CHAP.

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as sure to find an increase of their friends, as in its defeat XIV. they are to experience an augmentation of their enemies. Hence the inclination, equally with the interests of the movement party, both in France and all other Continental states, tends to unite them together, while the combined hostility of both is sure in the end to be directed against this country, whose industrial interests ultimately force it over to the other side. All revolutionary states look to France as their head and main stay, because it has always been the first in the revolutionary movement, and its great military strength qualifies it to form its most efficient protector. All Conservative states in secret rely upon the ultimate support of England, because it is generally known that, however strongly its sympathies in the outset may be enlisted in behalf of the cause of liberty all over the world, its material interests must in the end range it on the side of tranquillity, order, and protected industry, and its wealth forms the resource to which they all must have recourse in a protracted contest. The progress of war, which, in France and its revolutionary allies, is fraught with visions of military glory, general rapine, and the creation of offices of honour and profit for themselves in foreign and subjugated states, in England is prophetic only of increased domestic taxation, dismal commercial stoppages, and a frightful monetary crisis.

101. Inconsistency of the

These considerations at once explain the inconsistency in the policy of this country in foreign affairs, and the foreign and domestic administration of its own inhabitants, and the domestic directly opposite sides which its Government has often this country taken in the affairs of nations during the last eventrevolutions. ful eighty years. No people are so much inclined as the

policy of

in regard to

English to favour revolutionary movements in foreign states; none so determined to resist them in their own. The leaders of insurrection abroad, or the filibusters who are floating through the world to support them, are, in the general estimation in this country, heroes and demigods on the path to deathless renown; the same characters, when their efforts are directed against the

XIV.

1815.

peace of the British empire, are traitors, who should be CHAP. hung on the first tree, or pirates, who should be suspended from the first yard-arm. It is hard to say whether Great Britain exerted most energy in combating insurrection, in her own dominions in Ireland, or colonies in America, India, and the Ionian Islands, by force of arms; or in supporting it in those of South American colonies, and in the Spanish Peninsula, by covert intervention, and in Italy, France, and Belgium, by diplomacy and instant recognition of the revolutionary states. Our whole foreign policy for twenty years, under Mr Pitt and Lord Castlereagh, consisted in combating a great alliance of revolutionary states, the offspring of the first Revolution, which ultimately came to put in the utmost peril our national independence, by means of a counter alliance of legitimate empires; our whole foreign policy since its overthrow has consisted in rearing up, against ourselves in the end, a second revolutionary alliance, which at length, under another Napoleon, has come to be even more perilous than the first to our ultimate safety. All this, which to foreign nations seems an inexplicable contradiction, is simply explained by the considerations that our inclinations are strongly in favour of the cause of freedom, but our interests are all dependent upon that of conservatism; and that when the former has been long in the ascendant, a secret and unerring instinct teaches all the holders of property that their interests and the independence of their country are at stake, and that it is time to arm universally for their defence.

102.

views throw

on Lord

These considerations are not foreign to the biography of Lord Castlereagh and Sir Charles Stewart; on the Light contrary, they constitute the best vindication of their which these memory. They demonstrate the justice of the principles Castlereagh on which their public career was founded, by showing and Sir what have been the consequences of deviating from them, art's memoThe ruling maxim on which they both acted-viz., that every successful revolution on the Continent is in the 2 S

VOL. II.

Chas. Stew

ry.

CHAP.

XIV.

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end a direct addition to the power of France when under a revolutionary government, and a menace the more to the independence of this country-has now been decisively demonstrated by experience to have been well founded. Europe has had too much reason to discover the wisdom of the resolution of the Congress of Vienna, that no peace should be made "with Napoleon Buonaparte or any of his family." The tricolor flag of the Emperor will ever unite all the revolutionary states of the Continent against Great Britain. It is in the alliance of the legitimate Powers that a defence against their aggression can alone be found. Whether such a counterpoise is hereafter to be created, or the days of our freedom and prosperity are numbered, from its having become impossible, as yet lies buried in the womb of time. But this much may with confidence be affirmed, that if these blessings are destined to be lost, it will be from these principles having been forgotten by the nation, and abandoned by its rulers; if preserved, from both having been taught in the school of adversity to recognise their justice, and again act upon their suggestions.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

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