READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE FROM 1792 TO 1878

CHAPTER XVI.

THE MOVEMENTS OF 1830.

WHEN the Congress of Vienna re-arranged the map of Europe after Napoleon’s fall, Lord Castlereagh expressed the opinion that no prudent statesman would forecast a duration of more than seven years for any settlement that might then be made. At the end of a period twice as long, the Treaties of 1815 were still the public law of Europe.

The grave had peacefully closed over Napoleon; the revolutionary forces of France had given no sign of returning life. As the Bourbon monarchy struck root, and the elements of opposition grew daily weaker in France, the perils that lately filled all minds appeared to grow obsolete, and the very Power against which the anti-revolutionary treaties of 1815 had been in the main directed took its place, as of natural right, by the side of Austria and Russia in the struggle against revolution.

The attack of Louis XVIII upon the Spanish Constitutionalists marked the complete reconciliation of France with the Continental dynasties which had combined against it in 1815; and from this time the Treaties of Chaumont and Aix-la-Chapelle, though their provisions might be still unchallenged, ceased to represent the actual relations existing between the Powers. There was no longer a moral union of the Courts against a supposed French revolutionary State; on the contrary, when Eastern affairs reached their crisis, Russia detached itself from its Hapsburg ally, and definitely allied itself with France.

If after the Peace of Adrianople any one Power stood isolated, it was Austria; and if Europe was threatened by renewed aggression, it was not under revolutionary leaders or with revolutionary watchwords, but as the result of an alliance between Charles X and the Czar of Russia. After the Bourbon Cabinet had resolved to seek an extension of French territory at whatever sacrifice of the balance of power in the East, Europe could hardly expect that the Court of St. Petersburg would long reject the advantages offered to it.

The frontiers of 1815 seemed likely to be obliterated by an enterprise which would bring Russia to the Danube and France to the Rhine. From this danger the settlement of 1815 was saved by the course of events that took place within France itself. The Revolution of 1830, insignificant in its immediate effects upon the French people, largely influenced the governments and the nations of Europe; and while within certain narrow limits it gave a stimulus to constitutional liberty, its more general result was to revive the union of the three Eastern Courts which had broken down in 1826, and to reunite the principal members of the Holy Alliance by the sense of a common interest against the Liberalism of the West.

In the person of Charles X reaction and clericalism had ascended the French throne. The minister, Villele, who had won power in 1820 as the representative of the ultra-Royalists, had indeed learnt wisdom while in office, and down to the death of Louis XVIII in 1824 he had kept in check the more violent section of his party. But he now retained his post only at the price of compliance with the Court, and gave the authority of his name to measures which his own judgment condemned.

It was characteristic of Charles X and of the reactionaries around him that out of trifling matters they provoked more exasperation than a prudent Government would have aroused by changes of infinitely greater importance. Thus in a sacrilege-law which was introduced in 1825 they disgusted all reasonable men by attempting to revive the barbarous mediaeval punishment of amputation of the hand; and in a measure conferring some fractional rights upon the eldest son in cases of intestacy they alarmed the whole nation by a preamble declaring the French principle of the equal division of inheritances to be incompatible with monarchy. Coming from a Government which had thus already forfeited public confidence, a law granting the emigrants a compensation of 40,000,000 for their estates which had been confiscated during the Revolution excited the strongest opposition, although, apart from questions of equity, it benefited the nation by forever setting at rest all doubt as to the title of the purchasers of the confiscated lands.

The financial operations by which, in order to provide the vast sum allotted to the emigrants, the national debt was converted from a five per cent, to a three per cent, stock, alienated all stockholders and especially the powerful bankers of Paris. But more than any single legislative act, the alliance of the Government with the priestly order, and the encouragement given by it to monastic corporations, whose existence in France was contrary to law, offended the nation.

The Jesuits were indicted before the law-courts by Montlosier, himself a Royalist and a member of the old noblesse. A vehement controversy sprang up between the ecclesiastics and their opponents, in which the Court was not spared. The Government, which had lately repealed the law of censorship, now restored it by edict. The climax of its unpopularity was reached; its hold upon the Chamber was gone, and the very measure by which Villèle, when at the height of his power, had endeavoured to give permanence to his administration, proved its ruin. He had abolished the system of partial renovation, by which one-fifth of the Chamber of Deputies was annually returned, and substituted for it the English system of septennial Parliaments with general elections. In 1827 King Charles, believing his Ministers to be stronger in the country than in the Chamber, exercised his prerogative of dissolution.

The result was the total defeat of the Government, and the return of an assembly in which the Liberal opposition outnumbered the partisans of the Court by three to one. Villèle’s Ministry now resigned. King Charles, unwilling to choose his successor from the Parliamentary majority, thought for a moment of violent resistance, but subsequently adopted other counsels, and, without sincerely intending to bow to the national will, called to office the Vicomte de Martignac, a member of the right centre, and the representative of a policy of conciliation and moderate reform (January 2, 1828).

It was not the fault of this Minister that the last chance of union between the French nation and the elder Bourbon line was thrown away. Martignac brought forward a measure of decentralization conferring upon the local authorities powers which, though limited, were larger than they had possessed at any time since the foundation of the Consulate; and he appealed to the Liberal sections of the Chamber to assist him in winning an instalment of self-government which France might well have accepted with satisfaction. But the spirit of opposition within the Assembly was too strong for a coalition of moderate men, and the Liberals made the success of Martignac’s plan impossible by insisting on concessions which the Minister was unable to grant.

The reactionists were ready to combine with their opponents. King Charles himself was in secret antagonism to his Minister, and watched with malicious joy his failure to control the majority in the Chamber. Instead of throwing all his influence on to the side of Martignac, and rallying all doubtful forces by the pronounced support of the Crown, he welcomed Martignac’s defeat as a proof of the uselessness of all concessions, and dismissed the Minister from office, declaring that the course of events had fulfilled his own belief in the impossibility of governing in accord with a Parliament.

The names of the Ministers who were now called to power excited anxiety and alarm not only in France but throughout the political circles of Europe. They were the names of men known as the most violent and embittered partisans of reaction; men whose presence in the councils of the King could mean nothing but a direct attack upon the existing Parliamentary system of France. At the head was Jules Polignac, then French ambassador at London, a man half-crazed with religious delusions, who had suffered a long imprisonment for his share in Cadoudal's attempt to kill Napoleon, and on his return to France in 1814 had refused to swear to the Charta because it granted religious freedom to non-Catholics.

Among the subordinate members of the Ministry were General Bourmont, who had deserted to the English at Waterloo, and La Bourdonnaye, the champion of the reactionary Terrorists in 1816.

The Ministry having been appointed immediately after the close of the session of 1829, an interval of several months passed before they were brought face to face with the Chambers. During this interval the prospect of a conflict with the Crown became familiar to the public mind, though no general impression existed that an actual change of dynasty was close at hand. The Bonapartists were without a leader, Napoleon's son, their natural head, being in the power of the Austrian Court; the Republicans were neither numerous nor well organized, and the fatal memories of 1793 still weighed upon the nation; the great body of those who contemplated resistance to King Charles X looked only to a Parliamentary struggle, or, in the last resort, to the refusal of payment of taxes in case of a breach of the Constitution. There was, however, a small and dexterous group of politicians which, at a distance from all the old parties, schemed for the dethronement of the reigning branch of the House of Bourbon, and or the elevation of Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, to the throne. The chief of this intrigue was Talleyrand. Slighted and thwarted by the Court, the old diplomatist watched for the signs of a falling Government, and when the familiar omens met his view he turned to the quarter from which its successor was most likely to arise.

Louis Philippe stood high in credit with all circles of Parliamentary Liberals. His history had been a strange and eventful one. He was the son of that Orleans who, after calling himself Egalite, and voting for the death of his cousin, Louis XVI, had himself perished during the Reign of Terror. Young Louis Philippe had been a member of the Jacobin Club, and had fought for the Republic at Jemappes. Then, exiled and reduced to penury, he had earned his bread by teaching mathematics in Switzerland, and had been a wanderer in the new as well as in the old world.

After a while his fortunes brightened. A marriage with the daughter of Ferdinand of Sicily restored him to those relations with the reigning houses of Europe which had been forfeited by his father, and inspired him with the hope of gaining a crown. During Napoleon's invasion of Spain he had caballed with politicians in that country who were inclined to accept a substitute for their absent sovereign; at another time he had entertained hopes of being made king of the Ionian Islands. After the peace of Paris, when the allied sovereigns and their ministers visited England, Louis Philippe was sent over by his father-in-law to intrigue among them against Murat, and in pursuance of this object he made himself acquainted not only with every foreign statesman then in London but with every leading English politician. He afterwards settled in France, and was reinstated in the vast possessions of the House of Orleans, which, though confiscated, had not for the most part been sold during the Revolution. His position at Paris under Louis XVIII and Charles X was a peculiar one. Without taking any direct part in politics or entering into any avowed opposition to the Court, he made his home, the Palais Royale, a gathering-place for all that was most distinguished in the new political and literary society of the capital; and while the Tuileries affected the pomp and the ceremoniousness of the old regime, the Duke of Orleans moved with the familiarity of a citizen among citizens. He was a clever, ready, sensible man, equal, as it seemed, to any practical task likely to come in his way, but in reality void of any deep insight, of any far-reaching aspiration, of any profound conviction. His affectation of a straightforward middle-class geniality covered a decided tendency towards intrigue and a strong love of personal power.

Later events indeed gave rise to the belief that, while professing the utmost loyalty towards Charles X, Louis Philippe had been scheming to oust him from his throne; but the evidence really points the other way, and indicates that, whatever secret hopes may have suggested themselves to the Duke, his strongest sentiment during the Revolution of 1830 was the fear of being driven into exile himself, and of losing his possessions. He was not indeed of a chivalrous nature; but when the Crown came in his way, he was guilty of no worse offence than some shabby evasions of promises.

Early in March, 1830, the French Chambers assembled after their recess. The speech of King Charles at the opening of the session was resolute and even threatening. It was answered by an address from the Lower House, requesting him to dismiss his Ministers. The deputation which presented this address was received by the King in a style that left no doubt as to his intentions, and on the following day the Chambers were prorogued for six months. It was known that they would not be permitted to meet again, and preparations for a renewed general election were at once made with the utmost vigour by both parties throughout France. The Court unsparingly applied all the means of pressure familiar to French governments; it moreover expected to influence public opinion by some striking success in arms or in diplomacy abroad. The negotiations with Russia for the acquisition of Belgium were still before the Cabinet, and a quarrel with the Dey of Algiers gave Polignac the opportunity of beginning a war of conquest in Africa. General Bourmont left the War Office, to wipe out the infamy still attaching to his name by a campaign against the Arabs; and the Government trusted that, even in the event of defeat at the elections, the nation at large would at the most critical moment be rallied to its side by an announcement of the capture of Algiers.

While the dissolution of Parliament was impending, Polignac laid before the King a memorial expressing his own views on the courses open to Government in case of the elections proving adverse. The Charta contained a clause which, in loose and ill-chosen language, declared it to be the function of the King “to make the regulations and ordinances necessary for the execution of the laws and for the security of the State”. These words, which no doubt referred to the exercise of the King's normal and constitutional powers, were interpreted by Polignac as authorizing the King to suspend the Constitution itself, if the Representative Assembly should be at variance with the King's Ministers. Polignac in fact entertained the same view of the relation between executive and deliberative bodies as those Jacobin directors who made the coup-d'etat of Fructidor, 1797; and the measures which he ultimately adopted were, though in a softened form, those adopted by Barras and Lareveillere after the Royalist elections in the sixth year of the Republic. To suspend the Constitution was not, he suggested, to violate the Charta, for the Charta empowered the sovereign to issue the ordinances necessary for the security of the State; and who but the sovereign and his advisers could be the judges of this necessity? This was simple enough; there was nevertheless among Polignac's colleagues some doubt both as to the wisdom and as to the legality of his plans. King Charles who, with all his bigotry, was anxious not to violate the letter of the Charta, brooded long over the clause which defined the sovereign's powers. At length he persuaded himself that his Minister's interpretation was the correct one, accepted the resignation of the dissentients within the Cabinet, and gave his sanction to the course which Polignac recommended.

The result of the general election, which took place in June, surpassed all the hopes of the Opposition and all the fears of the Court. The entire body of Deputies which had voted the obnoxious address to the Crown in March was returned, and the partisans of Government lost in addition fifty seats.

The Cabinet, which had not up to this time resolved upon the details of its action, now deliberated upon several projects submitted to it, and, after rejecting all plans that might have led to a compromise, determined to declare the elections null and void, to silence the press, and to supersede the existing electoral system by one that should secure the mastery of the Government both at the polling-booths and in the Chamber itself.

All this was to be done by Royal Edict, and before the meeting of the new Parliament. The date fixed for the opening of the Chambers had been placed as late as possible in order to give time to General Bourmont to win the victory in Africa from which the Court expected to reap so rich a harvest of prestige. On the 9th of July news arrived that Algiers had fallen. The announcement, which was everywhere made with the utmost pomp, fell flat on the country.

The conflict between the Court and the nation absorbed all minds, and the rapturous congratulations of Bishops and Prefects scarcely misled even the blind coterie of the Tuileries. Public opinion was no doubt with the Opposition; King Charles, however, had no belief that the populace of Paris, which alone was to be dreaded as a fighting body, would take up arms on behalf of the middle-class voters and journalists against whom his Ordinances were to be directed. The populace neither read nor voted : why should it concern itself with constitutional law? Or why, in a matter that related only to the King and the Bourgeoisie, should it not take part with the King against this new and bastard aristocracy which lived on others’ labour? Politicians who could not fight were troublesome only when they were permitted to speak and to write. There was force enough at the King's command to close the gates of the Chamber of Deputies, and to break up the printing-presses of the journals; and if King Louis XVI had at last fallen by the hands of men of violence, it was only because he had made concessions at first to orators and politicians. Therefore, without dreaming that an armed struggle would be the immediate result of their action, King Charles and Polignac determined to prevent the meeting of the Chamber, and to publish, a week before the date fixed for its opening, the Edicts which were to silence the brawl of faction and to vindicate monarchical government in France.

Accordingly, on the 26th of July, a series of Ordinances appeared in the Moniteur, signed by the King and countersigned by the Ministers. The first Ordinance forbade the publication of any journal without royal permission; the second dissolved the Chamber of Deputies; the third raised the property-qualification of voters, established a system of double-election, altered the duration of Parliaments, and re-enacted the obsolete clause of the Charta, confining the initiative of all legislation to the Government. Other Ordinances convoked a Chamber to be elected under the new rules, and called to the Council of State a number of the most notorious ultra-Royalists and fanatics in France. Taken together, the Ordinances left scarcely anything standing of the Constitutional and Parliamentary system of the day. The blow fell first on the press, and the first step in resistance was taken by the journalists of Paris, who, under the leadership of the young Thiers, editor of the National, published a protest declaring that they would treat the Ordinances as illegal, and calling upon the Chambers and nation to join in this resistance. For a while the journalists seemed likely to stand alone.

Paris at large remained quiet, and a body of the recently elected Deputies, to whom the journalists appealed as representatives of the nation, proved themselves incapable of any action or decision whatsoever. It was not from these timid politicians, but from a body of obscure Republicans, that the impulse proceeded which overthrew the Bourbon throne. Unrepresented in Parliament and unrepresented in the press, there were a few active men who had handed down the traditions of 1792, and who, in sympathy with the Carbonari and other conspirators abroad, had during recent years founded secret societies in Paris, and enlisted in the Republican cause a certain number of workmen, of students, and of youths of the middle classes. While the journalists discussed legal means of resistance and the Deputies awaited events, the Republican leaders met and determined upon armed revolt. They were, assisted, probably without direct concert, by the printing firms and other employers of labour, who, in view of the general suspension of the newspapers, closed their establishments on the morning of July 27, and turned their workmen into the streets.

Thus on the day after the appearance of the Edicts the aspect of Paris changed. Crowds gathered, and revolutionary cries were raised. Marmont, who was suddenly ordered to take command of the troops, placed them around the Tuileries, and captured two barricades which were erected in the neighbourhood; but the populace was not yet armed, and no serious conflict took place. In the evening Lafayette reached Paris, and the revolution had now a real, though not an avowed, leader. A body of his adherents met during the night at the office of the National, and, in spite of Thiers’ resistance, decided upon a general insurrection. Thiers himself, who desired nothing but a legal and Parliamentary attack upon Charles X, quitted Paris to await events. The men who had out-voted him placed themselves in communication with all the district committees of Paris, and began the actual work of revolt by distributing arms. On the morning of Wednesday, July 28th, the first armed bands attacked and captured the arsenals and several private depots of weapons and ammunition. Barricades were erected everywhere. The insurgents swelled from hundreds to thousands, and, converging on the old rallying-point of the Commune of Paris, they seized the Hotel de Ville, and hoisted the tricolour flag on its roof. Marmont wrote to the King, declaring the position to be most serious, and advising concession; he then put his troops in motion, and succeeded, after severe conflict, in capturing several points of vantage, and in expelling the rebels from the Hotel de Ville.

In the meantime the Deputies, who were again assembled at the house of one of their number in pursuance of an agreement made on the previous day, gained sufficient courage to adopt a protest declaring that in spite of the Ordinances they were still the legal representatives of the nation. They moreover sent a deputation to Marmont, begging him to put a stop to the fighting, and offering their assistance in restoring order if the King would withdraw his Edicts. Marmont replied that he could do nothing without the King's command, but he despatched a second letter to St. Cloud, urging compliance. The only answer which he received was a command to concentrate his troops and to act in masses. The result of this was that the positions which had been won by hard fighting were abandoned before evening, and that the troops, famished and exhausted, were marched back through the streets of Paris to the Tuileries. On the march some fraternized with the people, others were surrounded and disarmed. All eastern Paris now fell into the hands of the insurgents; the middle-class, as in 1789 and 1792, remained inactive, and allowed the contest to be decided by the populace and the soldiery. Messages from the capital constantly reached St. Cloud, but the King so little understood his danger and so confidently reckoned on the victory of the troops in the Tuileries that he played whist as usual during the evening; and when the Duc de Mortemart, French Ambassador at St. Petersburg, arrived at nightfall, and pressed for an audience, the King refused to receive him until the next morning.

When morning came, the march of the insurgents against the Tuileries began. Position after position fell into their hands. The regiments stationed in the Place Vendome abandoned their commander, and marched off to place themselves at the disposal of the Deputies. Marmont ordered the Swiss Guard, which had hitherto defended the Louvre, to replace them; and in doing so he left the Louvre for a moment without any garrison. The insurgents saw the building empty, and rushed into it. From the windows they commanded the Court of the Tuileries, where the troops in reserve were posted; and soon after midday all was over. A few isolated battalions fought and perished, but the mass of the soldiery with their commander fell back upon the Place de la Concorde, and then evacuated Paris.

The Duke of Orleans was all this time in hiding. He had been warned that the Court intended to arrest him, and, whether from fear of the Court or of the populace, he had secreted himself at a hunting-lodge in his woods, allowing none but his wife and his sister to know where he was concealed. His partisans, of whom the rich and popular banker, Laffitte, was the most influential among the Deputies, were watching for an opportunity to bring forward his name; but their chances of success seemed slight. The Deputies at large wished only for the withdrawal of the Ordinances, and were wholly averse from a change of dynasty. It was only through the obstinacy of King Charles himself, and as the result of a series of accidents, that the Crown passed from the elder Bourbon line.

King Charles would not hear of withdrawing the Ordinances until the Tuileries had actually fallen; he then gave way and charged the Duc de Mortemart to form a new Ministry, drawn from the ranks of the Opposition. But instead of formally repealing the Edicts by a public Decree, he sent two messengers to Paris to communicate his change of purpose to the Deputies by word of mouth. The messengers betook themselves to the Hotel de Ville, where a municipal committee under Lafayette had been installed and, when they could produce no written authority for their statements, they were referred by this committee to the general body of Deputies, which was now sitting at Laffitte’s house.

The Deputies also demanded a written guarantee. Laffitte and Thiers spoke in favor of the Duke of Orleans, but the Assembly at large was still willing to negotiate with Charles X, and only required the presence of the Duc de Mortemart himself, and a copy of the Decree repealing the Ordinances.

It was now near midnight. The messengers returned to St. Cloud, and were not permitted to deliver their intelligence until the King awoke next morning. Charles then signed the necessary document, and Mortemart set out for Paris; but the night's delay had given the Orleanists time to act, and before the King was up Thiers had placarded the streets of Paris with a proclamation extolling Orleans as the prince devoted to the cause of the Revolution, as the soldier of Jemappes, and the only constitutional King now possible.

Some hours after this manifesto had appeared the Deputies again assembled at Laffite's house, and waited for the appearance of Mortemart. But they waited in vain. Mortemart’s carriage was stopped on the road from St. Cloud, and he was compelled to make his way on foot by a long circuit and across a score of barricades. When he approached Laffite's house, half dead with heat and fatigue, he found that the Deputies had adjourned to the Palais Bourbon, and, instead of following them, he ended his journey at the Luxemburg, where the Peers were assembled. His absence was turned to good account by the Orleanists. At the morning session the proposition was openly made to call Louis Philippe to power; and when the Deputies re-assembled in the afternoon and the Minister still failed to present himself, it was resolved to send a body of Peers and Deputies to Louis Philippe to invite him to come to Paris and to assume the office of Lieutenant-General of the kingdom. No opposition was offered to this proposal in the House of Peers, and a deputation accordingly set out to search for Louis Philippe at his country house at Neuilly.

The prince was not to be found; but his sister, who received the deputation, undertook that he should duly appear in Paris. She then communicated with her brother in his hiding place, and induced him, in spite of the resistance of his wife, to set out for the capital. He arrived at the Palais Royale late on the night of the 30th. Early the next morning he received a deputation from the Assembly, and accepted the powers which they offered him. A proclamation was then published, announcing to the Parisians that in order to save the country from anarchy and civil war the Duke of Orleans had assumed the office of Lieutenant-General of the kingdom.

But there existed another authority in Paris beside the Assembly of Representatives, and one that was not altogether disposed to permit Louis Philippe and his satellites to reap the fruits of the people's victory. Lafayette and the Municipal Committee, which occupied the Hotel de Ville, had transformed themselves into a provisional government, and sat surrounded by the armed mob which had captured the Tuileries two days before. No single person who had fought in the streets had risked his life for the sake of making Louis Philippe king; in so far as the Parisians had fought for any definite political idea, they had fought for the Republic. It was necessary to reconcile both the populace and the provisional government to the assumption of power by the new Regent; and with this object Louis Philippe himself proceeded to the Hotel de Ville, accompanied by an escort of Deputies and Peers.

It was a hazardous moment when he entered the crowd on the Place de Greve; but Louis Philippe's readiness of speech stood him in good stead, and he made his way unhurt through the throng into the building, where Lafayette received him. Compliments and promises were showered upon this veteran of 1789, who presently appeared on a balcony and embraced Louis Philippe, while the Prince grasped the tricolour flag, the flag which had not waved in Paris since 1815. The spectacle was successful. The multitude shouted applause; and the few determined men who still doubted the sincerity of a Bourbon and demanded the proclamation of the Republic were put off with the promise of an ultimate appeal to the French people.

In the meantime Charles X had withdrawn to Rambouillet, accompanied by the members of his family and by a considerable body of troops. Here the news reached him that Orleans had accepted from the Chambers the office of Lieutenant-General. It was a severe blow to the old king, who, while others doubted of Louis Philippe's loyalty, had still maintained his trust in this prince's fidelity. For a moment he thought of retiring beyond the Loire and risking a civil war; but the troops now began to disperse, and Charles, recognizing that his cause was hopeless, abdicated together with the dauphin in favour of his grandson the young Chambord, then called Due de Bordeaux. He wrote to Louis Philippe, appointing him, as if on his own initiative, Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and required him to proclaim Henry V king, and to undertake the government during the new sovereign's minority. It is doubtful whether Louis Philippe had at this time formed any distinct resolve, and whether his answer to Charles X was inspired by mere good nature or by conscious falsehood; for while replying officially that he would lay the king's letter before the Chambers, he privately wrote to Charles X that he would retain his new office only until he could safely place the Duc de Bordeaux upon the throne. Having thus soothed the old man's pride, Louis Philippe requested him to hasten his departure from the neighbourhood of Paris; and when Charles ignored the message, he sent out some bands of the National Guard to terrify him into flight.

This device succeeded, and the royal family, still preserving the melancholy ceremonial of a court, moved slowly through France towards the western coast. At Cherbourg they took ship and crossed to England, where they were received as private persons. Among the British nation at large the exiled Bourbons excited but little sympathy. They were, however, permitted to take up their abode in the palace of Holyrood, and here Charles X resided for two years. But neither the climate nor the society of the Scottish capital offered any attraction to the old and failing chief of a fallen dynasty. He sought a more congenial shelter in Austria, and died at Goritz in November, 1836.

The first public notice of the abdication of King Charles was given by Louis Philippe in the Chamber of Deputies, which was convoked by him, as Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, on the 3rd of August. In addressing the Deputies, Louis Philippe stated that he had received a letter containing the abdication both of the King and of the Dauphin, but he uttered no single word regarding the Duc de Bordeaux, in whose favour both his grandfather and his uncle had renounced their rights. Had Louis Philippe mentioned that the abdications were in fact conditional, and had he declared himself protector of the Duc de Bordeaux during his minority, there is little doubt that the legitimate heir would have been peaceably accepted both by the Chamber and by Paris. Louis Philippe himself had up to this time done nothing that was inconsistent with the assumption of a mere Regency; the Chamber had not desired a change of dynasty; and, with the exception of Lafayette, the men who had actually made the Revolution bore as little goodwill to an Orleanist as to a Bourbon monarchy. But from the time when Louis Philippe passed over in silence the claims of the grandson of Charles X, his own accession to the throne became inevitable. It was left to an obscure Deputy to propose that the crown should be offered to Louis Philippe, accompanied by certain conditions couched in the form of modifications of the Charta. The proposal was carried in the Chamber on the 7th of August, and the whole body of representatives marched to the Palais Royale to acquaint the prince with its resolution. Louis Philippe, after some conventional expressions of regret, declared that he could not resist the call of his country. When the Lower Chamber had thus disposed of the crown, the House of Peers, which had proved itself a nullity throughout the crisis, adopted the same resolution, and tendered its congratulations in a similar fashion. Two days later Louis Philippe took the oath to the Charta as modified by the Assembly, and was proclaimed King of the French.

Thus ended a revolution, which, though greeted with enthusiasm at the time, has lost much of its splendour and importance in the later judgment of mankind. In comparison with the Revolution of it 89, the movement which overthrew the Bourbons in 1830 was a mere flutter on the surface. It was unconnected with any great change in men's ideas, and it left no great social or legislative changes behind it. Occasioned by a breach of the constitution on the part of the Executive Government, it resulted mainly in the transfer of administrative power from one set of politicians to another: the alterations which it introduced into the constitution itself were of no great importance. France neither had an absolute Government before 1830, nor had it a popular Government afterwards. Instead of a representative of divine right, attended by guards of nobles and counselled by Jesuit confessors, there was now a citizen- king, who walked about the streets of Paris with an umbrella under his arm and sent his sons to the public schools, but who had at heart as keen a devotion to dynastic interests as either of his predecessors, and a much greater capacity for personal rule. The bonds which kept the entire local administration of France in dependence upon the central authority were not loosened; officialism remained as strong as ever; the franchise was still limited to a mere fraction of the nation. On the other hand, within the administration itself the change wrought by the July Revolution was real and lasting.

It extinguished the political power of the clerical interest. Not only were the Bishops removed from the House of Peers, but throughout all departments of Government the influence of the clergy, which had been so strong under Charles X, vanished away. The State took a distinctly secular colour. The system of public education was regulated with such police­like exclusiveness that priests who insisted upon opening schools of their own for Catholic teaching were enabled to figure as champions of civil liberty and of freedom of opinion against despotic power. The noblesse lost whatever political influence it had regained during the Restoration. The few surviving Regicides who had been banished in 1815 were recalled to France, among them the terrorist Barrere, who was once more returned to the Assembly. But the real winners in the Revolution of 1830 were not the men of extremes but the middle-class of France. This was the class which Louis Philippe truly represented; and the force which for eighteen years kept Louis Philippe on the throne was the middle-class force of the National Guard of Paris.

Against this sober, prosaic, unimaginative power there struggled the hot and restless spirit which had been let loose by the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty, and which, fired at once with the political ideal of a Republic, with dreams of the regeneration of Europe by French armies, and with the growing antagonism between the labouring class and the owners of property, threatened for a while to overthrow the newly-constituted monarchy in France, and to plunge Europe into war. The return of the tricolour flag, the long-silenced strains of the Republic and the Empire, the sense of victory with which men on the popular side witnessed the expulsion of the dynasty which had been forced upon France after Waterloo, revived that half-romantic military ardour which had undertaken the liberation of Europe in 1792. France appeared once more in the eyes of enthusiasts as the deliverer of nations. The realities of the past epoch of French military aggression, its robberies, its corruption, the execrations of its victims, were forgotten; and when one people after another took up the shout of liberty that was raised in Paris, and insurrections broke out in every quarter of Europe, it was with difficulty that Louis Philippe and the few men of caution about him could prevent the French nation from rushing into war.

The State first affected by the events of July was the kingdom of the Netherlands. The creation of this kingdom, in which the Belgian provinces formerly subject to Austria were united with Holland to serve as an effective barrier against French aggression Affairs in on the north, had been one of Pitt's most cherished schemes, and it had been carried into effect ten years after his death by the Congress of Vienna.

National and religious incongruities had been little considered by the statesmen of that day, and at the very moment of union the Catholic bishops of Belgium had protested against a constitution which gave equal toleration to all religions under the rule of a Protestant King. The Belgians had been uninterruptedly united with France for the twenty years preceding 1814; the French language was not only the language of their literature, but the spoken language of the upper classes; and though the Flemish portion of the population was nearly related to the Dutch, this element had not then asserted itself with the distinctness and energy which it has since developed. The antagonism between the northern and the southern Netherlands, though not insuperable, was sufficiently great to make a harmonious union between the two countries a work of difficulty, and the Government of The Hague had not taken the right course to conciliate its opponents. The Belgians, though more numerous, were represented by fewer members in the National Assembly than the Dutch. Offices were filled by strangers from Holland; finance was governed by a regard for Dutch interests; and the Dutch language was made the official language for the whole kingdom. But the chief grievances were undoubtedly connected with the claims of the clerical party in Belgium to a monopoly of spiritual power and the exclusive control of education. The one really irreconcilable enemy of the Protestant House of Orange was the Church; and the governing impulse in the conflicts which preceded the dissolution of the kingdom of the Netherlands in 1830 sprang from the same clerical interest which had thrown Belgium into revolt against the Emperor Joseph forty years before. There was again seen the same strange phenomenon of a combination between the Church and a popular or even revolutionary party. For the sake of an alliance against a constitution distasteful to both, the clergy of Belgium accepted the democratic principles of the political Opposition, and the Opposition consented for a while to desist from their attacks upon the Papacy. The contract was faithfully observed on both sides until the object for which it was made was attained.

For some months before the Revolution of July, 1830, the antagonism between the Belgians and their Government had been so violent that no great shock from outside was necessary to produce an outbreak. The convulsions of Paris were at once felt at Brussels, and on the 25th of August the performance of a revolutionary opera in that city gave the signal for the commencement of insurrection. From the capital the rebellion spread from town to town throughout the southern Netherlands. The King summoned the Estates General, and agreed to the establishment of an administration for Belgium separate from that of Holland: but the storm was not allayed; and the appearance of a body of Dutch troops at Brussels was sufficient to dispel the expectation of a peaceful settlement. Barricades were erected; a conflict took place in the streets; and the troops, unable to carry the city by assault, retired to the outskirts and kept up a desultory attack for several days. They then withdrew, and a provisional government, which was immediately established, declared the independence of Belgium. For a moment there appeared some possibility that the Crown Prince of Holland, who had from the first assumed the part of mediator, might be accepted as sovereign of the newly-formed State; but the growing violence of the insurrection, the activity of French emissaries and volunteers, and the bombardment of Antwerp by the Dutch soldiers who garrisoned its citadel, made an end of all such hopes. Belgium had won its independence, and its connection with the House of Orange could be re-established only by force of arms.

The accomplishment of this revolution in one of the smallest Continental States threatened to involve all Europe in war. Though not actually effected under the auspices of a French army, it was undoubtedly to some extent effected in alliance with the French revolutionary party. It broke up a kingdom established by the European Treaties of 1814; and it was so closely connected with the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy as to be scarcely distinguishable from those cases in which the European Powers had pledged themselves to call their armies into the field. Louis Philippe, however, had been recognized by most of the European Courts as the only possible alternative to a French Republic; and a general disposition existed to second any sincere effort that should be made by him to prevent the French nation from rushing into war. This was especially the case with England; and it was to England that Louis Philippe turned for co-operation in the settlement of the Belgian question. Louis Philippe himself had every possible reason for desiring to keep the peace. If war broke out, France would be opposed to all the Continental Powers together. Success was in the last degree improbable; it could only be hoped for by a revival of the revolutionary methods and propaganda of 1793; and failure, even for a moment, would certainly cost him his throne, and possibly his life. His interest no less than his temperament made him the strenuous, though concealed, opponent of the war-party in the Assembly; and he found in the old diplomatist who had served alike under the Bourbons, the Republic, and the Empire, an ally thoroughly capable of pursuing his own wise though unpopular policy of friendship and co-operation with England.

Talleyrand, while others were crying for a revenge for Waterloo, saw that the first necessity for France was to rescue it from its isolation; and as at the Congress of Vienna he had detached Austria and England from the two northern Courts, so now, before attempting to gain any extension of territory, he sought to make France safe against the hostility of the Continent by allying it with at least one great Power. Russia had become an enemy instead of a friend. The expulsion of the Bourbons had given mortal offence to the Czar Nicholas, and neither Austria nor Prussia was likely to enter into close relations with a Government founded upon revolution. England alone seemed a possible ally, and it was to England that the French statesman of peace turned in the Belgian crisis. Talleyrand, now nearly eighty years old, came as ambassador to London, where he had served in 1792. He addressed himself to Wellington and to the new King, William IV, assuring them that, under the Government of Louis Philippe, France would not seek to use the Belgian revolution for its own aggrandizement; and, with his old aptness in the invention of general principles to suit a particular case, he laid down the principle of non-intervention as one that ought for the future to govern the policy of Europe.

His efforts were successful. So complete an understanding was established between France and England on the Belgian question, that all fear of an armed intervention of the Eastern Courts on behalf of the King of Holland, which would have rendered a war with France inevitable, passed away. The regulation of Belgian affairs was submitted to a Conference at London. Hostilities were stopped, and the independence of the new kingdom was recognized in principle by the Conference before the end of the year. A Protocol defining the frontiers of Belgium and Holland, and apportioning to each State its share in the national debt, was signed by the representatives of the Powers in January, 1831.

Thus far, a crisis which threatened the peace of Europe had been surmounted with unexpected ease. But the first stage of the difficulty alone was passed; it still remained for the Powers to provide a king for Belgium, and to gain the consent of the Dutch and Belgian Governments to the territorial arrangements drawn up for them. The Belgians themselves, with whom a connection with France was popular, were disposed to elect as their sovereign the Duc de Nemours, second son of Louis Philippe; and although Louis Philippe officially refused his sanction to this scheme, which in the eyes of all Europe would have turned Belgium into a French dependency, he privately encouraged its prosecution after a Bonapartist candidate, the son of Eugene Beauharnais, had appeared in the field. The result was that the Duc de Nemours was elected king on the 3rd of February, 1831. Upon this appointment the Conference of the Powers at London had already pronounced its veto, and the British Government let it be understood that it would resist any such extension of French influence by force. Louis Philippe now finally refused the crown for his son, and, the Bonapartist candidate being withdrawn, the two rival Powers agreed in recommending Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, on the understanding that, if elected King of Belgium, he should marry a daughter of Louis Philippe. The Belgians fell in with the advice given them, and elected Leopold on the 4th of June. He accepted the crown, subject to the condition that the London Conference should modify in favour of Belgium some of the provisions relating to the frontiers and to the finances of the new State which had been laid down by the Conference, and which the Belgian Government had hitherto refused to accept.

The difficulty of arranging the Belgian frontier arose principally from the position of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg. This territory, though subject to Austria before the French Revolution, had always been treated as distinct from the body of the Austrian Netherlands. When, at the peace of 1814, it was given to the King of Holland in substitution for the ancient possessions of his family at Nassau, its old character as a member of the German federal union was restored to it, so that the King of Holland in respect of this portion of his dominions became a German prince, and the fortress of Luxemburg, the strongest in Europe after Gibraltar, was liable to occupation by German troops. The population of the Duchy had, however, joined the Belgians in their revolt, and, with the exception of the fortress itself, the territory had passed into possession of the Belgian Government. In spite of this actual overthrow of Dutch rule, the Conference of London had attached such preponderating importance to the military and international relations of Luxemburg that it had excluded the whole of the Duchy from the new Belgian State, and declared it still to form part of the dominions of the King of Holland. The first demand of Leopold was for the reversal or modification of this decision, and the Powers so far gave way as to substitute for the declaration of January a series of articles, in which the question of Luxemburg was reserved for future settlement. The King of Holland had assented to the January declaration; on hearing of its abandonment, he took up arms, and threw fifty thousand men into Belgium. Leopold appealed to France for assistance, and a French army immediately crossed the frontier.

The Dutch now withdrew, and the French in their turn were recalled, after Leopold had signed a treaty undertaking to raze the fortifications of five towns on his southern border. The Conference again took up its work, and produced a third scheme, in which the territory of Luxemburg was divided between Holland and Belgium. This was accepted by Belgium, and rejected by Holland. The consequence was that a treaty was made between Leopold and the Powers; and at the beginning of 1832 the kingdom of Belgium, as defined by the third award of the Conference, was recognized by all the Courts, Lord Palmerston on behalf of England resolutely refusing to France even the slightest addition of territory, on the ground that, if annexations once began, all security for the continuance of peace would be at an end. On this wise and firm policy the concert of Europe in the establishment of the Belgian kingdom was successfully maintained; and it only remained for the Western Powers to overcome the resistance of the King of Holland, who still held the citadel of Antwerp and declined to listen either to reason or authority. A French army corps was charged with the task of besieging the citadel; an English fleet blockaded the river Scheldt. After a severe bombardment the citadel surrendered. Hostilities ceased, and negotiations for a definitive settlement recommenced.

As, however, the Belgians were in actual occupation of all Luxemburg with the exception of the fortress, they had no motive to accelerate a settlement which would deprive them of part of their existing possessions; on the other hand, the King of Holland held back through mere obstinacy. Thus the provisional state of affairs was prolonged for year after year, and it was not until April, 1839, that the final Treaty of Peace between Belgium and Holland was executed.

The consent of the Eastern Powers to the overthrow of the kingdom of the United Netherlands, and to the establishment of a State based upon a revolutionary movement, would probably have been harder to gain if in the autumn of 1830 Russia had been free to act with all its strength. But at this moment an outbreak took place in Poland, which required the concentration of all the Czar's forces within his own border. The conflict was rather a war of one armed nation against another than the insurrection of a people against its government. Poland that is to say, the territory which had formerly constituted the Grand Duchy of Warsaw had, by the treaties of 1814, been established as a separate kingdom, subject to the Czar of Russia, but not forming part of the Russian Empire. It possessed an administration and an army of its own, and the meetings of its Diet gave to it a species of parliamentary government to which there was nothing analogous within Russia proper. During the reign of Alexander the constitutional system of Poland had, on the whole, been respected; and although the real supremacy of an absolute monarch at St. Petersburg had caused the Diet to act as a body in opposition to the Russian Government, the personal connection existing between Alexander and the Poles had prevented any overt rebellion during his own life-time. But with the accession of Nicholas all such individual sympathy passed away, and the hard realities of the actual relation between Poland and the Court of Russia came into full view. In the conspiracies of 1825 a great number of Poles were implicated. Eight of these persons, after a preliminary inquiry, were placed on trial before the Senate at Warsaw, which, in spite of strong evidence of their guilt, acquitted them.

Pending the decision, Nicholas declined to convoke the Diet: he also stationed Russian troops in Poland, and violated the constitution by placing Russians in all branches of the administration. Even without these grievances the hostility of the mass of the Polish noblesse to Russia would probably have led sooner or later to insurrection. The peasantry, ignorant and degraded, were but instruments in the hands of their territorial masters. In so far as Poland had rights of self-government, these rights belonged almost exclusively to the nobles, or landed proprietors, a class so numerous that they have usually been mistaken in Western Europe for the Polish nation itself. The so-called emancipation of the serfs, effected by Napoleon after wresting the Grand Duchy of Warsaw from Prussia in 1807, had done little for the mass of the population; for, while abolishing the legal condition of servitude, Napoleon had given the peasant no vestige of proprietorship in his holding, and had consequently left him as much at the mercy of his landlord as he was before. The name of freedom appears in fact to have worked actual injury to the peasant; for in the enjoyment of a pretended power of free contract he was left without that protection of the officers of State which, under the Prussian regime from 1795 to 1807, had shielded him from the tyranny of his lord. It has been the fatal, the irremediable bane of Poland that its noblesse, until too late, saw no country, no right, no law, outside itself. The very measures of interference on the part of the Czar which this caste resented as unconstitutional were in part directed against the abuse of its own privileges; and although in 1830 a section of the nobles had learnt the secret of their country's fall, and were prepared to give the serf the real emancipation of proprietorship, no universal impulse worked in this direction, nor could the wrong of ages be undone in the tumult of war and revolution.

A sharp distinction existed between the narrow circle of the highest aristocracy of Poland and the mass of the poor and warlike noblesse. The former, represented by men like Czartoryski, the friend of Alexander I and ex-Minister of Russia, understood the hopelessness of any immediate struggle with the superior power, and advocated the politic development of such national institutions as were given to Poland by the constitution of 1815, institutions which were certainly sufficient to preserve Poland from absorption by Russia, and to keep alive the idea of the ultimate establishment of its independence. It was among the lesser nobility, among the subordinate officers of the army and the population of Warsaw itself, who jointly formed the so-called democratic party, that the spirit of revolt was strongest. Plans for an outbreak had been made during the Turkish war of 1828; but unhappily this opportunity, which might have been used with fatal effect against Russia, was neglected, and it was left for the French Revolution of 1830 to kindle an untimely and ineffective flame.

The memory of Napoleon's campaigns and the wild voices of French democracy filled the patriots at Warsaw with vain hopes of a military union with western Liberalism, and over­powered the counsels of men who understood the state of Europe better. Revolt broke out on the 29th of November, 1830. The Polish regiments in Warsaw joined the insurrection, and the Russian troops, under the Grand Duke Constantine, withdrew from the capital, where their leader had narrowly escaped with his life.

The Government of Poland had up to this time been in the hands of a Council nominated by the Czar as King of Poland, and controlled by instructions from a secretary at St. Petersburg. The chief of the Council was Lubecki, a Pole devoted to the Emperor Nicholas. On the victory of the insurrection at Warsaw, the Council was dissolved and a provisional Government installed. Though the revolt was the work of the so-called democratic party, the influence of the old governing families of the highest aristocracy was still so great that power was by common consent placed in their hands. Czartoryski became president, and the policy adopted by himself and his colleagues was that of friendly negotiation with Russia.

The insurrection of November was treated not as the beginning of a national revolt, but as a mere disturbance occasioned by unconstitutional acts of the Government. So little did the committee understand the character of the Emperor Nicholas, as to imagine that after the expulsion of his soldiers and the overthrow of his Ministers at Warsaw he would peaceably make the concessions required of him, and undertake for the future faithfully to observe the Polish constitution. Lubecki and a second official were sent to St. Petersburg to present these demands, and further (though this was not seriously intended) to ask that the constitution should be introduced into all the Russian provinces which had once formed part of the Polish State. The reception given to the envoys at the frontier was of an ominous character. They were required to describe themselves as officers about to present a report to the Czar, inasmuch as no representatives of rebels in arms could be received into Russia. Lubecki appears now to have shaken the dust of Poland off his feet; his colleague pursued his mission, and was admitted to the Czar's presence. Nicholas, while expressing himself in language of injured tenderness, and disclaiming all desire to punish the innocent with the guilty, let it be understood that Poland had but two alternatives, unconditional submission or annihilation. The messenger who in the meanwhile carried back to Warsaw the first dispatches of the envoy, reported that the roads were already filled with Bussan regiments moving on their prey.

Six weeks of precious time were lost through the illusion of the Polish Government that an accommodation with the Emperor Nicholas was possible. Had the insurrection at Warsaw been instantly followed by a general levy and the invasion of Lithuania, the resources of this large province might possibly have been thrown into the scale against Russia. Though the mass of the Lithuanian population, in spite of several centuries of union with Poland, had never been assimilated to the dominant race, and remained in language and creed more nearly allied to the Russians than the Poles, the nobles formed an integral part of the Polish nation, and possessed sufficient power over their serfs to drive them into the field to fight for they knew not what. The Russian garrisons in Lithuania were not strong, and might easily have been overpowered by a sudden attack. When once the population of Warsaw had risen in arms against Nicholas, the only possibility of success lay in the extension of the revolt over the whole of the semi-Polish provinces, and in a general call to arms. But beside other considerations which disinclined the higher aristocracy at Warsaw to extreme measures, they were influenced by a belief that the Powers of Europe might intervene on behalf of the constitution of the Polish kingdom as established by the treaty of Vienna; while, if the struggle passed beyond the borders of that kingdom, it would become a revolutionary movement to which no Court could lend its support.

It was not until the envoy returned from St. Petersburg bearing the answer of the Emperor Nicholas that the democratic party carried all before it, and all hopes of a peaceful compromise vanished away. The Diet then passed a resolution declaring that the House of Romanoff had forfeited the Polish crown, and preparations began for a struggle for life or death with Russia. But the first moments when Russia stood unguarded and unready had been lost beyond recall. Troops had thronged westwards into Lithuania; the garrisons in the fortresses had been raised to their full strength; and in February, 1831, Diebitsch took up the offensive, and crossed the Polish frontier with a hundred and twenty thousand men.

The Polish army, though far inferior in numbers to the enemy which it had to meet, was no contemptible force. Among its officers there were many who had campaign in served in Napoleon's campaigns; it possessed, however, no general habituated to independent command; and the spirit of insubordination and self-will, which had wrought so much ruin in Poland, was still ready to break out when defeat had impaired the authority of the nominal chiefs. In the first encounters the advancing Russian army was gallantly met; and, although the Poles were forced to fall back upon Warsaw, the losses sustained by Diebitsch were so serious that he had to stay his operations and to wait for reinforcements.

In March the Poles took up the offensive and surprised several isolated divisions of the enemy; their general, however, failed to push his advantages with the necessary energy and swiftness; the junction of the Russians was at length effected, and on the 26th of May the Poles were defeated after obstinate resistance in a pitched battle at Ostrolenka.

Cholera now broke out in the Russian camp. Both Diebitsch and the Grand Puke Constantine were carried off in the midst of the campaign, and some months more were added to the struggle of Poland, hopeless as this had now become. Incursions were made into Lithuania and Podolia, but without result. Paskiewitch, the conqueror of Kars, was called up to take the post left vacant by the death of his rival. New masses of Russian troops came in place of those who had perished in battle and in the hospitals; and while the Governments of Western Europe lifted no hand on behalf of Polish independence, Prussia, alarmed lest the revolt should spread into its own Polish provinces, assisted the operations of the Russian general by supplying stores and munition of war. Blow after blow fell upon the Polish cause. Warsaw itself became the prey of disorder, intrigue, and treachery; and at length the Russian army made its entrance into the capital, and the last soldiers of Poland laid down their arms, or crossed into Prussian or Austrian territory. The revolt had been rashly and unwisely begun: its results were fatal and lamentable. The constitution of Poland was abolished; it ceased to be a separate kingdom, and became a province of the Russian Empire. Its defenders were exiles over the face of Europe or forgotten in Siberia. All that might have been won by the gradual development of its constitutional liberties without breach with the Czar's sovereignty was sacrificed. The future of Poland, like that of Russia itself, now depended on the enlightenment and courage of the Imperial Government, and on that alone. The very existence of a Polish nationality and language seemed for a while to be threatened by the measures of repression that followed the victory of 1831: and if it be true that Russian autocracy has at length done for the Polish peasants what their native masters during centuries of ascendency refused to do, this emancipation would probably not have come the later for the preservation of some relics of political independence, nor would it have had the less value if unaccompanied by the proscription of so great a part of that class which had once been held to constitute the Polish nation.

During the conflict on the banks of the Vistula, the attitude of the Austrian Government had been one of watchful neutrality. Its own Polish territory was not seriously menaced with disturbance, for in a great part of Galicia, the population, being of Ruthenian stock and belonging to the Greek Church, had nothing in common with the Polish and Catholic noblesse of their province, and looked back upon the days of Polish dominion as a time of suffering and wrong. Austria's danger in any period of European convulsion lay as yet rather on the side of Italy than on the East, and the vigour of its policy in that quarter contrasted with the equanimity with which it watched the struggle of its Slavic neighbours.

Since the suppression of the Neapolitan constitutional movement in 1821, the Carbonari and other secret societies of Italy had lost nothing of their activity. Their head-quarters had been removed from Southern Italy to the Papal States, and the numerous Italian exiles in France and elsewhere kept up a busy communication at once with French revolutionary leaders like Lafayette and with the enemies of the established governments in Italy itself. The death of Pope Pius VIII, on November 30, 1830, and the consequent paralysis of authority within the Ecclesiastical States, came at an opportune moment; assurances of support arrived from Paris; and the Italian leaders resolved upon a general insurrection throughout the minor Principalities on the 5th of February, 1831. Anticipating the signal, Menotti, chief of a band of patriots at Modena, who appears to have been lured on by the Grand Duke himself, assembled his partisans on February 3. He was overpowered and imprisoned; but the outbreak of the insurrection in Bologna, and its rapid extension over the northern part of the Papal States, soon caused the Grand Duke to fly to Austrian territory, carrying his prisoner Menotti with him, whom he subsequently put to death.

The new Pope, Gregory XVI, had scarcely been elected when the report reached him that Bologna had declared the temporal power of the Papacy to be at an end. Uncertain of the character of the revolt, he despatched Cardinal Benvenuti northwards, to employ conciliation or force as occasion might require. The Legate fell into the hands of the insurgents; the revolt spread southwards; and Gregory, now hopeless of subduing it by the forces at his own command, called upon Austria for assistance.

The principle which, since the Revolution of July, the government of France had repeatedly laid down as the future basis of European politics was that of non-intervention. It had disclaimed any purpose of interfering with the affairs of its neighbours, and had required in return that no foreign intervention should take place in districts which, like Belgium and Savoy, adjoined its own frontier. But there existed no real unity of purpose in the councils of Louis Philippe. The Ministry had one voice for the representatives of foreign powers, another for the Chamber of Deputies, and another for Lafayette and the bands of exiles and conspirators who were under his protection. The head of the government at the beginning of 1831 was Laffitte, a weak politician, dominated by revolutionary sympathies and phrases, but incapable of any sustained or resolute action, and equally incapable of resisting Louis Philippe after the King had concluded his performance of popular leader, and assumed his real character as the wary and self-seeking chief of a reigning house. Whether the actual course of French policy would be governed by the passions of the streets or by the timorousness of Louis Philippe was from day to day a matter of conjecture. The official answer given to the inquiries of the Austrian ambassador as to the intentions of France in case of an Austrian intervention in Italy was, that such intervention might be tolerated in Parma and Modena, which belonged to sovereigns immediately connected with the Hapsburgs, but that if it was extended to the Papal States war with France would be probable, and if extended to Piedmont, certain. On this reply Metternich, who saw Austria’s own dominion in Italy once more menaced by the success of an insurrectionary movement, had to form his decision. He could count on the support of Russia in case of war; he knew well the fears of Louis Philippe, and knew that he could work on these fears both by pointing to the presence of the young Louis Bonaparte and his brother with the Italian insurgents as evidence of the Bonapartist character of the movement, and by hinting that in the last resort he might himself let loose upon France Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt, now growing to manhood at Vienna, before whom Louis Philippe's throne would have collapsed as speedily as that of Louis XVIII in 1814. Where weakness existed, Metternich was quick to divine it and to take advantage of it. He rightly gauged Louis Philippe. Taking at their true value the threats of the French Government, he declared that it was better for Austria to fall, if necessary, by war than by revolution; and, resolving at all hazards to suppress the Roman insurrection, he gave orders to the Austrian troops to enter the Papal States.

The military resistance which the insurgents could offer to the advance of the Pope's Austrian deliverers was insignificant, and order was soon restored. But all Europe expected the outbreak of war between Austria and France. The French ambassador at Constantinople had gone so far as to offer the Sultan an offensive and defensive alliance, and to urge him to make preparations for an attack upon both Austria and Russia on their southern frontiers. A dispatch from the ambassador reached Paris describing the warlike overtures he had made to the Porte. Louis Philippe saw that if this despatch reached the hands of Laffitte and the war-party in the Council of Ministers the preservation of peace would be almost impossible. In concert with Sebastiani, the Foreign Minister, he concealed the despatch from Laffitte. The Premier discovered the trick that had been played upon him, and tendered his resignation.

It was gladly accepted by Louis Philippe. Laffitte quitted office, begging pardon of God and man for the part that he had taken in raising Louis Philippe to the throne. His successor was Casimir Perier, a man of very different mould; resolute, clear-headed, and immovably true to his word; a constitutional statesman of the strictest type, intolerant of any species of disorder, and a despiser of popular movements, but equally proof against royal intrigues, and as keen to maintain the constitutional system of France against the Court on one side and the populace on the other as he was to earn for France the respect of foreign powers by the abandonment of a policy of adventure, and the steady adherence to the principles of international obligation which he had laid down. Under his firm hand the intrigues of the French Government with foreign revolutionists ceased; it was felt throughout Europe that peace was still possible, and that if war was undertaken by France it would be undertaken only under conditions which would make any moral union of all the great Powers against France impossible. The Austrian expedition into the Papal States had already begun, and the revolutionary Government had been suppressed; the most therefore that Casimir Perier could demand was that the evacuation of the occupied territory should take place as soon as possible, and that Austria should add its voice to that of the other Powers in urging the Papal Government to reform its abuses. Both demands were granted. For the first time Austria appeared as the advocate of something like a constitutional system. A Conference held at Rome agreed upon a scheme of reforms to be recommended to the Pope; the prospects of peace grew daily fairer; and in July, 1831, the last Austrian soldiers quitted the Ecclesiastical States.

It now remained to be seen whether Pope Gregory and his cardinals had the intelligence and good-will necessary for carrying out the reforms on the promise of which France had abstained from active intervention. If any such hopes existed they were doomed to speedy disappointment. The apparatus of priestly maladministration was restored in all its ancient deformity. An amnesty which had been promised by the Legate Benvenuti was disregarded, and the Pope set himself to strengthen his authority by enlisting new bands of ruffians and adventurers under the standard of St. Peter. Again insurrection broke out, and again at the Pope's request the Austrians crossed the frontier (January, 1832). Though their appearance was fatal to the cause of liberty, they were actually welcomed as protectors in towns which had been exposed to the tender mercies of the Papal condottieri. There was no disorder, no severity, where the Austrian commandants held sway; but their mere presence in central Italy was a threat to European peace; and Casimir Perier was not the man to permit Austria to dominate in Italy at its will.

Without waiting for negotiations, he dispatched a French force to Ancona, and seized this town before the Austrians could approach it. The rival Powers were now face to face in Italy; but Perier had no intention of forcing on war if his opponent was still willing to keep the peace. Austria accepted the situation, and made no attempt to expel the French from the position they had seized. Casimir Perier, now on his death-bed, defended the step that he had taken against the remonstrances of ambassadors and against the protests of the Pope, and declared the presence of the French at Ancona to be no incentive to rebellion, but the mere assertion of the rights of a Power which had as good a claim to be in central Italy as Austria itself. Had his life been prolonged, he would probably have insisted upon the execution of the reforms which the Powers had urged upon the Papal government, and have made the occupation of Ancona an effectual means for reaching this end. But with his death the wrongs of the Italians themselves and the question of a reformed government in the Papal States gradually passed out of sight. France and Austria jealously watched one another on the debatable land; the occupation became a mere incident of the balance of power, and was prolonged for year after year, until, in 1838, the Austrians having finally withdrawn all their troops, the French peacefully handed over the citadel of Ancona to the Holy See.

The arena in which we have next to follow the effects of the July Revolution, in action and counter-action, is Germany. It has been seen that in the southern German States an element of representative government, if weak, yet not wholly ineffective, had come into being soon after 1815, and had survived the reactionary measures initiated by the conference of Ministers at Carlsbad. In Prussia the promises of King Frederick William to his people had never been fulfilled. Years had passed since exaggerated rumours of conspiracy had served as an excuse for withholding the Constitution. Hardenberg had long been dead; the foreign policy of the country had taken a freer tone; the rigors of the police-system had departed; but the nation remained as completely excluded, from any share in the government as it had been before Napoleon's fall. It had in fact become clear that during the lifetime of King Frederick William things must be allowed to remain in their existing condition; and the affection of the people for their sovereign, who had been so long and so closely united with Prussia in its sufferings and in its glories, caused a general willingness to postpone the demand for constitutional reform until the succeeding reign. The substantial merits of the administration might moreover have reconciled a less submissive people than the Prussians to the absolute government under which they lived. Under a wise and enlightened financial policy the country was becoming visibly richer. Obstacles to commercial development were removed, communications opened; and finally, by a series of treaties with the neighbouring German States, the foundations were laid for that Customs-Union which, under the name of the Zollverein, ultimately embraced almost the whole of non-Austrian Germany. As one Principality after another attached itself to the Prussian system, the products of the various regions of Germany, hitherto blocked by the frontier dues of each petty State, moved freely through the land, while the costs attending the taxation of foreign imports, now concentrated upon the external line of frontier, were enormously diminished.

Patient, sagacious, and even liberal in its negotiations with its weaker neighbours, Prussia silently connected with itself through the ties of financial union States which had hitherto looked to Austria as their natural head. The semblance of political union was carefully avoided, but the germs of political union were nevertheless present in the growing community of material interests. The reputation of the Prussian Government, no less than the welfare of the Prussian people, was advanced by each successive step in the extension of the Zollverein; and although the earlier stages alone had been passed in the years before 1830, enough had already been done to affect public opinion; and the general sense of material progress combined with other influences to close Prussia to the revolutionary tendencies of that year.

There were, however, other States in northern Germany which had all the defects of Prussian autocracy without any of its redeeming qualities. In Brunswick and in Hesse Cassel despotism existed in its most contemptible form; the violence of a half-crazy youth in the one case, and the caprices of an obstinate dotard in the other, rendering authority a mere nuisance to those who were subject to it. Here accordingly revolution broke out. The threatened princes had made themselves too generally obnoxious or ridiculous for any hand to be raised in their defence. Their disappearance excited no more than the inevitable lament from Metternich; and in both States systems of representative government were introduced by their successors. In Hanover and in Saxony agitation also began in favour of Parliamentary rule.

The disturbance that arose was not of a serious character, and it was met by the Courts in a conciliatory spirit. Constitutions were granted, the liberty of the Press extended, and trial by jury established. On the whole, the movement of 1830, as it affected northern Germany, was rationally directed and salutary in its results. Changes of real value were accomplished with a sparing employment of revolutionary means, and, in the more important cases, through the friendly co-operation of the sovereigns with their subjects. It was not the fault of those who had asked for the same degree of liberty in northern Germany which the south already possessed, that Germany at large again experienced the miseries of reaction and repression which had afflicted it ten years before.

Like Belgium and the Rhenish Provinces, the Bavarian Palatinate had for twenty years been incorporated with France. Its inhabitants had grown accustomed to the French law and French institutions, and had caught something of the political animation which returned to France after Napoleon's fall. Accordingly when the government of Munich, alarmed by the July Revolution, showed an inclination towards repressive measures, the Palatinate, severed from the rest of the Bavarian monarchy and in immediate contact with France, became the focus of a revolutionary agitation. The Press had already attained some activity and some influence in this province; and although the leaders of the party of progress were still to a great extent Professors, they had so far advanced upon the patriots of 1818 as to understand that the liberation of the German people was not to be effected by the lecturers and the scholars of the Universities.

The design had been formed of enlisting all classes of the public on the side of reform, both by the dissemination of political literature and by the establishment of societies not limited, as in 1818, to academic circles, but embracing traders as well as soldiers and professional men. Even the peasant was to be reached and instructed in his interests as a citizen. It was thought that much might be effected by associating together all the Oppositions in the numerous German Parliaments; but a more striking feature of the revolutionary movement which began in the Palatinate, and one strongly distinguishing it from the earlier agitation of Jena and Erfurt, was its cosmopolitan character. France in its triumph and Poland in its death-struggle excited equal interest and sympathy. In each the cause of European liberty appeared to be at stake. The Polish banner was saluted in the Palatinate by the side of that of united Germany; and from that time forward in almost every revolutionary movement of Europe, down to the insurrection of the Commune of Paris in 1871, Polish exiles have been active both in the organization of revolt and in the field.

Until the fall of Warsaw, in September, 1831, the German governments, uncertain of the course which events might take in Europe, had shown a certain willingness to meet the complaints of their subjects, and had in especial relaxed the supervision exercised over the press. The fall of Warsaw, which quieted so many alarms, and made the Emperor Nicholas once more a power outside his own dominions, inaugurated a period of reaction in Germany. The Diet began the campaign against democracy by suppressing various liberal newspapers, and amongst them the principal journal of the Palatinate. It was against this movement of repression that the agitation in the Palatinate and elsewhere was now directed. A festival, or demonstration, was held at the Castle of Hambach, near Zweibrucken, at which a body of enthusiasts called upon the German people to unite against their oppressors, and some even urged an immediate appeal to arms (May 27, 1832).

Similar meetings, though on a smaller scale, were held in other parts of Germany. Wild words abounded, and the connection of the German revolutionists with that body of opponents of all established governments which had its council-chamber at Paris and its head in Lafayette was openly avowed. Weak and insignificant as the German demagogues were, their extravagance gave to Metternich and to the Diet sufficient pretext for revising the reactionary measures of 1819. Once more the subordination of all representative bodies to the sovereign's authority was laid down by the Diet as a binding principle for every German state. The refusal of taxes by any legislature was declared to be an act of rebellion which would be met by the armed intervention of the central Powers. All political meetings and associations were forbidden; the Press was silenced; the introduction of German books printed abroad was prohibited, and the Universities were again placed under the watch of the police (July, 1832).

If among the minor sovereigns of Germany there were some who, as in Baden, sincerely desired the development of free institutions, the authority exercised by Metternich and his adherents in reaction bore down all the resistance that these courts could offer, and the hand of despotism fell everywhere heavily upon the party of political progress. The majority of German Liberals, not yet prepared for recourse to revolutionary measures, submitted to the pressure of the times, and disclaimed all sympathy with illegal acts; a minority, recognizing that nothing was now to be gained by constitutional means, entered into conspiracies, and determined to liberate Germany by force. One insignificant group, relying upon the armed co­operation of Polish bands in France, and deceived by promises of support from some Wurtemberg soldiers, actually rose in insurrection at Frankfort. A guard-house was seized, and a few soldiers captured; but the citizens of Frankfort stood aloof, and order was soon restored (April, 1833). It was not to be expected that the reactionary courts should fail to draw full advantage from this ill-timed outbreak, of their enemies. Prussian troops marched into Frankfort, and Metternich had no difficulty in carrying through the Diet a decree establishing a commission to superintend and to report upon the proceedings instituted against political offenders throughout Germany.

For several years these investigations continued, and the campaign against the opponents of government was carried on with various degrees of rigor in the different states. About two thousand persons altogether were brought to trial: in Prussia thirty-nine sentences of death were pronounced, but not executed. In the struggle against revolution the forces of monarchy had definitely won the victory. Germany again experienced, as it had in 1819, that the federal institutions which were to have given it unity existed only for the purposes of repression. The breach between the nation and its rulers, in spite of the apparent failure of the democratic party, remained far deeper and wider than it had been before; and although Metternich, victor once more over the growing restlessness of the age, slumbered on for another decade in fancied security, the last of his triumphs had now been won, and the next uprising proved how blind was that boasted statesmanship which deemed the sources of danger exhausted when once its symptoms had been driven beneath the surface.

In half the states of Europe there were now bodies of exasperated, uncompromising men, who devoted conspirators their lives to plotting against governments, and who formed, in their community of interest and purpose, a sort of obverse of the Holy Alliance, a federation of kings' enemies, a league of principle and creed, in which liberty and human right stood towards established rule as light to darkness. As the grasp of authority closed everywhere more tightly upon its baffled foes, more and more of these men passed into exile.

Among them was the Genoese Mazzini, who, after suffering imprisonment in 1831, withdrew to Marseilles, and there, in combination with various secret societies, planned an incursion into the Italian province of Savoy. It was at first intended that this enterprise should be executed simultaneously with the German rising at Frankfort. Delays, however, arose, and it was not until the beginning of the following year that the little army, which numbered more Poles than Italians, was ready for its task. The incursion was made from Geneva in February, 1834, and ended disastrously.

Mazzini returned to Switzerland, where hundreds of exiles, secure under the shelter of the Republic, devised schemes of attack upon the despots of Europe, and even rioted in honour of freedom in the streets of the Swiss cities which protected them. The effect of the revolutionary movement of the time in consolidating the alliance of the three Eastern Powers, so rudely broken by the Greek War of Liberation, now came clearly into view. The sovereigns of Russia and Austria had met at Munchengratz in Bohemia in the previous autumn, and, in concert with Prussia, had resolved upon common principles of action if their intervention should be required against disturbers of order. Notes were now addressed from every quarter to the Swiss Government, requiring the expulsion of all persons concerned in enterprises against the peace of neighbouring States. Some resistance to this demand was made by individual cantons; but the extravagance of many of the refugees themselves alienated popular sympathy, and the greater part of them were forced to quit Switzerland and to seek shelter in England or in America.

With the dispersion of the central band of exiles the open alliance which had existed between the revolutionists of Europe gradually passed away. The brotherhood of the kings had proved a stern reality, the brotherhood of the peoples a delusive vision. Mazzini indeed, who up to this time had scarcely emerged from the rabble of revolutionary leaders, was yet to prove how deeply the genius, the elevation, the fervour of one man struggling against the powers of the world may influence the history of his age; but the fire that purified the fine gold charred and consumed the baser elements; and of those who had hoped the most after 1830, many now sank into despair, or gave up their lives to mere restless agitation and intrigue.

It was in France that the revolutionary movement was longest maintained. During the first year of Louis Philippe's rule the opposition to his government was inspired not so much by Republicanism as by a wild and inconsiderate sympathy with the peoples who were fighting for liberty elsewhere, and by a headstrong impulse to take up arms on their behalf. The famous decree of the Convention in 1792, which promised the assistance of France to every nation in revolt against its rulers, was in fact the true expression of what was felt by a great part of the French nation in 1831; and in the eyes of these enthusiasts it was the unpardonable offence of Louis Philippe against the honour of France that he allowed Poland and Italy to succumb without drawing his sword against their conquerors.

That France would have had to fight the three Eastern Powers combined, if it had allied itself with those in revolt against any one of the three, passed for nothing among the clamorous minority in the Chamber and among the orators of Paris. The pacific policy of Casimir Perier was misunderstood: it passed for mere poltroonery, when in fact it was the only policy that could save France from a recurrence of the calamities of 1815. There were other causes for the growing unpopularity of the King and of his Ministers, but the first was their policy of peace. As the attacks of his opponents became more and more bitter, the government of Casimir Perier took more and more of a repressive character. Disappointment at the small results produced in France itself by the Revolution of July worked powerfully in men's minds. The forces that had been set in motion against Charles X were not to be laid at rest at the bidding of those who had profited by them, and a Republican party gradually took definite shape and organization. Tumult succeeded tumult. In the summer of 1832 the funeral of General Lamarque, a popular soldier, gave the signal for insurrection at Paris. There was severe fighting in the streets; the National Guard, however, proved true to the king, and shared with the army in the honours of its victory. Repressive measures and an unbroken series of prosecutions against seditious writers followed this first armed attack upon the established government. The bitterness of the Opposition, the discontent of the working classes, far surpassed anything that had been known under Charles X. The whole country was agitated by revolutionary societies and revolutionary propaganda. Disputes between masters and workmen, which, in consequence of the growth of French manufacturing industry, now became both frequent and important, began to take a political colour.

Polish and Italian exiles connected their own designs with attacks to be made upon the French Government from within; and at length, in April, 1834, after the passing of a law against trades-unions, the working classes of Lyons, who were on strike against their employers, were induced to rise in revolt. After several days' fighting the insurrection was suppressed. Simultaneous outbreaks took place at St. Etienne, Grenoble, and many other places in the south and centre of France; and on a report of the success of the insurgents reaching Paris, the Republic was proclaimed and barricades were erected. Again civil war raged in the streets, and again the forces of Government gained the victory. A year more passed, during which the investigations into the late revolt and the trial of a host of prisoners served rather to agitate than to reassure the public mind; and in the summer of 1835 an attempt was made upon the life of the King so terrible and destructive in its effects as to amount to a public calamity. An infernal machine composed of a hundred gun-barrels was fired by a Corsican named Fieschi, as the King with a large suite was riding through the streets of Paris on the anniversary of the Revolution of July. Fourteen persons were killed on the spot, among whom was Mortier, one of the oldest of the marshals of France; many others were fatally or severely injured. The King, however, with his three sons, escaped unhurt, and the repressive laws that followed this outrage marked the close of open revolutionary agitation in France. Whether in consequence of the stringency of the new laws, or of the exhaustion of a party discredited in public estimation by the crimes of a few of its members and the recklessness of many more, the constitutional monarchy of Louis Philippe now seemed to have finally vanquished its opponents. Repeated attempts were made on the life of the King, but they possessed for the most part little political significance. Order was welcome to the nation at large; and though in the growth of a socialistic theory and creed of life which dates from this epoch there lay a danger to Governments greater than any purely political, Socialism was as yet the affair of thinkers rather than of active workers either in the industrial or in the Parliamentary world. The Government had beaten its enemies outside the Chamber. Within the Chamber, the parties of extremes ceased to exercise any real influence.

Groups were formed, and rival leaders played against one another for office; but they were separated by no far-reaching differences of aim, and by no real antagonism of constitutional principle. During the succeeding years of Louis Philippe's reign there was little visible on the surface but the normal rivalry of parties under a constitutional monarchy. The middle-class retained its monopoly of power: authority, centralized as before, maintained its old prestige in France, and softened opposition by judicious gifts of office and emolument.

Revolutionary passion seemed to have died away: and the triumphs or reverses of party leaders in the Chamber of Deputies succeeded to the harassing and doubtful conflict between Government and insurrection.

The near coincidence in time between the French Revolution of 1830 and the passing of the English Reform Bill is apt to suggest to those who look for the operation of wide general causes in history that the English Reform movement should be viewed as a part of the great current of political change which then traversed the continent of Europe. But on a closer examination this view is scarcely borne out by facts, and the coincidence of the two epochs of change appears to be little more than accidental. The general unity that runs through the history of the more advanced continental states is indeed stronger than appears to a superficial reader of history; but this correspondence of tendency does not always embrace England; on the contrary, the conditions peculiar to England usually preponderate over those common to England and other countries, exhibiting at times more of contrast than of similarity, as in the case of the Napoleonic epoch, when the causes which drew together the western half of the continent operated powerfully to exclude our own country from the current influences of the time, and made the England of 1815, in opinion, in religion, and in taste much more insular than the England of 1780.

The revolution which overthrew Charles X did no doubt encourage and stimulate the party of Reform in Great Britain: but, unlike the Belgian, the German, and the Italian movements, the English Reform movement would unquestionably have run the same course and achieved the same results even if the revolt against the ordinances of Charles X had been successfully repressed, and the Bourbon monarchy had maintained itself in increased strength and reputation. A Reform of Parliament had been acknowledged to be necessary forty years before. Pitt had actually proposed it in 1785, and but for the outbreak of the French Revolution would probably have carried it into effect before the close of the last century. The development of English manufacturing industry which took place between 1790 and 1830, accompanied by the rapid growth of towns and the enrichment of the urban middle class, rendered the design of Pitt, which would have transferred the representation of the decayed boroughs to the counties alone, obsolete, and made the claims of the new centres of population too strong to be resisted. In theory the representative system of the country was completely transformed; but never was a measure which seemed to open the way to such boundless possibilities of change so thoroughly safe and so thoroughly conservative.

In spite of the increased influence won by the wealthy part of the commercial classes, the House of Commons continued to be drawn mainly from the territorial aristocracy. Cabinet after Cabinet was formed with scarcely a single member included in it who was not himself a man of title, or closely connected with the nobility: the social influence of rank was not diminished; and although such measures as the Reform of Municipal Corporations attested the increased energy of the Legislature, no party in the House of Commons was weaker than that which supported the democratic demands for the Ballot and for Triennial Parliaments, nor was the repeal of the Corn Laws seriously considered until famine had made it inevitable.

That the widespread misery which existed in England after 1832, as the result of the excessive increase of our population and the failure alike of law and of philanthropy to keep pace with the exigencies of a vast industrial growth, should have been so quietly borne, proves how great was the success of the Reform Bill as a measure of conciliation between Government and people. But the crowning justification of the changes made in 1832, and the complete and final answer to those who had opposed them as revolutionary, was not afforded until 1848, when, in the midst of European convulsion, the monarchy and the constitution of England remained unshaken. Bold as the legislation of Lord Grey appeared to men who had been brought up amidst the reactionary influences dominant in England since 1793, the Reform Bill belongs not to the class of great creative measures which have inaugurated new periods in the life of nations, but to the class of those which, while least affecting the general order of society, have most contributed to political stability and to the avoidance of revolutionary change.

CHAPTER XVII.

SPANISH AND EASTERN AFFAIRS.