CO-OPERATION OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE. 267

France was the only country which incurred expense by arming in behalf of the new State. It was a French army which at the end of the year 1832 besieged the citadel of Antwerp, which, after ceding the town, the sulky Dutchman would not give up to Leopold. The siege was interesting to English artillery officers, because it exhibited the force and precision of new guns, invented by a Frenchman, which threw explosive hollow shot instead of solid balls. A French squadron at one time lay alongside an English squadron to intimidate and almost to blockade the Dutch. The combination of the two fleets was satisfactory to the lovers of peace and to the English admirers of France, though the Kentish pilots were inclined to steer the foreigners on to shoals.

In the two years of co-operation Lord Palmerston was often quick to suspect this or that Frenchman; but his uncharitable misgivings were not at the time a hindrance to joint action. Earl Grey was thought by some Londoners to be too simple, and too kind to the French; but he is known to have judged aright, and to have given confidence where it was due. It was not necessary in those years for the wearers of crowns to hug one another, or for political ladies to

war, the Powers which make a treaty are to be guided by considerations of military geography when they trace frontiers. Such a statesman as Lord Palmerston would avoid, as much as possible, both the assertion and the denial of this rule; but he would think it a somewhat less inconvenient doctrine than the ethnographical one. As the man in the fable refuses to admit that two and two make four till he knows what his adversary means to infer from the admission, so a Palmerston demurs to any general enunciation till he sees whether it will be used against his own country.

268

NEUTRALITY OF BELGIUM.

fill saloons. A few statesmen on each side of the Channel became acquainted with each other. They treated each other as gentlemen, they professed no affection; there was nothing sentimental, there was no clap-trap, in their mutual trustfulness.

Here, then, was brought about a revision of the European settlement; and whilst the character of a people and its wishes, interpreted by its natural leaders, were more respectfully considered, the right to parcel countries was still assumed to belong to the five principal Governments which had at Vienna dictated to all the lesser communities; nor was their authority found to be weakened by the growth of opinion.

The artificial State had no duties to render to any confederation or to any suzerainty. Having no colonies and few seaports, it needed no ships of war. It was declared to be endowed with an exemption which might be considered wealth; this exemption was called neutrality. This metaphysical formula of the diplomatic lawyers, when turned into something intelligible, implies that, if the French fight with the Germans, neither party may go into Belgium with arms. They may take refuge if pursued, but they must lay down their arms on crossing the frontier ; the pursuers must retire as soon as they see a Belgian gendarme. Thus far the neutrality of Belgium is no more than the neutrality of any country which is at peace with two neighbouring belligerents. But the special neutrality of Belgium goes beyond this point. Whosoever uses Belgian soil as fighting ground

SECURITY OF BELGIUM ASSURED.

269

incurs the resentment, not of Belgium only, but of the Powers which signed the treaty by which Belgium was admitted to the sisterhood of European nations. Because of this singular attribute it came to pass that, in the year 1859, when the ambition of France troubled Europe, disturbed the English revenue, and caused even Denmark to expand her army, Belgium alone was unruffled by anxiety, and spent not a franc more than usual on her soldiers. Yet it was found expedient in 1870 to reinforce the validity of the treaty by two new covenants. The Court of St. James called on France and Prussia severally to promise to let Belgium alone; and if either a French or a Prussian army had encamped on Belgian fields, England would have done her best to punish the transgressors. The two little treaties

made for that occasion ran out when that war reached its term, but the fundamental treaty is confirmed.

The obligation to defend Belgium is, perhaps, more ornamental than burdensome to Russia and to Austria, because they lie far away. To England it is a matter of importance whether Antwerp is the citadel of a small state, or an outlet for the eruptive vigour of a great state. Yet it is a tenable view that a British Minister would be not less sensitive about Holland, which is not, than about Belgium, which is, guaranteed.1

The treaty which constituted Belgium is dated November 15, 1831, about a year after the deputies came to London to call upon Lord Aberdeen and M. de Talleyrand. It was ratified by Austria and Prussia April 18, 1832, by Russia May 4, 1832. But it was not till 1839 that Holland ratified a treaty with Belgium, which quite ended the affair.

THE doctrine, that treaty obligations are strengthened by neighbourhood and weakened by difficulty of access to the countries about which promises are made, worked in the year 1831 to the advantage of the Czar Nicholas. Whilst he employed Matasiewich, one of those mischief-makers whom the Muscovite stock readily produces, to hamper, in London, the founders of Belgium, and whilst he used the King of Holland as a tool for vexing the democratic Monarch of the French, he distracted the attention of the liberal Western nations from his own affairs and, when they were more at leisure, he was, by the fortune of war, released from the necessity of taking their remonstrances seriously; for they were far off.

The Polish troops mutinied against the King of Poland, who was also Emperor of Russia, in 1830. Many educated Poles rebelled. A sufficient body of the common people went with the officers and the noblemen. The grievances which provoked the insurrection had affected the gentry; their consciousness of superiority to the upper classes of Russia, their disappointment about the restoration of Poland with her dependencies, their sympathy with the Latin Church and with the French aristocracy, gave fuel to the spark of popular excitement which fell from the beacon-fire of the July Revolution. They had for fifteen years gone through parliamentary processes in conformity with the articles of a constitution

granted by Alexander their Russian King, who, when he bound himself and his heirs to this compact with the Poles, was fulfilling a solemn promise made at Vienna. If the Polish gentry had been blessed with political families they could have used the two chambers of their Diet as vehicles and engines of legality.

But they had not, even before the intrigues of France and the rapacity of the three Germans, Frederick, Catherine, and Maria Theresa, ruined their independence, evinced any capacity for getting, or executing, justice; and without this capacity a body of privileged families does not make a nation worth saving. If noblemen stipulate only for themselves, if they despise the tillers of the soil and the carriers of wares, if being Christians they persist through modern times in trampling on Jews, they deserve to be subject to the clerks, the policemen, and the colonels who, at the worst, go by some rules of uniformity. The Poles had a lively sense of race, and were indignant when subjected to Muscovites ; but they had not, when free from Muscovites, done justice to another race, the Ruthenians of the borderland. They could not bear to be deprived by the

1 One of the few things worth knowing, that can be found in the Middle Ages of England, is that the Barons, when they forced King John to a covenant, made terms for the peasants as well as their own class, and had regard to the interests of traders.

2 These were sometimes called Russians; those who thus use the word Russian are excluding the Muscovites. When the Polish Diet, before the partitions, ruled Poland, the Ruthenians asked through deputies whether they were not 'members' of the Polish body; they were answered thus: 'You are, no doubt, members; but, like hair and nails, you want cutting now and then.'