political infallibility. And he entertained no doubt that all honest citizens,' as Cicero called people on his own side, were ready to follow him, and that his opponents were only a desperate faction,' whom it was justifiable to oppose by all the means which power placed in his hands. He was only the representative and champion of the beauty, excellence, and perfection of the British constitution as by law established, on which he loved to dilate in stereotyped phrase.

to be every inch a king in his own realm: how much more so over its dependencies!' We cannot imagine any ground for the supposition that the King wanted to be more a King in America than in England. But, in plain truth, to suppose George the Third a believer in his own divine right, or a practical disciple of the high prerogative' school, is to mistake him altogether. H was no stickler for the rights of kings in a general way. Like a plain Englishman as he was, he was quite content to govern under the Revolution settlement.' Only men of imaginative and prejudiced minds. 'I will rather risk my crown than do what I like Horace Walpole's, attributed to him in think personally disgraceful; and whilst I have earnest any Stuart-like notions. Nor have no wish but for the good and prosperity of my we observed any expression of his reliance country, it is impossible that the nation shall on that quasi-divine right of English law-not stand by me; if they will not, they shall have another king!' yers, Prerogative. We do not remember having noticed that he once uses the word in all this correspondence. In careless conversation (if we may believe one of Mr. Massey's MS. authorities) he said that the English Constitution was the finest system in the world, but not fit for a king. He was the only slave.' And though he touch- He never seemed to invoke personal loyes on the subject of the Crown's legal pow-alty to his aid, but British patriotism, as he ers in one rather remarkable passage (with understood it. reference to the City Address and Petition against signing the Quebec Bill, June 29, 1774) he does so with, for him, unusual caution.

I am clear that, though I hope the Crown will ever be able to prevent [sic] a Bill it thinks detrimental to be thrown out in one or other House of Parliament without making use of its right of refusing the assent, yet I shall never consent to using any expression that tends to establish that at no time the making use of that power is necessary.'

His principal motive of action was of quite a different character. He claimed obedience and assistance from all honest people, not because he was every inch a King,' but because he was, in his own estimation, thoroughly and always in the right. He might have addressed his ministers in the Duchess de la Ferté's language to Mademoiselle Delaunay, Tiens, mon enfant, je ne vois que moi qui aie toujours raison.' The story told by Mr. Jesse, how, at the commencement of one of his fits of insanity, he startled the people at prayers in the chapel by putting his head out of the Royal closet, and following the reader with peculiar emphasis, Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, it is a people which do err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways,' expresses grotesquely his simple conviction of his own

which must reside in the heart of every man Common honesty, and that sense of honour born of a noble family, would oblige you at this hour to stand firmly to the aid of him who thinks he deserves the assistance of every honest man.'

"It is attachment to my country that alone actuates my purposes, and Lord North shall see that at least there is one person willing to preserve unspoiled the most beautiful combination that ever was framed.'

Such was his every-day language. Now, to misunderstand him in this particular is, in fact, to misconceive the mainspring of his power among his subjects, and the key to all his success. A sovereign in this country who were to use the Spanish style, 'I, the king,' would not have a chance. A sovereigu who terms himself, We, the people,' is nearly irresistible. It was in that name honestly used by himself, and honestly accepted by those for whom he spoke that he maintained his predominant share in the Government. And undoubtedly, during the greater part of his reign - though with exceptions he was the king of the people; not of the more far-sighted politicians, whose following is always small; not of the Whig families, nor of the City, nor the populace; but of the great majority of his middle-class subjects, with their love of honesty and domestic order, and morality, and bluntness, their fondness for respectable platitudes, their few plain instincts and their few plain rules;' and with minds, on the whole, wonderfully analogous to his own.

-

Such were the qualities which lost us | lar, if that secession threatens the prosperity America. So historical criticism contin- or the security of the whole community. ually repeats, and Mr. Donne only echoes George the Third believed that the prosthe ordinary sentence. And yet, strictly perity of his empire was bound up in the speaking, the reproach is not well-founded. maintenance of the American dominion, The measures which lost us America were just as Abraham Lincoln believed that the the Stamp Act, and the ungracious as well prosperity of his vast republic was bound up as short-sighted, policy which made us at in the maintenance of the Union. And each once show weakness by receding from our of them, Prince and President alike, was position, and show ill will by not frankly backed up in that belief by the zeal of his receding from it, but always brandishing in countrymen. And by that belief each stood the sight of her people the emblem of a absolved of blood-guiltiness: or neither. power of which we no longer possessed the Policy may be justified by events; the moreality. But all this series of mistakes was tives which dictate a policy can only be wrought by the Grenville ministry and their pronounced right or wrong in accordance successors, before the King had assumed with a higher criterion. George the Third any decided share in the Government. It was wrong in his judgment, as time has is possible, no doubt, that a sound adherence shown: for the loss of America did not inon his part to the principles of the first jure England. Whether the champions of Rockingham administration might have re- the North' were right or wrong in theirs, paired the breach; but it is scarcely proba- time has not yet revealed, and perhaps ble. But his real and leading share in those never may reveal; for the experiment of great transactions was this; that when the secession was not tried to its ultimate results. breach was once effected and recourse had Let us therefore take heed lest in repeating been had to arms, he absolutely refused to the ordinary formula of animadversion on give way; that he persisted in vain efforts George the Third's determination to subdue to reconquer America. When France had America, we are not adopting a moral rule turned against us, when Richmond, and which would condemn others whether Burke, and Fox, were for treating with monarchs or majorities-whose policy difAmerica on terms of independence, and fered from his only in respect of success. saving only, if possible, the rag of our for- And, farther, we must take the good with mer connection in some project of a federal the evil. The very same qualities of head alliance, it was the king,' in Mr. Bancroft's and heart, in sovereign and people, which words, who persuaded his minister to fore- carried us through our American defeats, go the opportunity which never could recur.' fought out victoriously the struggle of later For four years more, by mere force of will, years with France. Our lot is cast in more he imposed on statesmen, who saw but too tranquil times, and far more indulgent clearly the impossibility of effecting the times; in which (as a noble lord remarked object, a perseverance in hopeless hostilities, in the late Fenian debate) High Treason and carried them on even to the bitter seems to be about the safest amusement end,' until the system absolutely broke down which a man can allow himself. And long under him. All this is true; but let us may these times continue: for though stern fairly estimate the real amount of the charge. repression may again be more necessary We leave abstract rights' to those who than we have lately found it, it is a coarse love shadowy argument: the 'right' of a and evil method, which raises more fiends dependency to secede, the right' of a State than it lays. Nevertheless, whenever the to prevent such secession. But we are con- time arrives which shall rouse up the old tent to look only at the simplest and most national spirit of self-assertion and, in practical issue. Let us assume that it is the variety of human events, such conjuncwrong for a government to force into sub- tures will assuredly recur some touch of mission an unwilling community, federated the tenacious spirit of George the Third or dependent, from any pride of sovereignty or conceit of national honour: but that it is, on the other hand, not only right, but a bounden duty, for government to repress and stamp out' a secession, however popu

6

may possibly meet our requirements better than the more refined qualities and deeper sagacity which have adorned other leaders of men.

46

THE CRISIS IN EUROPE.

From the Spectator, 20 April.
THE CRISIS IN EUROPE.

THE "situation" in Europe, as it is called,
is not one whit less grave than it was last
week. Very few incidents have occurred,
incidents, that is, about which there can be
no question, but those few are all of one
kind, rather ominous than reassuring. Per-
haps the most important of them all is that
the French Chambers have risen for the
Easter holidays without receiving any mes-
sage as to the negotiations" opened "by the
Emperor, or any reassurances on the main-
tenance of peace. As it is certain that the
Emperor would not have voluntarily left
commerce in doubt for three weeks if he
could have avoided it, this fact alone suffices
to prove that his Majesty has not yet decid-
Then the
ed that there shall be no war.
lithographic correspondence" forwarded
from Paris to the Departments for insertion
in local papers, which is completely con-
trolled by the Ministry of the Interior and
revised in his office, is said to be full of
complaints of the insolence of Prussia,
couched in the language of the camp, and
intelligible alike to the Army and the peas-
ants. The Prussians are called "Kaiser-
lichs"- Imperialists an old camp nick-
name for Germans, which on the northern
frontier especially will be thoroughly in-
telligible, and the Zouaves are said to be
anxious" to be at their throats." The Em-
peror moreover, has taken the very serious
step of raising the price of exemption from
conscription nearly 50 per cent. at a blow
from 84%. to 120l. a measure which will
be felt as a cruelty in every department of
France, where families have toiled and pinch-
ed, often for twenty years, to raise the 847.
necessary to keep a son at home, and now
find their efforts frustrated by a stroke of
the pen. No such change would have been
made with the new Military Bill still on the
anvil, unless the Government wanted con-
scripts, and also wanted means to tempt old
soldiers to re-enlistment. The price of ex-
emption regulates the bounty, and to a
French private who has served his term
3,000 francs seems almost a fortune in itself.
The abolition of exemptions altogether
would have been borne without annoyance,
the peasants complaining of an inequality
which favours the rich; but the Govern-
ment wanted its old soldiers. More ominous
still is the report, should it be confirmed,
that the Emperor, to secure the rapid pas-
sage of his Military Bill, has given up the

473

principle of the liability of every male citi-
zen to serve, which was the key-note of his
project, and has consented to limit Army
and Reserve together to 800,000 men
four armies of the largest size with which
miltary science can yet deal. This leaves
the peasant one chance in four, instead of
none at all. We say nothing of the rumour-
ed despatch of the new cannon, light breech-
loaders throwing from eight to fifteen dis-
charges of grape per minute, to the North,
except that the Government, when chal-
lenged, did not deny it, but only threatened
to prosecute the Avenir National for "pub-
lishing false news;" that it has not pro-
secuted, and that the Courrier de Lyons
repeated the same story from a different
The Bourse has not risen, and in
source.
France Ministers are speculators, while in
French society the irritated annoyance at
Prussian pretensions seems ever to increase.

On the German side, the signs of the hour are even less pacific. The Austrian semi-official papers keep repeating like parrots that Austria will maintain her freedom of action, while the Bohemian Diet advises an alliance with France as the best chance for an Empire which has no nationality. In Bavaria, which would suffer first from war, the Palatinate lying across the Rhine, 115 Deputies have signed an address declaring that South Germany ought to fight for Luxemburg.

The Wurtemburgers energetically repudiate a separatist policy; while in Prussia itself, Count von Bismarck and the King have suddenly thrown up their hands accepted the Constitutional Amendment limiting the "inviolability" of the Military Budget to 1st January, 1872, and declared the Constitution as amended law. The object of that strange demi-volte is not, we imagine to conciliate the German Parliament, but the Prussian, which will now endorse the Constitution almost without debate. The nation and the King cannot quarrel just before a campaign. The King himself, in his final speech, tells Germany that national "self-consciousness" is fully aroused, and that "the regained power of the nation has, above all, to uphold its significance, by rendering secure the blessings of peace," that is, as we understand it, on the Roman plan si vis pacem, para bellum. The project for neutralizing Luxemburg, which alone seems to offer a prospect of peace, is rejected by the German Press, and there is little chance that King William, before all things a soldier, will evacuate a fortress which he garrisons under a treaty never cancelled, and which his engineers,

THE CRISIS IN EUROPE.

specially ordered to report, have declared
"essential" to the safety of the Rhine
provinces.

was 66

The most ominous news of all, however, comes from Florence. Rattazzi has formed a Ministry, with Count Campello, who married one of the Napoleonidæ, a daughter of the Canino branch, as Foreign Secretary, and has formally refused to divulge the reasons for the Ministerial change. Ricasoli struck by a thunderbolt from a clear sky," and it is difficult to doubt that it was levelled by the Emperor, whose first object in any war upon the Rhine must be to neutralize Italy, and who in this war hopes for the ultimate alliance of the Hapsburgs. He may not secure the aid of Italy, though the price he could offer is great, Rome and an Austrian guarantee; but he can secure her neutrality, which was imperilled so long as Ricasoli, who ordered Cialdini to invade Venetia after the French flag had been hoisted, remained in power. If this explanation is correct, Napoleon must have either used menaces or made offers of the most serious character, and either would indicate that he not only expected, but in his secret heart meant war. remembered that Italy, though apparently It must be distant from the scene, is really very near it. She would not attack France, and could not attack Prussia, but she could and would, without ingratitude or serious political danger, draw off one-half the Austrian Army to guard the southern frontier. Assured of Italian neutrality, Baron von Beust, as an ally of Napoleon, has only one danger to meet, the German sympathies of the German provinces of the Empire, and may use all force save theirs to aid in humiliating the foe who destroyed his policy, drove him from his own State, and expelled from Germany the power to which he has always looked for support. If the fall of Ricasoli means the neutrality of Italy as against Austria, it is intelligible and most ominous, while that solution, and that alone, explains why Rattazzi cannot state the truth to Parliament, yet talks of military reductions and internal reorganization as his sole cares.

If any combination as vast as this is in progress, and it is to this that the few known facts point, the matter has passed in part out of the hands of the Emperor Napoleon,

once all

whose interest we fear, it is to accomplish one of two things to obtain from Prussia fight France, thus allaying at an open confession that she is unwilling to French susceptibilities, or to strike a blow for the Rhine. The hope of peace lies in the former alternative, which, it is rumoured England, always anxious for peace, is pressing at Berlin. The confession is to be made as easy for Prussia as possible, she being asked only to accede to the neutralization of Luxemburg, and the consequent evacuation of the fortress, but even to this it is improbable that Prussia will consent. All Germany is furious, so furious that German papers are seized on the French frontier, and is eagerly watching Prussia to see, not whether this or that fortress is to be made useless, but whether Germany has really been made a mighty nation, one which will henceforth never be menaced except as a preliminary to war. to feel whether he is indeed giant or no, The young giant wants whether, above all, the world realizes his stature whether justly or unjustly matters nothing to itself. German opinion, for the moment, but, as we should say, ly, is clearly in favour of war, the King, neither justly or unjustly, but only naturalthough honestly desirous of peace, is not ready to evacuate anything, or take any man's order even to do as he wishes, and Count von Bismarck believes that as war must come, better it should come now, before Austria has regained her force. Unless the Emperor retreats, or turns Belgium, or finally decides, as he often does, that he can come to no decision, there is, we fear, little hope that we shall long be spared the greatest of political calamities a great European war, which once begun, can end only in one of two ways lution of Germany once more into many States, the destruction, that is, of a European guarantee for peace and civilization, or a revolution in France.

on

a reso

roitly extricated us and Spain out of our Meanwhile, M. de Calonge has most admutual scrape. The Revenue Board, or Court, or whatever it is, of Cadiz, has reQueen Victoria, and consequently Spain, in ceived orders to annul the seizure of the paying compensation and offering apology,

upholds to the full the honour and the independence of her tribunals.”