The Sun.
London, England, 1867-03-25 00:00:00

The Reconstruction of Europ'_..

The following article is from the pen of the Ame-
riean historian John C. S. Abbott, and is the first
of a series written for our contemporary the Anglo-
American Times :

The great question which engrosses the attention
of thinking men, the world over, is that reconstruc-
tion of Europe which is now in progress, and which
nothing can avert. When the Empire of the First
NAPOLEON was overthrown by more than a million
of foreign bayonets, the Allies, having garrisoned
all the fortresses of France with foreign troops,
assembled an army of 80,000 foreigners upon the
plains of Chalon. At the signal of a gun three cheers
were given by this multitudinous throng. It was
despotism's defiant and exultant yell—the most
awful roar ever heard on earth. The thunders of
that cry reverberated through France, and fell upon
the ear of the enslaved nation as the knell of death.
The Allied Sovereigns, having crushed out the
Empire with its principle of equal rights for all men,
met in Congress at Vienna to divide out Europe
anew between them. It was their great object so
to reorganise Europe as to render it impossible for
the people any where again to rise in advocacy of
those popular rights which had been so widely pro-
claimed upon the banners of the Empire. The
Congress, taking its name from the year of its
session, 1815, was composed of a motley, discord-
ant, contentious assemblage, held together but by
the single bond of a common hatred of those
principles of equal rights for all, which NAPOLEON
had so grandly maintained in France, and which
the peoples of Europe were so eagerly coveting.
The Congress of 1815 was the most formidable
and atrocious conspiracy against the rights of hu-
manity of which we have any record. Truly does
the British Quarterly say :
" The treaties of Vienna in 1815, though the
most desperate efforts have been made by the English
diplomatists to embalm them as monuments of poli-
tical wisdom, should be got underground with all
possible despatch. For no compacts so worthless,
so wicked, so utterly subversive of the rights of
humanity are to be found in the annals of nations."

The following incident illustrates the principles
which reigned in this Congress. METTERNICH, its
presiding officer, gave a banquet. At the table the
conversation turned upon those principles of popular
equality, for the advocacy of which NAPOLEON
was then entering upon the long agony of St.
Helena. After dinner Lord CASTLEREAGH and
METTERNicn stepped out upon a balcony which
commanded an extensive view of the surrounding
country. METTERNICH pointed to the peasants, men,
women, and girls, toiling in the fields, and said,—
" Behold, my lord, the true philosophy of society—
gentlemen in the parlour, labourers in the field, and
an impassable gulf between them."
I can refer to but a few of the measures of this
Congress as a specimen of the rest. The kingdoms
of Italy, with freedom of conscience and equal rights
for all, which NAPOLEON had aided the Italian people
to establish, were overthrown, and the old and
loathsome regimes of civil and religious despotism
reinangurated. Spain was driven back into ignor-
ance and barbarism.

The Italian people, under the regeneration which
NAPOLEON had enabled them to effect, had tasted
the sweets of Governments instituted for the bene-
fit of the masses, and not for the nobles alone. As
it was certain that the Italians would be restive
under the reimposed tyranny, Italy was cut up into
fragments and parcelled out, so as to render any
rising of the people almost impossible.
Venetia and Lombardy, with a population of
nearly seven millions, were giren to an Austrian
duke, who held the population in subjection by
Austrian armies. Modena, with about five hundred
thousand inhabitants, and from which a revenue
could be extorted of about seven million of francs,
was placed under the guardianship of one of the
nephews of the Emperor FERDINAND. Parma, a
duchy of about the same size, population, and
revenue, was assigned to the EMPEROR'S daughter,
MARIA LOUISA, with Count NEIPPERG to collect
the taxes. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany, with a
population of one and a half millions, and a revenue
of twenty-five millions of francs, was placed in the
hands of the Austrian EMPEROR'S son. The nine-

teen States of the Church, with a population of
about three millions, were restored to the temporal
dominion of the Pon. The kingdom of Naples,
inhabited by seven millions of people, was surren-
dered to that hoary debauchee, FERDINAND, who
had married a daughter of the Austrian EMPEROR,
and who was as worthless a tyrant as ever sat upon
a throne.

Thus it will be seen that nearly the whole of Italy
was surrendered to Austria, and was virtually cut
up into provinces of the Austrian Empire. The
same process was pursued in all other parts of
Europe. Wherever any Governments had been
established, pervaded by those principles of equal
rights for all, which the Empire of NAPOLEON had
so nobly maintained, these Governments were over-
thrown, and the old feudal despotisms reinstated.
Years rolled on—years of feudal oppression and
the degradation of the masses. In various parts of
Europe, in Italy, Hungary, Poland, desperate
attempts were made by the people to throw off the
intolerable yoke, imposed upon them by the treaties
of 1815. But these attempts were easily crushed
by the combined armies of the Holy Allies ! In
one of these uprisings in Italy, the present Emperor
of France, with his elder brother, joined the people
in their struggle to regain their liberty. The elder
died, from the exhaustion of the campaign, in the
arms of the younger.

In 1830 the French people rose successfully, and
drove CHARLES X. from the throne upon which the
bayonets of foreigners had placed him. The remains
of NAPOLEON were now mouldering beneath the
sod at Longwood. His only son, the Duke of
REICHSTADT, had pined away and died in the
palaces of Austria. All the members of the BONA-
PARTE family were exiled from France. It was a
perilous hour, which might usher in the reign of
anarchy or of terror.
The most devoted and intelligent frfends of popu-
lar rights, men whose love of liberty cannot be
questioned, and who were intimately acquainted
with the internal condition and foreign relations of
France, did not think France prepared for the esta-
blishment of a republic. LAFAYETTE presented
LOUIS PHILIPPE to the people as the candidate for
the vacant throne.

In this eventful hour, as LAFAYETTE held the hand
of Louts PHILIPPE at the Hotel de Ville, wishing
to impress upon the new candidate for the throne
his duty to rule in the interests of the masses of the
people, and not for a privileged class alone, he said
to Louts PHILIPPE, " You know that I am a Re-
publican, and that I regard the Constitution of the
United Status as the most perfect that has ever
existed."

" I think as you do," replied Louis PHILIPPE.
" It is impossible to pass two years in the United
States, as I have done 3. and not be of that opinion.
But do you think that in the present state of France
a republic can be sustained here ?"

" No," said LAFAYETTE," that which is necessary
!or France now is a throne surrounded by Repub-
ican institutions."

" That is exactly my opinion," replied Louis
PHILIPPE.

The French people, however, were bitterly
disappointed. They hoped that the prin-
ciplu of the NapolLonie Empire would per-
vade the monarchy, and that the Govern-