war commenced in Aragon, Catalonia, and An- | organized under the name of the Sacred Band dalusia, and Spanish blood soon dyed every Many generals presented themselves, also part of the Peninsula. The crisis which this offering their services and their swords; induced at Madrid, which finally laid the among this number were Ballasteros and throne prostrate at the feet of the Revolution- Riego. ists, is thus described:

"The session was about to finish, the closing was fixed for the 30th June, 1822. Great fermentation reigned at Madrid, and every one, without being able to account for it, was aware that a crisis was approaching.

"Negotiations and indecision continued for six days, during which the two parties remained constantly encamped, notwithstanding the tropical sun of the dogdays, venting reproaches at each other sabre in hand, the torches lighted awaiting only the signal of the combat. At intervals single muskets were discharged, which sounded like the distant peals of thunder, which announced the approach of a frightful tempest.

"At length the attack commenced. The

"The king seated himself in his carriage, after closing the session. Cries of 'Long live the constitutional king,' were heard on all sides, mingled, in feebler notes, with the cry of 'Long live the absolute king.' The guards repulsed with violence those who raised inflam-divisions of the guard at a distance from Madmatory or seditious cries, and blood already began to flow. The tumult redoubled at the moment that the king descended from his carriage. The guard wished to disperse it; they experienced resistance, and had recourse to their arms. The exasperation was extreme among the soldiers; one of their officers, named Landaburo, desirous of restraining them, was insulted by his own men. He drew his sabre, but speedily fell, shot dead by a musket from the ranks.

rid, marched upon the capital, but they were met and defeated at all points by the constitutional forces, and the fugitives in great numbers fled for refuge to the palace. The militia were everywhere victorious; triumphant and victorious, they surrounded the royal abode, while Te Deum was celebrated on the Place of the Constitution, and the walls of the palace resounded with menaces against the king. A capitulation was proposed; but nothing but an unconditional surrender would satisfy the conquerors. Two battalions agreed to it; the others, conceiving that a snare was laid for them, fired a volley upon the militia, abandoned the palace, and rushed out of the city, where they were soon cut to pieces by the popular dragoons and the incessant discharge of grape-shot. This victory was decisive; the violent party now reigned in uncontrolled supremacy, and nothing remained to oppose even the shadow of resistance to their domi

"Landaburo was the son of a merchant at Cadiz, and well known for his liberal opinions. His death became instantly a party affair, and excited to the last degree the fury of all those who professed the same principles. The militia were soon under arms; the troops of the garrison and the artillery united themselves to their colours; the whole officers and noncommissioned officers, who were at Madrid detached from their regiments, joined their ranks. The artillery put their pieces in posi-nation."-I. 420–424. tion; the municipal body declared its sittings permanent; and every thing announced the speedy approach of hostilities between the court and the people.

Such was the state of the Revolution, and the prostration of the throne, when the inva sion of the Duke d'Angoulême dissipated the fumes of the Revolutionists, and re-established the absolute throne.

Several reflections arise upon the events, of which a sketch has been here given.

"Had they possessed an able chief and a determined will, the guards might have made themselves masters of Madrid. They were more numerous, better armed, more inured to In the first place, they show how precisely war, than the constitutional bands which com- similar the march of revolution is in all ages posed the garrison. They occupied the bar- and countries; and how little national characriers and principal posts. Nothing was easier ter is to be relied on to arrest or prevent its for them than to have made themselves mas-fatal progress. The horrors of the French ters of the park of artillery, and the possession of the park would have rendered all resistance impossible. Nothing, however, was attempted-nothing was thought of.

"Of the six battalions of which it was composed, two remained to protect the king; the four others, afraid of being shut up in their barracks, clandestinely left the town during the obscurity of the night; but this movement was executed with such confusion, that the first battalion, when they arrived at the rendezvous, opened a fire upon the others which were approaching.

Revolution, it was said, were owing to their
volatile and unstable character, and the pecu-
liar combination of events which preceded its
breaking out. The Spanish Revolution, not-
withstanding their grave and thoughtful na-
tional character, and a totally different chain
of previous events, exhibited, till it was cut
short by French bayonets, exactly the same
features and progress.
leaves it but too doubtful, whether, in the
sober and calculating realm of England, simi-
lar passions are not in the end destined to pro-
duce similar effects.

Recent experience

"On the other side, the constitutionalists of In the next place, the historical facts now all descriptions united to resist the common brought forward demonstrate how enormous enemy. The militia night and day blockaded the palace; the regular soldiers soon obtained a formidable auxiliary; this was a band composed of men without name, without characier; adventurers and enthusiasts, who were

is the delusion which the revolutionary party, by means of a false and deceitful press, spread over the world in regard to all the transactions in which their projects are concerned. We put it to the candour of every one of our read

ers, whether the facts now detailed do not put | nish Revolution; the speech of Mr. Brougham, in an entirely different point of view from any on the opening of the session of Parliament in which they had yet considered it, the Spa- in February, 1823, still resounds in our ears. nish Revolution? Certainly these facts were We were told, and we believed, that the Spautterly unknown to us, not the least vigilant nish constitution conferred upon the people of observers of continental transactions, and the the Peninsula moderated freedom; that the march of revolution in the adjoining states. cause of liberty was at stake; and that unless The truth is, that what Jefferson long ago said we interfered, it would be trampled down unof the American, has become true of the Euro- der the bayonets of the Holy Alliance. And pean press; events are so utterly distorted, what is the fact as now proved by historical falsehoods are so unblushingly put forth, hos- documents? Why, that it was the cause of tile facts are so sedulously suppressed, that it Pure Democracy which we were thus called on is utterly impossible from the public journals to support; of universal suffrage, Jacobin to gather the least idea of what they really are, clubs, and a furious press; of revolutionary if they have the slightest connection with re- confiscation, democratic anarchy, and unbrivolutionary ambition. Till the false light of dled injustice; of the most desolating of tyrannewspapers has ceased, and the steady light nies, the most ruinous of despotisms. Such of history begins, no reliance whatever can is the darkness, the thick and impenetrable be placed on the public accounts, even of the darkness, in which we are kept in regard to most notorious transactions. passing events by the revolutionary press of Europe; and when historic truth comes to illuminate the transactions of our times, the Revolution of July, the Belgian Insurrection, it will be found that we have been equally de-ceived; and that, by the use of heart-stirring recollections, and heart-rending fabrications, we have been stimulated to engage in war, to support a similar system of revolutionary cupidity and democratic ambition.

Lastly, we now see how inconceivably the British people were deceived in regard to these transactions, and how narrowly we escaped at that juncture being plunged into a war, to uphold what is now proved to have been, not the cause of freedom and independence, but of anarchy, democracy, and revolution. We all recollect the vigorous efforts which the Movement party in this country made to engage us in a war with France, in support of the Spa

PARTITION OF THE KINGDOM OF THE
NETHERLANDS.*

Ir is related by Bourrienne, that it was dur- of this important station: all the resources of ing the visit of Napoleon to the shores of the art, all the wealth of the imperial treasury, ocean, by order of the Directory, in February, were lavished upon its fortification; ramparts 1798, to prepare for the invasion of England, after ramparts, bastion after bastion, surroundthat he first was struck with the vast import-ed its ample harbour; docks capable of holdance of Antwerp as a naval station to effect ing the whole navy of France were excavated, that great object of Gallic ambition. The im- and the greatest fleet which ever menaced pression then made was never afterwards England assembled within its walls. Before effaced; his eagle eye at once discerned, that the fall of his power, thirty-five ships of the it was from that point, that the army destined line were safely moored under its cannon; he to conquer England was to sail. Its secure held to it with tenacious grasp under all the and protected situation, guarded alike by pow-vicissitudes of his fortune, and when the Allies erful fortresses and an intricate and dangerous approached its walls, he sent the ablest and inland navigation; its position at the mouth of the Scheldt, the great artery of the Flemish provinces of the empire; its proximity on the one hand to the military resources of France, and on the other to the naval arsenals of the United Provinces; its near neighbourhood to the Thames and the Medway, the centre of the power of England, and the most vulnerable point of its empire, all pointed it out as the great central depot where the armament for the subjugation of this country was to be assembled, as the advanced work of French ambition against English independence. No sooner had he seized the reins of power than he turned his attention to the strengthening

Blackwood's Magazine, Dec. 1832. Written at the

time when the French army, aided by the English fleet, were besieging Antwerp

firmest of the republicans, Carnot, to prolong even to the last extremity its means of defence. "If the allies were encamped," said he in the Legislative Body, on the 31st March, 1813, "on the heights of Montmartre, I would not surrender one village in the thirty-second military division." Though hard pressed in the centre of his dominions, he still clung to this important bulwark. When the Old Guard was maintaining a desperate struggle in the plains of Champagne, he drafted not a man from the fortifications of the Scheldt; and when the conqueror was struck to the earth, his right hand still held the citadel of Antwerp.

In all former times, and centuries before the labour of Napoleon had added so immensely to its importance, the Scheldt had been the

centre of the most important preparations for | never saw a French fleet but as prizes, have the invasion of England, and the spot on witnessed the infamous coalition, and the unwhich military genius always fixed from conquered citadels of England thundered with whence to prepare a descent on this island. salutes to the enemies who fled before them An immense expedition, rendered futile by the at Trafalgar! Antwerp, with its dockyards weakness and vacillation of the French mo- and its arsenals; Antwerp, with its citadel narch, was assembled in it in the fourteenth and its fortifications; Antwerp, the outpost and century; and sixty thousand men on the shore stronghold of France against English indeof the Scheldt awaited only the signal of pendence, is to be purchased by British blood Charles VI.* to set sail for the shore of Kent. for French ambition! Holland, the old and The greatest naval victory ever gained by the faithful ally of England; Holland, which has English arms was that at Sluys, in 1340, when stood by us in good and evil fortune for one Philip of France lost thirty thousand men and hundred and fifty years; Holland, the bulwark two hundred and thirty ships of war, in an en- of Europe, in every age, against Gallic aggagement off the Flemish coast with Edward gression, is to be partitioned, and sacrificed in III., a triumph greater, though less noticed in order to plant the standards of a revolutionary history, than either that of Cressy or Poictiers. power on the shores of the Scheldt! Deeply When the great Duke of Parma was commis- has England already drunk, deeper still is she sioned by Philip II. of Spain to take steps for destined to drink of the cup of national huthe invasion of England, he assembled the miliation, for the madness of the last two forces of the Low Countries at Antwerp; and years. the Spanish armada, had it proved successful, was to have wafted over that great commander from the banks of the Scheldt to the opposite shore of Essex, at the head of the veterans who had been trained in the Dutch war. In an evil hour, Charles II., bought by French gold and seduced by French mistresses, entered into alliance with Louis XIV. for the coercion of Holland; the Lilies and the Leopards, the navies of France and England, assembled together at Spithead, and made sail for the French coast, while the armies of the Grande Monarque advanced across the Rhine into the heart of the United Provinces. The consequence was, such a prodigious addition to the power of France, as it took all the blood and treasure expended in the war of the Succession and all the victories of Marlborough, to reduce to a scale at all commensurate with the independence of the other European states. Mr. Pitt, how adverse soever to engage in a war with republican France, was driven to it by the advance of the tricolour standard to the Scheldt, and the evident danger which threatened English independence from the posses-nufactures, because she has none to compete sion of its fortresses by the French armies; and the event soon proved the wisdom of his foresight. The surrender of the Low Countries, arising from the insane demolition of its fortresses by the Emperor Joseph, soon brought the French armies to Amsterdam; twenty years of bloody and destructive war; the slaughter of millions, and the contraction of eight hundred millions of debt by this country, followed the victorious march of the French armies to the banks of the Scheldt; while seventeen years of unbroken rest, a glorious peace, and the establishment of the liberties of Europe upon a firm basis, immediately succeeded their expulsion from them by the arms of Wellington.

Before these sheets issue from the press, an English and French fleet will have sailed from the British shores to co-operate with a French army IN RESTORING ANTWERP TO FRANCE. The tricolour flag has floated alongside of the British pendant; the shores of Spithead, which

*Sismondi, Hist. de France, xi. 387.
Hume, ii. 230.

Disgraceful as these proceedings are to the national honour and integrity of England; far as they have lowered its ancient flag beneath the degradation it ever reached in the darkest days of national disaster, their impolicy is, if possible, still more conspicuous. Flanders, originally the instructor, has in every age been the rival of England in manufactures; Holland, being entirely a commercial state, and depending for its existence upon the carrying trade, has in every age been her friend. The interest of these different states has led to this opposite policy, and must continue to do so, until a total revolution in the channels of commerce takes place. Flanders, abounding with coal, with capital, with great cities, and a numerous and skilful body of artisans, has from the earliest dawn of European history, been conspicuous for her manufactures; Hol land, without any advantages for the fabricating of articles, but immense for their transport, has, from the establishment of Dutch independence, been the great carrier of Europe. She feels no jealousy of English ma

with them; she feels the greatest disposition to receive the English goods, because all those which are sent to her add to the riches of the United Provinces. Belgium, on the other hand, is governed by a body of manufacturers, who are imbued with a full proportion of that jealousy of foreign competition which is so characteristic in all countries of that profession. Hence, the Flemish ports have always been as rigorously closed as the Dutch were liberally opened to British manufactures; and at this moment, not only are the duties on the importation of British goods greatly higher in Flanders than they are in Holland, but the recent policy of the former country has been as much to increase as that of the other has been to lower its import burdens. Since the Belgian revolution, the duties on all the staple commodities of England, coal, Woollens, and cotton cloths, have been lowered by the Dutch government; but the fervour of their revolutionary gratitude has led to no such measure on the part of the Belgians.

This difference in the policy of the two states being founded on their habits, interests

and physical situation, must continue perma- ated to the principles of iniquity, to have been nently to distinguish them. Dynasties may accustomed, as in revolutionary France, to rise or fall: but as long as Flanders, with its have spoliation palliated on the footing of exgreat coal mines and iron founderies, is the pedience, and robbery justified by the weakrival of England in those departments of in-ness of its victim. We have not yet learned dustry in which she most excels, it is in vain to measure political actions by their success; to expect that any cordial reception of British to praise conquest to the skies when it is on manufactures is to take place within her pro- the side of revolution, and load patriotism vinces. The iron forgers of Liege, the wool with obloquy when it is exerted in defence of len manufacturers or cotton operatives of regulated freedom. We are confident that the Ghent or Bruges, will never consent to the free British seamen under any circumstances will importation of the cutlery of Birmingham, the do their duty, and we do not see how Holland woollen cloths of Yorkshire, the muslins of can resist the fearful odds which are brought Glasgow, or the cotton goods of Manchester. against her; but recollecting that there is a But no such jealousy is, or ever will be, felt moral government of nations, that there is a by the merchants of Amsterdam, the carriers God who governs the world, and that the sins of Rotterdam, or the shipmasters of Flushing. of the fathers, in nations as well as individuals, Flanders always has been, and always will will be visited upon the children, we tremble desire to be, incorporated with France, in or- to think of its consequences, and consciender that her manufactures may feel the vivify-tiously believe that such a triumph may ultiing influence of the great home market of that mately prove a blacker day for England, than populous country; Holland always has been, if the army of Wellington had been dispersed and always will desire to be, in alliance with in the forest of Soignies, or the fleet of Nelson England, in order that her commerce may ex- swallowed up in the waves of Trafalgar. perience the benefit of a close connection with the great centre of the foreign trade of the world.

Every one practically acquainted with these matters, knows that Holland is at this moment almost the only inlet which continental jealousy will admit for British manufactures to the continent of Europe. The merchants of London know whether they can obtain a ready vent for their manufactures in the ports of France or the harbours of Flanders. The export trade to France is inconsiderable; that to Flanders trifling; but that to Holland is immense. It takes off 2,000,000l. worth of our exports, and employs 350,000 tons of shipping, about a seventh of the whole shipping of Great Britain. Were it not for the facilities to British importation, afforded by the commercial interests of the Dutch, our manufactures would be well nigh excluded from the continent of Europe. The Scheldt, when guarded by French batteries, and studded with republican sails, may become the great artery of European, but unquestionably it will not be of English commerce. The great docks of Antwerp may be amply filled with the tricolour flag; but they will see but few of the British pendants. In allying ourselves with the Belgians, we are seeking to gain the friendship of our natural rivals, and to strengthen what will soon become a province of our hereditary enemies; in alienating the Dutch, we are losing our long-established customers, and weakening the state, which, in every age, has been felt to be the outwork of British independence.

But it is not the ruinous consequences of this monstrous coalition of the two great revolutionary powers of Europe against the liberty and independence of the smaller states which are chiefly to be deplored. It is the shameful injustice of the proceeding, the profligate disregard of treaties which it involves, the open abandonment of national honour which it proclaims, which constitute its worst features. We have not yet lived so long under democratic rule as to have become habitu

What is chiefly astonishing, and renders it painfully apparent that revolutionary ambition has produced its usual effect in confounding and undermining all the moral feelings of mankind in this country, is the perfect indifference with which the partition of Holland is regarded by all the Movement party, as contrasted with the unmeasured lamentations with which they have made the world resound for the partition of Poland. Yet if the matter be impartially considered, it will be found that our conduct in leaguing with France for the partition of the Netherlands, has been much more infamous than that of the eastern potentates was in the subjugation of Poland. The slightest historical retrospect must place this in the clearest light.

Poland was of old, and for centuries before her fall, the standing enemy of Russia. Twice the Polish armies penetrated to the heart of her empire, and the march of Napoleon to the Kremlin had been anticipated five centuries before by the arms of the Jagellons. Austria had been delivered from Turkish invasion by John Sobieski, but neither that power nor Prussia were bound to guaranty the integrity of the Polish dominions, nor had they ever been in alliance with it for any length of time The instability of Polish policy, arising from the democratic state of its government, the perpetual vacillation of its councils, and the weakness and inefficiency of its external conduct, had for centuries been such that no lengthened or sustained operation could be expected from its forces. It remained in the midst of the military monarchies a monument of democratic madness, a prey to the most frightful internal anarchy, and unable to resist the most inconsiderable external aggression. Its situation and discord rendered it the natural prey of its more vigorous and efficient military neighbours. In combining for its partition, they effected what was on their part an atrocious act of injustice; but will ultimately prove, as Lord Brougham long ago observed, the most beneficial change for the ultimate

* Colonial Policy.