Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/355

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the very centre of the kingdom unsurpassed for intelligence in any previously existing manufacturing community. The shipowners of the kingdom, instead of stopping up and checking the fountain of prosperity at its source, now suffer it to flow in its natural channels, and they find that their own interests, instead of being impaired by the change, have kept pace with the general prosperity enjoyed by other classes.

Great European Alliance. Turning now to the great wars which still raged in Europe, we may, by way of continuity, remind our readers that the consent of the King of Prussia having been reluctantly obtained, for he still inclined to Napoleon, the treaty of Kalitsch was signed on the 1st of March, 1813.[1] This treaty constituted the foundation of that grand Alliance which soon after accomplished the overthrow of Napoleon, and the deliverance of the European continent. The people of Prussia, to a man, had risen to arms to deliver their fatherland from the grasp of their French oppressor, and the king, though dreading the ire of Napoleon, who could easily have purchased his neutrality at the time, felt conscious that it was now a question of life and death for him, and no longer hesitated. The treaty, therefore, was signed, and Russia agreed never to lay down her arms until Prussia was reconstituted as she stood anterior to 1806. A proclamation was issued to all the German princes, announcing that the allies had no other object in view but to rescue Germany from the domination of France. Four days afterwards the Russian general proclaimed the dissolution of the

  1. Alison, v. x. p. 121.