Rome, he would almost imagine that nothing could be more just than those proscriptions. The preambles contained, in fact, most specious reasons, most moral arguments; almost as moral as the arguments of the holy alliance; for the murder of innocent and patriotic men. He who read them might imagine that Marius had been a teacher of ethics, and Scylla a model of morality. So might men now suppose, from their declarations and professions, that those who had perpetrated the partition of Poland had been eminent patrons of national morality. In 1772, when the first partition had been made, the reasons assigned for the necessity were, that anarchy and disorder had prevailed in Poland, and were propagated into the neighbouring states. To put an end to this evil, the only means discovered were, that the neighbouring state should take each a slice of the territory. The generous lovers of order and peace yielded to this necessity, and shared Poland among them. In 1791 a regular constitution had been established. There was an hereditary monarch; there were two houses of parliament; the veto of the king had been most properly abolished. What course did the empress Catherine, that guardian of the rights of mankind, take then? She published a manifesto, declaring that she would stand up against innovation, and in defence of the ancient liberties of Poland. The king of Prussia had recognised the hereditary, monarchy, the two houses of legislature, and the other improve ments of the Polish government; he had entered into an alliance,

offensive and defensive, with Po land; yet next year he marched a body of soldiers into Great Prussia, declaring that he would put an end to the anarchy and jacobinism which prevailed there. In 1795 it was found that the principles of political philanthropy could not he supported without the annihilation of the republics. The neighbouring sovereigns were obliged to divide Poland into three parts, and to leave none to the abuse of the Poles. The diet of Poland assembled at Grodno, and, protected by 100,000 Russian soldiers, subscribed their names to the surrender of their existence as a nation; a deed which no force should have compelled them to do if they had a thousand lives. The execration of mankind was due to them; but to the authors of the force applied to them, and of the partition of their country, terms were due which he could not venture to use in that house. The hostilities with which Naples was threatened were, it was confessed, undertaken upon peculiar and extraordinary grounds: it was a war that could not be justified upon any of the usual principles by which the affairs of nations were directed. There had been no direct offence; no infraction of the rights of any other state on the part of the Neapolitan government,

"Non hic agitur de vectigalibus, de sociorum injuriis, sed de libertate humanæ gentis, de libertate nostra." What must be our own condition, if new principles like these were to be sanctioned and adopted into the policy of the greater states? He would say at once, that Europe could not retain its civilization,

nor.

nor the different members of it their independence, in security one hour, if such a system were introduced. Prince Metternich himself could not be rendered so insensible to the natural operation of moral causes as not to see that, should the success of the allied armies be as complete as their own predictions would represent it to be certain, there must still remain a sense of indignation that subsequent results must be yet apprehended; and that after they should have degraded a sovereign into a vassal, that the empty decoration of the kingly title would scarcely serve to accomplish him as the instrument of their purposes. Was it expected that the present king of Naples could be so bound as that he should never enter into a treaty containing provisions utterly contrary to those which he might be induced to subscribe under the influence of compulsion? Look at the character of those treaties which had succeeded each other, since it was vainly hoped that the treaty of Westphalia had fixed the balance of power on a stable foundation in Europe. As long as men continued men, as long as they retained human feelings in their hearts, so long as they were not a caput mortuum in the hands of despots, such changes and revocations would take place. He should like to hear from the noble lord what was the security contemplated by him and his colleagues against the entire absorp. tion of Italy under the Austrian yoke. If such an event should occur, was it not likely that Russia would think it necessary that she should be indemnified by the possession of Gallicia and

1821.

Romania? It was not even impossible that indemnity should be found in the north of Germany, or in his majesty's patrimonial dominions. A circumstance not dissimilar to this had already taken place in a former instance. It might occur as one of the results of that balanced system of power which had been so often and loudly eulogised, it might happen that the prince, who had been among the first to admit foreign troops into his dominions, should ultimately have to forfeit his foreign inheritance. Much had been said on the subject of the right of vicinage; it was thrown as a subsidiary though important weight into the scale; and in this view he should submit a few observations respecting it. In the treaty of Vienna, the only danger explicitly declared with regard to Naples, as a danger which required certain guards and cautions, was that of the Neapolitan government adopting institutions subversive of monarchy, or measures hostile to the repose and interests of neighbouring powers. This was not to demand security for crushing the designs of the Carbonari; this was not pointed against the Spanish constitution. He feared that its object was to prevent the slightest relaxation of a stern military despotism, and that, however obscurely expressed, we might regard the proceedings in Italy as only giving effect to intentions then entertained. was well known by those at all acquainted with the actual state of Naples, and the condition of the Neapolitan people, that one of the heaviest grievances suffered in that country was arbitrary imprisonment. Many illustrious,

Ꭰ

It

some

some of the first families in Naples had felt the weight of this monstrous injustice. Allowing himself for a moment to suppose that a law equivalent to that of our Habeas Corpus had been introduced, or that a promise of what was tantamount to so great a blessing had been held out to the people, would not this have filled the people with delight; would it not have been viewed as one of the best securities on which their individual comfort and freedom could be made to rest? On the other side they could see nothing, under the yoke of Austria they could feel and dread nothing, but a continued military and foreign despotism. When the people of Naples therefore prepared to defend themselves against the united invasion of the allied powers, they were resisting an aggression made, not upon any doubtful political principles reduced to dangerous practice; not upon the new constitution of Spain; not upon any wild or impracticable mode of government, suggested in the ardour of their imaginations to men unskilled in human nature, or in the diversity of human action; but it was an open war on liberty itself, even under its best regulated form. What was it that the allied powers had combined their efforts to put down? What had the people of Naples hitherto done to show themselves unworthy of that freedom to which they aspired? Neither the anarchy which followed licentiousness, nor the military government which was its ordinary cure, had yet sprung up in the newly cultivated soil. Nothing had yet appeared to show that the Neapolitans merited the cen

sure of our great moral poet, always great, and not the least so in his political morality-(Milton's Sonnets):—

"License they mean when they cry liberty; "But who means that must first be wise and good."

What they had done, the sin which they had committed, was that of imitating our example; their unpardonable fault was, that they had endeavoured to establish amongst themselves a British constitution. No doubt this country was equally without excuse in the eyes of the allied sovereigns on the continent, for having set the example, and for still holding it forth to the world. It was indeed a lasting satire on their own power; it was of a nature to produce alarm in despotisms, and would, he hoped, continue till the latest period to tempt less fortunate nations to its imitation. Notwithstanding the exhaustion. of the house, and that under which he was himself beginning to labour, he must still beg leave to submit one or two further observations on a subject not yet fully discussed. A practice had now for some time prevailed in the continental courts, of setting forth to the public, as it accorded with their convenience, the views which they entertained at different periods, and the schemes which they perhaps were on the point of executing. These papers were notoriously published under the authority of the respective governments whose designs or policy they were employed to justify. Amongst the persons engaged in drawing up these papers was the celebrated M. Gentz, an individual whose talents and eloquence no man admired more than himself,

but