The robbed have all the time loudly protested, by
words, deeds, sufferings, and sacrifice of their lives, against the
compact of the robbers. Yet, forsooth, we are still told that the
treaties of 1815 are inviolable. Why, I have heard it reported that
England rang with a merry peal when the stern inward judge, conscience,
led the hand of Castlereagh to suicide; and shall we, in 1859, be
offered the sight of England plunging into the incalculable calamities
of a great war for no better purpose than to uphold the accursed work
of the Castlereaghs, and from no better motive than to keep the House
of Austria safe?
"Inviolable treaties, indeed. Why, my lord, the forty-four years that
have since passed have riddled those treaties like a sieve. The
Bourbons, whom they restored to the throne of France, have vanished,
and the Bonapartes, whom they proscribed, occupy the place of the
Bourbons on the throne of France. And how many changes have not been
made in the state of Europe, in spite of those 'inviolable treaties'?
Two of these changes--the transformation of Switzerland from a
confederation of states into a confederated state, and the independence
of Belgium--have been accomplished to the profit of liberty. But for
the rest, the distinctive features through which those treaties have
passed is this, that every poor plant of freedom which they had spared
has been uprooted by the unsparing hand of despotism.
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