ction to the
Government. The landed nobility, whose entire income consisted in
feudal revenues of all sorts, could not but support a Government which
proved their only protection against that down-trodden class of serfs
upon whose spoils they lived; and whenever the less wealthy portion of
them, as in Galicia, in 1846, rose in opposition against the
Government, Metternich in an instant let loose upon them these very
serfs, who at any rate profited by the occasion to wreak a terrible
vengeance upon their more immediate oppressors. On the other hand, the
large capitalists of the Exchange were chained to Metternich's
Government by the vast share they had in the public funds of the
country. Austria, restored to her full power in 1815 restoring and
maintaining in Italy Absolute Monarchy ever since 1820, freed from
part of her liabilities by the bankruptcy of 1810, had, after the
peace, very soon re-established her credit in the great European money
markets; and in proportion as her credit grew, she had drawn against
it. Thus all the large European money-dealers had engaged considerable
portions of their capital in the Austrian funds; they all of them were
interested in upholding the credit of that country, and as Austrian
public credit, in order to be upheld, ever required new loans, they
were obliged from time to time to advance new capital in order to keep
up the credit of the securities for that which they already had
advanced. The long peace after 1815, and the apparent impossibility of
a thousand years old empire, like Austria, being upset, increased the
credit of Metternich's Government in a wonderful ratio, and made it
even independent of the good will of the Vienna bankers and
stock-jobbers; for as long as Metternich could obtain plenty of money
at Frankfort and Amsterdam, he had, of course, the satisfaction of
seeing the Austrian capitalists at his feet. They were, besides, in
every other respect at his mercy; the large profits which bankers,
stock-jobbers, and Government contractors always contrive to draw out
of an absolute monarchy, were compensated for by the almost unlimited
power which the Government possessed over their persons and fortunes;
and not the smallest shadow of an opposition was, therefore, to be
expected from this quarter. Thus Metternich was sure of the support of
the two most powerful and influential classes of the empire, and he
possessed besides an army and a bureaucracy, which for all purposes