cutive, or extend the liberty of their people. The centralised despotic government of Napoleon still remains untouched-the question with all parties is, not whether its powers shall be restrained, but who shall direct them. Universal suffrage itself affords no sort of security against such a result: the quasi monarchy of Louis Napoleon was established in France in 1849 by a majority of four millions of electors, within a year of the communist and socialist fervour of 1848. The more popular and democratic the faction is which gains the ascendancy, the more formidable does the action of the state machine become, because the weaker is the counteracting force which is to restrain its motions. If the extreme democratic party were to succeed to power, the force of the centralised government, based on the support of the people, would, in a short time, become well-nigh insupportable. In the triumphs which they achieved, and the crimes which they committed, the early Revolutionists poured the poison which ever proves fatal to freedom through the veins of their country; with their own hands they dug the grave of its liberties. Nothing remained to their descendants but to lie down and receive their doom. When this last deplorable effect has taken place, it becomes the duty of the patriot no longer to resist the centralising system; but to support it as the only species of administration under which, since freedom is unattainable, the minor advantage of a tranquil despotism can be attained.

mate effect of his measures, whether for good or for evil, should be first fully developed. Judging by this principle, to how few characters in the French Revolution will the friends of freedom in future times rear a mausoleum; to how many will the abettors of arbitrary power, if their real opinions could be divulged, be inclined to erect statues ! Looking forward for the short period of only eighteen years, not a month in the lifetime of a nation, and seeing in the servility and sycophancy of the Empire the necessary effects of the vehemence and injustice of the Constituent Assembly, what opinion are we to form of the self-styled patriots and philosophers of the day, who thus, in so short a time, blasted the prospects and withered the destiny of their country? Who were the real friends of freedom? Mr Pitt and Mr Burke, who, by combating the ambition of democracy and coercing its extravagance in this country, have bequeathed to their descendants the glorious and enduring fabric of British liberty; or Mirabeau and Danton, who, by achieving for its votaries a bloody triumph on the banks of the Seine, plunged their children and all succeeding ages into the inextricable fetters of a centralised despotism? It is fitting, doubtless, that youth should rejoice; but it is fitting, also, that manhood should be prosperous and old age contented; and the seducers, whether of individuals or nations, are little to be commended, who, taking advantage of the passions of early years or the simplicity of inex98. It was a rule in one of the re-perience, precipitate their victims into publics of antiquity, that no public monument should be voted to any person who had been engaged in the administration of affairs till ten years after his death, in order that the ulti

a course of iniquity, and lead them, through a few months of vicious indulgence or delirious excitement, to a life of suffering and an old age of contempt !

CHAPTER LI.

SETTLEMENT OF EUROPE AFTER THE TREATY OF TILSIT.
JANUARY 1808.

JULY 1807

chased, was its accession to the Continental System, and the closing of its ports to the ships of Great Britain; and that thus not only were they likely to be deprived of half their wonted revenue from their estates, by losing the principal market for their produce, but compelled to contribute to the ag grandisement of a rival empire, already too powerful for their independence, and which, it was foreseen, would ere long aim a mortal stroke at their na tional existence. So strong and universal were these feelings among the whole aristocratic and commercial circles, that when General Savary, whom Napoleon had chosen as his ambassador at the Russian capital, on account of the address he had exhibit

1. Ir the treaty of Tilsit was pro- | ductive of glory to the Emperor Napoleon, and transport and opulence to the citizens of his victorious capital, it was the commencement of a period of suffering, ignominy, and bondage to the other capitals and countries of continental Europe. Russia, it was true, had extricated herself unscathed from the strife; her military renown had suffered no diminution on the field of Eylau, or in the struggle of Friedland; it was apparent to all the world that she had been overpowered by banded Europe, not conquered by France in the strife. But still she had failed in the object of the war. Her arms, instead of being advanced to the Rhine, were thrown back to the Niemen; in indignant silence her warriors had re-ed, and the favour with which he had entered their country, and surrendered to their irresistible rivals the mastery of western Europe. If the Czar had been seduced by the artifices of Napoleon, or dazzled by the halo of glory which encircled his brows; if the army was proud of having so long arrested, with inferior forces, the conqueror before whom the Austrian and Prussian monarchies had sunk to the dust, the nobles were not carried away by the general illusion. They saw clearly, amidst the flattery which was lavished on their rulers, the gilded chains which were imposed on their country. They could not disguise from themselves that France had not only acquired by this treaty an irresistible preponderance in western and central Europe, but subjected Russia herself to her command; that the price to the Empire of the Czar, at which all the advantages of the treaty had been pur

been received by Alexander at the time of the battle of Austerlitz, ar rived at St Petersburg, he experienced, by his own avowal, the utmost difficulty in finding any furnished hotel where he could obtain admission; and during the first six weeks of his stay there, though he was overwhelmed with attentions from the Emperor, he did not receive one invitation from any of the nobility. While he saw the guests whom he met at the palace depart in crowds to the balls and concerts of that scene of festivity, he himself returned, mortified and disconsolate, from the imperial table to his own apartments.*

* In Savary's case the general aversion to the cause of France was increased by the part which he was known to have taken in the murder of the Duke d'Enghien, which had been one of the leading causes of the irritation that led to the war. Napoleon, charmed at having extricated himself with credit from so perilous and unprofitable a contest,

2. In the British dominions the disastrous intelligence produced a different, but perhaps still more mournful impression. England was, by her maritime superiority, relieved from the apprehensions of immediate danger, and the general resolution to main-moderate the vibrations of the pendutain the contest continued unabated; but a feeling of despondence pervaded the public mind, and the strife was persevered in rather with the sternness of dogged resistance, or from a sense of the impossibility of making a secure accommodation, than from any hope that the war could be brought to a successful issue. This general impression cannot be better portrayed than in the words of Sir James Mackintosh, the able champion, in its earlier days, of the French Revolution: "I do not indeed despair of the human race; but the days and nights of mighty revolutions have not yet been measured by human intellect. Though the whole course of human affairs may be towards a better state, experience does not justify us in supposing that many steps of the progress may not be immediately for the worse. The race of man may at last reach the promised land; but there is no assurance that the present generation will not perish gave the most positive injunctions to his envoy at the Russian court at all hazards to avoid its renewal. "I have just concluded peace," said he to Savary; they tell me I have done wrong, and that I shall repent it; but, by my faith, we have had enough of war -we must give repose to the world. I am going to send you to St Petersburg as chargé d'affaires till an ambassador is appointed. You will have the direction of my affairs there: lay it down as the ruling principle of your conduct than any further contest is to be avoided; nothing would displease me so much as to be involved in that quarter in fresh embarrassments. Talleyrand will tell you what to do, and what has been arranged between the Emperor of Russia and me. I am about to give repose to the army in the country we have conquered, and to enforce payment of the contributions; that is the only difficulty which I anticipate; but regulate yourself by this principle, that I will on no account be again drawn into a contest. Never speak of war; in conversation studiously avoid everything which may give offence; contravene no usage; ridicule no custom. Neglect nothing which may draw closer and perpetuate the bonds of alliance

in the wilderness. The prospect of the nearest part of futurity, of all that we can discover, is very dismal. The mere establishment of absolute power in France is the least part of the evil: it might be necessary for a time to

now contracted with that country." SAVARY, iii. 96, 97; and HARDENBERG, X. 29.

lum in that agitated state; but what are the external effects of these convulsions? Europe is now covered with a multitude of dependent despots, whose existence depends on their maintaining the paramount tyranny in France. The mischief has become too intricate to be unravelled in our day; an evil greater than despotism, or rather the worst and most hideous form of despotism, approaches; a monarchy literally universal seems about to be established; then all the spirit, variety, and emulation of separate nations, which the worst forms of internal government have not utterly extinguished, will vanish. And in that state of things, if we may judge from past examples, the whole energy of human intellect and virtue will languish, and can scarce be revived otherwise than by an infusion of barbarism." Such were the anticipations of the greatest intellects of the age, even among those who had originally been most favourable to the democratic principle, and that, too, on the eve of the Peninsular campaigns, and at no great distance from the general resurrection of Europe after the Moscow retreat a memorable example of the fallacy of any political conclusions founded upon the supposed durability of the causes at any one time in operation; and of the oblivion of that provision for the remedy of intolerable evils, by the reaction of mankind against the suffering of these, and of the general intermixture of the principles of good and evil in human affairs, which, as it is the most general lesson to be deduced from history, so is it fitted above all others to inspire moderation in prosperous and constancy in adverse affairs.

3. The political changes consequent in central Europe on the treaty of Tilsit were speedily developed. On his route to Paris, Napoleon met a deputa

:

tion of eight of the principal nobles, | aristocratic legislature, and public in the French interest, of Prussian Poland at Dresden; and Talleyrand, in a few days, produced a constitution for the grand-duchy, calculated, as he thought, at once to satisfy the general wish for a restoration of their nationality, and to accord with the despotic views of the Emperors of the East and West. By this deed, which was produced with more than usual rapidity even in those days of constitutionmanufacture, the ducal crown was declared to be hereditary in the Saxon family the grand-duke was invested with the whole executive power, and he alone had the privilege of proposing laws to the diet, with whom the prerogative remained of passing or rejecting them. This diet was composed of a senate of eighteen, named by the grand-duke, embracing six bishops and twelve lay nobles, and a chamber of deputies of a hundred members; sixty being appointed by the nobility, and forty by the burghs. The chambers, like those at Paris, were doomed to silence; they could only decide on the arguments laid before them, on the part of the government, by the orators of the council of state, and of the chambers by commissions appointed by them. This mockery of a parliament was to assemble only once in two years, and then to sit but fifteen days. The ardent plebeian noblesse of Poland, whose democratic passions had so long brought desolation on their country, found little in these enactments to gratify their wishes; but a substantial, though perhaps precipitate improvement was made in the condition of the peasantry, by a clause declaring that the whole serfs were free. No time, however, was left for reflection; the deputies were constrained to accept it; and the new constitution of Poland was not only framed, but sworn to at Dresden during the brief period of Napoleon's sojourn there on his route to Paris. 4. The constitution given to the infant kingdom of Westphalia was, in like manner, framed entirely upon the model of that of France. It contained a king, council of state, senate, silent

orators, cast like all those at this period from the Parisian mould. The throne was declared hereditary in the family of Jerome Buonaparte, the Emperor's brother, and the first sovereign; one half of the allodial territories of the former sovereigns, of which the new kingdom was composed, was placed at the disposal of Napoleon, as a fund from which to form estates for his military followers; provision was made for payment of the contributions levied by France, before any part of the revenue was obtained by the new sovereign; the kingdom was directed to form part of the Confederation of the Rhine, and its military contingent, drawn from a population of about two millions of souls, fixed at twenty-five thousand men in default of heirs-male of his body, the succession to the throne was to devolve on Napoleon and his heirs by birth or adoption. Every corporate right and privilege was abolished; trial by jury and in open court introduced in criminal cases; all exclusive privi leges and exemptions from taxation annulled; the nobility preserved, but deprived of their former invidious rights. The chamber of deputies consisted of a hundred members, of whom seventy were chosen from the landed aristocracy, fifteen from the commercial, and fifteen from the literary classes. Salutary changes! if the equality which they were calculated to induce was the enjoyment of equal rights and general security; but utterly fatal to freedom, if they were only fitted to introduce an equality of servitude, and disable any individuals or associ ated bodies from taking the lead in the contest for the public liberties with the executive power.

5. The states of the Rhenish confederacy had flattered themselves that the general peace concluded on the shores of the Niemen would finally deliver them from the scourge of warlike armaments and military contributions. But they were soon cruelly undeceived, Shortly after the general pacification, and before they had recovered from the burden of maintaining, clothing,

and lodging the numerous corps of the | ions, the King and Queen repaired to Grand Army which traversed their Memel, where they were compelled to territories on the road to the Rhine, sign a fresh convention, which, under they were overwhelmed by the entry pretext of providing for the liquidation of a fresh body of forty thousand men, of the contributions and speeedy evawho issued from France, and took the cuation of their territories, in effect route to the Vistula, still at the sole ex- subjected them, without any prospect pense of the allied states. They were of relief, to those intolerable burdens. speedily followed by a large body of By this treaty it was provided that Spaniards drawn from Italy, and which the evacuation of the fortresses, with went to augment the corps of Romana, the exception of Stettin, Cüstrin, and under the orders of Bernadotte, on the Glogau, should take place before the shores of the Baltic; a sad omen for 1st November; but this only on the succeeding times, when the conclusion condition that the whole contributions of peace was immediately succeeded by were previously paid up-a condition fresh irruptions of armed men, and which it was well known could not be burdensome preparations, at the cost complied with, as they amounted to of the allied states, for future hostili- above four times the revenue of the ties. It soon appeared that the stipu- whole kingdom before its dismemberlations in favour of the conquered ter- ment,* in addition to the burden of ritories in the formal treaties were to feeding, clothing, paying, and lodging be a mere empty name. It had been above one hundred and fifty thousand provided at Tilsit that Dantzic was to men, for which no credit was given in be a free city, governed by its own estimating their amount by the French magistrates; but Rapp, the new gover- commissaries. By a second convennor, was speedily introduced at the tion, concluded at Elbing three months head of a numerous French garrison, afterwards, the unhappy monarch, inwho summarily expelled the Prussian stead of the single military road through authorities and great part of the in- his territories from Dresden to Warhabitants, and began the rigorous en- saw, stipulated by the treaty of Tilsit, forcement of the French military con- was compelled to allow five passages, tributions and the Continental System. two for troops and three for commerThe same system of government was cial purposes, to Saxony, Poland, and sternly acted upon in Hamburg, Bre- their respective allies-a stipulation men, Lübeck, and all the Hanse which in effect cut his dominions Towns; Bourrienne continued to en- through the middle, and subjected the force it with such severity at Ham- inhabitants on these roads to unnumburg, that the trade of the place was bered exactions and demands both entirely ruined, and large sums were from the French and allied troops. remitted by him quarterly to the Tuil- Rapp, soon after, instead of a territory eries out of the last fruits of the com- of two leagues in breadth around the mercial enterprise of the Hanse Towns. walls of Dantzic, as provided in the 6. But most of all did the ruthless treaty, seized upon one two German hand of conquest fall with unmitigated miles, or eight English miles broad, rigour on the inhabitants of Prussia. counting from the extreme point of its Hard as their lot appeared to be, as it outworks; while by a third convention, was chalked out in the treaty of Tilsit, in the beginning of November, Prussia it was yet enviable compared to that was not only forced to cede to the which, in the course of the pacification Grand-duchy of Warsaw New Silesia which followed, actually ensued from and the circle of Michelau,-no inconthe oppressive exactions of the French siderable addition to the losses, already government and the unbounded insolence of its soldiery. Immediately after the conclusion of the treaty which reft them of half their domin

VOL. VII.

*They amounted to 600,000,000 francs, or fore the war, was about £6,000,000.-Ante, £24,000,000, and the revenue of Prussia, beChap. XLVI., § 77, note.

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