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ART VI.-1. The Political and Historical Works of Louis NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, President of the French Republic. London: 1852.

2. History of Europe from the Fall of Napoleon in 1815, to the Accession of Louis Napoleon in 1852. By SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON, Bart. Part I. New Series. Edinburgh: New

York: 1853.

3. Inaugural Address of FRANKLIN PIERCE, as President of the United States, delivered at Washington, March 4, 1853.

THE subject evidently suggested by these three publications, is the relations existing between the present governments of France, England, and America. We purpose, therefore, to inquire into the policies which these important powers have lately pursued, or are likely to pursue, toward each other, rather than to enlarge upon the intrinsic merits of the works themselves. If any exception is made, it will be in favor of our old friend, Sir Archibald Alison, whom we are not sorry to see, at last, a titled member of that aristocracy whose praises it has so long been his privilege to sing. The present time is a fitting one for such considerations, as the vapid but bellicose harangues of declamatory partisans during the last two or three years appear not unlikely to be superseded by decisive action.

Till quite recently, the true mission of the American Republic, involved as it is in the great ideas and facts of its history, has been regarded as a simple, but a sufficiently glorious one. A stern, perhaps an ascetic, people had come to a new world and founded their rude homes in a wilderness. Unfettered by feudal traditions, preserving as much loyalty as they had ever held toward a dishonored race of kings, persecuted and ridiculed in the country of their fathers, they still looked back affectionately to their friends and kinsmen in the land they had left, and, for their sake, rendered allegiance to its crown and its laws; they paid it tribute and fought its battles. After a time, driven to rebellion by injustice and contumely, they passed through all the stages and the trials of revolution, till a stable and independent government was established, a government which, from the very nature of the case, could not

have been other than republican. Imparting dignity and securing freedom to its own citizens, it has been ever ready to adopt the destitute and the adventurous of other countries, and to afford an asylum for the persecuted. Having increased, beyond all precedent, in wealth and strength, it has patiently awaited the time when, by its invincibility on the American continent, and by the example of its own prosperity, an influence might be peaceably exerted by it, in behalf of humanity and freedom elsewhere, more effectual than any that the bayonet has ever acquired.

The recent European revolutions have undoubtedly altered, to some extent, the aspect of our foreign relations. The demands of the people of Prussia for the constitutional privileges that had been promised them for their share in the War of Liberation in 1814, the partial fulfilment of these demands, the overturning of the French monarchy in 1848, the insurrections in all the capitals of the anomalous empire of Austria, the all but successful rebellion of the largest of her provinces, and the very act of interposition of the most formidable member of the Holy Alliance,—were events that excited strong interest and sympathy on this side of the Atlantic. It was then that the idea of active intervention in the affairs of nations upon the continent of Europe was first promulgated, a doctrine as short-lived as was the influence of its most distinguished advocate. Reaction was almost immediate. The Prussian monarchy was strengthened by the outbreak; France has exchanged the vagaries of the revolution for the iron rule of the empire; the vast possessions of the House of Hapsburgh are bound together by the strong arm of military despotism; and even the most sanguine of the believers in the might of American influence have become convinced, that popular enthusiasm is not always a safe guide.

But while no rural candidate for small municipal honors now thinks his claims to office are improved by the "fearless" advocacy of a hostile expedition to the Adriatic, allusions have been made, in much higher quarters, to a more practical alliance, which shall be offensive and defensive, and bound together by the same common bond of liberty, a suggestion not emanating from, or exclusively confined to the impulsive

natures and restless dispositions of "Young America," but mainly urged and demanded, almost as a matter of course, by the only country to be benefited by it. The English press, and English orators and legislators, not universally, but in respectable numbers, have decided to regard the close union of the United States with England, in the event of an European war, as a thing definitively settled; and the pseudo-complimentary "extracts" from English newspapers, referring to this subject, have been greedily copied into our journals, without any comment to indicate the tone of popular opinion, but merely to show, we suppose, our growing importance and the altered tone of Englishmen towards a people whom, till recently, they have affected to overlook or despise.

With a few exceptions, however, this proposal, notwithstanding its flattering character, has found no very strong friends in this country; and it does not require great shrewdness to perceive, that it is intended not merely to conciliate America, but to serve as a kind of menace towards some of the European powers whom the English press and ministry have been in the habit of wantonly insulting with gratuitous advice, and the abuse with which English advice is generally accompanied. The consequences of this officiousness within a few years have been quite marked. Leaving, for the present the manner in which England has conducted herself towards France, and also towards Spain, whom she befriended so equivocally in the campaigns of the latter years of the war against Napoleon, even her old faithful ally Austria, whose good opinion the Tories have always assiduously cultivated, and in whose armies many of her officers learned the art of war, regards her now with a degree of rancor bordering upon the ridiculous. It is not long since a drunken Englishman, of the name of Matthews, we believe, insulted an Austrian officer in the street, and was promptly cut down for it. The "opposition," of course, was in a ferment. The Emperor Francis Joseph was applied to; he justified his officer, but offered to pay the surgeon's and nurse's bill, amounting to about £200. Lord Malmsbury, the valiant English minister of foreign affairs, pocketed the pounds sterling and the insult. We have lately seen it stated, in an

English paper, that at a target exercise during the present year, the Austrian soldiers shot at the figure of an Englishman which was surrounded by mottoes that indicated, to be sure, more bitterness than wit, and in which Lord Palmerston was not forgotten. It is, by the way, notorious that the retirement of this "judicious bottle-holder" from Lord John Russell's ministry was known at Vienna before it was divulged at London.

But notwithstanding the general enmity that England has excited upon the continent, there is one nation more than any other of which she stands in fear, and whose action she awaits with the uneasiness of a perturbed conscience, a nation which it has been her unceasing boast, for more than thirty years, that she has trampled in the dust. The key to English diplomacy upon the continent may be found in the open promulgation of the doctrine by Mr. Canning, that the interests of England are to be secured at any price, and at any sacrifice of the independence of other nations. The key to that mad, but temporarily successful, attempt to annihilate, by means of coalitions, all French influence upon the continent, is to be found in the celebrated maxim which Mr. Pitt left to his successors, that justice to France would be the ruin of England. And lastly, the secret of her sudden trepidation and sudden transatlantic friendship lies in the fact, that France, after a humiliation of thirty years, finds herself in a position to exact justice at the point of the bayonet.

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The French throne is now occupied by one who bears that mighty name, so loved by France and so dreaded by her enemies. The lawful heir to an empire created by the suffrages of a free people, born in the palace of the kings of France, the first of a dynasty sprung from and inaugurated by her people, Louis Napoleon had no common claim to the almost unanimous voice which has recalled him, at last, after so many revolutions and so much suffering, to that summit of power which her own will had never denied him. Forty-four years before, that empire which made all France delirious with joy was made hereditary in the family of Napoleon by four millions of votes; two thousand royalists and disorganizers alone having offered a feeble negative to these over11

VOL. LXXVII.-NO. 160.

whelming numbers. That vote has never been rescinded or annulled by any act of the French people. It was not forgotten even when a million of armed men overran her soil, and a hated and discarded dynasty was resuscitated as a part of her humiliation. It was owing to the conviction that the restoration of the Napoleon family was the act of the people, and would be defended by them with their lives and fortunes, that France has been permitted to consolidate her government, unembarrassed by a war of self-defence. The dreaded arbiter of the North, who, after the fall of Charles X., had gathered his forces to march upon Paris, quietly beholds upon an imperial throne the heir of him whom Alexander had been bribed to depose, and whose family the four great powers had solemnly decreed should never again hold property or power in France, or even live within the limits of her territory. Austria, occupied with her rebellious subjects, could not forget that she had held up the Duc de Reichstadt over the head of the usurping Louis Philippe, till the day of that youth's premature death. Russia could no more spare her armies than Austria; and there remained to England, therefore, no ally but her terrible press.

The cool impertinence with which, through that medium, England has presumed to speak of recent French affairs, while she is able to exert but little influence upon the continent, while her army is absolutely insignificant in numbers, and, by her own showing, not to be compared in point of discipline and science with that of the nation whose wrath she so sedulously invokes, can be explained only upon the hypothesis, that she opes, by the aid of an alliance with this country, to avert a ar which she is less able than any other country in Europe > maintain.

In no spirit of hostility to England, we think there are many reasons why this project of an alliance with her should go no farther; and it might be shown, out of the mouths of her own statesmen and historians, that so long as there is any prospect of the Tories, or Conservatives as they now call themselves, having an influence in her councils, that she is not a fit subject for the alliance or the friendship of a powerful and a free people. We think it can be made clear, moreover,

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