WHAT IS OUR EXTERNAL POLICY AND CONDITION ? Sæpe mihi dubiam traxit sententia mentem Rector, et incerto fluerent mortalia casu. Abstulit hunc tandem Rufini poena tumultum, Absolvitque Deos-jam non ad culmina rerum Injustos crevisse queror-tolluntur in altum That England has now taken up the trade of Ut lapsu graviore ruant ? propagandism, by which France long brought such incalculable miseries upon Europe, is now And do we suppose that we are to be an exnot only certain from their actions, but admitted ception to the same external laws? Is England, by our rulers themselves. Lord Palmerston has secure in her sea-girt isles, to carry the firesaid in the House of Commons that it was for brand and the dagger with impunity into every the interest of England to establish liberal go- adjoining state, and never to feel the just meavernments in the adjoining states, and therefore sure of retaliation in her own bosom? Is a nonthey had concluded the Quadrupartite Alliance; intervening administration, which professes so and since it had proved not adequate to beat tender a regard for the liberty and independence down the Spaniards, they had resolved upon in utter horror any interference in the internal of every other nation,—which pretends to hold openly giving them maritime assistance along the coasts. They did the same thing in Flan- concerns of another state, or coercion of its inders, and thereby partitioned the kingdom of the habitants in their choice of a government for Netherlands, and conferred half the dominions themselves,--to be permitted for ever to aliment of their old ally on a revolutionary monarch. a sanguinary and atrocious civil war in the They did the same thing in Portugal, and there-bosom of its ancient allies ? Are the British by imposed a revolutionary yoke on the unwill- people never to feel the unutterable evils which ing Portuguese people. They are doing the same they have permitted their Reform rulers to inthing now in Spain, and thereby keeping alive a fict on other states, and enjoy all the blessings civil war, attended with unexampled horrors and of peace and prosperity under their own fig-tree, suffering throughout all the north of the Penin- while they distract their old comrades in war sula. What more unjust, tyrannical, or atro- with revolutionary passions, and, by insidious cious deeds did the French Directory commit aid rendered to one of the factions, hinder the when their revolutionary propagandism drew people from exercising their free choice in the down on them the deserved hostility of Europe ? formation of their government? Let us not de"They revolutionized Flanders; so have we ceive ourselves; such things neither can nor They nourished a civil war in Switzerland; we ought to go unpunished. We have voluntarily have done the same in Portugal. They spread plunged into the same system of revolutionary the seeds of liberal principles through the states aggression and insidious propagandismas of Italy, and devastated its beautiful plains by France, and we must look for the same fruit to hostile armies. And we have done worse; we our labours. The time will come when the have let loose, not the dogs, but the furies of war monstrous injustice, aggression, and perfidy of on the Spanish Peninsula, and overwhelmed its the last five years will recoil on our own heads smiling valleys with an inundation of horrors - when the old and undying jealousy of other worse than the imagination of Danté had feigned, nations at our maritime superiority will proor the Jacobins of Paris executed. voke, under darker auspices, another armed neu. We have seen what conduct of this sort occa- trality--when no Pitt will be at the helm to dissioned to France: we have been the instruments sipate the cloud by the wisdom of his councils, under Providence of its righteous punishment. and no Nelson at the head of its fleets to strike Year after year the system of propagandism dead the enemy by the lightning of his armwent on. It was loudly proclaimed by the Ja- when, instead of being supported by the concobin rulers, as it is now by our Reform Minis. sciousness of a just, we shall be weighed down ters, that it was for their interests to establish li- to the earth by the shame of an unjust causeberal governments in the adjoining states. And when, in place of bearing on our flag the enwas war the result? Did France enjoy in quiet signs of freedom and honour, we shall be overand peace the fruit of its revolutionary injustice ? shadowed by the streamers of rebellion and ty. Was she permitted to sit down in tranquillity ranny--when the cannon of Antwerp will seem herself while she sent the dagger into the bosom the knell of our fleet, and the blood of Navarre of every other people within her reach? Was will call for vengeance on our heads. she not, on the contrary, involved in a career of That the northern powers are unalienab! foreign aggression, to which no limit could be separated from our cause--that Russia an placed, and compelled, in order to maintain the Prussia are only waiting for the favourable m fruits of early injustice, to persevere to the end ment to make an attempt on our naval supre in a course of external conquest? For long this acy, and wrest India from our arms-th course of iniquity continued; for long the Im- France is joyfully watching the growing perial eagles were fanned only by the gales of gust at our external conduct, and prepari triumph. No limit appeared to be possible to when the time comes, to join in the general the course of revolutionary injustice. But what sade which is to assert the freedom of the s was the end of these things? Did not the Roman and avenge the maritime wrongs of three ce poet say with truth of the affairs of nations, as ries--that America will gladly join her force well as individuals, the general league, to beat down her old and VOL. XXIX, SEPTEMBER, 1836.—49. midable competitors in the carrying trade-may parable ruin only the more alarming, that no be considered as certain. Examine the foreign provision has been made to ward it off. writers. There is not one of any nation, charac- Even supposing that these views are surter, or shade of opinion, French, German, Rus- charged with gloomy colours, and that no imsian, Spanish, or American; Doctrinaire, Re-mediate danger threatens in the political horipublican, Royalist, or Jacobin, to whom our zon, still it cannot be supposed that an unboundmaritime supremacy is not an object of horror. ed course of prosperity awaits this country, that On that subject, and that alone, Thiers is agreed the evil days are never to arrive to its inhabiwith Lacretelle, and Guizot with Chateaubriand. tants. Wars and jealousies will and must arise; Of all the illusions under which the nation la- the march of intellect, so far from having made bours, there is none so complete as this. Of all any diminution in the number of the causes of the foundations on which our external security division, has fearfully augmented them, by bringrests, there is none so utterly unstable as the ing the rival interests and passions of the masses idea that we are any thing but an object of aver- on both sides to bear on public affairs. Repubsion to foreign states. lican ståtes ever have been, and ever will be the Wherefore, it will be said, all this alarm ? Are most warlike, because the interests and ambition we not in a period of profound peace? Is not of numerous bodies are there enlisted on oppotrade prosperous, manufactures thriving, money site sides. If Europe is rendered essentially deoverflowing? Is not the revenue rising, taxa- mocratic, by the organic changes in progress tion declining, exports and imports increasing ? amongst us and the states we have revolutionWhen were our cities so busy, our millions so ized, the contests in which its popular states well employed, our fields so smiling ? True. will be engaged will, in all probability, be more But has no nation, while pursuing a guilty and dreadful, when they do arise, than any in which unjust career, been brought up in like manner they have hitherto been involved. They will no in heedless security to the very edge of perdi- longer be the strife of kings or the rivalry of tion? Were they not eating and drinking, their ministers; but the stern vengeance of numarrying, and giving in marriage, when the merous bodies who have suffered grievous inwaters of the Flood were beginning to rise ? juries from each other; the mortal struggle of Were they not feasting and rioting in the palace Rome and Carthage, which all the citizens of of Belshazzar when the hand-writing on the both republics felt could not be extinguished but wall announced that they were weighed in the by the ruin of one of the combatants. balance and found wanting? Was not Athens Then what provision has been made or exists reposing in fancied security when the flames of for the serious strife with conservative Europe, Aigospotamos delivered them over to the arms which our revolutionary aggressions and insiof Lysander? Had not Rome recently witnessed dious intervention have so strongly provoked, the triumph of Aurelian over Zenobia and all and our long prosperity and glorious renown the forces of the East when the Goths were fer- are so likely to render universal? Having ried over, never to recede, across the waters of thrown down the gauntlet to the whole conserthe Danube? In what fancied repose and bound- vative powers of Europe, in other words, all its less security were the whole nations of Europe potentates, excepting the rickety revolutionary sunk when the tempest of the French Revolution dynasties we have set up in Belgium, Spain, and was let loose upon the earth! Was not Prussia Portugal, what provision have we made for the constantly growing in population, territory, conflict ? Have we, like republican Rome, manufactures, and revenue, up to the moment taught every citizen the use of arms, and reared when the catastrophe of Jena at once sunk them up a people which could never be subdued, till in an abyss of misery ? and Napoleon framing its whole male inhabitants were destroyed ! schemes of universal dominion, of the throne of Have we, like revolutionary France, made a levy Constantinople and Oriental conquest, when the of fifteen hundred thousand men for the conflict; frozen gales were beginning to blow which were and is all our empire, like the territory of that to drive him before their icy breath to the rock blood-stained republic, converted into a vast arof St. Helena? Was not the power of the trium-senal for war? These, our predecessors in rephant Tory Administration deemed unassail- publican ambition or revolutionary aggression, able, and the constitution of England eternal, went to work like men in the perilous enterprize when the fatal discontents were gathering in which they had engaged: if they were deterstrength in the nation which terminated in the mined “to disturb the peace of all the world." Reform tempest? It is not in the present tran- they were at least prepared "to rule it when it quillity or apparent security of a nation that we was wildest.” But when we began our propa. are to discern the shadows which coming events gandist principle; when we carried the tricolor cast before; but in the evidence of their coun- into Belgium, and nourished a frightful civil war cils, the justice of their measures, the foresight in Spain and Portugal, we made no provision of their Government, and the spirit of their whatever for the natural consequences of these people. And if they are awanting in these vital measures. We neither amassed treasures, nor particulars; if their councils are unsteady or re- raised armies, nor equipped fieets. We flattered volutionary, their measures unjust and aggres- ourselves we should be allowed to carry on a sive, their Government inconsiderate and un-"quiet little agitation" in all the adjoining states, seseeing, their people selfish and infatuated, without disturbing the peace of our own: to de public danger is only the greater that it is vastate with fire and sword all the countries who nerally perceived, and the chances of irre-/were formerly our allies; but never see an ene WHAT IS OUR EXTERNAL POLICY AND CONDITION ? my's flag in our own territories. Can these support of the democratic bloodthirsty faction of , that the inconsiderate multitude repose but must, sooner or later, arise between our de If you ask a partisan of Government what pre-test. paration has been made to meet the storm which The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his finanOur propagandist efforts in Western Europe cial statement on opening the budget on May must sooner or later cause to burst on our 9, 1836, stated the revenue of the empire at heads, he will answer that the nation never was £46,000,000; and the charges of the debt and so powerful; that our population is advancing in consolidated fund at somewhat above £30,000,every part of the empire with extraordinary ra- 000. The surplus available towards the reducpidity; that our exports are seventy-six, and our tion of the debt, after providing for the charges imports forty-eight millions; that commerce is of the West India loan, and making the proposed active, speculation abundant; that railroads are reductions in the newspaper duties, was only every where forming, and joint-stock companies £660,000. The debt is £770,000,000. Practically universally set on foot; that our artisans are in speaking, therefore, we have no sinking fund; for full employment, and our husbandmen contented a few hundred thousands a-year is evidently no in their fields. That great present prosperity fund at all for that purpose, after twenty-one pervades the land (whether founded on a secure years of unbroken peace. Here, then, is the first basis or not time will show) is indeed certain ; leading feature of our political situation,—that but these appearances are suited to a period of we have no sinking fund. Mr. Pitt left us at his profound peace: and afford but slender prepara- death a sinking fund of ten millions. It had tion for a warlike struggle. If we go to war grown up to fourteen millions at the conclusion with Russia, Prussia, and France, it will be nei- of the war; but now it may be considered as to ther our joint-stock companies nor our railroads all practical purposes destroyed, and the nation which will avert the public danger, and hurl must sit down for ever with seven hundred and back from the Channel the combined fleets of seventy millions of debt, and eight-and-twenty Europe. Herein, therefore, lies the extraordi- millions annually to pay as its interest. The nary infatuation of the present times, which public revenue is about forty-six millions, of strikes us as in an eminent degree fraught with which nearly two-thirds are absorbed in the future danger; that while our external language charges of the debt. It is easy to see to what is unconciliatory, our external conduct, at least this lamentable financial situation of the nation' to all lesser states whom we can reach, is am- is owing. The power of the democratic classes bitious, faithless, oppressive, and injurious; our in the House of Commons has become so inordiinternal habits, speculations, and scale of taxa- nate that no fixed system of finance is practition are suited for a period of profound peace, cable, and the measures of government are and adapted only for a nation which sedulously ruined by that "ignorant impatience" and disreavoids inflicting any injury on its neighbours. gard of every thing but present relief, which is Read the democratic journals; they are furious the invariable characteristic of the masses of against Russia, indignant against Government mankind. The very last budget has afforded for not engaging in a crusade for the restoration decisive evidence that Government are noways of Poland, and clear for a peremptory demand of emancipated from their blind democratic taskthe abolition of all duties on the Danube, and masters; for out of a disposable surplus of £1,opening of the Hellespont to the armed vessels 600,000 a-year they were compelled to surrender of all nations. But if any proposal is made to no less than £600,000 to their formidable allies, increase the taxes or augment the army or navy, in the form chiefly of a remission of the taxes on the necessary antecedent or concomitant of such what they call knowledge, but which in truth is a policy, they are still more indignant, and ex- falsehood and malignity; leaving, when the claim against the monstrous and unnecessary charges of the West India loan were taken into warlike establishment which is maintained. account, only £660,000 a-year to meet a debt of Such expectations and ideas are inconsistent; £770,000,000 ! they cannot co-exist. If we will take up the The army is now reduced to so inconsidersystem of democratic propagandism after France able a scale that it may be considered as almost has laid it down, and devastate our allies with totally powerless in a national point of view an interminable civil war, let us at least be pre- About 96,000 men are scattered over the im pared, like resolute though iniquitous men, to mense extent of the British empire, of who bear the burdens and face the dangers which it 20,000 are required in Ireland to prevent a rebe necessarily induces. If, on the other hand, we lion from breaking out among the grateful r are anxious to withdraw from strife and enjoy ceivers of Catholic emancipation; 20,000 in in external tranquillity the period which is to nada and the West Indies, to stifle the seeds witness our internal regeneration, then let us at revolt consequent on achieved slave emanci once, and in good faith, abandon our insidious tion, and anticipated equalization of tim duties; and 20,000 are buried in India, to over-, vail in this country; that the monstrous anarchy awe the native army, and hinder the discontents of Ireland could no longer be endured by the consequent on the niggardly reduction of its pay adjoining states, and that the focus whence refrom tearing that splendid dominion froin our volutionary doctrines were incessantly impelled empire. Not 30,000 men remain for Great Britain into other states could no longer be permitted and the fortified ports in the Mediterranean; a to exist? How could we, who sailed into the force less considerable than the Grand Duchy of harbour of Navarino, and burned the Turkish Warsaw or Bavaria could at a moment's warn- fleet during profound peace, to stop the blooding bring into the field. To save the people from shed of the Morea which the Porte was unable slavery, and the empire from destruction, no to put down, complain if a similar step was possible efforts of Government could now as- taken to extinguish, by a grand confiagration semble above 15,000 British soldiers at any point at Plymouth, the anarchy of Ireland, which half of Europe, Asia, or America! It is with this a century of ineffectual efforts have shown we force that our insane democratic journals would are unable to allay? How could we, who blockhave us provoke the hostility of Russia, Prussia, aded the Scheldt and besieged Antwerp, to give and Austria, who could, without difficulty, bring the finest harbour in Europe to a democratic 300,000 admirable troops into the field. And it power, remonstrate against a similar course beIs with such preparation for a revolutionary ing adopted by the combined French and Ruscontest that we have actually taken off the mask sians, in order to place the arsenal of Woolwich and begun hostilities to beat down the free-born at the disposal of the Conservative forces of peasantry of Spain to a vile slavery at the feet Europe? How could we, who partitioned the of the urban revolutionists of the southern parts kingdom of the Netherlands, in defiance of the of the Peninsula! Such is the admirable fore- Treaty of Vienna, and gave the malecontent sight and sagacious wisdom of the Government portion to a revolutionary monarch, be surprisof the masses! ed if the northern powers were to propose to But the navy, it will be said, is the real strength “ arbitrate” in the eternal dissensions between of England; the wooden walls are its true forti. England and Ireland, by handing over the emefications; while they are undecayed, no weak-rald isle, with its eight millions of souls, as a ness in our military strength or financial re- separate appandage to King Dan? Or have we, sources need give us any uneasiness. Softly, who for four years have kept alive a frightful is the navy undecayed? Could we fit out now civil war in Spain and Portugal, because it was the fleets which carried the thunder of our arms for “our interest” to be surrounded by states to the Nile and Trafalgar? In the small remnant with liberal institutions, any reason to suppose of that once glorious establishment, indeed, we that we are to enjoy for ever a monopoly of firmly believe that the skill, and valour, and selfish interference, or to be surprised, if 50,000 patriotism exist worthy of the days of Rodney foreigners were landed to foment the divisions and Nelson; but what is the size of the fragment or consolidate the institutions of the British dowhich democratic stinginess has suffered to re- minions? It is easy to find a Conservative cant main of the wooden walls of England? Twelve which would be just as plausible in defence of or fifteen ships of the line are in commission, such acts of aggression as our revolutionary and twice as many frigates, to face the navies cant to paliate our monstrous foreign iniquity of Europe, whom our revolutionary inroads into during the last six years has been; and if the other States may any day array against our in- evil days thus come upon us, where, we beg to dependence. With great difficulty, and as a know, are the elements of successful resistance pro ligious exertion, Government this Session to be found ? prevailed on their Radical ruler to allow an ad- Experience has recently taught us, in the atdition of 5,000 men to be made to the sailors of tempt to raise the 5,000 men for the Royal Navy, the Royal Navy. Why, if they had proposed how extremely difficult it is to provide any inan addition of 50,000 it would have been hardly crease for the public service on a sudden emer. adequate to preserve us from most serious dan- gency; impressment will not be tolerated by the ger, in the revolutionary course of propagand- emancipated sons of freedom, and where, we İsm into which we have blindly, and with no again ask, are we to find sailors to combat the sort of preparation, had the infatuation to rush. sixty or eighty ships of the line which Russia, Sir Edward Codrington told us lately in Parlia-France, and Denmark could at a month's warnment, that he recently saw twenty-five ships of ing combine in the British Channel ? It is easy the line in the Baltic, manned and ready for sea, to say the resources of the kingdom are undein the Russian harbours. We should be glad to cayed, the countrymen of Nelson will never know what would come of our democratic trans- want defenders; but we here tell the people of ports, if these five-and-twenty ships of the line England that they, just as well as other nations, were some morning to make sail for the Ger-stand in need of organization and foresight, in man ocean, and pick up on their way twenty-order to provide an efficient system of defence; five more from the harbour of Copenhagen and and that without such foresight, which, with our Carlscrona, and cast anchor off the mouth of the present preponderance of democratic shortsightThames. edness, it is in vain to expect in the Lower Meeting us with our own language, would House, a calamity may ensue which may at not they be able to say, with at least as much once prostrate the empire, as that of Aigospotruth as we have done, that it was for their in-tamos did the maritime power of Athens, by terest” not to allow a democratic regime to pre-| bringing the hostile fleets to the mouth of our |