THE STRENGTH OF GERMANY.
111-11. COBDEN, in the splendid speech in which, on .1.VJL Tuesday night, he denounced manliness as a crime, called the "balance of power" a "mere figment," and in the sense in which the phrase is popularly employed he was undoubtedly in the right. When he adds that the idea began with the " uneettlement of all things called the Treaty of Vienna," he talks the kind of nonsense to be expected from a man who does not know history; but the blunder affects the influence of his arguments over educated men rather than his arguments themselves. The "balance of power" is a modern phrase, but it has been the governing principle of Europe since the death of Charlemagne,—since, that is, the last succes- ful attempt to revive the Imperial system, which looked to a world controlled, or rather guided, by a single chain of ideas, in preference to a world in which all ideas have scope. It is, in fact, the formula invented to defend the independence of separate nations against the revival of the Imperial system, which would make them all mere sections of one grand but monotonous whole. Of late years it has, however, been used by statesmen so as to imply only an equality of territorial power, and in that sense it is of course, as Mr. Cobden ex- claims, a meaningless figment. Modern political science has proved that mere increase of territory is one of the smallest additions to a nation's active strength. Great Britain has not only not increased her territory since 1815, but she is from geographical situation incapable of increase but her power has more than quintupled. The elevation dam Italian of genius to supreme power indefinitely multiplied for twenty years the inherent resources of France. A discovery made by a spinner tripled within ten years the fighting strength of Great Britain. The lucky hit of an old martinet who thought ramrods might as well be iron as wood doubled in six months the strength of the Prussian line. The life of Cavour was worth whole provinces to Italy, the physicians who murdered him had better have killed an army, and German swans could hardlx predict the addition which unity, hearty unity, might make to the effective force of the Fatherland. Russia owes more to Peter the Great's reforms than to all his conquests, and the discovery of a great coal-field might do more for Spain than the restoration of all her Transatlantic dominion. Suppose the population of France to have multiplied like that of Great Britain, or the people of Denmark like the people of the United States, what would be the worth of territorial treaties ? Internal progress alters the relations of States more rapidly than any treaty or any diplomatic combination, and Spain has fallen and England risen, though both have equally lost their Transatlantic possessions.
Thus far the old theory of the balance of power is demon- strably false, and Mr. Cobden in exposing its falsity before diplomatists have obtained the courage to abandon the ancient grooves does a very great public service ; but the ancient formula has yet another meaning. It implies, besides a desire for the independence of all existing nations, also a fear lest any one nation should acquire such strength as to make it temporarily and after great exertions supreme over Europe. That supremacy more or less avowed has from time to time been the object, four or five times the attained object, of a single European Power. The authority so acquired has always been obtained by violence, has always so arrested or so crossed the aspirations of its subjects as to stir them to present revolt and an enduring hatred, has never endured for a generation, and has usually brought on the aggressive nation a terrible retribution ; but so frightful have been its immediate cobse- quences, so long continued its permanent effects, that far- sighted statesmen have always believed its prevention worth a great European war. Spain nearly obtained it, had the Armada not been dispersed would have obtained it altogether, and her success cost Italy three hundred years of slavery, the Low Countries the accumulations of two centuries of success- ful industry, England a century of Stuart government, a revolution, and an arrest in development of a hundred years, and America the surrender of her most fertile soils to a race who after three hundred years are giving way in every direc- tion before the unimprovable red tribes. Louis XIV. made the attempt, and it cost England twelve years of war and the creation of a national debt, Germany the desolation of two provinces and the elevation of the Hapsburgs to Imperial power, Holland her position as a progressive country, and France the awful series of events which, begin- ning with her "great monarch's" death and the Re- gency, have not ended yet. Napoleon renewed the struggle, and there is not a country in Europe which has fully re- covered its effects, witness our debt, German disunion, the Russian military organization, and the French readiness te bow before the rule of a Caesar, and the mere fear lest 'a second Napoleon should once again play this rile curses the world with unendurable taxation, turns one per cent. of the European family into soldiers, and makes even Mr. Cobden allow that the British navy must cost us fifteen millions a year. The attempt may never be made again, but it also may, and if any Power could make it with success it is the German Confederation. That cumbrous and multiform body, with its absurd constitution and powerless Parliament, its divided principalities and hostile Courts, has shown that whenever in- flamed by ambition it can act as a whole,—act with rapidity, act with a perfect forgetfulness of the local jealousies of its States. The Cimbric Peninsula is now garrisoned by the troops of the entire Confederation, and of all its subject peoples.
Nothing can be more perfect than the unity for offence which pervades that miscellaneous mass. Napoleon was not obeyed more rapidly than Prince Charles of Prussia. Berlin may hate Vienna, and Frankfort distrust both, but no reason- able politician doubts that if Prince Charles wesa defeated Count von Gablenz would hasten to his support, or that if both encountered a check the troops of the Diet now in Holstein would in twelve hours be streaming to their aid.
The nation for offensive purposes when warmed by the lust of conquest or the passion for vengeance is one, and a most terrible one. Forty-five millions of persons, one in language and opinion, in civilization and institutions, trained under an admirable military organization, active as any race but the French, and brave as any people on earth, wield all the mili- tary resources of thirty millions more in addition to their own.
The greatest rivers of Europe are within German frontiers ; Germany is seated in full strength on the North Sea and the Mediterranean, and she alone of European Powers strikes at every enemy from the inside of the campaigning circle. Her literature influences the world, her alliances are absolutely ubiquitous, she can control an election in North America as easily as a succession in Denmark, and of all the Kings of Europe there are but two not sprung of a German stock or think- ing in the German tongue. The nation which wields this extra- ordinary power has no hereditary enemies among first-class States, and swallows nationalities on every side without incur- ring for a moment the charge of ambition or aggressiveness. Crushing Poland to the ground, holding Hungary as we hold India, ravaging Denmark, threatening Turkey, and striving to emasculate Italy, she is still popularly believed to be a " stationary and Conservative Power" "essential to the peace and the good order of Europe." One limit only has for ages been placed on her ambition. She has been able to do little at sea, but with the conquest of Denmark even this disability disappears. Germany does not assimilate as France does, but she has the talent shown by our own race on the American continent,—the capacity for eating out all weaker nationalities. Denmark conquered will be digested, and then seventy millions of people magnificently organized for war- fare by land will be posted on all northern seas, with har- bours in abundance, arsenals only limited by the wealth of the third richest race in Europe, and a maritime population of six millions, of which one-fourth is Scandinavian. Grant her but a genius at her head, and what is to resist such a Power, or stop her from regaining Alsace, overflowing Holland, reconquering Italy, or crushing the rising hope of the Slaver' tribes of European Turkey? France ? France with a Napoleon for,chief drove Austria alone with difficulty out of a foreign province, and who reckons on a succession of Napoleons ? Italy ? Can Italy even face South Germany ? Russia ? Russia is governed by Germans, is a sharer in the spoils of Poland, and would sell the world for ten hours' undisturbed possession of Constantinople. Great Britain ? Great Britain is shrinking from the battle now, when Germany has no fleet and Denmark is alive, is plunging deeper and deeper into the trade which makes her prosperity and enfeebles her sense of right, and is governed and will be governed by a house German in blood and sympathies. We believe firmly if the career be once commenced, if Germany once pass through a time of exaltation, there will be no remedy for Europe till it has tasted what German domination means, till it has felt the rule which has in three centuries made all Italians the sworn enemies of all Germans, has in ten centuries failed to reconcile Hungarians, has in eighteen months made of the Roumans allies of their Magyar oppressors, has in a century and a half changed Poles from prosperous enemies into pauperized foes, and has so alien- ated its own people that no German conquered by a French- man has in three centuries ever struck one blow for German dominion. When the Germans move to the North, the East, or the South, they drag with them irreconcilable foes, soldiers whom they must watch as vigilantly as their adversaries in the field ; when they move West they are encountered by men of their own lineage, obeying their own traditions, speaking their own language, but who will resist their pro- gress to the death. It is a people like this, thus powerful, thus aggressive, and thus hated, whom we are called upon to resist, if not in Denmark while Germany is without a navy, then in Holland when she has a navy—that is if the marriage of a Prince of Orange into the English house should happily for the world enable us to perceive that Holland is de- fensible.
But nothing, we shall be told, will happen of all this, for Germany is not united, and in the long run is peaceful. We heard that argument of disunion ad nauseam before Magenta, but we do not hear much of it now, and union for aggression is to the world more dangerous than union for internal improve- ment. Bavaria may obey laws which Westphalia rejects, but if Bavarians assist Westphalians in cutting Danish throats their internal jealousies are not of perceptible advantage to Danes. Every statesman who has spoken this week admits that if we defend Denmark we must fight all Germany, and if all Germany fights, the difference between Austrians and Prussians matters no more than the discontent of Ireland or the separate Church of Scotland matter to the enemies of Great Britain when the Scots Greys charge. Peaceful and unaggressive ! Well, the German Diet of Vienna has voted that Venice is a port of the Confederation, Prussia will not give up one inch of Posen, the Reichsrath refuses to condemn the state of siege in Galicia, and Germany from end to end is ringing with delight because German troops are cutting the unripe corn which might encourage Danish Jutlanders to resist their German invaders. Our opponents put to us a prediction, and in reply we only state what is.
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