Europe needs a holier and more spiritual, and therefore a stronger
union, than can be given by armed neutralities, and the so-called cause
of order. She needs such a bond as in the Elizabethan age united the
free states of Europe against the Anarch of Spain, and delivered the
Western nations from a rising world-tyranny, which promised to be even
more hideous than the elder one of Rome. If, as then, England shall
proclaim herself the champion of freedom by acts, and not by words and
paper, she may, as she did then, defy the rulers of the darkness of this
world, for the God of Light will be with her. But, as yet, it is
impossible to look without sad forebodings upon the destiny of a war,
begun upon the express understanding that evil shall be left triumphant
throughout Europe, wheresoever that evil does not seem, to our own
selfish short-sightedness, to threaten us with immediate danger; with
promises, that under the hollow name of the Cause of Order--and that
promise made by a revolutionary Anarch--the wrongs of Italy, Hungary,
Poland, Sweden, shall remain unredressed, and that Prussia and Austria,
two tyrannies, the one far more false and hypocritical, the other even
more rotten than that of Turkey, shall, if they will but observe a
hollow and uncertain neutrality (for who can trust the liar and the
oppressor?)--be allowed not only to keep their ill-gotten spoils, but
even now to play into the hands of our foe, by guarding his Polish
frontier for him, and keeping down the victims of his cruelty, under
pretence of keeping down those of their own.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29