LAST WEEK.
Still the columns of our public journals are stuffed with accounts of warlike preparations; steam-frigates upon new and improved principles, both for offence and defence, are in course of construction here—volunteers are reviewed there. The French Emperor is strengthening his army of Rome—the Austrian Emperor is reinforcing his garrisons in the Quadrilateral. Victor Emmanuel is still—at the date these lines are written—engaged in administering a kind of homœopathic bombardment to the fortress of Gaëta. Garibaldi, late Dictator of the Two Sicilies, but now the Hermit of Caprera, has hung up his sword, and turned out his two horses for a season, but he claims 1,000,000 Italians in arms as the contingent of Italy next spring. We have a little war upon our hands in New Zealand, and a tedious war still before us in China, for, whatever may be the terms which Lord Elgin may think it proper to impose upon the Mandarins at Pekin, it is too much to suppose that they will be adhered to by the Chinese as soon as the military pressure is withdrawn. We will pass over the threats of the Southern States concerning the dissolution of the great North American Confederation as a mere brutum fulmen—but although there be no actual warfare, nor any immediate likelihood of it upon the North American continent, there is plenty of violence in Texas and elsewhere.
What is to be the end of all this? It does not follow as an inevitable consequence that because the great nations of Europe are making all these warlike preparations, they will therefore take the field next spring. Si vis pacem para bellum—says the old maxim, and certainly upon this principle the desire for the maintenance of peace must be very vehement throughout Europe just now. The true danger seems to lie in the fact that at the present moment questions of foreign policy seem to occupy the attention of every European nation in most cases, though not in all, to the exclusion of those which are merely of domestic interest. This must be. By the railroad, by the electric telegraph, by the spread of commerce, by the interchange of literatures, we have all learnt to sympathise with each other.
An English Liberal is an European Liberal. This may not be true to the same extent of other nations, for upon all points of political economy the great bulk of the Continental Liberals are still mourning over the grave of the late Colonel Sibthorp. Your German or Frenchman can never be a thorough Liberal until he has dismissed from his mind the dogma that he is to gain by his neighbour’s loss, and that the nation to which he belongs is proportionably the more prosperous the more it is independent of foreign supply. These fallacies will be appreciated in time for just what they are worth; but meanwhile ignorance of political economy is a great stumbling-block in the path. Capital throughout Europe is still tainted with false opinions upon the subject of exchange; and herein lies great danger to the peace of the world. Could the European Liberals be brought to lay aside their municipal jealousies and apprehensions—to agree upon the objects which they shall pursue in common, and to stand by each other in troublesome times, we should have a great security for the future. As an illustration of this, take the recent expression of public opinion in this country with regard to the Italian question. It is clearly understood that England has no intention of interfering in the contest in a material way; still the weight of her opinion is felt as though it were an army in the field. Had France been a free country—as England is a free country—and had there been in France the same overwhelming expression of public sympathy with the Italians as has taken place here—the liberation of the Peninsula might have been brought about without a Magenta or Solferino—without the lamentable cession of Savoy to a foreign power. The impulses and processes would naturally have been different, but the results would have been the same, if not more complete. England has sent her free thoughts, France her soldiers. England neither asked for, nor expected, profit from the liberation of the Italians. France did expect it, and has exacted it. In all probability the French Emperor will require further payment before his complete assent is given to the independence of the Peninsula.
Thus, then, we are all intent upon questions of foreign policy; we are all preparing for war, and yet Lord Palmerston thinks, and many men of great experience, and of forecasting mind, think with him that actual hostilities will in some way be avoided. There is no doubt that any war—save one of defence—would be highly unpopular in this country. Despite of the national fanaticism for military glory, there is little doubt that Louis Napoleon found the temper of the French nation not very malleable when he embarked in the Crimean war; and, more recently, in the Italian campaign. All public expression of opinion may be killed in France; but despite of all his laws of repression, it is still a power with which the French Emperor must settle accounts at his peril. War is always unpopular with Prussia, as every one knows who has ever witnessed the amount of domestic misery consequent upon a desire for what is called the “mobilisation” of the army, when the soldiers are called back from their ploughs and their shop-boards to the ranks. Russia is still exhausted with her last enormous struggle; and if the war party in Austria, of which Francis Joseph is the head, should succeed in plunging the Empire once more into war, the base of their operations will indeed be a house doubly and trebly divided against itself! Independently of these considerations, it should be added that the actual position of the Austrian treasury seems to be very desperate. The great capitalists of Europe are of course prepared to discount such an enterprise as an Austrian attempt to recover Lombardy, if it should be brought before them with any considerable chances of success; but fortunately the chances are not considerable. When to the difficulties inherent in the Italian campaign, are added those which would follow from an Hungarian insurrection, which would in all probability take place as soon as the Empire was at war, one should suppose that a capitalist would as soon make advances to the Grand Trunk Line