The act of the Congress of Vienna remains the eternal monument of their
diplomatic knowledge and political sagacity. Their capital feats were the
creation of two kingdoms, both of which are already erased from the map of
Europe. They made no single preparation for the inevitable, almost
impending, conjunctures of the East. All that remains of the pragmatic
arrangements of the mighty Congress of Vienna is the mediatisation of the
petty German princes.

But the settlement of Europe by the pseudo-Tories was the dictate of
inspiration compared with their settlement of England. The peace of Paris
found the government of this country in the hands of a body of men of whom
it is no exaggeration to say that they were ignorant of every principle of
every branch of political science. So long as our domestic administration
was confined merely to the raising of a revenue, they levied taxes with
gross facility from the industry of a country too busy to criticise or
complain. But when the excitement and distraction of war had ceased, and
they were forced to survey the social elements that surrounded them, they
seemed, for the first time, to have become conscious of their own
incapacity. These men, indeed, were the mere children of routine. They
prided themselves on being practical men. In the language of this defunct
school of statesmen, a practical man is a man who practises the blunders
of his predecessors.

Now commenced that Condition-of-England Question of which our generation
hears so much. During five-and-twenty years every influence that can
develop the energies and resources of a nation had been acting with
concentrated stimulation on the British Isles. National peril and national
glory; the perpetual menace of invasion, the continual triumph of
conquest; the most extensive foreign commerce that was ever conducted by a