than for arrangements to be made at the international conference for the
transference of Russian troops to the west, "to preserve the sacred rights
of property and the peace of Europe"? This may seem a somewhat fantastic
supposition, yet it was precisely in this way and on grounds like these
that the Holy Alliance interfered with the internal affairs of European
countries during the second and third decade of last century, and even as
late as 1849 we have Russia, still faithful to the principles of thirty
years before, coming to the assistance of Austria in her suppression of the
liberties of Hungary. It was a healthy instinct in the English people that
led them to break up the Concert of Europe in 1818--"a system which not
only threatened the liberties of others, but might, in the language of
the orators of the Opposition, in time present the spectacle of Cossacks
encamped in Hyde Park to overawe the House of Commons";[1] and, if the
prevailing "internationalism" has not quite blinded their eyes to-day,
they will scrutinise with the greatest possible care any new proposals to
re-erect the Concert of Europe as a permanent and authoritative tribunal.
What the world needs at present is more nationalism and more democracy. And
it is only after these two great nineteenth-century movements have worked
themselves out to the full, at least on the continent of Europe, that
mankind will be able safely to make experiments towards the realisation of
the third and crowning principle, the principle of a European Commonwealth.

[Footnote 1: _Cambridge Modern History_, vol. x. p. 16.]

[Illustration: EUROPE IN 1815]

The national problems which the Congress of Vienna bequeathed to posterity
may be seen at a glance by looking at a political map of Europe in 1815.
The entire centre of the Continent from Ostend to Palermo, and from
Königsberg to Constantinople, was left a political chaos. And it is not too