THE BALANCE OF POWER. T HE short review we gave last
week of the growth of the chief civilized Powers in the last four centuries may serve, imperfect as it necessarily was, to indicate some main points in our present position. It is evident that the old tear lest a single military Power under a Philip II. or Louis XIV. should establish a virtual autocracy in Christendom may be laid aside for the present at least, the great increase in the number of States giving substantial pledges for general liberty. There is an old proverb, that no man is as wise as all the world ; and we may say still more confidently, that no State can outweigh all mankind, even though the sword of Brennus be in the balance. Nor can the partial success of Napoleon I. fifty years ago be taken as argument against this theory. At that time France was, to England, Austria, and Prussia collectively, as 7 toll; she now stands to them .as only a little more than 5 to 12. But, above all, Italy followed the first Napoleon as the regenerator, in some degree at least, of its nationality. Italy is now an inde- pendent kingdom, with interests of its own very different in many respects from those of ,France. Spain was then an inert mass, and Spain is now a second-rate Power, too strong, at least, to be intimidated into lending its navy. Whether, some fifty years hence Russia and the United States, if the present civil war end in a restoration of the Union, may not have increased to proportions dangerous for the world it is, of course, impossible to predict ; but it is certain that the troubles in both countries from the servile question, and the pressure of financial difficulties, will go far to equalize their conditions of growth with those of Europe. Meanwhile, Brazil, Canada, and Australia will have grown, in the natural course of things, to the dimensions of great Powers, and we may fairly hope that something will have been effected to- wards the consolidation of North Germany and the regene- ration of Turkey. Canning's famous vaunt of calling a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old has been humiliatingly belied by the anarchy of the Spanish re- publics in America. But it seems none the less to be the law of Providence that new and glorious forms of political life should arise at a time when the vast problems of social growth require more than ever to be tried under different conditions. The civilization of several continents and half a dozen different races ought surely to add something to the grand but unfinished systems which Palestine, Greece, Rome, and England have successively developed. Unless mankind should enter on some new phase of senti- ment it would seem as if the chances of peace must grow with every, generation. The prophecy may appear a bold one in the face of present facts. Yet a slight glance at history may convince any thoughtful man that for two centuries at least the peaceful nations have won in the struggle for existence upon the warlike. Military Poland has been absorbed by Russia, where the soldier hates the service ; military Hun- gary is a province of Austria; the Turks are dying out of the land which the conquered Greeks and Slavonians are filling; and France and Spain, the two paladins of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have been distanced in the race of enterprise by England. It is strange to contrast foreign speculations about the rapid decline of commercial greatness and comparisons of Carthage and England with our actual position. Yet it is not difficult to see how the mistake arose. Assume only two powers in existence, and struggling for victory, and it will undoubtedly remain with the one whose population is largest, and who pursues a single object instead of two. Rome, a nation of soldiers (for Rome was Italy), easily conquered Carthage, a single city, which bad dissipated its strength to preserve its dependencies. But a war now demands large resources, and, eceteris paribus, the wealthiest country is the: strongest, and the country that has spent least upon war the wealthiest. It may seem a paradox for those who look at our national debt to say that we have spent little. But in one most important sense we have been the most economical of nations, maintaining the smallest army, relatively to our population, of any people in the world. In fact, we keep 7 men in 1000 from increasing the national wealth, and founding families, where France, and most of the German States, keep from 17 to 20. In other words, allowance being.° made for the difference of population, France withdraws 300,000 men from trade and agriculture, restricts them from marriage, and supports them at the charge of national industry, whom we in England should leave free. The enormous loss incurred by our neighbours and avoided by ourselves may be easily guessed. But, moreover, wherever the military spirit pre- dominates it tends in many 'indirect ways to injure com- merce, drawing the energy of the nation into unremune- mtive channels, and regarding labourers and fishermen as mere material for the army and the marine. Russia is a curious instance of a country divided between opposite inte- rests. The court has thrown back the nation indefinitely by the maintenance of an army too large for its finances ; but the people, naturally nnwarlike, are tradesmen or agricultural colonists wherever they are left to themselves. Again, the population is so vast, that the army actually maintained is not more at most than 11 in the 1000, and even of these many are mere militia, who are practically productive citizens. The late Czar, soldier despot as he was, never exceeded the ordi- nary French proportion, even on paper, and it is believed that his estimates were enormously above his real levies. The comparative growth of Russia, in spite of retarding causes is thus accounted for. Assuming these estimates to be substantially true, the axioms resulting from the present balance of nations would seem to be that no military nation can hope to gain great extension of area by conquest in Europe, and that the country which maintains fewest soldiers must gain largely upon its neighbours in population and wealth.
But while population and wealth are the main ultimate conditions of power, they are not its motive forces. Curi- ously enough, if the debt charge of Russia and England be subtracted from their respective revenues, the residuum of net income will be the same in either case, while the popula- tion of Russia is as two and a half to that of England, and its area as more than sixty to one. Yet the severe trials of the last ten years in Europe have told very differently upon the two Powers, the Crimean war having for a time paralyzed Russia, while the Indian mutiny has rather added to than impaired our prestige and strength. We may pay our late foemen the willing tribute that they are nowise inferior to ourselves in heroic patriotism, and the cause of our compara- tive superiority must be sought partly, no doubt, in the fact that our reserve of wealth is supposed to be greater, but chiefly in our position as representatives of a victorious idea —constitutional liberty. In spite of the strong personal preference for Russians over Englishmen, and perhaps over natives of every other great nation on the Continent ; in spite of the Czar's dynastic alliances ; in spite ()this position within a few days' march of Vienna and Berlin, he is weaker than ourselves by the difference between the convictions of whole peoples desiring self-government and the desires of a few hundred placetnen and guardsmen for the order of St. Anne. Besides ourselves, there are only two Powers at pre- sent in Europe which can count on arousing unbought popular devotion. One of these, the Papacy, detested for its maladministration, in the hands of Antonelli and Merode, and at war with the principle of nationality, is yet able to thwart Cesar and keep a people at bay, because to many millions of men it represents the only practicable embodiment of spiritual independence. The strength of the Catholic re- action lies not in its appeal to devotion, for faith at present is not menaced in Italy, but in the issue every continental Catholic puts before himself that the Church will become a mere department of police if the Pope ceases to be inde- pendent and sovereign. The fear may seem absurd to us, who know the amount of religious liberty compatible with the existence of a State Church ; but it is not unnatural or unreasonable in France and Germany. The third Power that represents an idea is France. That idea in its simplest form is equality and the abolition of social privilege. It reduces all competition under the State to a question of results rather than antecedents, testing its servants by what they do, rather than by what they are, and is thus favourable to in- tellect rather than to character. In these respects it is the antithesis of the spirit of liberty which respects individuality and difference, even in the forms of family birth and pro- perty. Hence in periods of revolution, when a great and immediate change is desired, France is looked up to by other nations as their Corypheus, and has always shown itself sympathetic even for ideas apparently alien to its in- terests. On the other hand, the steady growth of England, connected as it no doubt is in practice with the importance which English ideas assign to the past, invests it with a character of superhuman stability, and recommends it as the model to all countries that have passed the throes of change, and desire the conditions of healthy life. It is difficult to see how any progress would be possible, if either the English or the French idea were without a representative in Europe.
These considerations are not without their moral aspects. We are clearly in a new world, and must learn its language and thoughts. If there is any truth in the charge commonly brought against us on the Continent, that we are jealous of all great Powers, we may at once discard the unworthy feeling, for our own safety—to leave out of question the future hap- piness of the world,—will be best promoted by the rise of so many new states as to make coalition against a single power impossible. If we have ever believed, as our enemies were fond of believing, that England, with its little area and fluc- tuating commerce, could not grow as surely as France and Russia, we may look at the relative advance of the last century, and remember that every improvement in science and government is tending to make the existence of untold myriads as possible within the four seas as in the valley of the Mississippi. If we have regarded France as a dangerous rival we may now see that so long as either country is true to its destiny both are fellow-workers in civilization, and that France is necessary to initiate what England is best fitted to mature. If we believe that dreams of military conquest are inextinguishable in the sons of the soldiers of Austerlitz, we may remember that in proportion as a country is purely military is it barren and suicidal. Our faith in the omnipotence of wealth may be chastened by the reflection that one or two bad harvests, and a protracted cotton famine, would inflict a loss perhaps as large as our national debt on England ; and our trust in our own future may be strength- ened by the remembrance that we were weaker relatively to France when we almost conquered it in the fourteenth century, and to Spain when we destroyed the Armada, than we now are to the three strongest Powers, whichever they may be, put together. The time when the German poet described France and England as "wrestling for the world's undivided possession" has passed suddenly, like the dream it was. But so long as we are faithful to the principles that have made us great, and do not confound belief in liberty with trust in the prosperity that results from it, we shall remain, if not the first power in the world, second to none. Given conditions so equal as are now seen in the relative resources of states, force of character and vitality of ideas are the elements that must determine success in the struggle to lead the world. Our destiny is in our own hands.
{Note.—The areas in last week's article were given in German square miles.]
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