Are thine within thy pearly dwelling,- Obedience, perfect, simple, glad, and free, To the great will that animates the sea.'-pp. 57, 58. We are not less pleased with an address To certain Golden Fishes:' 'Restless forms of living light Or of the shade of golden flowers, As As gladly earnest in your play, And while your forms are gaily shining, Nay-but still I fain would dream That ye are happy as ye seem.'-pp. 113, 114. We conclude with another of his sonnets: it is inscribed To a lofty Beauty, from her poor Kinsman : Fair maid, had I not heard thy baby cries, Whose gentleness gave grace to so much pride- Old times unqueen thee, and old loves endear thee.' p. 34. The Beauty must, we think, be cold as well as lofty, if these delicious lines did not reach her heart, It is an old saying, that the oakling withers beneath the shadow of the oak; and perhaps had it been the happier destiny of this lady's 'poor kinsman' to spend his early manhood under the same roof with the 'father and bard revered' to whom he dedicates his little book, we should never have been called upon to announce a second English poet of the name of Coleridge. If he will drop somewhat of that overweening worship of Wordsworth which is so visible in many of these pages-so offensively prominent in the longest piece they contain and rely, as our extracts show he is thoroughly entitled to do, solely upon himself, we are not afraid to say that we shall expect more at his hands than from any one who has made his first appearance subsequent to the death of Byron. ART. ART. X.-1. Reflections on the Domestic and Foreign Policy of Great Britain since the War. By a British Merchant. 1833. 2. Letter to Viscount Palmerston respecting the Relations of England and Portugal. By William Walton. 1830. 3. A Second Letter to Lord Palmerston. By William Walton. 1831. 4. A Reply to the Exposé des Droits de S. M. Donna Maria. 1832. 5. Portugal; or, Who is the lawful Successor to the Throne? By a Well-wisher to the peace and independence of both Portugal and Brazil. 1831. WHEN one's own house is on fire, there is neither time nor inclination to think of the scandals and squabbles of the neighbourhood. The unhappy sufferers whose lives and property are in jeopardy, the few brave and active men who are endeavouring to check the conflagration, and the greedy crowd who are on the watch for plunder, are all too much absorbed by the urgent excitement of the moment to think of anything else: present inconveniences are unfelt-personal injuries are disregarded-petty thefts are committed with impunity-and as to remote events and future interests, they are no more thought of than the millennium. Such is, and for the last two years has been, the state of England with regard to her foreign policy. We are not so Quixotic as to hope to be able to create a different feeling; indeed, we ourselves partake too much of the general anxiety, and are too much convinced that our first and greatest danger is at home, to wish to distract the public attention from perils that are urgent and immediate to those which are eventual, and perhaps problematical: but when our external difficulties, by their number, their frequency, their magnitude, come so near and assume so fearful an aspect as to bear directly on our internal concerns, it becomes a duty-even at the risk of being, like the patriot prophetess of Troy, disregarded-to warn our fellowcitizens that, in addition to our domestic enemies, we are beset by foreign dangers; and that our worst antagonists are not our open adversaries, but the treacherous Sinons whom we have admitted into our city and our councils. If some μαντις κακων had prophesied to our fathers, they would not have believed-and when impartial history shall have told our children, they will not comprehend the state to which our foreign relations have been brought. We shall beg leave to lay before our readers a summary of some of the chief points of that miserable, degraded, and degrading policy. 1. Holland. I. Holland.-We have allied ourselves with our natural* enemy, France, against our natural ally, Holland-we have frustrated the diplomacy and forfeited the conquests of our ancestors. We have effected the opening of the Scheldt †—we have introduced a French army into the Low Countries, and consolidated by military co-operation and family alliances the influence of France over those provinces whose independence of that power was, for a century and a half, the first object of our national policy—we have adopted Bonaparte's arbitrary and illegal principles of proclaiming blockades and embargoes, not for any immediate military purpose, but to operate, by their pressure on commerce, remote political consequences principles which even in war were untenable, but in peace are monstrous; and which will hereafter recoil, fatally perhaps, on our own maritime rights. We have dislocated all the interests-we have prostrated all the barriers—we have broken all the treaties which it had cost us oceans of blood and mines of treasure to establish; and every power in Europe whose aid we had courted, purchased, and employed to restrain the ambition of France, has been affronted, insulted, or sacrificed—in favour and for the support of that our most ancient and formidable enemy-our now still more formidable ally! II. Algiers.-Nor have we been satisfied with the folly and humiliation of helping to establish the power of France in the Ne * We use this word in its popular sense, to express that combination of circumstances such as geographical position, difference of religion, manners, tempers, and interests—which tend to make nations rivals and enemies; and, certainly, if there ever were two countries, whom the evidence of eight hundred years proves to be natural enemies, they are France and England. On this question, which England so long considered as vital to her own interests as well as to those of Holland, it will amuse our readers to be reminded that when Lord (then Mr.) Grey moved, on the 21st February, 1793, an address to the Crown for peace with France, he did not attempt to deny that the opening of the Scheldt in spite of Holland might be a sufficient cause of war, but he insisted that Holland did not feel strongly about it, and that, even if she did, France had shown a disposition to concede the point. "The point in dispute," said Mr. Grey's address, "seems to us to have been relieved from a material part of its difficulty by the declaration of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, that the French nation gave up all pretensions to determine the question of the future navigation of the Scheldt."-Parliamentary Debates, February 21, 1793. France, however, has revived these pretensions, and Lord Grey has ratified them. On a previous evening, when advocating the interference of this country in favour of Poland, Mr. Grey contended that the same ground on which we justified our interference on the question of the Scheldt, ought to have induced us to interfere in favour of Dantzic, for we were guarantees of her independence as strongly as we were guarantees of the exclusive navigation of the Scheldt.—Ibid., February 18, 1793. In those days Mr. Grey did not venture even to contemplate the possibility of our abandoning Holland on this question, though it would have very well suited his argument; for, then as now, he was advocating an alliance with revolutionary France -in that alone consistent-for, as to the rest, he has abandoned both Poland and the Scheldt. VOL. XLIX. NO. XCVIII. 2 N therlands therlands-we have acquiesced in her occupation of Algiers, and her colonization of an unlimited tract of the African coast of the Mediterranean, a possession not less important as regards our maritime interests than even that of the richer but more remote provinces of the Nile; and when looked at, with reference to the balance of power in the Mediterranean, and to the ultimate safety of Spain and Italy, we do not hesitate to say, that it assumes a most formidable aspect. When the French undertook the Algerine expedition, the Duke of Wellington's ministry, as is abundantly proved by the papers recently laid before Parliament, lost no time in demanding and finally obtaining from the French court pledges that France did not aim at the permanent possession of Algiers, and still less at territorial aggrandizement on the African coast; but only-first, at reparation for gross injuries and insults which she had received; and secondly, at preventing for the future the system of piracy and slavery with which that state had so long afflicted Europe: and the French ministry engaged that, these objects being accomplished, the final settlement and disposal of the territory and government of Algiers should be arranged in concert with the other European powers for the general advantage. And of these assurances the Wellington cabinet obtained a repetition from Louis Philippe and his ministers immediately after their accession to power. All these pledges and assurances have been now notoriously retracted by France; she revokes all her promises, and professes openly-and as a course of policy in which she glories-that France holds Algiers in her own right, and will colonize that territory to whatever extent she may think proper. When it comes to be examined, if ever we have time and patience to examine anything, the conduct of Louis Philippe will not much advance the credit of revolutionary kings. The Wellington cabinet found him, at the end of a great civil convulsion, on an unsteady throne-his present safety, his future prospects, and, what was still more urgent, the internal peace of France, depended on our immediate recognition. That cabinet, too generous, perhaps, asked but one question, Will you adhere to treaties and engagements, and nommément to that concerning Algiers?' The new-made majesty answered, in substance,-Yes-yes-but take the assurance from my own mouth; do not wait for the formal delays of diplomacy-the case is urgent-the safety of France requires your instant recognition. Recognize me, then, and trust to the good faith of regenerated France and her chosen king to perfect our engagements in diplomatic form, as soon as we have leisure to do anything.' On this representation and assurance the recognition was given; and now, the written engagements of the old government, and the verbal pledges of the new one, are equally disregarded |