We anticipate no good from the revolution in Prussia. We are well aware, indeed, of the intelligence and energy of that gallant people. We know that her inhabitants are the most highly educated of any people in Europe, and second to none in patriotism and spirit. Prussia is capable, in good time, and from her _own exertions_, of working out the elements of constitutional freedom. But we distrust all revolutions brought about by example. Contagion never yet spread the spirit of real freedom: foreign imitation may for a while overthrow existing governments, but it cannot establish new ones in their stead on a durable foundation. The Republic of Rienzi, who, according to the fine expression of Madame de Stael, "mistook recollections for hopes," perished in a few years without leaving a wreck behind. Where are now the Batavian, Cisalpine, Ligurian, and Parthenopeian Republics, which arose during the fervour of the first Revolution around the great parent Republic? What has been the result of the revolutionary mania which in 1820 threw down the established government in Piedmont, Naples, Spain, or Portugal? What has become of the Republics of South America, which borrowed their institutions from the French or Spanish model? Has any one of these countries obtained real freedom in consequence of their exertions? Have they not all, on the contrary, suffered dreadfully, and in nothing so much as their capacity for liberty, from their effects? Has not capital been so abridged, industry so blighted, security so endangered, violence so general, that the cause of freedom has been postponed for centuries, if not rendered entirely hopeless, from the triumph of foreign imported liberalism? Whatever it may effect elsewhere, _free-trade in revolutions_ does nothing but evil in society. Nothing but what is of home growth, in constitutions at least, can succeed there. It is difficult enough to make the tree of liberty prosper even where it is indigenous in the earth; but who ever heard of a _transplanted tree of liberty_ thriving in the soil to which it was transferred?