government of Venetia, nor have they any real purpose of dying or spending money to protect the Quadrilateral, but they like to fancy that they would probably interfere to prevent so splendid a possession passing into alien hands. The Courts, even when as liberal as German Courts ever are, lean to the side of Austria as a fighting Power, and there can be little doubt that Prussia last year gave Austria to hope that if Austria adopted the proper internal reforms, she should not lose Venetia. The vote of the Prussian Chamber has terminated all this state of vagueness, of half promises, of wavering resolutions. The stand of Prussia is taken on the sure ground that she and Italy are free States, with no opposing interests, but with many ties to bind them together. The Italians, with excellent sense and feeling, have welcomed this overture from free Germany, and have testified the warmest pleasure in the alliance that is held out to them. The Hungarian Diet is to meet on the 2nd of next month, and then the issue will be decided on which the fate of Austria hangs. At present there are no indications sufficiently clear to determine an opinion as to the probability of the Empire holding together or not. Sometimes we hear of great dissatisfaction, and of certain counties sending remonstrances to the central authorities that may almost be called impertinent. But many counties are respectful in the addresses they present, and others offer no opposition to the Government. It appears, however, to be tolerably certain that the party which is guided by the strict letter of the constitution, the especially legal party, is on the ascendant. Everything seems to be looked at as we should be inclined to look at them in England. What is the existing law on the subject? is the question which the members of this party solely attend to. They regard all payment of taxes as purely voluntary unless it has been sanctioned by the Diet. They do not quarrel with the Imperial Government, or blame any one who chooses to contribute to its wants, but they allege the impossibility of compelling any Hungarian to pay if he does not like. Those who, like Counts Szechen and Appony, and Baron Vay, keep the unity of the Empire before their minds as the one ruling idea, are naturally puzzled by this legal scrupulousness. It is hard for them, as patriotic Hungarians, to upbraid Hungarians for looking only to the law and obeying it, and yet they feel that unless this adherence to the letter of the law is confined within limits, the unity of the Empire is at an end. According to the existing law there would be a separate Hungarian ministry, responsible to a Diet having complete power over taxation and over the levying of revenues. This is incompatible with the co-existence of an Austrian Empire, and the Imperial Government offers the Hungarians an adequate share in the election of a central representative body at Vienna, containing upwards of three hundred members, if the supremacy of the local Diet is done away with. If once the Diet met, it could, with the assent of the people and of the King, abdicate certain of its functions, and remit them to the representatives of Hungary at Vienna, and thus the scruples of the legal party would be satisfied, while the objects of the Conservative party would be accomplished. There is, however, a large and very active party, whose first maxim is unre mitting hostility to Austria, and who will do their utmost to bring about a different result. To grind Austria to the dust, and then set up an independent Hungary, is their one ambition; and it is not until the Diet meets that we shall know how far this party has a real command over the hearts and heads of the mass. The emancipation of the Russian serfs, which is to be proclaimed on the 3rd of this month, cannot fail to produce great effects over Germany, and less directly over Europe, as well as over Russia itself. It will probably give Russia enough to do for some years, and thus one 1861.] Abolition of Serfdom in Russia. of the greatest of military powers is bound over to keep the peace. The nobles will feel profoundly a change which will make them dependent on voluntary labour, and the serf has to learn how to depend on himself or else to organize a system which, like the communes on the Crown lands, will give him protection and support. Probably serfage has done Russia good serIvice in its time. Russia was in the sixteenth century far too large for its population. It is not even now occupied, except very nominally, in many districts. But in the sixteenth century it must have given an endless area for roaming. The occupants of one year were not the occupants of the next. They moved elsewhere to richer pastures or more attractive settling grounds. The boyards were lords of the soil under the Czar, but they could get no labour. Serfage was instituted to give this labour; and it is difficult to see how Russia could have become a settled country had not some rough means been found to chain a nomadic population to fixed centres of toil. But the effects produced by such machinery destroy the machinery itself when there is no barrier of race between the bondsman and the free. Serf labour has made Russia comparatively rich. It has given the serf time to grow into a character little below that of the ordinary European peasant. It has kept up a landed aristocracy who are not perhaps very distinguished or elevated as a class; but who are at least sufficiently cultivated to have spread the knowledge of Western Europe through a great part of the empire. But the time has come when the serf ought to reap the fruits of the change he has produced. Hitherto the noble has profited largely, and the serf has had to bear very many serious burdens. The cruelty, the rapacity, and the licence of the landowners have carried desolation to many hearths, and bowed many a head to the grave in misery. There are too many well-authenticated stories of the dreadful revenge which serfs have sometimes taken when driven to revolt, to 401 prevent a doubt as to what they have had to endure. The nobles have resisted the emancipation now offered, and their resistance has been as natural as it has been strenuous. There can be little doubt that many of them will be utterly swept away by the change. A very large proportion of the landowners are men of small property, without capital, and deeply in debt. Their credit has hitherto been sustained by the possession of their serfs. They have been held up as the lower members of a dominant class are so frequently held up, even in the face of the gravest embarrassments. But now there will be nothing to support them. The Czar and the enfranchised peasant will continue to lower the position of the aristocracy; and their very existence will be menaced. The serfs will hold the land which used to belong to the lord; and if they are bound to pay rent, this will be very difficult to collect, while the land still left to the lord will be almost valueless for want of labour. There are also many districts of Russia still unsettled where cultivation will be far better repaid than on the sterile soil and in the bleak climate of the north. The enfranchised serf will be free to wander where he likes, and the noble may find that his land is not thought worth renting. A middle class, too, will rapidly grow up. Hitherto, as the native merchants have almost always been serfs, the calling of a trader has been a mark of social disgrace, and the successful merchant has had to conceal his wealth or limit his transactions, lest the capricious exactions of his owner should make him suffer for the notoriety of wealth. Now the merchants, and manufacturers, and agriculturists, and mine-owners will be the leading men of the country, and thus Russia will in a hundred ways be brought nearer to Europe. Except by a half-dozen bigoted Tories in Parliament, and by those people who always delight in taking the unpopular side on every question, the fall of Gaeta has been received with the greatest delight in England. Francis II. has got quite as much credit as he deserved for the defence, and we think a little more. He was in some danger from cannon-shot by staying, and in greater danger from fever. But if he could have done himself or his party any good by staying, there is nothing magnanimous in a king facing peril which he obliged thousands of his fellow-men to share with him. If there was no good in his staying, why should he be praised for doing so? It shows the secret contempt felt for kings on the Continent, that it should be thought creditable in a king not to run away in a sudden panic and leave his kingdom altogether. Count Cavour had said beforehand that by the time the first Italian Parliament met, Gaeta should be taken; and his usual good fortune enabled him to see his prophecy fulfilled. The Parliament has met under the happiest auspices. The Government is supported by a large working majority, and yet the representatives of the opposing parties are not absolutely excluded. The King's speech was very good, adroit, just, and full of sound sense. His announcement that the Government must exercise its own discretion as to the time when it will be expedient to attack Venetia, has given general satisfaction. It has placed the King in his right position, while, at the same time, his pointed appeal for effective armaments shows that the Government knows well what Italy must do to hold the place in Europe to which she aspires. The framer of the speech ought to be highly praised for the skill with which France and England were alluded to. France was most properly put first. It is to France, and, above all, to the Emperor, that Italy owes her freedom. The Emperor may not have meant to give it, or he may even now view it with jealousy, or he may be thwarting Italy in some way or other; but nothing can alter the great standing fact that Italian freedom was won at Magenta and Solferino, and was won by French guns and bayonets. But England has done much for Italy lately, and we like to have it acknowledged. Everybody who acts in a friendly spirit, and confers a benefit, likes to see that what he does is recognised by those whom he obliges; and we are pleased that Victor Emmanuel and Count Cavour take so very marked a method of letting us know their gratitude. We have, there can be no doubt, most materially helped on the Italians. We enabled Garibaldi to cross to the mainland when the French Government wished to stop him. We openly expressed our approval of the interference of Piedmont in the States of the Church and in Naples, when all the rest of Europe was loud in real or feigned disapproval of the step. We got the French to quit Gaeta and terminate the policy of disinterestedness. We have maintained at Turin throughout all the difficulties of Italy a wise, bold, and honest representative, able and willing to back Count Cavour, and devotedly attached to the cause of Italian liberty. Lastly, when the title of King of Italy has been offered to Victor Emmanuel by the Italian Parliament, we shall be the first to recognise him by his new title, and shall wish very cordially that he may be able to preserve the splendid crown he has won. What all this has been to Italy, we may gather if we turn to a parallel in private life. If a cloud has passed unjustly over the fame of any one in a country neighbourhood, if little men look coldly on the person traduced, and great men forget his existence, he will not think lightly of the service done him if one of the most indisputable grandees, a man of power, reputation, and fortune, comes publicly forward and claims him as a friend. This is what we have done for Italy in the face of Europe. FRASER'S MAGAZINE. APRIL, 1861. THE AMERICAN QUARREL. IN the speculations of current political literature no more prevalent error among the well-informed strikes us, than the involuntary assumption that interest will prevail over passion in the actions of great States. This may be true where there is no one pervading passion; where impulse is set against impulse, and common interest is, though a weaker, yet an ever-acting power: but otherwise, it is no more true with Imperial dynasties, as Russia and Austria, than with the American democracy. In America itself the press of New York has for years back consoled itself with the erroneous belief that however the Slave-states might bluster, and however the Garrisonian abolitionists might rave, common interest in the mighty and glorious UNION would make civil war or separation impossible. Local conflict, as at Kansas, soon to be pacified by the Federal forces, was the utmost of disorder which their fond speculations admitted to blot the peaceful and agreeable prospect. In fact, every American of the States whom we have met treated it as a mere result of local ignorance when Englishmen prognosticated that the quarrel of free and slave labour would never be settled without civil war. Strange as the assertion may at first seem, we are disposed to think it true, that in many great political questions close and minute knowledge is unfavourable to sound judgment. The fresh eye of a spectator from without catches broad facts and discerns great silent currents, which by their steady continuous action escape those who are borne on in the midst of them. The proportions of events, as of mountains, are better discerned by those who do VOL. LXIII, NO. CCCLXXVI. not live in the midst of them. A physician who has too long seen his patient from day to day-and we will add, has seen no other patients-less keenly discerns his true state than does the equally intelligent eye of a stranger. To the English speculator on the United States, we believe no phenomenon has been more prominent, than that which their own Emerson publicly proclaimed, immediately after the brutal attack on Charles Sumner had called forth echoes of applause from the South. By that whole affair the fact was brought out into terrible prominence, that the temper of the South is essentially barbarous. 'Barbarism and civilization,' said Emerson (we quote the substance of his words by memory only), 'cannot coalesce to work a free constitution.' The recent conduct of the South is in so striking analogy to the dynastic usurpations of Europe in its pretensions and justification, as instructively to show despotism as the spiritual essence of the pretended democracy. A king who has received a legitimate throne that he may be the honoured guardian and enforcer of the laws, finds that his Parliament, in the exercise of its legitimate functions, is something else than his tool or plaything. It will not vote money for something which he desires; or it will censure a corrupt or lawless minister. Hereupon the king overthrows the constitution by violence, and justifies himself by saying that he found the Parliament unmanageable. Such has been the uniform course of European usurpations: and what of American? The Southern States, for a series of years, had been accustomed to find their own favourite candidate win EE in the Presidential elections: at length their candidate is defeated, and forthwith they break up the very foundation of the State, scorning to remain in it at all if they are ever to be outvoted. Clearer demonstration could not be offered of the absolute impossibility of North and South (even if the present quarrel be temporarily patched up) working a free constitution peaceably in common. The South has evidently not one spark of that vital principle of free communities which Mr. Grote has named Constitutional Morality. The moment the slave-party is beaten by voting, it betakes itself to violence, treason, and revolt. Mr. Seward, in his great speech on the secession, avowed that he did not know what would be the value to the Union of States forced by civil war to return to it. With equal pertinence one. may ask, what will be their value to the Union if they are won back by such concessions to their petulance and lawlessness as Mr. Seward declared himself willing to give? In the history of republics it is easy to see to what crisis these events are analogous. They are to the American Union what the fatal feud of aristocracy and democracy was to the small republics of Greece and of middle age Italy; and again, what the quarrel of Marius and Sulla was to Rome. Of course in the modern controversy there is the marked distinction, and the auspicious advantage, that the opponents are not locally mingled on the very same area, so as to entail the worst dangers of civil war. Nevertheless, the possession of magistracy and its results, power and family wealth, are the prize of contest with the Southerners, as with the Greek or Italian nobles. Here, as there, an aristocracy accustomed to regard office as its natural right, struggles to retain it by unscrupulous violence, if legally outvoted. But we do not draw the fatal omen which the comparison might suggest; for in the modern struggle a higher spiritual principle is involved. This is no mere scramble of reciprocal and equal selfishness; but it is a combat in which the violators of the Union, who are also actual and treacherous aggressors, are avowed patrons and glorifiers of an accursed form of slavery; while their opponents, whatever mixture of party spirit or other human weakness may be ascribed to them, are undoubtedly champions of human freedom, some broadly and consciously, the rest by desiring to put some limit to the extending pestilence. That between elements so intensely op posed hostile conflict should arise, we can scarcely regret. The only thing to be desired is, that the conflict shall take as little desolating a character as circumstances admit. It is a well-known remark of Thucydides, that in the civil contests familiar to him, the more daring and unscrupulous men generally prevailed over the intelligent and more moderate, who fell victims to violence while they were deliberating; perhaps while they were studying schemes of pacification and comprehension. But these were little city-states, with none of the happy stability enjoyed by our great communities, to which no sudden attack can be fatal except from the executive government, which has in its own hand the entire military organization. The American Union appears nevertheless to have really had a narrow escape through the irresolution of its President, who proved not to have enough of the dare-devil in him for the work which others were anxious to put upon him-men to whom he gave the reins almost up to the verge of treason. Three cabinet ministers are such open offenders that we suppose no defence of them from a European is possible. Cobb of Georgia found in the treasury a surplus of forty million dollars, and left it bankrupt. Floyd, of the war department,* se Since this was written we see it stated that Mr. Floyd 'indignantly denies' these charges. If he can show that the arms have not vanished, it will, no doubt, bring much satisfaction. |