How was the balance of power to be maintained in Europe, especially against Russia, if the Austrian monarchy had been broken up? Experience had long ago proved that no coalitions for the preservation of the independence of central Europe, either against Russia on the one side or France on the other, had the least chance of success, in which Austria did not take a prominent part. Even the disasters of the Peninsular campaigns, and the awful catastrophe of the Moscow retreat, could not enable Europe to combat Napoleon, till Metternich, at the Congress of Prague, threw the weight of Austria into the scale. It was by an alliance of Austria, France, and England that, at the Congress of Vienna, a curb was put on the ambition of Russia: by a similar alliance that the Turkish empire was saved from ruin, when the Muscovite standards were advanced to Adrianople, and the Pacha of Egypt was encamped on Scutari. It was a coalition of Austria, England, Russia, and Prussia, which in 1834 coerced the ambition of France, when M. Thiers had sent orders to the French admiral to attack and burn the English fleet in the bay of Vourlas, at dead of night. But if Austria had been broken up into a Hungarian, a Lombard, and a Bohemian republic, how was such an alliance to be formed? What central power could, in such an event, have existed under such circumstances, to oppose a mid impediment to the grasping ambition of Russia on the one side, and France on the other? Prussia, it is well known, is entirely under the influence of Russia, and does not, except in the first fervour of revolution, venture to deviate from the policy which it prescribes. Sweden and Denmark are mere subsidiary states. Austria alone is so strong as to be able, with the aid of England, to bid Russia defiance; and is situated so near to its southern provinces, as to be actuated by a ceaseless dread of its encroachments. The breaking up of the Austrian empire would have been a fatal blow to the balance of power, and with it to real liberty in Europe. It would have left the field open to the Cossacks on the one side, and the Red Republicans on the other.