Of all the countries in Europe, Germany presents, at this 
moment, the most curious, the most intricate, and the most 
lamentable spectacle. The real state of German affairs will be best 
understood from a simple juxtaposition of two facts, the recent 
meeting of the German National Association at Coburg, and the 
impending meeting of the principal German princes at Warsaw. *” 
While the former aspires to the unification of the fatherland, by 
abandoning German Austria and confiding in Prussia, the Regent 
of Prussia* himself rests his prospects of resistance against French 
aggression upon the restoration of the Holy Alliance under 
Russian auspices. Russian foreign policy, as is well known, does 
not care one straw for principles, in the common meaning of the 
term. It is neither legitimist nor revolutionary, but improves all 
opportunities of territorial! aggrandizement with the same facility, 
whether they be obtained by siding with insurgent peoples or with 
struggling princes. In regard to Germany, it has become the 
invariable policy of Russia to shift sides. She first combines with 
France, in order to break the resistance of Austria to her Oriental 
schemes, and then sides with Germany in order to enfeeble France 
and draw a bill upon German gratitude, to be discounted on the 
Vistula or the Danube. In the progress of a European complica- 
tion, she will always prefer a coalition with the German princes to 
an alliance with the French upstarts, for the simple reason that her 
real force consists in her diplomatic superiority, and not in her 
material power. A war with Germany, her immediate neighbor, 
springing from an alliance with France, would reveal the real 

impotency of the Northern Colossus; while in a war with France, 
Russia must, from her geographical position, always form the 
reserve, forcing Germany to do the real work, and keeping in 
store for herself the fruits of the victory. Coalesced empires 
resemble in this point the different corps of an army. The 
vanguard and the center have to bear the decisive shock, but the 
reserve decides the battle and carries the day. German dreamers 
may flatter themselves with the delusive hope that Russia, while 
laboring under the high pressure of an internal social struggle, in 
the emancipation movement, will for once give the lie to 
Karamzin, the Russian historian’s maxim that Russian foreign 
policy never changes. 

It has been presumed that an immense empire, distracted by a 
struggle of classes, and distressed by a financial crisis, would be 
but too glad to let Europe alone; but then the real nature of the 
Russian internal movement has been misunderstood. Whatever 
may have been his real intentions, it is no more possible for a 
benevolent Czar* to conciliate the abolition of serfdom with the 
continuance of his own autocracy than it proved for a benevolent 
Pope,? in 1848, to reconcile Italian unity with the vital conditions 
of the Papacy. Simple as the phrase of Russian serf emancipation 
sounds, it implies meanings the most different and aspirations the 
most contradictory. The vail that, in the beginning of the 
movement, was thrown, by a kind of general enthusiasm, over the 
conflicting tendencies, must necessarily be torn asunder, so soon as 
steps are taken to proceed from the verbal to the real. Serf 
emancipation, in the sense of the Czar, amounted to the 
destruction of the last checks still restraining the Imperial 
autocracy. On the one hand the relative independence of the 
nobles, resting upon their uncontrolled sway over the majority of 
the Russian people, would have been removed; on the other hand, 
the self-administration of the rural serf communities, based on 
their common property in the enslaved soil, would have been 
broken up by the Government scheme which aimed at the 
abolition of the “communist” principle. Such was serf emancipa- 
tion as understood by the Central Government. The nobles, in 
their turn—that is to say, that influential portion of the Russian 
aristocracy which despaired of maintaining the old state of 
things—had made up their minds to grant the emancipation of 
the serfs on two conditions: monetary indemnity, converting the 

peasants from their serfs into their mortgagees, so that, so far as 
material interests go, nothing would have been changed, for two 
or three generations at least, save the form of servitude—its 
patriarchal form being supplanted by its civilized form. Beside this 
indemnity to be paid by the serfs, they wanted another indemnity 
to be paid by the State. For the local power over their serfs, which 
they declared themselves ready to surrender, they wanted to make 
up by political power to be wrested from the Central Government, 
investing them in substance with a constitutional share in the 
general management of the empire. 

Lastly, the serfs themselves preferred the simplest formula of 
the emancipation question. What they understood by it was the old 
state of things, minus their old landlords. In this mutual strife, 
where the Government, despite menaces and cajoling, split upon 
the opposition of the nobles and the peasants—the aristocracy 
upon the opposition of the Government and of their human 
chattels, the peasantry upon the combined opposition of their 
central lord and their local lords—an understanding, as is usual in 
such transactions, has been arrived at between the existing powers 
at the cost of the oppressed class. The Government and the 
aristocracy have agreed together to shelve the emancipation 
question for the present, and to again try their hands at foreign 
adventures. Hence the secret understanding with Louis Bonaparte 
in 1859°***, and the official congress at Warsaw with the German 
princes in 1860. The Italian war had sufficiently broken the 
self-reliance of Austria to transform her from an obstacle into a 
tool of the Russian schemes of foreign policy, and Prussia, which 
had made a fool of herself by combining, during the continuance 
of the war, the airs of ambitious perfidy with an utter nullity of 
action, cannot, threatened as she is by France on her Rhenish 
frontiers, but follow in the wake of Austria. It was one of the great 
delusions of the Gotha party **” to fancy that the blows Austria was 
likely to receive on the part of France would dissolve her into her 
constituent parts, so that Austrian Germany, disconnected from its 
ties with Italy, Poland, and Hungary, might easily enter into the 
formation of one great German empire. A_ long _ historical 
experience has shown us that every war which Austria may have to 
wage with France or Russia would not free Germany from her 
weight, but only make her subservient to the schemes of France or 
Russia. To break her up into her constituent parts by one great 
blow, would be bad policy on the part of those Powers, if they 
were possessed of the force to strike the blow; but to enfeeble 
Austria, in order to turn its remaining influence to their own 

account, was and must always be the main object of their 
diplomatic and military operations. Nothing but a German 
revolution, with one of its centers at Vienna and the other at 
Berlin, could shatter to pieces the Hapsburg empire, without 
endangering the integrity of Germany, and without subjecting its 
non-German dominions to French or Russian control. 

The impending Warsaw Congress would immensely strengthen 
Louis Bonaparte’s position in France, if the prospect of a conflict 
in Italy between the truly national party and the French party did 
not spoil his opportunity. As it is, one must hope that the Warsaw 
Congress will at last open the eyes of Germany, and teach her that 
either to withstand encroachments from without or realize unity 
and liberty at home, she must clear her own house of its dynastic 

landlords.