the test of the most ordinary chess-player that he can see three moves forward ; but there are few politicians who can stand that test. It is most usual to look only at the next move, and the one move beyond is quite enough for those who consider them- selves far-seeing. In the crisis of 1814-'15 the bugbear of Europe was Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Empire ; to extinguish Napoleon was thought to be worth a trifle over the seven hundred millions that we had already expended. A few millions more for Russia, Holland, or anybody that asked it, were cheerfully thrown in ; and the genuine interests of England were unhesitatingly sa- crificed as the price of the conspiracy to put down the Antichrist of the Holy Alliance. If the herd of emperors, kings, diplomatists, courtiers, and-ladies, assembled at Vienna in congress, could look one move further, it was, possibly, to discern that some of the Great Powers, imitating the example of France, might aggrandize them- selves at the expense of the rest. Hence the anxiety to establish " the balance of power"; hence the almost blind eagerness to re- construct the map of Europe so as to patch up minor states which it was thought would be independent and would serve as barriers against the encroachments of the Powers—for Powers are addicted to encroachment. These conclusions are impressed upon us by a striking paper on the Congress of 1815 and its present consequen- ces, in the current number of the _Dublin University Magazine. The ground traversed was familiar to the memory of some and the reading of most of us ; but in the paper entitled " The Boundary Map of Europe" it is brought out with renewed vividness and graphic tact, and the beginning and end are suggestively put together.
There were other motives at work in the Congress. Napoleon had humiliated Pius the Seventh : "the first gentleman in Europe," who seems to have regarded himself as the one antagonist of Na- poleon, resolved to reexalt the Pope, and, by special stipulation of the Prince Regent, Cardinal Gonsalvi was admitted to represent the Pope at the Congress of Vienna. Murat was there by repre- sentative, in virtue of his defection from Napoleon. England was represented by Lord Castlereagh ; who no doubt was hampered by the professed principles of the Tory party, which naturally placed them in cooperation with Divine Right, with the Holy Alliance, and so far with the Absolutist Monarchs who overruled the advice of England. This, perhaps, was one of the difficulties which prevented Castlereagh from pursuing his really honest purpose at the Con- gress. In a speech on the annexation of Norway to Sweden, op- posed by Earl Grey and his friends early in 1814, Lord Castle- reagh said that the great evil of Europe had been the modern wars of ambition, and his object was to strengthen the second-rate Powers. This object he evidently intended to pursue ; and it was with this object that he joined other statesmen in endeavouring to counteract the schemes of aggrandizement which Russia was already furthering through her hold upon the balance of power. The Austrian statesmen foresaw this as well as the English, and Talleyrand was not blind to it; but the fears of the herd were turned in an opposite direction.
How the real danger was even then foreseen, might be shown by innumerable passages, but one will suffice. In a note addressed to Lord Castlereagh, the Duke of Saxe Coburg Saalfeld says that Russia and Prussia cannot be divided, because their personal re- lations and their united interests are too strong for separation. " Prussia," says the Duke, " will be supported by Russia in her projects of aggrandizement in Germany, and she will on her side support the designs of Russia on the Ottoman empire." So early and so distinctly was the present position foreseen. But Russia was not the bugbear for the mob represented at the Congress. On the contrary, the Emperor Alexander was hailed as a deliverer from the grand enemy—as the common preserver. The very height and imposing mien of his person assisted his art in representing the dignified, the kindly champion of order. He rode into Paris as the friend and protector of the French ; he moved about in the Con- gress as the patron of reinstated or readjusted sovereigns ; and if the idea of reconstructing minor states as barriers against encroachments of the larger was adopted in terms, the fear of the barrier-builders of that day was directed towards France and not to Russia—towards democratic, subversive movements, and not towards the encroach- ments of an autocrat. The boundary map of Europe was entirely reconstructed ; but with reference to reestablishing the order of princes, and without the smallest reference to the wishes of the in- habitants of the states disposed of. The kingdom of the Nether- lands,
the compound kingdom of Sardinia, and the kingdom of Hol- land, were amongst those patched up ; each state being despoiled for the benefit of some other, and compensated by new spoliation. To Holland, for instance, was ceded Java, with the English guarantee of the Russo-Dutch loan. Italy, which might have adjusted itself into a federation of states, was par- celled out by the royal mob ; and with the reenthronement of the Pope, Great Britain helped to restore a local standing- place and a material rule to that domineering church which has subsequently created difficulties in Prussia, France, Ireland, and indeed wherever her spiritual authority has been re- cognized. The designs of Russia, as we have said, were already perceived ; but only by the few. The three Powers who are now united against that one, perceived the danger so distinctly, that on the 3d of February 1815, a secret treaty was concluded between Austria, France, and England, offensive and defensive. The Rus- sian Emperor even then showed his teeth : he hinted to the Al- liance, that he might evoke a Muralist opposition to the Bourbon family, a Beauharnais alliance, German complications, and so forth. England endeavoured to resist him, to strengthen the barriers against him, and particularly to secure the restoration of the inde- pendence of Poland. But Russia persevered, and events were precipitated. Parliamentary duties called Castlereagh home ; leaving as his successor Wellington, who was not then keen- sighted on the subject of Russia. Napoleon broke bounds from Elba; the readjustment of the European map was hastened ; it was concluded a few days before the battle of -Waterloo, and rati- fied in Paris, the seat of the overthrown domination that had been the terror of the Congress.
Old Europe had disappeared ; and although the Jupiter Tonans of the Parisian capitol had been overthrown, old Europe could not be reinstated. The old "Roman Empire " had gone, and the feeble " Bund" had taken its place. Bernadotte occupied the throne of the Wasa ; the Romans had been given to the Pope, for the benefit of Catholic Europe ; Norway had been torn from Denmark against the will both of the Danish King and of the Nor- wegian citizen ; Poland had been compromised into the evanescent "Duchies"; the Netherlands had been made a barrier. But even during the peace the results have not justified the masonry of those Powers, who had no sooner accomplished their work than they felt the necessity of consolidating the "Holy Alliance" of arbitrary power against the natural instinct of independence in nations. A premature revolution ended in the total disruption of the barrier, Poland. The kingdom of the Netherlands has fallen to pieces ; and Belgium is probably a more secure barrier by itself than when it was submerged in Holland. Irritated by a pre- carious possession of her alien provinces, Holland would have been more inclined to fall back upon Russian support than she should be now, that she views her position in Europe from an independent position. Revolutions have touched almost every part of Europe. The one thing that remains un- touched and unbroken is that menacing power of Russia which was foreseen by the few at the Congress, disbelieved by the many. The barriers which were- set up against the Great Powers have proved worthless for their purpose. The royal families, who appear to have expected that they could secure their thrones better by setting one nationality against another, have almost universally been shaken by the jar and concussions of their disunited foundations. France has seen two dynasties since the one reestablished by all the Kings; and there is not a state that has not learned, by its reverses, the truth that undying popular disaffection is a bad foundation for the stability of thrones. Eng- land then used her influence for the advancement of arbitrary power. She abandoned her colonies, her millions sterling, her ad- vantages on the Continent, to procure concessions, always in favour of the Holy Alliance. She took no real guarantees for herself; and we find her now, forty years later, discovering the necessity for taking guarantees against the encroachments of the patron who was even then suspected. The attempt of Russia upon Turkey, with its accompanying disclosures, has called practical attention to her encroachments, discerned in 1815, but continued since that date. Even the memorandum of 1844 had scarcely awakened suspicion; the dominating influence exercised by Russia in 1848 positively al- layed doubt; but the insidious approaches to the "sick man" at last did the work. At the end, as at the beginning, we find Prus- sia the vassal of Russia, bound to her service by interests, per- sonal ties, and a certain refinement of servility : again we find Austria forced in self-defence to fall back upon France and Eng- land; and the prediction of the Duke of Saxe Coburg Saalfeld is accomplished on the very field of the Ottoman empire. In the brief sequel, the diplomacy and the armed aggression of Russia upon the Danube were exposed; and the work, of which Castle- reagh as well as Metternich and Talleyrand saw the necessity in 1815, was commenced in 1853. The events of the subsequent interval are too fresh in the recol- lection of the reader to need recapitulation. The Government which is quitting office. has, in connexion with that of France, done an immense amount of work in a few months. Austria, who seemed but a little while ago the vassal of the Czar, is now canvassing amongst the German States for a league in ease Europe should be divided, with Russia and Prussia as a united enemy ; the Viennese Government offering for its royal re- cruits their share in "the gains of war "! In other words, the Three Powers, in conjunction with Piedmont, Turkey, perhaps Switzerland, almost certainly Belgium, and such of the German States as choose, to join, are preparing to take up arms for reducing Russia to a safe restraint, unless she will at once accept the neces- sity. It is a question how far all this great work is undone by our Ministerial crisis ; how far uncertainties in our own Cabinet will sap the confidence that has rendered the Alliance possible— will introduce despondency or indifference in Paris or 'Vienna— will throw us back to the compromise of 1815, and replace Russia at her advanced starting-point of 1853, looking out for other "sick men."
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