The spirit of conquest which was perhaps forced upon France, by the necessity of giving to the enemies of the new order of things, employment at home, in order to prevent their interference abroad, was fatal to the beneficial results of the revolution. The rapid conquests achieved by Napoleon, drew the eyes and hearts of a people fond of glory, and full of a military spirit, from their internal affairs, to foreign conquests; and, while they were subduing a world, they were themselves subdued by the same power. Then came the empire of Napoleon; the confederacy of nations,--not merely of kings and their armies, but of nations, instigated partly by their own wrongs, and partly by the promises of their rulers, to rise in mass, and do what neither their kings nor their armies had been able to perform. It was the people of Europe that at length overthrew Napoleon. When, after this great event, it became necessary to reorganize Europe, which had been cast from its ancient moorings, by the gigantic power, and gigantic mind of the child of democracy, who had devoured his mother, there arose a schism between the people and their sovereigns. The former expected the fulfilment of those promises, which the latter had made in the hour of extreme peril, in order to rouse them to effectual resistance against the French. These promises in Germany, Prussia, the Netherlands, &c. consisted principally in the establishment of representative governments, which would leave the sovereign in possession of a hereditary power, checked by a body elected by the people. On the other hand, the sovereigns, unmindful of the preservation of their thrones, which they owed to _the people_, refused to fulfil their solemn stipulations. In the hour of success, they as usual forgot the hour of adversity, and insisted upon the unconditional re-establishment, if not of old boundaries, at least of the old political regime. Hence we may trace the origin of what is called seriously by some, in derision and scorn by others, _the Holy Alliance_, which originated in the fears and the weakness of kings, who, being unable to maintain singly their antiquated pretensions at home, sought in a close union of policy and interests, the means of doing that, which each one alone was inadequate to achieve. By this alliance, Europe was dismembered--millions of acres, and millions of people, were parcelled out among the different sovereigns, and the balance of Europe was either believed, or affected to be believed, restored by placing whole nations under a dominion which they abhorred. It is obvious that such an unnatural state of things could endure only while cemented by a mutual fear of the powers which had constituted it; which fear would subside immediately, or very soon after the dissolution of the great confederacy. A large portion of Europe had been fermenting for nearly fifteen years, under the oppressions of this union of despots, and the