Volume 53 — THE BRITISH QUARTERLY APRIL 1871 (continued 7)

Art. IX.—The Future of Europe.

(1) Der Deutschen Volkszahl und Sprachgebiet in den Europaischen staaten eine statistische untersuchung von Richard Böekh. Berlin: J. Guttenay. 1871.

(2.) France, Alsace and Lorraine. London: Trübner & Co. 1870.

(3.) The French Case Truly Stated. By Augustus Granville Stapleton. London: E. Stanford. 1871.

(4.) La France et la Prusse, pendant l'invasion de 1870. Par Erard de Choiseul Gouffier. 2^me Edition. Luxembourg: Pierre Bruck. 1870.

(5.) La France devant l'Europe. By Jules Michelet. 2^me Edition. Ferrier: Hachette and Cie. 1871.

(6.) Elsass und Lothringen nachweise wie diese provenzen dem deutschen Reiche verloren gingen. Von Adolf Schmidt. Dritte auf. Leipzic: Vert and Co. 1870.

(7.) Prussian Aggrandizement and English Policy. London: Ridgway. 1870.

(8.) Krieg und Friede. Von D. F. Strauss. Leipzic: S. Herzel. 1870.

(9.) The Interests of Europe in the Conditions of Peace. London: Stanford. 1870.

(10.) Recueil des Documents sur les Exactions, vols et cruautés des armées Prussiennes en France. Bordeaux: Feret et fils. 1871.

(11.) La République neutre d'Alsace. Par le Comte A. de Gasparin. Genève et Bäle. 1871.

(12.) Who is responsible for the War? By Scrutator. London: Rivingtons. 1871.

(13.) Europe of the near Future. By Emeritus Professor Francis W. Newman. Trübner and Co. 1871.

(14.) Diary of the French Campaign of 1870; with the Decrees, Telegrams, and Proclamations of his Majesty the King of Prussia. London: Trübner and Co. 1871.

There are two antagonistic theories which profess to summarise history. Vico attempted, in the last century, to prove that the course of human events had, like the planets, an orbit of their own, into which they returned after a certain number of years. In fact, according to this philosopher, the tendency of history was to repeat itself, much like a compound circulating decimal. But the rapid development of physical science has, of late years, thrown this theory very much into the shade, by confronting it with the more glittering notion of human perfectibility. Mankind, instead of gyrating in an ellipse, move along a line of infinite progression. Scientific men fondly imagined that the march of intellect was destined to impel society, through stages of uninterrupted progress, to a fanciful millennium. Knowledge was to be the spiritual means of redeeming the nations. When mankind came to understand their relations to the surrounding universe, Astrea would again visit the earth, and the golden age return. There were not wanting many minor postulates which seemed to support this splendid vision. All the wars of Europeans found their root in dynastic interests, and would vanish, when the wishes of the million became the main-spring of politics. The knell of standing armies was rung by a citizen soldiery; and with standing armies vanished all fear of territorial aggrandisement. Economic inventions and the wide ramifications of industrial interests were fast binding mankind in a network of harmony and peace. Under war waged for the spell of these illusions, philosophers and statesmen had looked back upon the past as the wilderness of humanity, and, from the heights of Pisgah, sighted the promised land. Even Gioberti, priest though he was, did not shrink from avowing in his primato, that if the Jews looked forward to the Messiah as yet to come, in the light of the golden age, he was as staunch in that belief as the stoutest Israelite among them. The rationalist divines have vied with the poets of our own age in announcing the approach of the dawn of an era of universal peace and happiness. In the midst of these delightful anticipations a speck appears upon a sunny sky, no bigger than a man's hand. But it suddenly swells to gigantic dimensions and sheds disastrous twilight over the fairest regions of the earth. Without any rational pretext whatever, two of the most enlightened nations of Europe rush with murderous weapons at each other's throats. They close with deadly gripe; inflict upon each other mortal blows, until one sinks through sheer exhaustion. The collapsed state is then let blood. Heavy gyves are placed upon it, from which there is little chance of escape for many years to come, and then only by combination with some other power. Between two races who were, a little time ago, beginning to forget their old animosity in acts of amity and goodwill, the flames of hate are anew enkindled with a vehemence destined to last through all time. Now these phenomena may, doubtless, be explained by the usual philosophic method of assigning very simple causes to very complicated effects.

As to which power is humanly responsible for these multiplied disasters, is discussed at large in the pamphlets before us.[234] The question is not simply historical, but bears directly upon the reasonableness of the terms of peace which have been imposed. If Prussia is as blameless in the transactions which led to the outbreak, as Bismark would make out, it is obvious he had some reason for his recent severity. But this, we think, can in no way be sustained. We do not share the bias of the authors who have written on this subject. It is our opinion, having heard, with the impartiality of a nisi prius judge, all that can be said upon the subject, that both parties have been lamentably in the wrong; that the diplomatic relations between France and Prussia for the last six years have been conducted upon principles more worthy of thieves than honest politicians; that each has been attempting to overreach the other; that Napoleon began these subterranean intrigues with a view to secure all the prizes of war without fighting for them, and that Bismark so manipulated events as to cause the Emperor to fight after all, and left him nothing but defeat for his pains. Each knew that the mining operations in which both were engaged, had gone so far, that they must explode somewhere, and each endeavoured to direct the train from his own territory to that of his neighbour. It is beyond question that Bismark, if he did not plan the Hohenzollern intrigue with his eyes open to all the consequences, knew of its existence when his Government denied all knowledge of it. It is also clear that Baron Von Theile, in a conference with Benedetti, repudiated, on the part of his Government, the very suggestion, after Bismark and the King had expressed their approval of the candidature.[235] From the declarations of the French ambassador on this occasion, Bismark must have known the irritating effect the avowal of the scheme must produce on the French Government. He also refused to advise the King simply to withdraw his consent from Leopold's acceptance of the Spanish crown, when pressed to do so by the British Government,[236] though that step would have probably induced France to give up the quarrel. When the Prince withdrew his claims to the Spanish throne at the instance of his father, Prussia sullenly refused to renounce her sanction to those claims, and thus bore a very conspicuous part in drawing upon Europe the consequences which followed. Then, there is a great deal of mystery about the telegram from Ems conveying the falsehood that the King, in a crowded watering-place, turned upon his heel when accosted by, and refused to speak with, the French ambassador. Now, it is expressly admitted by Bismark, that he sent copies of that telegram to all the German representatives abroad; and either himself or his subordinates must have caused its insertion in the official Berlin gazette, by which the war excitement in both countries was roused to fever height.[237] We all know it was that telegram which impelled the French Government to launch their declaration of war. It is also upon record that France, in the course of February, made, through Lord Clarendon, two overtures to Berlin for mutual disarmament, offering to reduce her various contingents to the extent of 90,000 men, which was, in fact, one-eighth of her army; but that Bismark, having churlishly refused to listen to the first proposal, did so far entertain the second as to forward it to the King, who, under the counsels of his astute chancellor, declined the proposition on the ground that the military organization of Prussia was the vital principle of her constitution, and that she was least of all inclined to modify it, in front of an aggressive Russia, and with the probability of an alliance between Austria and the South German States[238]—two pretexts, the hollowness of which, recent events sufficiently demonstrate. Now, though the conduct of France is utterly indefensible in provoking the conflict after the Hohenzollern grievance had been substantively withdrawn, we cannot acquit Prussia of irritating her adversary, and of provoking, in a great degree, the blow she seemed anxious to repel. In point of fact, both parties had their respective interests in the struggle; both desired to fight; both, like two pugilists, had been in training for the encounter during the last five years, and both were determined that so opportune an occasion should not be lost for bringing it on.

The indulgence of military vanity, and the desire to dominate Europe, are faults which may be ascribed to France in a larger degree than to Prussia. But Germany, after having disarmed her antagonist, has indulged these propensities with a mercenary spirit, and with the manifest intention of wiping France out of the list of the great powers. The frankness with which this is avowed is admirable in its simplicity. France must be hindered from being dangerous in the future. She must, therefore, be reduced to such a position as to render her alike both impotent and defenceless. She must be degraded from her state in the family of nations. She is, therefore, stripped of her armaments: her artillery, her muskets, her swords, her ammunition, her military stores, in fact, nearly all her implements and panoply of war, are carted off to Berlin. That she may not be in an immediate position to supply their place, she is loaded with a pecuniary indemnity which must exhaust the energies of another generation. The frontiers of the country are thrown back to the state in which they were in the middle of the sixteenth century. The strong chain of fortresses which France has erected or fortified during the last three hundred years, with two or three minor exceptions, have been wrenched from her by her enemy. Strasburg, Bitsche, Phalsburg, Thionville, and Metz, protecting that flank of France which is most exposed to attack, are now only so many reservoirs, ready, at a moment's notice, to open the rivers of invasion and deluge the country. Metz, which is only some 160 miles from Paris, is a naked rapier laid across the defenceless throat of France. With her greatest buckler of defence in the hands of Prussia, anything like independent action on the part of France is manifestly impossible. While Metz is in the hands of Prussia, she must remain as politically weak as Piedmont, with Austria in the Quadrilateral. With a bankrupt exchequer, with a pillaged population, with a disorganized government, with a defenceless frontier, with a mutilated territory, with civil feud in her capitals, with all her strongholds in the hands of the enemy, with an imposition of £200,000,000 sterling as a war indemnity, France is not likely to recover her physical strength in our day; and when vigour returns to her shattered frame, it will be only to feel she has lost her place in the councils of Europe.

There are, of course, many excellent reasons assigned for this sort of beneficence, which need only be stated to win common assent. Metz and Alsace belonged to the house of Hapsburg in the fourteenth century. They ought, therefore, to belong to the house of Hohenzollern in the nineteenth,—a convincing argument, which no country so consistently as Prussia could urge with elaborate effect. If every nation which has been disintegrated during the last two hundred years, should get back its own to-morrow, we all know how much Prussia would be a gainer by the transfer. But the inhabitants of Alsace speak a patois of German and French, which contains something of both, and is not either. They are, therefore, clearly entitled to be governed from Berlin. This principle is beautifully illustrated by the Sclave-speaking population of Silesia, the Polish community of Posen, and the Danes of Schleswig. What more in keeping with this piebald collection of people, in the name of nationality, than the French people at Metz? Then, were not Alsace and Lorraine taken by force and guile from Germany? and what more proper to retake them by the same openhanded violence? But it is forgotten that these provinces were first wrenched from France by Germany, so that to restore the original balance, France will have to scramble for them again. By this flux and reflux of empire, at least, one principle is fully assured. Nations are prevented from becoming stagnant. The standing pool of industrial affairs is defecated. War becomes, not an exceptional, but the normal condition of the universe. Civilization has the consolation of knowing that it has no sooner got on its legs, and is about to gather into its granaries an exuberant harvest, than it is knocked over again and its fruits are withered.

It is singular that German ideologists, whose views are so sound upon abstract subjects, should put forth such inconsistent trash, to justify their newly-adopted policy of territorial aggrandizement. There are, however, a large number of sentimentalists in the world, who have a strange hankering for the past, whose sympathies it was necessary to secure. The German archives have, therefore, been ransacked for every tittle of evidence to prove that Metz was a German province in the fourteenth century; and, therefore, if any Frenchmen are found there in the nineteenth, they ought to be under Prussian rule. But to do Bismark justice, he has a great contempt for trashy dialectics of this character. He takes his stand upon the firmer ground of political expediency. France has invaded Germany some twenty-seven times, stimulated entirely by her lust for the Rhine provinces. It is, therefore, necessary to reduce her to such conditions that she is not likely to offend again. In the case of the German ideologists, we grant the premise, but deny the inference. They are doubtless sincere in their unreason. But Bismark's premiss and conclusion are alike vicious, and no one knows that better than himself.

The earlier wars of France against the Empire arose out of the struggle for these border possessions when the posterity of Lothaire II., to whom they belonged, had died out; but in these wars, France, then being parcelled out among numerous vassals, had the worst of it. A series of German irruptions, under Henry the Fowler, and the Othos, united these domains to the Empire. They were, however, held more or less as fiefs of the crown of France. The French element within, and French intrigue without, always gave the German emperors great uneasiness; and this, combined with further schemes of obtaining fresh fiefs in Burgundy and Flanders, exposed France to two German invasions—one under Henry V., and the other under Otho IV., which made Louis the Fat and Philip Augustus tremble for their suzerainty. But the Germans soon found in Italy a richer field for their exploits, and France was left to constitute her unity without much hindrance, until the empire fell into Spanish hands. Afraid, then, of being bodily eaten up, her monarchs became aggressive; but their blows were aimed, not against Germany, but against Spain, unluckily without any great effect; for, the towns of France were some half dozen times invaded by the Emperor and his allies, her king captured, and her fortresses demolished. Our share in these plundering transactions helped us to Tournay and Boulogne. In the next series of wars, which arose out of the religious and political dissensions of the empire, if France intermeddled, she was invited to do so by the Protestant princes of Germany, with whom she was allied, and whose interests were menaced by the house of Austria. As the price of her intervention, she got a portion of the disputed frontier; but we never heard that Germany otherwise than freely conceded the long-coveted prize to her, or regarded this portion of the Treaty of Munster as a menace to her liberties. It was not until Louis Quatorze seized Franche Comté, and sent his legions over the Rhine, that Germany manifested any uneasiness at the ambition of France—an uneasiness which the league of Augsburg immediately dispelled, and an ambition which the armies of Eugene and Marlborough levelled to the ground. Hence, Lorraine soon afterwards fell as quietly into the hands of France, as if its exchange for the reversion of Tuscany had been an arrangement of Providence. We are rather curious, therefore, to know how Count Bismark gets his twenty-seven instances of French aggression against Germany, and whether he includes in the list the troops which France lent to Prussia to enable her to retain her hold upon Silesia, and the counter-support she gave Maria Theresa to enable the empress to defeat Prussia. It is evident no parties are responsible for such interventions except those who invite them; and to ascribe to the ambition of the people of France, wars which arose out of the rapacity of his own countrymen, is a phase given to the quarrel which outrages common sense. Even were all the wars carried on under the Louises, the Richelieus, and the feudal princes of France, as wantonly aggressive as Bismark would make out, the French people are no more responsible for them, than the horses which dragged their artillery to the field. They were waged frequently in their own despite, purely for dynastic interests, and as often undertaken to repel aggression, as to make it. Even when the people woke up to their sovereign rights, in 1789, from whom did the first deliberate act of aggression come? From mild and peace-loving Prussia. Scarcely five years ago, we saw both the Saxon and Bavarian palatinate entirely at the mercy of the first French regiment that might have ventured to cross the border, without a hand being stretched forth to snatch the defenceless prize. It is therefore false, in fact, to assign to the French such an incurable lust after German territory, as to warrant the necessity of her political servitude. The French have no specific hatred to the Germans as a people, any more than they have to the Italians, whose territory they have honoured no less frequently with their presence. The allegation of Bismark is not, therefore, very assuring. He revives the memory of these miserable feuds, as a reason why they should be stopped; and produces a treaty, for that purpose, which only transmits them to posterity, wrapped in a blaze of undying vehemence. It is monstrous for the conquerors of a country to assign, as a pretext for its abasement, the participation of its rulers in those quarrels which originated with themselves. The great shield of Germany against French interference is its unity. Had she further insisted upon the fortresses in Alsace and Lorraine being dismantled, with an adequate pecuniary indemnity, she would then have been doubly secure. But when, in addition, she requires the keys of France to be placed in her hands, and the country, bound hand and foot, to be cast under her feet, it is idle to say that Prussia is aiming at mere immunity from aggression. There is a weightier reason behind for the mutilation of France, which it would be inconvenient to avow, and that is the preservation, if not the increase, of her own military ascendancy.

Prussia in making peace consulted her own interests. Had her troops returned to Berlin after concluding with France a wise and durable treaty, that would have occurred which occurred after the peace of 1815—Germany would have demanded free and liberal institutions. There would have been no necessity for Prussian Cæsarism. Berlin would have had to modify her military constitution. There would have been no necessity for vast armaments. The world would have once more settled down to pacific ways. But in leaving behind her an exasperated France, Prussia has the strongest of all motives for inducing Germany to perpetuate her military dictatorship, and keep the war ferment at high pressure. But it is impossible that the most pacific country can remain long under the influence of such a military organization as Prussia commands, without using it as an instrument for further aggrandizement. Were it indeed otherwise, a marvel would occur, the like of which would be unknown in history. Who ever heard of a power suddenly overtopping Europe, and, amid a handful of weaker states, stopping short in her career of aggression? Those who believe in the pacific virtues of Bismark, and the pious sincerity of William, ask us to indulge in anticipations which have never been realised. Did Rome stop when it overran the Peninsula, Macedon when it fulminated over Greece, the Caliphs when they stormed Constantinople, or the Hapsburgs when they conquered Vienna? There is a momentum in all states, once entered upon a career of conquest, which hurries them along with a speed proportionate to the extent of their acquisitions. The law of rising kingdoms may be formulated almost with the same nicety as that of falling bodies. Nor are there any circumstances in this instance calculated to modify its tendency, except such as give it vastly preponderating force and direction.

It must not be overlooked in this case, that the states under the hegemony of Prussia are amongst the poorest in Europe. Some three hundred thousand annually are driven, by fell necessity, to seek that provision in foreign lands which is denied them at home. The little wealth possessed by the home population is not in the possession of their princes and feudal aristocracy, but in the hands of the mercantile class, to whom war would not be in the least distasteful, if it opened out new avenues for their trade. The poverty of the German Junker, however, has been up to the present only equalled by his pretentiousness. Sheridan advised the last generation of them, to sell their high-sounding titles, to buy worsted to mend their stockings. Yet some of our statesmen would have us believe that these gentlemen, long suffering under a painful sense of impecuniosity, will, on waking up to the reality of their being masters of the world, continue to go about, as heretofore, with empty pockets. Can we suppose that a strong state, steeped up to the ears in poverty, will continue quiescent, surrounded by weak states who oppose no barriers to her possession of superabundant wealth? The inference is against everything we know of human nature, even upon the supposition that Prussia, to whom the people have entrusted their fortunes, is the most pacific state in the world, and that they have been attempted to be worried like bleating lambs, in the recent struggle. The only rational conclusion is that the Junkers of Germany will, like every other impoverished class, make the most of their new position. They will sit down to consider what countries contain the great reservoirs of commerce, and by what accession of territory the stream of wealth may be diverted to their own land. Germany is in the condition of the miller who had large mills but no water. Is it likely, when she has the power, she will refrain from entering her neighbour's territory, to divert the course of the element which sweeps by her with such majestic abundance, without rendering any service to herself? If she did not withhold her hand from a few barren roods in the case of Denmark, is she likely to do so when the prize is more tempting, the power to snatch it a thousand degrees more startling, and the chances of failure so much less? There can be only one reply to these questions. If the bourgeoisie condemned the movement, their opposition would be treated with the same indifference as the opposition of the great commercial class to the war of 1866. But the Minister has only to show the trading class that the movement is a commercial venture, and he will convert them into his staunchest adherents.

The German people have acquired of late years a peace-loving character, which, however, is rather adventitious than real, springing more out of the helplessness into which they were thrown by the dissensions of the Diet, than out of any innate disposition to be less quarrelsome than their neighbours. That they are more phlegmatic, more industrious, and less easily roused than the French may be readily admitted. But we should be strangely oblivious of the thirty years' war, of the Silesian wars, of the Swedish and Italian wars, of the Danish and Austrian wars, if we came to the conclusion that, if left to themselves, and in possession of their united strength, they would be the most benignant people in the world. The Germans have always evinced a conservative disposition to follow their feudal chiefs, and, by espousing their quarrels, have kept Europe embroiled for many centuries. In no other country could a small state like Prussia spring out of a mere society of Knight Templars, and in less than two hundred years, take her place among the first powers of the globe. While the smaller states of the empire followed their indolent habits, and cultivated the dilettante tastes of their rulers, Prussia was perpetually sharpening her sword, carving out of her neighbours fresh slices of territory, and using one acquisition as a stepping-stone to another. The acceptance of the peaceful pursuits to which the inaction of the minor states, and the jealous rivalries and despotic tendencies of the larger, impelled their respective populations, as a pledge of the new era of quiet harmony upon which Europe is about to enter, is only another instance of taking the forced and exceptional state of a people for its normal and natural condition. If the German people could be divorced from their feudal leanings, if they could bind up their unity with free institutions, and sink the interest of each particular state in that of the entire community, we should regard their assumption of military supremacy as a blessing to Europe. But this state of things, so near being accomplished in 1848, is now further off than ever. Prussia, then, by the free voice of Germany, was offered the Imperial crown, upon condition of merging her individual sovereignty in that of the commonwealth. But she refused. Now she has got it upon her own terms—that of merging the commonwealth into herself. All the power and might of Germany, instead of being allied with liberal institutions, is wielded by one despotic hand. Instead of Germany swallowing up Prussia, Prussia has swallowed up Germany. Germany in inaugurating her unity, like the young man coming to his heritage, was surrounded by two candidates for her favours,—free institutions and military despotism—and, succumbing to the tempter, she has flung herself into the embraces of military despotism.

Prussia, who first intoxicated Germany with the idea of unity, has debauched her with the doctrine of nationality. The lure was in the Elbe Duchies, which she first held out to the Fatherland, and then appropriated to herself. The overthrow of Austria induced the Northern states to submit, some out of compulsion, and others out of love, but all out of a hope that under so puissant a leader, an impoverished state of independence might be changed for one of wealthy servility. Hence, the Confederation or Staatenbund of the North, which placed the armaments and international relationships of all the states on the Prussian side of the Main completely under the control of Berlin. The Treaty of Prague guaranteed independent action, as well as a separate confederation to the German states south of the Main. But while the ink wherewith that treaty was signed was scarcely dry, and while Napoleon was congratulating his subjects on having set up two confederations in Germany instead of one, Bismark signed treaties of offensive and defensive alliance with each of the Southern States, which made their confederation an impossibility, by placing all their armaments as completely in the hands of Prussia as if they belonged to the Northern Bund. But, in these days, changes take place so rapidly as to exhaust our breath in recounting them. The goal of Prussian ambition to-day, is its starting-post to-morrow. The North German Confederation, with their treaties of defensive and offensive alliance, which have done their work so effectually in the subjugation of France, has already made room for another edifice of a more momentous character. The Staatenbund, which has disappeared, was, as its name imports, a mere confederacy. The union was effective for federal purposes, but too much individual action was left to the component bodies. The armies of the Confederacy, though under the command of the King of Prussia, as President of the Bund, owed fealty to their respective chiefs. There is something naïve in the declaration that they should have command of their own troops in time of peace. But now this poor shadow of sovereignty is taken away, and the armies of the Northern States, both in peace and war, are handed over to the King of Prussia, and constitute part and parcel of the Prussian force. The joints have, therefore, been tightened in proportion as the area has been extended. In point of fact, the former mediatized states have been virtually incorporated with Prussia; while the semi-independent sovereignties of the south have been reduced to the position of the former mediatized states. They have only one railway and water communication, one system of post and telegraph, one mercantile marine, one tariff, one code of civil and criminal judicature, one consulate, and one army and navy. The states south of the Main now find themselves bound up in closer ligatures with those of the north than formerly united these with each other. In other words, the Staatenbund has been changed into a Bundesstaat, or a confederacy into one allied State. The whole of Germany, from the Baltic to the Vosges, from the frontiers of Gallicia to the mouth of the Weser, is now united in a single commonwealth, with an hereditary emperor, with a central parliament, and a common capital: we need hardly add that the majority of that parliament are Prussian subjects, that the Emperor is the Prussian monarch, and that the capital is Berlin.

It is curious to notice the careful guarantees by which Prussia has secured the increase of her ascendancy in the new institution, and the growth of centralization in her hands. No change can be effected in the charter which is opposed by fourteen votes of the Federal Council. But as she has seventeen of these, it is clear Germany cannot enter upon a more liberal regime unless Prussia wishes it. Baden and Hesse have, like the Northern States, handed over their armies to Prussia, with whose forces they are henceforth incorporated. The King of Bavaria has the command of his own troops only in times of peace; in war he is liable to be superseded by a Federal commander, appointed by the Emperor. Würtemburg has consented to consign her troops to a Federal commander, nominated by Prussia, both in peace and war. For this concession the King has been allowed to appoint his inferior officers, subject to the approval of the Emperor. Throughout the rest of Germany, the appointment of all the officers rests entirely with the Emperor. All the citadels and fortresses of every state, without exception, are surrendered into his hands. He can give the keys of all the strong places to whom he chooses. The Emperor alone can make war or conclude peace; though unless the country be invaded, he has been restricted, at the instance of Bavaria, from making war without the consent of the Federal Council. But, as King of Prussia, he can make war when he pleases, which renders him as practically independent of control as if the restriction did not exist. The armaments of Germany are, therefore, as practically in the hands of Prussia, as the armaments of Russia are in those of the Czar. The concessions in favour of the Kings of Würtemburg and Bavaria are so trifling, that to call these princelings kings any longer is trifling with the name. Their sovereignties are virtually absorbed in the crown of Prussia. Let the phantom monarchs, who have signed their own death-warrants at Munich and Stuttgart, presume to interfere with the mandates of Berlin, and they will be dealt with as summarily as any provincial maire who ventured to disobey imperial decrees under the Napoleonic régime.

These results we ventured to predict some five years ago, but they have been brought about with a celerity and completeness which even have surprised ourselves.[239] The fact is, there is a splendour and glitter about military achievements which the soberest cannot withstand, when they appear in the shape of victories over those who have been perpetually disparaging our strength or crowing over our weakness. It would, indeed, have been a great advantage to German liberty, had the different states been allowed to consolidate their unity in peace. Prussia would then have been obliged to make terms with the southern populations, who would have been alive to the necessity of obtaining solid pledges from her, that the resources of the German commonwealth should not be squandered to gratify the ambition of the house of Hohenzollern. But the astonishing exploits of Prussia, the unparalleled series of triumphs which have laid France prostrate at her feet, have carried away the judgments of the populations of the South, and induced them to call for indiscriminate amalgamation with the conqueror, in terms which their princes could not withstand. The sovereigns of Stuttgart and Munich had, therefore, no choice between deposition and obedience to the popular voice. They therefore made a virtue of necessity, and were the first to offer the Imperial Crown to the King of Prussia. In the Salle des Glaces at Versailles, surrounded by the pictures and medallions which perpetuate the triumphs of Louis XIV. in Franche Comté and the Netherlands, and beneath the roof of the edifice dedicated to all the glories of France, King William was solemnly proclaimed Emperor, on the anniversary of the day when, 170 years ago, the Elector Frederick first assumed the crown of Prussia. Before all the representatives of Germany, ranged beneath the banners of their respective states, at the gates of the French capital, already quivering in the throes of capitulation, and girt round with all the panoply and pride of victorious armies, the German cannon thundered out the ominous title in the ears of dying France. In the power which the title created, the lofty pinnacle to which it elevated the sovereign upon whom it was conferred, in the proud circumstances under which the transfer of the Imperial Crown was accomplished, the imagination is carried back to the days of Charlemagne and Frederick Barbarossa in order to find a parallel. For, the pageant represented the assumption of no mere primatial dignity, but the extension of direct sovereign power, absorbing some three kingdoms, with twenty-four principalities, which at once enables it to become supreme in Europe, both in war and peace. The nominal federal ties, by which the princes of the Southern States are allowed to flatter their hereditary vanity, cannot even outlast the present generation; for the new elections to the Federal Parliament have returned a large majority, to strengthen the autocratic interests and centralizing policy of Prussia. The need of simplification in the laws which bind up the different states into one homogeneous body, will powerfully contribute to the same end, so that, in a few years, Prussia will find herself wielding the power of the Cæsars, with a single national authority.

That Prussia will not use the tremendous force she has thus acquired to fight for empty name or mere gloire, or marshal her battalions for deadly conflict, simply because some foreign ambassador has refused to take off his hat to one of her kings' mistresses, may be readily conceded; and, taking the transfer of military ascendancy from Paris to Berlin, so much in the interests of peace has doubtless been gained. But what guarantee have we that Prussia will not use her vast accession of power to augment her material interests and enrich the populations who have confided their fortunes to her management? The military and naval supplies are raised by taxes, over which neither parliament—the Reichstag, nor the Federal Council—the Bundesrath, has the slightest control. The chief corner-stone of English liberty is the dependence of the executive on Parliament. If it cannot get the supplies from the legislature, down it goes. But in the adroit charter lately manipulated at Versailles, there is no executive beyond the Prussian monarch and his chancellor, and the military taxes of the Empire find their way into their exchequer, without any check or hindrance, quite as if the process was a law of nature. The great doctrine of ministerial responsibility, without which not even the shadow of constitutional liberty can be inaugurated, finds no place in the charter of the new federal Empire. It is true that any extraordinary levies or augmentation of the armaments of the Empire would have to receive the sanction of the new German legislature. But when we remember that the military resources of the Empire are already developed to the utmost, that the normal military organization of the Empire enables Bismark to exhaust its last thaler, employ its last musket, and call out its last man, it would appear a mockery to hold out this provision as a guarantee of the influence of the popular element in the new constitution. It does not improve the situation, when we remember, how resolutely the popular element in the Prussian Chambers was set at defiance by the King and his Minister, upon the refusal of the majority to endorse the increased armaments which they demanded, to enable them to appropriate the Duchies, and afterwards to fight Austria. Bismark suspended the Prussian Constitution for four years, to carry out his policy of blood and iron. A despotic charter, in the hands of Liberal ministers, might be modified in favour of progress. But with a despotic charter in the hands of a despotic minister, we see little hope for the future pacification of Europe. France is under the heel of Germany, and Germany under the heel of Prussia. That that power will henceforth champion the liberties she has hitherto done her best to repress; that she will voluntarily renounce the plundering policy which has been the predominant feature of her character for a policy of justice and rectitude; that she will hereafter woo peace with the same ardour with which she has up to the present wooed the sword, is what we most devoutly wish, but which we cannot bring ourselves to believe.

In fact, Prussia has by no means fulfilled the destiny which she avows it is her honest mission to accomplish. She is called by Providence to unite the whole of Fatherland under her sceptre. But the German kingdom still remains divided. The edifice of German nationality still requires the copestone for the completion of the structure. The words which her sovereign addressed to the German people on the day when he accepted the imperial crown at Versailles, are strikingly significant of her pretensions, 'The Empire,' said the king, or rather Bismark, who spoke in his person, 'has been in abeyance some sixty years. We are summoned to undertake its re-establishment.' In 1806, the dissolution of the old Germanic Empire followed as a natural consequence of the Confederation of the Rhine. The Emperor of Austria, at the dictation of Napoleon, then renounced the title and regalia of the empire which had fallen to pieces, but which King William now takes it upon himself to revive. 'Accordingly,' says this monarch, 'we and our successors to the crown of Prussia henceforth shall use the imperial title in all the relations and affairs of the German Empire; and we hope to God that it may be vouchsafed to the German people to lead the Fatherland on to a blessed future under the auspices of its ancient splendour.'[240] As an earnest of this intention, Alsace and German-speaking Lorraine, together with a portion of French-speaking Lorraine, brought under the German flag, is an important revival of the old kingdom on its western frontier. This is a rich slice to commence with. But the resuscitation of the Empire with the western limb of the Austrian monarchy, and nine millions of Germans left out, is like the resuscitation of Greece without either Athens or Thermopylæ; or the play of Hamlet, with the part of the Prince excluded from the programme. The union of Fatherland would be a mockery, and the revival of the Empire a nullity, without the annexation of those provinces which constitute the birthplace and cradle of its history. Accordingly, when the Germanic Confederation was set up in 1815, as a substitute for the old diet, the German provinces of Austria were deemed of such importance as to confer upon her the leading voice in its councils. It is not, therefore, likely that some forty-two millions of Germans will long remain united, without endeavouring to include, under the same hegemony, the nine additional millions now clamouring for admission outside. Already, within the German provinces of Austria, committees are established, with a view to afford their Northern brethren a fulcrum for realizing the desired event. In Glatz, Salzburg, Innsprück, Linz, and Vienna, fêtes were prepared to celebrate the recent triumphs of their German compatriots, which the Hohenhart ministry was obliged to suppress by force. But even despite of the Government, numerous meetings have been held in which the warmest eagerness for German unity and for federal union with Berlin has been expressed. Indeed, the Austro-Germans who formerly aspired to lead Fatherland, now live in subordination to the Sclaves, whose influence in the Austrian Chambers, by mere force of numbers, is paramount to their own. They, therefore, seek union with their heroic countrymen, with all the more ardour, as it would release them from the ascendency of a race whom they despise. Guided by the aspirations of his countrymen, Bismark will find a much easier passage across the Inn to the Leitha than across the Rhine to the Moselle. The work of German nationality has advanced so far that we must doubt, if Prussia remained indifferent to the prize, that the fusion would not be accomplished by the very momentum which the movement has already acquired. But with Prussia, true to the grasping instincts of her house, clothed with the enormous prestige of her recent victories, and throwing all her energies into the struggle, Austria can no more resist the absorption than a wave of the Eider could resist being swallowed up in a ground swell from the German Ocean.

The limits of the revived Empire on its Southern frontier will, doubtless, be such as to enclose those provinces in which the Germans form the principal element. These comprise Upper and Lower Austria, including Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, and the Tyrol. Some two millions occupy the north and western frontiers of Bohemia. In the north-east of Moravia, and the eastern part of Austrian-Silesia, there are some seven hundred thousand more. But the proportion of the German to the Sclavonic populations of Bohemia and Moravia is only one-fourth; so that these provinces cannot be annexed to the German Empire without giving the doctrine of nationality its coup de grâce. But Moravia and Bohemia constituted integral portions of the old German Empire. They were, also, reclaimed as such by Austria, on the construction of the Germanic Confederation in 1815. There are besides strategical reasons. For the Austrian Archducal province, with its three millions of Germans, would be blocked up between the Czechs and Magyars, while Bohemia would extend like a wedge into the bowels of the Empire. We are afraid, that when the question comes to be settled, both Bohemia and Moravia will find themselves eaten up, sandwichlike, by the German populations on the north and south frontiers, and assimilated into the political body which is already dominating Europe.

But the necessity of increased outlets for German industry, and of further materials for the expansion of her commerce, will be as powerful a stimulant for the growth of Prussian Cæsarism as the principle of nationality. Germany having achieved her national unity, will require free access to the seaboard of the German Ocean. She will require ships and colonies. The possession of Holland would place all these requirements at her disposal, and enable her to fructify her home commerce a hundredfold. Professor Newman sees such advantage to both parties in the annexation, that he is anxious the union should be accomplished; he rather naïvely adds that Prussia will withhold her hand, because she would not wish to be hampered with Java or Surinam, and the other possessions which alone impart to Holland its significancy. Twenty millions of colonial population, however, would be a prize as glittering to the Germans as the Dutch seaboard at home; and, therefore, no one was overwhelmed with surprise when its annexation was mentioned as one of the overtures made by Bismark to the French Emperor in return for Prussian acquiescence in the French seizure of Belgium. Nor can it excite wonder that the French Emperor refused as promptly as his uncle, when the Russian Alexander offered to France both Syria and Egypt in return for allowing him to seize Constantinople. But now there is no France to block the way, and Holland is entirely at the mercy of Berlin. The House of Nassau had its representative in the Germanic Confederation, to answer for the interests of Luxembourg. Why should it not have its representative in the Bundesrath at Berlin, and sacrifice its independence, to bask in the splendour of the new Empire? If the four millions of Dutchmen do not fall in with these suggestions so readily as the five millions of Bavarians, they will be found as incompetent as the Bavarians would have been, to oppose the high behests and the colossal interests of a race of fifty millions, who threaten to rule the world. The Netherlands were an important limb of the old Germanic Empire. The Dutch section of it is identified with Germany by military traditions. Her language and religion are Teutonic. In resuming possession of this territory, the revivers of the old imperial domination would not meet with anything like the difficulties they have to encounter in incorporating the eastern frontiers of France.

The absorption of Holland, by so powerful a country as Germany, would deal a heavy blow at our own naval supremacy. But this danger is the least of those which are ahead. For Prussia does not appear alone upon the scene of action; and there are prizes for her to seize, which require the support of an ally who has herself a direct interest in the spoil, and who is troubled with as few scruples as Prussia herself. There cannot, we think, be a doubt that Prussia entered upon the recent campaign with a secret understanding with Russia, of armed intervention on the part of that power, in case of certain eventualities arising out of the war, unfavourable to Prussia. The two combatants had not measured swords at Spicheren, before this treaty was suddenly announced, and as boldly denied. The cordial greetings of the two courts, moreover, during the progress of the war; the shout of rapture which every French disaster drew from the Emperor Alexander; the indiscreet announcement of the Emperor William, that he would never forget that he owed it to the attitude of his Imperial nephew that the war did not assume larger dimensions, and the conferring on each other, at the conclusion of the campaign, military honours; all these things tend conclusively to prove that, in league with Prussia, there is a power still more formidable to the liberties of mankind. Had it not been for this assurance of support from Russia, it would have been perfect madness for Prussia to leave her eastern frontier exposed to the inroads of Austria, when that power was counting her chances as to throwing in her lot with France. Had Austria moved a musket, Russia would have poured her troops through the defiles of the Carpathians, and given her another enemy to encounter. Bismark was, therefore, enabled to leave Saxony as much unprotected, as were the Rhine Provinces in the war of 1866. When France was prostrate; when she was expiring under the terrible effects of the blow which she had recklessly invited, but which the connivance of Russia enabled Germany with collective force to deal; that power plainly exposed her cards, and showed the interests she had in the struggle. In the month of November, Gortschakoff startled London by announcing the intention of Russia to repudiate the treaty of 1856. Within a little time afterwards, the Prussian Prince of Roumania declared he could no longer support his position as Turkish feudatary; but must convert his government into one of independent sovereignty, or retire from it altogether. About the same period, as if to bring the repudiation of treaties in fashion, Bismark announced the resolution of Prussia to withdraw from the guarantee of 1867 protecting the neutrality of Luxembourg. If two of these difficulties have been transitionally arranged, the compromisers have only deferred the real solution of the question they involve, to a more convenient opportunity. It is very ominous for England, that Europe, at present, is virtually in the hands of two potentates evidently acting in concert with each other, who can place two millions and a half of fighting men in the field; and that both have shown a disposition to complicate affairs in the East, to the spoils of which each possesses peculiar pretensions, as well as peculiar means of realizing those pretensions in the amplest manner.

The interest of Russia in driving the Turks out of Europe is traditional. She believes in it as a mission to which she is called by divine Providence. It is not merely an affair of conquest, but a matter of religion. For this she exists as a nation, bound to execute the task at all hazards, and to intermit no opportunity of bringing it about. With Prussia it is merely a question of arithmetic. But the gain to her, were the struggle only partially decided in her favour, is such as to overpower even an Oriental imagination. The conjoint export and import trade of Turkey may be set down at forty millions annually. Of this trade England has, at present, the lion's share. The rest is mainly divided between Italy, France, Austria, and Russia. Prussia and Northern Germany enjoy little or next to nothing of it. Turkey, to them, might as well not be in existence, except for the wealth it pours into the coffers of their neighbours. Formerly Russia has been prevented from dealing with the 'sick man' by the protectorate of the Western Powers. England and France have been repeatedly offered ascendancy on the banks of the Nile, in return for permitting Russian ascendancy on the shores of the Bosphorus. But, besides the principle of equity, which no English minister dare contravene, it would have been an absurd policy, in exchange for an African or Asiatic province, to place our trade in the Levant in jeopardy, by allowing Russia to instal herself in Constantinople. But Russia has now an accomplice who can help her to the booty, who is troubled with no moral delicacy, and who would gain a large revenue out of the transaction. Prussia, by laying her hand upon the north-western limb of European Turkey, would command the navigation of the Danube, and divert a large stream of Oriental commerce to the capitals of Germany. Provinces which are at present rich, even in their uncultivated state, would, colonized by Prussia, become the granaries of the world. The Italian portions of the Empire are gone from it irretrievably: but Germany can indemnify herself by expansion in an eastern direction. If, therefore, no extraneous force intervenes, we look forward to the establishment of a Prussian sovereignty, extending from the Euxine to the Adriatic, and owning no limit till it tops the crests of the Balkan. The scion of her house, who has already converted the Principalities into a Prussian arsenal, is in an admirable position to direct her energies towards this object. While Russia operates on the Asiatic frontier, the Prussian Hospodar, backed by German battalions, and reinforced with ordnance from Berlin, has only to put out his hand, and Bosnia and Servia are in his grasp. With the iron and steel of the Vosges, with the copper, lead, and silver mines of Carinthia and Carniola, with the silks and carpets of Shumla, and the grain of Servia and Roumania, Germany would possess a trade with which the commerce of Italy in the Middle Ages, or the colossal industries of England in the nineteenth century, would be dwarfed in comparison. Would she resist the prize within her reach, if the tempter at her ear instigated her to take it as her share of the spoil? The Ottoman Empire may be said to derive the very breath of its existence from the jealousy of the great Powers. The States of the West had an instinctive dread of the great Empire of the North, besides a mutual mistrust of each other; and, therefore, the fairest plains of Europe were allowed to remain in possession of those who had no ambitious instincts to gratify, and no foreign predilections to indulge. But now the state of affairs is profoundly changed, and Turkey finds herself at the mercy of two military despots, who are acting in concert, without any protection from their cupidity, but what their own mistrust of each other may happen to oppose.

Up to 1866 five great Powers existed in Europe. But we cannot conceal it from ourselves, that in the interim of a few years, three of these have either been neutralized or practically effaced. Since the battle of Kœniggratz it would be idle to say that Austria is of any account in Europe. The blow she received at Solferino was a prelude to the loss of Venetia, and the loss of her Italian possessions is only a prelude to the stroke which will drive her completely out of Germany. When empires rise, they accomplish the task of expansion with difficulty and labour, but when they sink, everything appears greased to impel the wheels along the declivity of descent. Austria has ceased to be an empire, and will soon find it difficult to maintain an independent sovereignty. When her Germans imitate her quondam Italian subjects in attaching themselves to their own nationality, the Magyar and multifarious Sclavonian tribes will alone remain, whose respective interests are so antagonistic, that anything like union under one sceptre, without being tempered by the influence of less excitable races, will be difficult in the extreme. At present, her possession of nine millions of Germans, is much more a source of weakness than of strength. Prussia, in any scheme of annexation she may contemplate, or in any object she may have in view, has only to show that it is for the interest of Fatherland, and Austrian Germany is at once alive to the necessity of paralysing the action of its own Government, and assisting the Prussian project. During the late war, it was manifestly the interest of Austria to have flung in her lot with France, but had she done so, the first enemy whom she would have had to encounter would have been her German subjects. The mode in which she clung to our garments during the struggle, and like a child with its nurse, interceded with us to interfere between the combatants, when she dared not interfere herself, was a glaring instance of the timidity arising out of her weakness. When we remember the boldness of Metternich before Napoleon I., and how Maria Theresa, yet bleeding from the loss of Silesia, confronted the united hostility of France and Prussia, we are astonished at the pusillanimity which Austria displays, even in her present stage of decrepitude. In 1866, though backed by nearly all the military forces of the Confederation, she suffered herself to be prostrated by Prussia, and her imperial mantle to be stript from her in a few weeks. It is therefore not from such a Power that any help can come, when Prussia in the name of Germany finds her way to the seaboard of the Northern Ocean, or when the Russian Emperor and his ally choose to realize any little plans they may have concerted, with a view of bringing Turkey within the sphere of European civilization.

The position of France is much more desperate than that of Austria, though the compact unity of her race holds out a better prospect of her recovering some portion of her former strength. This, however, if it occurs, will not be, at least, in our generation. We must, therefore, regard the course affairs may take during the next twenty years, as if she was not in existence, at least as a controlling power. It is not the effect of the material, so much as of the moral, ruin of the French nation which has to be feared. Before the German armies passed through the defiles of the Vosges, the corruption of the Second Empire had done its work in effeminating the character of a gallant people. The mode in which the Army of the Rhine left the capital of France for the frontier, animated with the spirit of conquest, and glittering with all the vain conceit of anticipated triumph, and the mode in which that proud host was rolled back, never halting for a moment until fortressed walls afforded them some respite from their pursuers, can be paralleled only by the bluster of those armies of old, who under Mardonius and Hippias came to wreck all the pride of Persia against the gates of Greece. The spirit of a nation must be entirely emasculated, its prowess gone, when the flower of its soldiery can surrender in masses of hundreds of thousands to an enemy in numbers hardly superior; and when the great body of the army can be allowed to be shut up for nearly two months in a fortress, without making any decisive attempt to cut through a line of weaker proportionate strength, and without the country so much as putting up a finger to relieve them. The capitulations of Sedan and Metz, consigning the famous Imperial Guard, which so often restored the fluctuating fortunes of France under Ney and Cambronne, and 300,000 soldiers to the hulks of Germany, there to be employed as beasts of burden and helots, make us almost blush at the name of Frenchmen. Such shameful surrenders are hardly equalled by the masses of barbarous Cossacks under Peter the Great, whom Charles XII. netted like shoals of fish in the Ukraine. If the Republican armies did not conduct themselves so ignominiously, it cannot be forgotten that the strategy of Chanzy and Faidherbe was disconcerted by the Mobiles flinging down their arms at the critical moment, and exhausting in a panic-flight energies which ought to have been employed against the enemy. Even in the Paris sorties, after the tide had spent its strength, more soldiers surrendered themselves than the Germans cared to make prisoners. It also speaks volumes for French military degeneracy, that the German armies were permitted, for four months, to go through the dilatory process of strangling Paris, by famine, without a single attempt being made to interrupt their two lines of communication with Germany, except a bold but abortive one by Ricciotti Garibaldi, when, had the country by foraging parties constantly directed its energies to this end, they might have placed the besieging armies in the same plight as the besieged. If the French justly complain of the physical prostration to which the plundering and huckstering propensities of the Germans have reduced France, this mischief is nothing in comparison with the moral prostration to which their submission to twenty years of a corrupt despotism has brought the country. The injury inflicted by the foreigner, they may in a few years partially retrieve, but the evil they have inflicted on themselves is likely to be of a far more permanent character. The fact is, France can never show her face in the arena of foreign diplomacy, much less appear in the front rank again, until she probes her weaknesses to the bottom, and eliminates the causes which have so powerfully contributed to cast the nation, like a bleeding and mangled carcase, under the heel of Prussia. Perhaps the most destructive of these, is the number of hostile factions into which her population is split, each clamouring against the other, with a hatred ever ready to burst out into civil conflict. In France, Republicanism is arrayed against Monarchy, and each of these parties admits of infinite subdivisions, arrayed against each other. Legitimist, Constitutionalist, and Imperialist, represent the monarchical element. But the Bonapartist entertains not a greater hatred to the Orleanist, than the Socialist entertains to the Conservative Republican. Then, the priest-party in the country has a thorough abhorrence of the free-thinking Democrat of the town. It cannot be denied, that during the late war, these factions did much to paralyze the energies of the country. The Republican party had little sympathy for the armies which were overthrown at Woerth, and sent into captivity at Sedan. The priest-party had as little sympathy for the raw levies which Gambetta sent to be mown down like unresisting grass, under Chanzy and Bourbaki. The energy of the nation was constantly divided against itself. Its heart was never thoroughly enlisted against Germany in any part of the struggle. The country wanted a common hope, a united faith, a solidarity of principle to champion it in the struggle. Until these miserable feuds are terminated, we see little hope for France. For, they reduce the country to the same state of imbecility, which rendered Poland, fifty years previous to her extinction, of no account in Europe. That they will entirely disappear we have little hope. But that they will be very considerably diminished by the galling chastisement which Prussia has inflicted, is what we try to believe, although the events which have transpired in Paris during the last fortnight, in which the bloodthirsty cruelty and aimless recklessness of the Paris mob have been met by the miserable irresolution, divided councils, and practical imbecility of the Versailles government, almost destroy all reasonable hope. It is just in proportion to the degree in which hatred of Prussia, and the desire of being revenged for the punishment she has recently administered, shall diminish the rancour of political factions and amalgamate all the feelings and strength of the country into one flood-tide of patriotism, that we must look for the political regeneration of France. Prussia, by the exorbitant demands she has imposed, has certainly done her utmost to bring about this result. She has purchased the triumphs and security of to-day, at the expense of future ages of misery and retribution. But it is not consolatory to think that, whatever may be her efforts, so low is the present position of France, that she must consent to remain a political cypher during the present century, and that her only means of recovering her position, even as a first-class power, and of directing her united energies and resources to that end, is by renewing the struggle with her relentless enemy.

That France in the school of adversity will unlearn much of the frivolity and self-glorifying spirit which has distinguished her people during the Second Empire, is another advantage which may be hoped rather than expected from her recent disasters—an advantage, indeed, which would confer as many benefits upon herself as upon the world. France, ever since the days of Louis Quatorze, has been too much accustomed to deem herself the arbitress of Europe. She had come to recognise it as her peculiar mission to open or shut the Temple of Janus, and give peace or war to the world. It was her boast that not a gun could be fired off in Europe without her consent. This had been repeated so often, in later times, that not only Frenchmen but mankind generally came to believe it. The consequence was, that when any restlessness was exhibited at the Tuileries, foreign nations began to look at their muskets, increase their armaments, and prepare for eventualities. Nor will anyone, who considers the exploits of the First Napoleon, the marvels he accomplished in the midst of a divided Italy and a dismembered Germany, regard the belief as having no foundation. But France, while trading on the splendid reminiscences of the First Empire, during the Second, completely lost that daring and resolute spirit by which those wonders had been achieved. While pandering to all the foolish vanities, and indulging in the hectoring and blustering swagger, generated by the victories of the First Napoleon, she had sunk in the slough of effeminacy all that martial dash, that burning ardour, and fearless courage which enabled her, against overwhelming odds, to nail victory to her standards at Marengo and Austerlitz. The delusion under which she laboured, was not surpassed by that of Greece, who, when debauched by her Asiatic conquests, imagined, in her struggles with the Roman Empire, that she possessed the prowess of the heroes who made such havoc with the Persian armies at Marathon and Thermopylæ. The folly, into which this delusion has betrayed her, can only be measured by the colossal nature of the task she undertook—a task before which even the adventurous genius of Napoleon would have quailed, that of defeating upwards of forty millions of Germans armed to the teeth, and united against her as one man. The result must open her own eyes to the hollow nature of her pretensions, quite as much as it has undeceived the world. She must now learn, if she would not be ridiculous, since she cannot bring her deeds up to the level of her words, to reduce her words to the level of her performances. She must for ever renounce all idea of military ascendancy in Europe—an idea, the realization of which has so often covered her with wounds, and now has eclipsed all her glory. The cultivation of a chastened spirit on the part of France, the abandonment of her levity, the manifestation of a proper sense of the humiliation to which she is reduced, will doubtless free the world from some nightmares, and powerfully contribute to the rehabilitation of the country. But the work is a question of time. The change cannot be perceptibly felt during the lifetime of the present generation; and in the interim, before she can exercise any marked influence on the course of events, the keys of Europe may be fought for, and the world's Empire given away.

When we contrast the past glories of France, the height of power she attained, or even the influence she might have exerted under wise rulers over contemporary events, with her present prostration and political eclipse, it is impossible to over-estimate the gravity of the crisis to humanity. A great force has been struck out of the nations. A power upon which during the last half century we leaned for the enforcement of order, and the progress of constitutional ideas in Europe, has been removed. She is, at present, as politically dead as if the Atlantic wave rolled over Limoges, and crested the Jura. Except England, which it is the fashion to decry as selfish and sordid, her Crimean and Abyssinian wars notwithstanding, France was the only nation in Europe that was chivalrous enough to fight for abstract right, especially when it was endangered among the Latin nations. It is owing to her that Italy has become free, united, and independent. The Poles always found in her the resolute champion of their interests. Russian ambition had nowhere a more uncompromising enemy than the great people whose political obsequies are now being celebrated by illuminations in Berlin. It is true, on a few occasions, led away by a false sense of her own interest, her Government refused to sanction the policy we recommended for its adoption; and in the case of the Egyptian suzerainty and the Spanish marriages, moved exactly in a contrary direction. But it may be safely affirmed that for the last half-century, under every government France has possessed, she has co-operated with our own, in resisting aggression, and promoting the triumph of constitutional principles in every part of Europe. Under the united flags of both countries, an independent kingdom was founded in Greece. From 1830 to 1833 she assisted us to establish Belgium, to promote constitutional government in Switzerland and Piedmont, and to guard the infancy of the constitutional monarchy of Spain. In 1839, we united our efforts to extinguish the feud between Mehemet Ali and the Porte. We also joined our protests, when Russia suppressed Warsaw, and Prussia and Austria extinguished Cracow, just as we sent in our united protests when these two powers made their raid on Denmark. Our forces fought together in 1827 to protect Greece from Turkey, as in 1854 to protect Turkey against Russia. The two Western nations were, as regards force, the complements of each other. What the one wanted to be complete, the other had. Singly, they were impotent to withstand any combination of despots; but united, they might have defied the world. Now France is a wreck, and we stand isolated in Europe. The head of the Latin nations lies shattered in the dust; and the people whose independence we assisted her to build up, are unable by themselves to lift an arm, or to afford any effectual barrier against aggression. Their sole resource now is in England, who stands alone, looking with dismay upon the effacement of the two allies, upon whom she mainly relied in her difficulties, and upon the alliance of two military monarchies in Europe who dominate the situation. It depends entirely upon the attitude of Great Britain during the next few years whether she surely shall participate in the fate of her allies, and abandon the world to a retrogressive policy; or whether the foyers of freedom and independence shall be kept alive in Europe; and whether the spirit of justice and rectitude, instead of that of rapacity and conquest, shall sway the intercourse of nations.

For our part, it is not without some misgivings that we look forward to the policy of Great Britain, during the next thirty years. We do not lose our faith in God, nor in the power of right principles, nor do we mistrust the indomitable spirit and resources of the country when once fairly roused, disciplined, and utilized with sagacity and skill. But of late years there has been a growing party in the State, who would confine the energies of the Government to its own internal affairs; who would withdraw it from active intervention in European politics; who would employ every shilling of our expenditure upon developing the commercial resources of the country, and who would not even prepare to resist an enemy until they saw him actually approaching our shores. The disciples of this school, fortified by the principles of political economy, refuse to see any other element in our relations with foreign countries than the mere ledger account of barter and gain; and anything which suspends the traffic, or withdraws the national energies into other paths, is denounced by them as suicidal to the national interests. War shatters the doctrines of political economists. It is, therefore, only natural they should attempt to relieve us of warlike armaments and decry military organization. There can be no doubt that the Reform Bills of 1831 and 1868, by throwing power into the hands of the great trading classes, have augmented the strength of this party, until it weighs with preponderating effect on the main-spring of Government. We gladly admit the beneficial influences of the changes which this party have largely contributed to bring about, in interior retrenchment and municipal reforms, in the equalization of political privileges, in the extension of education, in the partial abolition of University Tests, in the liberation of commerce from protective duties, and of religion from State-Church endowments. We heartily accord, moreover, with its denunciations of the war spirit, as such. But we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that these benefits have not been unalloyed by some admixture of evil. For, to the fact of our applying all our energies in this direction, may be traced the breakdown of our armies before Sebastopol; the acceptance of the declaration of Paris, which strips England of one of its most potent weapons in naval warfare; and the shameful abandonment of Denmark in the affair of the Duchies, which has given rise to three wars and to the present complicated difficulties which we have to face.[241] It even now is a question whether, if Russia were to enter upon a new phase of encroachment in the East, or Prussia were to annex Holland, we could, or dare, interpose with dignity and effect. Any joint scheme of conquest pursued by these two military monarchies, we might certainly as well hope to resist, as a child might venture to arrest an avalanche; and our individual incompetency would, in the eyes of the governing class, be a solid reason for not endeavouring to solicit the aid of a series of disorganized States who are weaker than ourselves. For the last fifty years, our influence abroad has depended very much on the martial spirit and the indomitable pluck we displayed in our struggles with the First Napoleon. But, if we were now to enter upon a Continental war of only one-fifth of the dimensions of that we carried on against Napoleon, we should find ourselves, without allies, as little competent to support our former prestige, as the French have lately found themselves to support the prestige of the First Empire.

But the weakness of England lies not so much in the ascendancy of the non-intervention party, as in the hand-to-mouth policy of the English Executive. Every question of foreign policy is considered exclusively on its own merits, and solely with relation to the circumstances of the hour. It is never considered as evolved out of the events of the past, and linked with the impending events of the future. The Minister, instead of contemplating the question in its philosophic bearings, surrounded with all the lights which his lofty position enables him to command, counts his majorities, feels the pulse of the nation through the organs of the press, and decides upon adopting that course which shall most contribute to strengthen his power. In all these questions, the necessity of preserving a Cabinet is always paramount to that of saving a nation. At this crisis, it is unfortunate we have to do with States which pursue an entirely opposite system. The foreign policy of England fluctuates now in one direction, and then in another, much at the mercy of vulgar opinion, according to whatever whims the Minister may have who happens to be in power. But the foreign policy of Russia and Prussia broadens out like a mighty stream which unceasingly rolls its current in one direction, and never ceases to return with renewed effort upon any point where it may have sustained a temporary defeat. The policy of both Powers is one in act, identical in principle, substance, and complexion. It is the simple abnegation of justice in the comity of nations. Since the days of Peter the Great, and the first Frederic, the policy of these two Powers has been one of continuous annexation and conquest. Prussia has no more intention of arresting her course at the foot of the Carpathians, than Russia at the foot of the Caucasus. It behoves, therefore, the British people to change their course, and adjust their sails to the altered circumstances of affairs. Nor is it less incumbent on Ministers to be alive to the fact, that, though they may receive their home policy from the dictates of the people, it is their high sphere, on all questions of foreign policy, to guide, direct, create, and fashion the opinion of the country. There may be a difference of opinion as to how far the nation is bound to uphold the principles of abstract justice and right in its dealings with other Powers; but there can be no difference of opinion upon the obligation of maintaining these principles with the greatest tenacity, wherever their violation affects our interests. We would claim the support of the most rabid economist for the expediency of maintaining our rank as a first-class Power, if upon no higher principle than with a view to keep open foreign markets for our goods, and to prevent ourselves from being cut off from the sources of our commercial prosperity. A policy, which directed all the energies of the country to its own internal affairs, might be persisted in without radical injury, while the political equilibrium was divided between five States, each bent upon neutralizing its neighbour's power by counter-checks and balances; but the same policy pursued while Europe is in the hands of two military monarchies, apparently having only one game in view, would be simple ruin to the nation.

We therefore regard the present Army Organization Bill as a step in the right direction: our only objection to it is, that it does not go far enough. What the nation wants is increased military efficiency, and diminished expense. The Bill does not secure the one, and only partially realizes the other. We, however, are content to proceed by steps, if we are only secure of going in the right direction. Let us hope this measure is only the prelude to a series of others, which may increase our military efficiency without increasing the military burdens of the country. But union is strength. The liberal States of Europe, like the sticks in the fable, may be weak in themselves, but they can easily become strong by mutual alliance. The time is not inopportune for a League among the smaller States, based upon mutual defence from attack, which, if it could not preserve peace, might afford England, in conjunction with her crippled allies, a fulcrum of support in time of need. At all events, it is our duty, besides attending to our military organizations at home, to enter into closer relationship with the independent States of Europe, that if the autocrats of the North persist in indulging their old freak of enriching themselves at their neighbours' expense, they may not find us unprepared to maintain the power and greatness of this country.

Contemporary Literature.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND TRAVELS.

The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of Ireland from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria. By J. Roderick O'Flanagan, M.R.I.A., Barrister-at-Law. Two vols. Longmans.

These two handsome volumes are the result of twenty-five years' almost continuous industry, and they bear abundant testimony to the variety and interest of the author's researches and lucubrations. It was undoubtedly a bold and happy resolution that led him to follow in Lord Campbell's path, and attempt to accomplish for the Lord Chancellors of Ireland, what that successful lawyer and judge had already done with such vigour, clearness, and liberality for the Lord Chancellors of England. Mr. O'Flanagan has certainly produced a work which will command public attention from the specially skilful manner in which he has furnished, in connection with the personal biography of the great lawyers, an almost continuous review of Irish events, together with a thousand traditionary reminiscences and anecdotes, scandalous or praiseworthy, concerning the Irish bar, from the earliest period. The portraits, especially in the first volume, may be rather indistinct; but, after all, the Lord Chancellors of Ireland, for a period of about six hundred years, stand before us with a remarkable distinctness, in all their variety of opinion, accomplishment, and character; the arrogant churchman, the profound politician, the corrupt judge, the staunch patriot, the fierce fanatic, and the eccentric jester, all playing their parts variously, and at times in a manner but little consistent with the character of their sedate and pacific avocations. The first Irish Chancellor of whom there is any record is John de Worchley, who received his appointment in 1219, in the reign of Henry III. Nearly all the early Chancellors were Englishmen, as well as prelates. Their courts were held in Dublin Castle. Their salaries were originally £40 a year, exclusive of fees and perquisites; now the income of the office is £8,000 a year, with a retiring pension of £4,000. The greatest of all the Irish Chancellors were certainly Lord Clare and Lord Plunket, and Mr. O'Flanagan not inappropriately devotes to their biographies nearly two-thirds of the second volume.

It is very evident to the most cursory reader of this work, that the author is a very staunch Roman Catholic, as well as a most patriotic Irishman; but we should not on this ground hold him disqualified for his present task, if he discovered a general candour and impartiality in those instances in which his religious convictions are concerned. Unhappily, however, in such cases, surgit amari aliquid. It would be impossible for us to note all the evidences of religious partizanship observable in the pages of this extensive work; but we prefer to direct public attention to a very bold though unsuccessful attempt to vindicate the character of one of the most detestable and unprincipled judges who ever disgraced the Irish bench. Mr. O'Flanagan has taken extraordinary pains to wipe the stains from the character of Sir Alexander Fitton, the Irish Lord Chancellor of James II., who certainly appears in no enviable light in the pages of Hume and Macaulay. Though compelled to admit that he may not be 'able to remove the stains altogether,' our author is still bold enough to say, 'with patience and perseverance, I have satisfied myself that party prejudice originated or embellished most of the original accusations.' (Vol. i. p. 467.) The case is one of purely historical evidence. Hume's reference to Fitton is in these words:—Tyrconnell was now vested with full authority, and carried over with him as Chancellor, one Fitton, a man who was taken from a jail, and who had been convicted of forgery and other crimes, but who compensated for all his enormities by his headlong zeal for the Catholic religion. He was even heard to say from the bench, that the Protestants were all rogues, and that there was not one among forty thousand that was not a traitor, a rebel, and a villain.' Macaulay's account is substantially the same; but he adds that Fitton 'often, after hearing a cause in which the interests of his church were concerned, postponed his decision, for the purpose, as he avowed, of consulting his spiritual director, a Spanish priest.' Mr. O'Flanagan disposes of these statements by affirming that both these historians drew their representations from the account of Fitton given in his 'State of the Protestants of Ireland during King James's Government,' by Archbishop King, of Dublin, an avowed enemy. Burnet, however, in his 'History of his own Times,' speaks of Tyrconnell and Fitton as 'not only professed but zealous Papists,' and of Fitton he says, he 'knew no other law but the king's pleasure.' It is a very remarkable fact that Plowden, the Roman Catholic historian, in his 'Historical Review,' published long after these works, does not make the slightest allusion to Fitton, though if he had preserved anything like the spirit of Mr. O'Flanagan, he would not have allowed the memory of James's Irish Chancellor to rot under the 'repulsive reproaches of two centuries.' But we are fully prepared to show that Dr. King did not speak without book in charging Fitton with forgery.

It is not a matter of much consequence whether Fitton was only 'one Fitton,' as Hume calls him, or a descendant of one of the most aristocratic families of Cheshire, as Mr. O'Flanagan, on undoubted evidence, assures us. Neither does anyone dispute the fact that he was convicted of the crime of forgery, and lay several years in prison. The question is, was he guilty of the crime? Our author says—'There is some doubt whether he was chargeable with the guilt which has been so unsparingly imputed to him;' but he cannot deny that a jury of twelve men had no hesitation on their oath in attaching forgery to his name. What, then, are the facts of the case? These are recounted at some length by Mr. O'Flanagan, following the admirable and now rare 'County History of Cheshire,' by Ormerod; but he has not fairly followed his authority, as his narrative omits passage after passage that bears most hardly against Fitton. We are also to remember that Ormerod's own authority was a tract written in Fitton's own justification, under the following title:—'A True Account of the Proceedings in the several suits in Law that have been between the Right Honorable Charles Lord Gerard of Brandon and Alexander Fitton, Esq. Published for general satisfaction by a lover of truth. Hague: Printed mdclxiii. Small 4to, 49 pp.' There was also another tract published, which, perhaps, Ormerod never saw, under the title—'A Reply to a Paper intituled, A New Account of the Unreasonableness of Mr. Fitton's pretences against the Earl of Macclesfield.' (British Museum, Parl. Law Cases, vol. v., p. 117.) The facts of the case as narrated in these tracts by Fitton's friends, may be briefly described. Sir Edward Fitton, who was childless, resolved in 1641, after paying his debts and bequeathing legacies to his sisters' children, to restore the ancient entail of the Gawsworth estates, and sealed it by indenture dated 9th Nov., 17 Car., on William Fitton, his next male kinsman, the father of Alexander Fitton, the Irish Lord Chancellor. In this settlement there was a power of revocation. It is said to have been confirmed by deed-poll, dated April 3, 18 Car., by Sir Edward Fitton, who died two years after at Bristol. The allegation is that this deed-poll was forged by Alexander Fitton, or, at his instance, by Alexander Grainger. After Sir Edward's death, his widow, Lady Fitton, retained possession of Gawsworth as her jointure; but on her death, after a series of lawsuits instituted against the sisters of Sir Edward Fitton, who were determined to retain the estate, William Fitton succeeded in getting Gawsworth into his possession, and his son, Alexander, afterwards succeeded upon his marriage in getting hold of all the property by paying off a number of mortgages against it. But nineteen years after Sir Edward Fitton's death, as this tract states, his nephew, Lord Gerard, produced a will bequeathing the estates to himself, as the son of one of Sir Edward's sisters; though it was stated, on the other side, that immediately before his death, Sir Edward said 'he would rather settle his estate on Ned Fitton, the bonny beggar, than on any one of his sisters' children.' The parties then went to law, Alexander Fitton relying on the deed-poll, and Lord Gerard maintaining that it was not genuine. The High Court of Chancery directed a trial at law to be had at Westminster upon this special issue, whether the deed-poll was the act of Sir Edward Fitton or not; for it had been rumoured that Lord Gerard's solicitor had prevailed upon Abraham Grainger to swear that he had forged Sir Edward's hand to the deed. The question came on for trial; the deed was substantiated—to use Ormerod's words—by the evidence of Mr. Richard Davenport, Mr. Edmund Barwick, and Mr. Thomas Smallwoods, whose deposition was taken on his deathbed by Mr. Edge, a clergyman; but the forgery was, on the other hand, fully acknowledged by Grainger himself, corroborated by the evidence of Gifford and Wheeler; and it was also deposed by Colonel R. Ashton,—Webb, Esq., Thomas Adams, Thomas Cotton, Captain Holland, and others, that they had heard Mr. Fitton confess that Grainger had forged a deed for him for £40. Depositions to Mr. Fitton's character were taken, and three witnesses not named are said to have sworn they had seen the deed-poll before the time alleged for the forgery. It was objected to Fitton that he could not prove where he had the deed, or who engrossed it; that it had not been mentioned at the former trials or at Fitton's marriage; and that the witnesses could not remember where it was executed. The jury found that the deed was forged. Now, let it be remembered that this narration comes from the Fitton party; and yet Mr. O'Flanagan holds Fitton guiltless in the teeth of the verdict of an independent jury in London, who heard both sides of the case. But the narrative does not end here. Processes were issued commanding several of Fitton's witnesses to appear before the King's Bench on an information of perjury. Then, says Mr. O'Flanagan, 'Grainger, conscience-stricken, declared his prevarication in a written document, stating that he had not forged the deed; that this document was signed in the presence of twelve or thirteen gentlemen.' Our author's version of Ormerod's history is singularly defective and one-sided. Ormerod says that Grainger—according to the tract—begged earnestly for an opportunity of acknowledging his guilt to Fitton; and, farther, did so before a citizen of London, not named, and a kinsman of Fitton's, not named; and then wrote a narrative which he read before twelve or thirteen gentlemen. But Ormerod says that these 'gentlemen' 'were all most probably in low situations, and are in no way identified.' The narration itself relates the most improbable circumstances, as, for example, that in March, 1661, Grainger, the narrator, was pulled off his horse, taken before Sir Allen Aspley, who committed him to the Gatehouse without examination; that he was in danger of being murdered in his bed by one Rowe; that he was threatened with hanging, and with getting his hands cut off, if he would not forge the will. Was there ever such an improbable story? And yet Mr. O'Flanagan passes over this statement in silence, without referring to Ormerod's honest judgment, that even the inference from Grainger's facts is in favour of Lord Gerard, and that the evidence of a perjured witness was of no value unless corroborated by independent testimony. We have good reason, then, to believe that not only did Fitton secure the forgery of the deed in the first instance, but that he induced Grainger to issue his recantation in the shape of the narration referred to. For the House of Lords, immediately after its publication, ordered two copies of it to be burned, one at Westminster and another at Chester, 'at such time as Lord Gerard should appoint,' and inflicted the following severe punishment on Fitton and three others:—'That Alexander Fitton should be fined to his Majestie in the summe of £500; and should be committed close prisoner to the King's Bench Prison until he should produce Grainger, and should find sureties for his good behaviour during life; and that Edward Floyd, John Cade, and John Wright (three of the witnesses), should be committed to the Fleet during the King's pleasure, and should, before their enlargement, find sureties for their good behaviour during life.' It is evident from this very stringent proceeding of the House of Lords that they connected Fitton very directly with the disappearance of Grainger, and that Grainger was either unable or unwilling to come forward to stand the ordeal of a public examination upon the circumstances of his recantation.

We submit, then, that Archbishop King—'with all his hatred of Catholicity'—was perfectly warranted in saying that Sir Alexander Fitton was 'a person detected of forgery, not only at Westminster and Chester, but likewise fined by the House of Lords in Parliament' (p. 65). Mr. O'Flanagan has no evidence to offer against Dr. King's further statement that he was an inefficient and partial judge, for the mere negative evidence that the Irish bar did not express any dissatisfaction with his decisions is not worth the slightest consideration. He admits that Fitton did consult one Dr. Stafford, a Popish priest, before giving some of his decisions; but then Stafford was made a Master in Chancery by the same power that placed Fitton at the head of Irish law; for, as King remarks, the Chancellor 'was forced to make many needless references to the Masters in causes that had no difficulty in them.' Stafford, 'the learned and loyal,' Mr. O'Flanagan calls him, may have been 'an eminent doctor of the civil law,' but the Reverend Master in Chancery who perished at Aughrim in cheering on the courage of the Irish troops was not exactly the person best fitted to dispense justice in such critical times—side by side, be it remembered, with Felix O'Neal, another Master, son of Turlogh O'Neal, the bloody rebel and murderer of 1641. We do not believe, then, that Mr. O'Flanagan has succeeded in the slightest degree in 'removing the stain' upon the character of Fitton.

Select Charters and other Illustrations of English Constitutional History, from the earliest times to the reign of Edward the First, arranged and edited by William Stubbs, M.A., Regius Professor of Modern History. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1870. Pp. xii. 531.

This volume is intended to be, primarily, a 'treasury of references; an easily handled repertory of the Origines of English Constitutional history; and, secondarily, a manual for teachers and scholars, with a view to the first purpose.' Professor Stubbs has collected 'in it every constitutional document of importance during the period which it covers;' and with a view to the second, he has also 'pointed out the bearings of the several documents on one another, and on the national polity,' in his prefatory remarks to each of them, 'supplying in the introductory sketch, a string of connexion and a continuous theory of the development of the system.'

As 'the first traces of our national history must be sought for, not in Britain, but in Germany—in the reports given by Cæsar and Tacitus of the tribes which they knew;' reports in which we have indeed a 'somewhat indistinct picture,' yet 'one which when interpreted by the clearer history of the later stages of the institutions which are common to the Teutonic race, does give a probable and consistent representation' of them. The Professor's first extracts are taken from the 'Commentarii' of one of these authors, and the 'Germania' of the other. These are followed by others taken from Mr. Thorp's translation of the 'Ancient Laws and Institutes of the Anglo-Saxons.' The remainder of the volume consists of 'Select Charters and Excerpts,' illustrated by carefully selected passages from the chronicles of the several periods, as well as by other historical documents not easily accessible to any who have not the command of a public library, and some of which are to be read only in MS., all bearing upon the 'long struggle of the constitution for existence,' which terminated only with the reign of Edward I. There are only two documents of a later date given—the 'Petition of Eight,' of 1628, and the 'Bill of Rights' of 1689; both of which are printed in an appendix.

Mr. Stubbs thus states his reasons for closing his labours with the reign of the first Edward. It is 'the period of time at which the nation may be regarded as reaching its full stature. It has not yet learned its strength, nor accustomed itself to economise its power. Its first vagaries are those of a people grown up, but not disciplined. To trace the process by which it learned the full strength of its organism,—by which it learned to use its powers and forces with discrimination and effect,—to act easily, effectually, and economically,—or, to use another metaphor, to trace the gradual wear of the various parts of the machinery, until all roughnesses were smoothed, and all that was superfluous, entangling, and confusing was got rid of, and the balance of forces adjusted, and their action made manageable and intelligible, and the power of adaptation to change of circumstances fully realized, is the story of later politics—of a process that is still going on, and must go on as the age advances, and men are educated into, wider views of government, national unity, and political responsibility. We stop, however, with Edward I., because the machinery is now completed, the people are at full growth. The system is raw, and untrained, and awkward, but it is complete. The attaining of this point is to be attributed to the defining genius, the political wisdom, and the honesty of Edward I., building on the immemorial foundation of national custom; fitting together all that Henry I. had planned, Henry II. organized, and the heroes of the thirteenth century had inspired with fresh life and energy'—(pp. 50, 51).