war commenced in Aragon, Catalonia, and An- | organized under the name of the Sacrea Band dalusia, and Spanish blood soon dyed every part of the Peninsula. The crisis which this induced at Madrid, which finally laid the throne prostrate at the feet of the Revolutionists, 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.

"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 inflammatory 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.

Many generals presented themselves, also offering their services and their swords; among this number were Ballasteros and Riego.

"Negotiations and indecision continued for six days, during which the two parties remained constantly encamped, notwithstanding the tropical sun of the dogdays, venting re proaches 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. The

"At length the attack commenced. divisions of the guard at a distance from Madrid, 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 invasion 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 | Revolution, it was said, were owing to their of the park would have rendered all resistance volatile and unstable character, and the pecuimpossible. 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.

liar combination of events which preceded its breaking out. The Spanish Revolution, notwithstanding their grave and thoughtful national character, and a totally different chain of previous events, exhibited, till it was cut short by French bayonets, exactly the same features and progress. Recent experience leaves it but too doubtful, whether, in the sober and calculating realm of England, similar passions are not in the end destined to produce similar effects.

"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 is the delusion which the revolutionary party, the palace; the regular soldiers soon obtained by means of a false and deceitful press, spread a formidable auxiliary; this was a band com- over the world in regard to all the transactions posed of men without name, without charac-in which their projects are concerned. We ier; adventurers and enthusiasts, who were put it to the candour of every one of our read

ers, whetner the facts now detailed do not put in an entirely different point of view from any in which they had yet considered it, the Spanish Revolution? Certainly these facts were utterly unknown to us, not the least vigilant observers of continental transactions, and the march of revolution in the adjoining states. The truth is, that what Jefferson long ago said of the American, has become true of the European press; events are so utterly distorted, falsehoods are so unblushingly put forth, hostile facts are so sedulously suppressed, that it is utterly impossible from the public journals to gather the least idea of what they really are, if they have the slightest connection with revolutionary ambition. Till the false light of newspapers has ceased, and the steady light | of history begins, no reliance whatever can be placed on the public accounts, even of the most notorious transactions.

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

nish Revolution; the speech of Mr. Brougham, on the opening of the session of Parliament in February, 1823, still resounds in our ears We were told, and we believed, that the Spanish constitution conferred upon the people of the Peninsula moderated freedom; that the cause of liberty was at stake; and that unless we interfered, it would be trampled down under the bayonets of the Holy Alliance. And what is the fact as now proved by historical documents? Why, that it was the cause of Pure Democracy which we were thus called on to support; of universal suffrage, Jacobin clubs, and a furious press; of revolutionary confiscation, democratic anarchy, and unbridled injustice; of the most desolating of tyrannies, the most ruinous of despotisms. Such is the darkness, the thick and impenetrable darkness, in which we are kept in regard to 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.

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 effecting 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 as sembled, 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 inde of 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, Disgraceful as these proceedings are to the was to have wafted over that great commander national honour and integrity of England; from the banks of the Scheldt to the opposite far as they have lowered its ancient flag beshore of Essex, at the head of the veterans neath the degradation it ever reached in the who had been trained in the Dutch war. In darkest days of national disaster, their impolicy an evil hour, Charles II., bought by French is, if possible, still more conspicuous. Flangold and seduced by French mistresses, enter- ders, originally the instructor, has in every age ed into alliance with Louis XIV. for the co- been the rival of England in manufactures; ercion of Holland; the Lilies and the Leopards, Holland, being entirely a commercial state, the navies of France and England, assembled and depending for its existence upon the cartogether at Spithead, and made sail for the rying trade, has in every age been her friend. French coast, while the armies of the Grande The interest of these different states has led to Monarque advanced across the Rhine into the this opposite policy, and must continue to do heart of the United Provinces. The conse- so, until a total revolution in the channels of quence was, such a prodigious addition to the commerce takes place. Flanders, abounding power of France, as it took all the blood and with coal, with capital, with great cities, and treasure expended in the war of the Succession | a numerous and skilful body of artisans, has and all the victories of Marlborough, to reduce from the earliest dawn of European history, to a scale at all commensurate with the inde- been conspicuous for her manufactures; Hol pendence of the other European states. Mr. land, without any advantages for the fabricatPitt, how adverse soever to engage in a war ing of articles, but immense for their transwith republican France, was driven to it by port, has, from the establishment of Dutch the advance of the tricolour standard to the independence, been the great carrier of EuScheldt, and the evident danger which threat- rope. She feels no jealousy of English maened English independence from the posses-nufactures, because she has none to compete sion of its fortresses by the French armies; with them; she feels the greatest disposition and the event soon proved the wisdom of his to receive the English goods, because all foresight. The surrender of the Low Coun- those which are sent to her add to the riches tries, arising from the insane demolition of its of the United Provinces. Belgium, on the fortresses by the Emperor Joseph, soon brought other hand, is governed by a body of manuthe French armies to Amsterdam; twenty facturers, who are imbued with a full proporyears of bloody and destructive war; the tion of that jealousy of foreign competition slaughter of millions, and the contraction of which is so characteristic in all countries of eight hundred millions of debt by this country, that profession., Hence, the Flemish ports followed the victorious march of the French | have always been as rigorously closed as the armies to the banks of the Scheldt; while Dutch were liberally opened to British manuseventeen years of unbroken rest, a glorious factures; and at this moment, not only are the peace, and the establishment of the liberties duties on the importation of British goods of Europe upon a firm basis, immediately suc-greatly higher in Flanders than they are in ceeded 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.

.

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 bur dens. 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 weak rival 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 provinces. The iron forgers of Liege, the woollen manufacturers or cotton operatives of Ghent or Bruges, will never consent to the free importation of the cutlery of Birmingham, the woollen cloths of Yorkshire, the muslins of Glasgow, or the cotton goods of Manchester. But no such jealousy is, or ever will be, felt by the merchants of Amsterdam, the carriers of Rotterdam, or the shipmasters of Flushing. Flanders always has been, and always will desire to be, incorporated with France, in order that her manufactures may feel the vivifying influence of the great home market of that populous country; Holland always has been, and always will desire to be, in alliance with England, in order that her commerce may experience the benefit of a close connection with the great centre of the foreign trade of the world.

the side of revolution, and load patriotism with obloquy when it is exerted in defence of regulated freedom. We are confident that the British seamen under any circumstances will do their duty, and we do not see how Holland can resist the fearful odds which are brought against her; but recollecting that there is a moral government of nations, that there is a God who governs the world, and that the sins of the fathers, in nations as well as individuals, will be visited upon the children, we tremble to think of its consequences, and conscientiously believe that such a triumph may ultimately prove a blacker day for England, than if the army of Wellington had been dispersed in the forest of Soignies, or the fleet of Nelson swallowed up in the waves of Trafalgar.

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.

What is chiefly astonishing, and renders it painfully apparent that revolutionary ambition has produced its usual effect in confounding Every one practically acquainted with these and undermining all the moral feelings of manmatters, knows that Holland is at this moment kind in this country, is the perfect indifference almost the only inlet which continental jea-with which the partition of Holland is regarded lousy will admit for British manufactures to by all the Movement party, as contrasted with the continent of Europe. The merchants of the unmeasured lamentations with which they London know whether they can obtain a ready have made the world resound for the partition vent for their manufactures in the ports of of Poland. Yet if the matter be impartially France or the harbours of Flanders. The ex-considered, it will be found that our conduct port 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 Bri- Poland was of old, and for centuries before tish importation, afforded by the commercial her fall, the standing enemy of Russia. Twice interests of the Dutch, our manufactures would the Polish armies penetrated to the heart of her be well nigh excluded from the continent of empire, and the march of Napoleon to the Europe. The Scheldt, when guarded by Kremlin had been anticipated five centuries French batteries, and studded with republican before by the arms of the Jagellons. Austria sails, may become the great artery of Euro- had been delivered from Turkish invasion by pean, but unquestionably it will not be of Eng-John Sobieski, but neither that power nor lish commerce. The great docks of Antwerp Prussia were bound to guaranty the integrity may be amply filled with the tricolour flag; of the Polish dominions, nor had they ever but they will see but few of the British pen- been in alliance with it for any length of time dants. In allying ourselves with the Belgians, The instability of Polish policy, arising from we are seeking to gain the friendship of our the democratic state of its government, the natural rivals, and to strengthen what will perpetual vacillation of its councils, and the soon become a province of our hereditary weakness and inefficiency of its external conenemies; in alienating the Dutch, we are duct, had for centuries been such that no losing our long-established customers, and lengthened or sustained operation could be exweakening the state, which, in every age, has pected from its forces. It remained in the been felt to be the outwork of British inde- midst of the military monarchies a monument pendence. 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

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

* Colonial Policy

nappiness of its people, by forcibly repressing | nary robber, they have superadded the abandontheir democratical passions, and turning its ment of a friend and the partiality of a judge. wild but heroic spirit into the channels of It is this lamentable combination of unprincipled regulated and useful patriotism. In dividing qualities, which makes our conduct in this Poland, the three powers incurred the guilt of transaction the darkest blot on our annals, and robbers who plunder a caravan, which, from will ultimately render the present era one for internal divisions, is unable to defend itself; which posterity will have more cause to blush Austria was guilty of black ingratitude in than for that when John surrendered his doassailing her former deliverer; but Russia minions to the Papal legate, or Charles gifted violated no oaths, broke no engagements, be- away to French mistresses the honour and the trayed no treachery-she never owed any thing integrity of England. to Poland-she was her enemy from first to last, and conquered her as such. We attempt no vindication of this aggression; it was the work of ruthless violence, alike to be stigmatized in a monarchical as a republican power. We observe only how Providence overrules even human iniquity to purposes finally beneficent.