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§ 47.

Instances of

for or

against rev

olutions.

While the French revolution was in progress some of the leading powers of Europe had shown a disposition to interfere in the affairs of France, partly on the interference ground that former treaties had been violated, and partly because the king and royal family of France were restrained in their liberty and treated with dishonor. A circular of the emperor of Germany, of July 6, 1791, invited the principal powers of Europe to declare to the French nation among other things, that the sovereigns "would unite to avenge any further offenses against the liberty, the honor and safety of the king and his family; that they would consider as constitutional laws only those to which the king should have given his free assent; and that they would employ every means of terminating the scandal of a usurpation founded on rebellion, and of which the example was dangerous to every government." On the 27th of August, in the same year, the same sovereigns, with the king of Prussia, signed a declaration to the same effect, in which they invited the monarchs of Europe to unite with them in using "the most efficacious means to put the king of France in a state to enable him with perfect freedom to lay the foundation of a monarchical government, equally consistent with the rights of sovereigns and the welfare of the French nation; in which case they were resolved to act promptly and with necessary forces to obtain the proposed common object. In the mean time they would give the necessary orders to hold their troops in readiness to take the field." 2

Louis having accepted the new constitution on the 13th of September, 1791, and announced to foreign powers his intention of supporting it, there was no pretext of a restraint upon the king's liberty for an armed intervention in the affairs of France. But unsettled questions in dispute continued, and at

1 Comp. Wheaton's History, p. 347 et seq., and his Elements, ii., 1, 102–109, which I have freely used.

2 Wheaton's History, p. 346 seq. The passages in quotations through this paragraph are borrowed from that work.

length, on the 7th of April, 1792, the Austrian ultimatum demanded, together with the restoration of the Venaissin to the Pope, and of their possessions and privileges in Alsace to the princes of the Empire, the reëstablishment of the French monarchy on the basis of the French king's declaration of the 23d of June, 1789. This necessarily led to the decree in the national assembly that France was in a state of war with Austria. The king of Prussia, on the 26th of June of the same year, 1792, announced to the world the reasons which induced him, in conjunction with Austria, to take up arms against France. Among them we mention "the propagation of principles subversive of social order, which had thrown France into a state of confusion;" and "the encouragement and even official publication of writings the most offensive against the sacred persons and lawful authority of sovereigns. To suppress anarchy in France; to reestablish for this purpose a lawful power on the essential basis of a monarchical form; and by these means to secure other governments against the criminal and incendiary efforts of madmen, such the king declared to be the great objects of himself and his ally."

The declaration of Austria drew forth at once a counter statement from the national assembly drawn up by Condorcet, which, among other things, claimed for every nation the exclusive right of making and changing its laws; denied that France had threatened the general tranquillity, seeing she had renounced all designs of conquest; declared that the avowal of the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, which the nation had made, could not be regarded as disturbing the peace of other states; and rebutted the charge that Frenchmen had excited other nations to insurrection; whilst, on the other hand, emigrants from France had received aid and encouragement from those who brought these complaints, and attempts had been made to excite civil war in France. Such complaints were unreasonable "unless it were lawful to extend servitude and unlawful to propagate liberty; unless everything be permitted against the people, and kings alone have rights."

England could not, in consistency with the historical development of its own institutions by means of a revolution, adopt the principles on which the continental powers declared war against France. An attitude, however, far from friendly, was observed towards that country, and, among the causes of complaint, one was the encouragement given to revolt in other countries, not only by emissaries sent to England, but by a decree of the Convention, which was said to express the design of extending French principles and of promoting revolutions in all countries, even those which were neutral. At length, on the death of Louis, in the beginning of 1793, the French ambassador was ordered to leave the kingdom. A state of war ensued, during which Mr. Pitt declared that there had been no intention, if the country had not been attacked, to interfere in the internal affairs of France. But, no doubt, the atrocities in the summer of 1793, and the closing tragedy of the king's execution, were motives, if not pretexts of hostility. Nor can there be much doubt that the interference of the European powers, above spoken of, produced, or at least intensified, those atrocities, by arousing the national feeling of the French, by exciting distrust of the king's good faith, and by making it apparent that no terms could be kept with the sovereigns.

The revolution had its course.

The interference was

Holy Alli26, 1815.

avenged, and the parties to it were humbled. But at length France, which destroyed the independence ance, Sept. of half of Europe, lost its own, the empire fell, and the old Bourbon dynasty was restored. During the occupation of Paris, consequent on the battle of Waterloo, the three rulers of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, joined afterwards by the French king, formed the Holy Alliance, which has been regarded as a league of absolutism against the rights and the freedom of the nations. This famous league, however, at its inception, appears to have had no definite object in view. It was a measure into which the other sovereigns entered, in order to gratify the emperor Alexander, whose romantic mind, then under the influence of Madame Krudener, contemplated

a golden age, in which the intercourse of nations should be controlled by Christian principles. The parties to the Holy Alliance bound themselves, appealing to the Holy Trinity, to exercise their power according to the principles of religion, justice, and humanity; to afford one another on all occasions. aid and help; to treat their subjects and soldiers with paternal feeling, and to regard their people as members of a great Christian family, whose guidance was entrusted to them by God.1

Aix-la-Cha

29, 1818.

The congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, at which the five great Congress of powers were represented, and which removed the pelle, Sept. army of occupation from the French fortresses, effected an alliance almost as vague as the Holy Alliance, which, according to some of the parties to it, was intended to exercise a supervisory power over European affairs, interfering to prevent all dangerous revolutions, especially when they should proceed from popular movements. They declared, however, their intention to observe scrupulously the law of nations. "The sovereigns have regarded," say they,

66

as the fundamental basis, their invariable resolution never to depart either among themselves or in their relations with other states, from the strictest observance of the law of nations, principles, which, in their application to a state of permanent peace, are alone able to give an effectual guaranty to the independence of each government, and to the stability of their general association."

The unmeaning nature of such declarations was shown not Congress of long afterwards by acts of interference, undertaken

Troppau

Laybach, Oct. 28,

1820, and onwards.

without the consent and against the will of one leading European power, and certainly not accordant with a rigorous view of the law of nations. A feeling of discontent with the anti-liberal movements of most of the continental powers had been growing in intensity in many parts of Europe, when, in 1820 and 1821, revolutions broke out in rapid succession in Spain, Naples, and Sardinia, and the

1 The whole compact is given by Mr. Manning in an English version, pp. 82-84, of ed. 1.

constitution of Cadiz, of the year 1812, was proclaimed in all the three kingdoms. The alarm excited by the revolutionary spirit was the occasion of convoking a congress at Troppau in Silesia, in October, 1820, which was removed near the end of the same year to Laybach in Styria, and at which not only the five great powers were represented by their sovereigns or by ambassadors, but the king of Naples and deputations from small powers appeared. Against the proposed intervention in the affairs of Italy the British government protested in strong terms, although the existing ministry were not averse to the suppression of revolutionary liberalism; while, on the other hand, the French government approved openly of the intervention, in order to gratify the ultra-royalist party at home, but secretly dreaded the Austrian influence which such a measure would increase. Austria, thus supported, sent an army into the Peninsula, overthrew the revolution almost without a blow in the spring of 1821, and brought back the old absolutism in all its rigor.

The circular despatch of the sovereigns of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, justified these measures by alleging "that there existed a vast conspiracy against all established power, and against all the rights consecrated by that social order under which Europe had enjoyed so many centuries of glory and happiness; that they regarded as disavowed by the principles which constitute the public right of Europe all pretended reform operated by revolt and open hostility; " that they opposed a "fanaticism for innovation, which would spread the horror of universal anarchy over the civilized world; that they were far from wishing to prolong this interference beyond the limits of strict necessity, and would ever prescribe to themselves the preservation of the independence and of the rights of each state." On the other hand the British government, while it acknowledged the right to interfere, where the "immediate security or essential interests" of one state are seriously endangered by another, denied that "this right could receive a general and indiscriminate application to all revolutionary governments." Such interference was an excep

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