Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 094.djvu/263



annals of European history contain no epoch characterised by more general, more violent, and more extraordinary events, than what occurred in 1848. The agitation was clearly discerned, yet every one was taken by surprise. There was not want of foresight, there was want of resolution. Nothing was opposed to the revolutionary deluge, but a mistaken, dignified silence, and arms blunted by the lapse of time. To repair so great an evil, and to prevent any similar catastrophe, is the great problem which now engages the courts of Europe. But the problem is not one of very easy solution; governments accuse the people, the people accuse governments, when there is, or ought to be, mutual responsibility—a responsibility which, however, is greater on the part of government, and the more so as its forms are more or less despotic. To re-establish, on the one hand, a former state of things, that has been destroyed, is a new revolution; to continue, on the other, an open and incessant hostility against all existing institutions, is to destroy everything, even to the germs of futurity.

As the basis of order lies in government, so we see in the present day all kinds of systems bolstered up—monarchies anticipating that the basis being once re-established by force, society will reform, and all will go on smoothly; monarchies which are to be durable, without the people being royalist; and, lastly, republics springing up among people of decided anti-republican tendencies. Proportionately brief, also, has been the duration of the latter. One might just as well pretend to establish the supremacy of religion where there is not a sentiment of its truths. The Count de Ficquelmont, formerly President of the Council, and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Court of Austria, takes no account of this mutual responsibility of people and governments; with him the people are alone to blame, and the evils that weigh down upon them, in the shape of a re-actionary despotism, are of their own seeking—the natural punishment of their faults.

Among the great catastrophes of 1848, the revolution in Austria was the most surprising. It was most difficult to understand how so extensive a political body, which had never ceased to act in the extreme system of defence, could be so easily overthrown. The French revolution of 1789 was effected by an entive change in social feelings, brought about by philosophy, by literature, and by manners; and France has ever since March.—