Page:Wallachia and Moldavia - Correspondence of D. Bratiano whit Lord Dudley C. Stuart, M.P. on the Danubian Principalities.djvu/5

 indeed, the Russian and Austrian commanders do not hesitate to say as much to all who choose to listen to them. But wherefore this war? For surely the motives they allege are not worthy of being seriously considered.

Must our poor Europe be condemned to become another South America of endless wars, continual revolutions, and counter revolutions ? and that, too, in this age of enlightenment and industry, when strength apparently should appertain to right, and conquest have become for ever the exclusive property of thought; when the numerous and wonderful applications of science to the arts and to industry; when steamboats, railways, electric telegraphs, the happy results of free trade, universal exhibitions, the spirit of tolerance, of association, of solidarity; when all these wonders, by bringing different countries into closer connection with each other, and breaking down the barriers which separated them, assimilating the ideas and interests of the peoples, and harmonising their tendencies and their effects, seem to have realised the most ardent wishes of all good men, and to have assured to us a peace, if not perpetual, at least fruitful and durable ?

Scarcely are the popular risings suppressed, thanks to the incompetency and treason of some of their chiefs, and to the lying promises made to the insurgents, before the princes themselves begin to. agitate in their turn. A fatality presses upon them. It might be said that the cruelties which have tortured the peoples for four long years having failed in driving them to take up arms anew, the princes have lost patience, and would arm themselves against each other.

It is said that nothing less has been contemplated than the division of the Ottoman Empire. Admitting that Russia may consummate this crime without the participation of England and France, or that these powers consent to become accomplices, do they not see that they can have no compensation equivalent to the seizure of Constantinople by the Russians; and besides that, whatever may be their share they will not long enjoy it, the Czar once master of the Bosphorus ? I do not speak of Austria, far