Russia has long looked to the dismemberment of Turkey, as affording the opportunity of her own most valuable aggrandisement; Austria is eager to obtain possession of the Sclavonian provinces bordering her own territories, and adjacent to Italy, her favourite object; France, connected with the Mediterranean, and desirous of acquiring the advantages of commerce, looks with hope and expectation to the independence of Greece; and Great Britain, interested, generally, in the protection of commerce, and, specially, in the maintenance of her own maritime importance, must regard, with anxious apprehension, every power which should seek to ob tain a predominance in a country so favourably situated for maritime purposes. Here, then, is a country, in which Russia seeks to magnify her already vast dominion, and where Austria, France, and Great Britain, have each a direct and urgent interest in restraining and moderating her encroachments. Here, therefore,

we may conclude, the political interests of these great powers will, in some manner or other, be brought to an adjustment, and a regular and efficient combination of federative policy be at length constituted.

In the succession of a new confederacy of policy to that which perished in the wars of the French revolution, and, indeed, had even previously lost the principles of its combination, it might be expected by those who believe in the improvement of mankind, that something more perfect should be discoverable. This, at least, we may perceive in the case which we are contemplating. By the barrier treaty, the Spanish Netherlands served, indeed, as a connecting link to bind together the interests of the powers confederated against France, but to this combination the interest of those provinces themselves was sacrificed, for they were by that treaty precluded from maritime commerce. If, in the new political order, the independence and consequent prosperity of Greece should be the political bond, no such sacrifice would be made, but Europe would find its common advantage in the highest improvement of the very country to which it should be indebted for the combination of its international policy. Another important advantage, also, might perhaps result from such an arrangement. The country of adjustment, if the expression may be allowed, would not in this case be placed in the centre of the system, as in the arrangement constituted by the barrier treaty, but would be an exterior state, so that the agitations, to which the adjustment might occasionally be exposed, would not necessarily convulse the entire system. An invasion of the Netherlands, in the former system, would unavoidably have produced a general commotion throughout Europe; but hostilities commenced by any power in Greece, however destructive of the general equilibrium, would not be felt by any of the confederating

powers

powers as a blow struck at its own security and separate independence.

Let it not then be imagined, that the interest of Great Britain requires her to maintain at all events the dominion of Turkey, and thus to link her fortune with the permanence of Ottoman barbarism. It is the true interest of Great Britain, that an orderly combination of governments should be formed which should guarantee the independence of all. This is the honourable object for which she has struggled in the conflicts of war; this is likewise the object for which she should struggle in the negotiations of peace, or the long struggle of war would have been maintained in vain. But this object is not attained by the governments of Europe in their present state of incoherence, in which no two states can be said to have any common interest, or any determinate relation. The purpose, for which the dominion of France was overthrown, is not yet accomplished. Europe is independent, but that independence has no guarantee of its continuance. The deliverance of Greece, by giving occasion to a combination of three great powers for its protection, may furnish this guarantee, and thus complete the arrangement of the policy of Europe.

We have not, therefore, any reason to consider the aggrandisement of Russia, which might be the result of interference in the concerns of Turkey, as necessarily prejudicial to the interests of the British empire. If this aggrandisement should be balanced by a reciprocal adjustment of interests, why should it be prejudicial to any one state? The interest of Great Britain, in particular, is that other nations should be independent and prosperous; and the independence and prosperity of nations are best protected by the reciprocal adjustments of a balanced policy, which secure to each the prompt assistance of others, as they are connected by a common interest in some collective arrangement. In the present state of Europe, no state can be said to have any certain means of defence beyond its own separate power, because there is not any combined system of political interests on which it can rely for assistance; it may form an alliance, as an emergency may render it necessary, but it is not previously assured of receiving support, in virtue of an existing confederacy of nations, actuated by a sense of a common interest, and forward to avert any danger by which any of them might be menaced. By entering into a new arrangement, of which the independence of Greece should be the object, the British empire would receive advantage, first, as a commercial nation, from this augmentation of the general prosperity of Europe; and, secondly, as the guardian of the general security, in a combined adjustment of the political interests of the great governments of Europe.

No reflecting man can believe that, amidst the general progress

of

of human improvement, the fine countries of Europe, which are comprehended in the Turkish empire, can long remain in their present barbarism and wretchedness. Let not a subject of the British government believe that this empire has a real interest in the perpetuation of abuses so grievous. It seems to be the high function of our government to present to other nations the model of their political improvement, as it had previously maintained for them that independence without which improvement must be sought in vain. The faith of treaties should, indeed, be respected, but this is a distinct consideration. The question now considered is, not whether we should disregard the obligation of existing treaties, but whether we should so firmly attach ourselves to the present order of things, that we should see no safety in a change which might raise up a people of Christians into the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty. It is not the duty of our government to agitate other countries by instigating them to speculative changes; but neither can it be our duty, or our interest, to link our fortune with abuses because they exist, and to oppose ourselves to a progressive improvement, which seems to be the characteristic of the moral government of God. For ourselves, if the independence of Greece were secured by a confederacy of Austria, France, and Great Britain, we should not entertain any apprehension on account of any aggrandisement which political events might confer upon Russia in another part of the Turkish empire.

It most fortunately happens, that the question concerning Greece may probably be settled without involving the Christian governments of Europe in any considerable hostilities. The sanguinary and protracted struggle with France is too recent in recollection, and the burdens, which it has imposed, are still too heavily oppressive, to suffer those governments to be forward in committing their interests to the dread arbitrement of war. In such circumstances, it may well be hoped that their relative pretensions may be peaceably adjusted by negotiation; and that a new and more perfect system of federative policy may be quietly constructedmore perfect, as comprehending, in a single combination, the interests of all the great governments of Europe, without sacrificing the prosperity of any territory to the advantage of others, and, also as, on that very account, less liable to be destroyed by the operation of those changes which time must introduce into all the combinations of human wisdom. Nor can it fail to inspire general hope and confidence of a favourable termination for the impending or incipient crisis, both here and elsewhere, that the interests of England are placed, on such a momentous occasion, under the guidance of such an eye and arm as we now see at the helm of the state.

ART.

ART. VIII.-Chronological History of the West Indies. By Capt. Thomas Southey, Commander, Royal Navy. 3 vols. 1827. THIS is the unpretending work of a seaman, collected, as he

tells us, out of authors both ancient and modern, with great care and diligence,' and arranged in the manner best suited to so broken a subject-the plan comprehending the whole of the Columbian islands; for, as they belong to different European powers, and as some even of those, which are subject to the same crown, have little or no connexion with each other, there is no other natural or convenient order, wherein their history can be composed, than that which a chronological series offers.' They are chronicles which, it might be thought, neither Spaniard, nor French, nor Englishman, could contemplate without some emotions of shame for his country, and humiliation for his kind: so much violence, so much cruelty, so much injustice are recorded there, with so little to relieve the melancholy register. Were the history of Spain, and France, and Great Britain to perish, as that of the great early monarchies of the world has perished, and only these colonial annals, for these three centuries which have elapsed since the discovery of the islands, to be saved from the wreck, what opinion could posterity form of the three nations, as to the degree of civilization which they had attained, their policy, their religion, and their arts! But, however little there may be to ennoble this portion of history, the subject is not without an interest of its own, and more especially at this time.

The discovery of America was an event of which the great importance was immediately apprehended. A new world was opened to imagination and enterprise; the ambitious looked thither to the conquest of kingdoms, and the rapacious to their plunder; science, imperfect as it was, had its votaries then as well as now, who cheerfully encountered any difficulties and dangers in the pursuit of knowledge; and if, among the ministers of religion, there were some who made their profession a cloak for cupidity and cruelty, there were others who went and laboured faithfully in the Lord's vineyard, with a Christian temper and a Christian heroism which might more than compensate for the errors of their corrupted faith. Thoughtful men who, from their quiet studies, regarded the affairs of the world with a deeper interest than is felt by those that are actively engaged in it, were moved to tears* when they looked to the indefinite prospects that seemed opening upon man

kind.

Peter Martyr, writing to Pomponius Lætus, says: ' Præ lætitiá prosiliisse te, vixque à lachrymis præ gaudio temperasse, quando literas adspexisti meas, quibus de antipodum VOL. XXXVIII. NO. LXXV.

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kind. Indefinite they might well appear, for it was a world of wonders that had been found, where veteran soldiers went in search of a fountain which should restore them to youth, and Columbus himself believed that he had approached the terrestrial paradisethat the body of fresh water in which he found himself, when in the Bocas del Dragon, came from the garden of Eden (the river Pison, he would suppose it to be, which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good'); and, although he despaired of ascending so high, was perhaps not without a hope that he might come within sight of the cherubim's flaming sword.

A very able and eloquent writer,* whose work we have already recommended to the notice of our readers, has recently argued, that the work of planting the nations was not performed when the earth was full of inhabitants, but, on the contrary, when it was a comparative void; not by nations whose numbers were the greatest, but the fewest and most scattered: in ages of ignorance or in times of strife and oppression; and that, as the population of the different nations has increased, the necessity of these wanderings has diminished.' There is some confusion here, both with regard to Scriptural and later history. It is true that the earth was comparatively a void, when it was divided in the days of Peleg; but that was not an age of ignorance, for primal truths retained the freshness of their impress upon the heart of man, and the righteous lived in the light and sunshine of a visible dispensation. The visible characters of this great book of nature,' says Jackson of Newcastle, were of old more legible, the external significations of Divine Power more sensible and apter to imprint their meaning—both purposely fitted to the disposition of the world's non-age.' And, in later times, the author seems not to distinguish between the migratory movements of barbarian hordes, or armed nations, and the colonial settlements of civilized states. Whether Egypt sent out colonies to India, or was itself colonized from thence, is a question which there seems little hope that M. Champollion or Dr. Young will be enabled to decide; but, in either case, the colonizers were not an ignorant race. In a later age, when the history of colonization begins, colonies

orbe latenti hactenus, te certiorem feci, mi suavissime Pomponi, insinuasti. Ex tuis ipse literis colligo quod senseris. Sensisti autem, tantique rem fecisti, quanti virum summá doctrina insignitum decuit. Quis namque cibus sublimibus præstari potest ingeniis isto suavior? quod condimentum gratius? à me facio conjecturam. Beari sentio spiritus

meos, quando aceitos alloquor prudentes aliquos ex his qui ab eá redeunt provincia. Implicent animos pecuniarum cumulis augendis miseri avari; libidinibus obscœni; nostras nos mentes, postquam Deo pleni aliquandiu fuerimus, contemplando, hujuscemodi rerum notitia demulceamus.-Epist. clii.

* Mr. Sadler, in his treatise upon Ireland: its Evils and their Remedies.'

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