ess of the greatest
statesman to the infinite and unlooked-for combinations of things which
lie hid in the dark prolific womb of futurity! The great trunk of
Bourbon is cut down; the withered branch is worked up into the
construction of a French Regicide Republic. Here we have formed a new,
unlooked-for, monstrous, heterogeneous alliance,--a double-natured
monster, republic above and monarchy below. There is no centaur of
fiction, no poetic satyr of the woods, nothing short of the hieroglyphic
monsters of Egypt, dog in head and man in body, that can give an idea of
it. None of these things can subsist in Nature (so, at least, it is
thought); but the moral world admits monsters which the physical
rejects.
In this metamorphosis, the first thing done by Spain, in the honey-moon
of her new servitude, was, with all the hardihood of pusillanimity,
utterly to defy the most solemn treaties with Great Britain and the
guaranty of Europe. She has yielded the largest and fairest part of one
of the largest and fairest islands in the West Indies, perhaps on the
globe, to the usurped powers of France. She completes the title of those
powers to the whole of that important central island of Hispaniola. She
has solemnly surrendered to the regicides and butchers of the Bourbon
family what that court never ventured, perhaps never wished, to bestow
on the patriarchal stock of her own august house.
The noble negotiator takes no notice of this portentous junction and
this audacious surrender. The effect is no less than the total
subversion of the balance of power in the West Indies, and indeed
everywhere else. This arrangement, considered in itself, but much more
as it indicates a complete union of France with Spain, is truly
alarming. Does he feel nothing of the change this makes in that part of
his description of the state of France where he supposes her not able to
face one of our detached squadrons? Does he feel nothing for the
condition of Portugal under this new coalition? Is it for this state of
things he recommends our junction in that common alliance as a remedy?
It is surely already monstrous enough. We see every standing principle
of policy, every old governing opinion of nations, completely gone, and
with it the foundation of all their establishments. Can Spain keep
herself internally where she is, with this connection? Does he dream
that Spain, unchristian, or even uncatholic, can exist as a monarchy?
This author indulges him
|