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270  especially if it be part of the case that there be a nation that is manifestly detected to aspire to new acquests, then other states assuredly cannot be justly accused for not pay ing for the first blow, or for not adopting Polyphemus's courtesy, to be the last that shall be eaten up. &quot; (Speech concerning a War with Spain.)

Upon the fall of Napoleon in 1814 it became the com mon interest, and the universal desire, of all the sovereigns and nations of Europe to restore peace upon a settled basis, to re-establish the authority of public law, to reinstate the rightful owners in the possessions and dominions they had been forcibly deprived of, to reduce the military establish ments which weighed so heavily on the finances and on the population of Europe, and to create anew a balance of power between the states of Europe, by which the greatest of them might be restrained and the least of them protected. A secret article had been annexed to the Treaty of Paris, declaring that &quot; the allied powers had agreed among them selves on the bases which were to be given to the future system of equilibrium ; &quot; though what the nature of that agreement and of those bases was, has never been made clearly apparent. But the matter was unquestionably referred to the congress then about to open at Vienna, where the most powerful sovereigns and the most distin guished ministers of all the European states met for the first time in council. That congress was certainly the most complete, and in its action the most important, assemblage of independent political powers and their representatives which ever took place in the world. Its decisions were not all of them just, or wise, or disinterested. The broad general principles of pacification which had been laid down were more than once traversed and thwarted by particular interests and ambitions. The theory of the rights of legitimate sovereigns over their subjects was carried to an extravagant point, pregnant with danger for the future, Genoa was transferred to Sardinia, Venice to Austria, Norway to Sweden, Poland to Russia, part of Saxony to Prussia, and the sacred hopes and pledges of freedom which had animated the nations in the contest were forgotten by the leading courts of Europe in the division of the spoil. But in spite of these shortcomings and abuses, we cannot concur with writers who, like Harden- berg, denounce the Congress of Vienna as an auction of nations and an orgy of kings. It was said that every one withdrew from the Congress of Vienna disappointed, no one having obtained as much as he expected ; but if so, that would suggest the inference that the general interest of Europe prevailed over the pretensions of each particular state. From the point of view we are now considering, which is the restoration of the balance of power, it cannot be denied that the Treaties of Vienna secured forty years of peace to Europe. They stood the brunt of two fresh convulsions in France in ] 830 and in 1848, and their main provisions, though modified with respect to the Low Countries in 1832, and abrogated in Italy by the campaign of 1859, were not seriously impaired until the dissolution of the Germanic body in 1866, and the Franco-German War of 1870. During the whole of this period the warlike ambition of France, and the disposition of Russia to over awe Central Europe, were successfully held in check. At Vienna itself, and during the congress, the struggle was close and sometimes doubtful. Russia was resolved to retain the whole of Poland, which she occupied with her armies, and Prussia claimed the whole of Saxony as a com pensation for her share of the Polish provinces. To counteract this combination of Russia and Prussia, an alli ance was signed on the 3d January 1815 between Austria, England, and France, which might have led to hostilities between those powers and their recent allies. Perhaps it was fortunate that the return of Napoleon from Elba broke up the congress, and reminded all the powers that union and mutual concessions were the first duties of those who had devoted themselves to the cause of law, order, and peace. It was a sign of the wisdom of the congress, and of its respect for sound principles, that although France was the vanquished power and the author of the calamities of Europe, she was treated at Vienna with as much con sideration as any other state. Her ambassador, M. de Talleyrand, had his full weight in the congress ; and no attempt was made in 1814 to curtail her ancient territorial possessions or to lower her rank in Europe. On the con trary, the just influence of France was recognised as an essential condition of the balance of power. For the first time, then, by this general act of the Congress of Vienna, the territorial possessions and frontiers of the Continental states were defined in one document, to which all the Governments of Europe were parties ; the constitution of the Germanic body was incorporated in the same instrument, and the neutrality and independence of the smallest cities and commonwealths were established and guaranteed. Every state in Europe had therefore an equal right and interest to invoke the authority of the treaty, and to claim the execution of all its conditions. A complete fabric of European polity, such as had never existed before, was thus literally established by mutual contract; and every infraction of it might justly be brought under the consideration of the high contracting parties, or might even have been the ground of a declaration of war. In several instances this controlling power was wisely and beneficially exercised, and more than one burning question was adjusted by the conferences v!:ich met from time to time, always on the basis of the treaties of 1815. This certainly was the nearest approach ever made to a practical balance of power ; and we owe to it, as we have seen, a long period of mutual confidence, respect for public law, and peace, which contributed enormously to the pro gress, prosperity, and happiness of the world. But there are darker shades to the picture. The com prehensive interest which every state was thus held to have acquired in maintaining the general settlement might be held, and was held, to justify a dangerous and mischievous degree of intervention in the internal affairs of every other country, and this right was too often exercised in a manner injurious to liberty and independence. The northern powers, not content with the terms of the general alliance and the Treaties of Vienna, proceeded to connect themselves more closely by the mystic ties of the Holy Alliance, which provided that they were to act together on all subjects, and to regard their interests as one and indivisible. The con struction they put upon the system recently established in Europe was that it gave the allied powers a right to inter fere, not only for the prevention of quarrels, aggressions, and war, but in the internal government of states, for the purpose of preventing changes which they chose to regard as injurious to their own security and eventually to the balance of power. At the congresses and conferences of Troppau, Carlsbad, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Verona, these doctrines were avowed and acted upon to their furthest extent, and under pretence of maintaining and defending the common interests of Europe, the popular movements and constitutional progress of Italy were crushed, a French army entered Spain in 1823 to restore the authority of Ferdinand VII. against the Cortes, and even the inde pendence of the South American colonies was represented as a blow to the peace and security of Europe. The British Government had early perceived that the interpretation thus given to the theory of the balance of power, and to what was termed the federal system in Europe, was only another name for an intolerable oppression, and that the right of intervention in the internal affairs of other countries

