The Austrian cabinet, no doubt, takes ample precautionary measures, but there is no cruelty or oppression in its system; and whoever has had an opportunity of conversing with Prince Metternich ought to ask himself, whether it is possible a man of so calm and reasonable an intellect should be guilty of an act of barbarity without even a motive for his conduct? The strict repressive measures upon which the system of Prince Metternich in Germany and Italy is founded occasioned a movement of reaction; for liberty, that master passion of the mind, does not allow itself to be crushed without making some despairing efforts. Far from the secret societies having been dissolved in Germany, they were regularly organised in the universities among the students, and the heated state of their minds was encouraged by the influence of poetry and the political writings, which called upon the courage and patriotism of all those who possessed noble hearts to lend their assistance to the German unity. This unity, so loudly appealed to by the young generation, was in reality only a sort of federative republic, in which all the states, while enjoying their individual freedom, were to be united by the practice of virtue, and would thus tend to the general happiness of mankind. The old German sovereignties were obliged to curb these associations, which burst forth in the assassination of Kotzebue. Metternich had just been travelling in Italy when the universities distinguished themselves by this sanguinary crime. He was loaded with the benefits of his sovereign; he now bore the title of prince, and stars of almost all the orders of knighthood in Europe glittered on his breast. The state of fermentation which existed in Germany had not escaped his statesmanlike penetration, and it was solely at his suggestion that a congress took place at Carlsbad, where severe and distrustful measures were adopted against the organisation of the public schools in Germany. The conduct of the universities, the repression of seditious writings, the establishment of a political police,--nothing was neglected in this regular crusade, undertaken by the government against the revolutionary feelings by which the heated imaginations were then inflamed. After great disturbances have taken place in a state, the sole anxiety of the government is to check any disposition to disorder, and they are excited to do so by public opinion, and by the middle classes, who entertain a dread of fresh revolutions, and with good reason.