Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

THE GERMANIC DIET.-HOLLAND-Disputes concerning the Naviga tion of the Rhine-Arrangements regarding the Catholics-Epidemic Disease in North Holland-Finances-Militia Law-Expedition to Java BAVARIA-AUSTRIA-Proceedings of the Hungarian DietDecree against the Slave Trade-PRUSSIA-RUSSIA-A Commission appointed to investigate the Insurrection of 1825-Reforms in the Administration-Discontents among the Peasants-Death of the Empress Report of the Commission of Inquiry Sentence and Punishment of the Conspirators-Coronation of the Emperor-War with Persia Military Operations in Georgia The Persians defeated.

[ocr errors]

HE Diet of the Germanic Confederation assembled at Frankfort in January; but, although several questions of very general importance occupied its attention, as they had done for years, no one of them was brought to a conclusion; so tedious are the forms of proceeding in that body, requiring constant correspondence between the members and their constituents; and so multiplied and contradictory are the interests which it vainly attempts to combine in a harmonious whole. The organization of the military force of the Diet was still to be finally fixed, the smaller states remonstrating against the numerical amount of their contingents, and resisting with great good sense, the oppression of imposing upon their insignificant territories the burthen of maintaining cavalry and artillery, which they said, ought to be maintained at the expense of the great powers, to whom alone these muniments of war could ever be of any real service. The questions, too, of the tolls upon the navigation of the Rhine, and the establishment of a free

commercial intercourse among the states, were still to be determined; the former involving the interests of every corner of Germany, and the latter touching the destruction of a jealous prohibitory system, by which even the most petty states attempted to defend their manufactures against their neighbours. On none of these matters did the Diet come to any decision; and the only measure which they carried through was the final occupation of the Belgic fortress of Luxembourg by commissioners and a garrison in the name of the Confederation. The king of the Netherlands resisted this change as far as he decently could resist a fundamental rule of the Confederation, of which, as sovereign of the Duchy of Luxemburgh, he formed a partfor no monarch can willingly see his fortresses in the hands of domineering powers, of which he has always occasion to be jealous as dangerous rivals, though united with them in name as confederates.

The differences which existed regarding the navigation of the

and France were thus united to preserve the peace of Europe in so far as it was menaced by Spain. Such an union deprived the cabinet and Camarilla of Madrid of their last hope of being able to extend over a neighbouring country the

dark and dreary reign of despotism and superstition, amid whose palpable obscurity they prowled for their own prey, or, when sated with victims, slumbered on in brutish indolence.

[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]

THE GERMANIC DIET.-HOLLAND-Disputes concerning the Naviga tion of the Rhine-Arrangements regarding the Catholics-Epidemic Disease in North Holland-Finances-Militia Law-Expedition to Java-BAVARIA AUSTRIA-Proceedings of the Hungarian DietDecree against the Slave Trade-PRUSSIA-RUSSIA-A Commission appointed to investigate the Insurrection of 1825-Reforms in the Administration-Discontents among the Peasants-Death of the Empress Report of the Commission of Inquiry Sentence and Punishment of the Conspirators-Coronation of the Emperor-War with Persia Military Operations in Georgia The Persians defeated.

THE Diet of the Germanic Con Tred Patitofthe Germanic coil fort in January; but, although several questions of very general importance occupied its attention, as they had done for years, no one of them was brought to a conclusion; so tedious are the forms of proceeding in that body, requiring constant correspondence between the members and their constituents; and so multiplied and contradictory are the interests which it vainly attempts to combine in a harmonious whole. The organization of the military force of the Diet was still to be finally fixed, the smaller states remonstrating against the numerical amount of their contingents, and resisting with great good sense, the oppression of imposing upon their insignificant territories the burthen of maintaining cavalry and artillery, which they said, ought to be maintained at the expense of the great powers, to whom alone these muniments of war could ever be of any real service. The questions, too, of the tolls upon the navigation of the Rhine, and the establishment of a free

commercial intercourse among the conten, vere still to be determined; the former involving the interests of every corner of Germany, and the latter touching the destruction of a jealous prohibitory system, by which even the most petty states attempted to defend their manufactures against their neighbours. On none of these matters did the Diet come to any decision; and the only measure which they carried through was the final occupation of the Belgic fortress of Luxembourg by commissioners and a garrison in the name of the Confederation. The king of the Netherlands resisted this change as far as he decently could resist a fundamental rule of the Confederation, of which, as sovereign of the Duchy of Luxemburgh, he formed a partfor no monarch can willingly see his fortresses in the hands of domineering powers, of which he has always occasion to be jealous as dangerous rivals, though united with them in name as confederates.

The differences which existed regarding the navigation of the

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Rhine, formed a dispute between Germany and the king of Holland, rather than among the members of the diet. From the moment that the Rhine entered Holland, it be came subject to the government of that country alone, who was sove reign of both its banks. Whatever duties Holland might think proper to impose on the traffic of the river during the remainder of its course to the shores of the North Sea, were strictly matters of internal arrangement, regulating the intercourse of foreigners with her own exclusive dominions, and were imposts with which the diet had no authority to interfere. She was thus enabled by high duties, to render the Rhine useless as a means of transport to the sea; by discriminating duties she could secure the whole trade from Nimeguen to the sea, to her own subjects, and a preference to her own manufactures as articles of export. The states higher up the river could gain little by establishing equitable regulations regarding the duties to be levied by the powers who possessed its opposite banks, so long as they were absolutely excluded from proceeding on it to the ocean by an authority over which they had no control. In the treaty of Paris, in 1814, by which the kingdom of the Netherlands, as ite at present exists, was created, and subsequently at the Congress of Vienna, provisions had been agreed on which certainly were intended, and, it was thought, would be sufficient, to limit the power of Holland, and open the navigation of the Rhine to all Germany, to and from the sea. But an ambiguous expression gave Holland a pretext for maintaining her exclusive rights. She said, that " to the sea" was a very different

[ocr errors]

1

[ocr errors]

expression from "into the sea;" and, moreover, if the upper states were to insist so strictly upon words, then they must be contented with the course of the proper Rhine itself. The mass of water which forms the Rhine, dividing itself a little way above Nimeguen, is carried to the sea through three principal channels, the Waal, the Leck, and the Yssel; the first descending by Gorcum, where it changes its name for that of the Meuse; the second, farther to the north, approaching the sea at Rotterdam; and the third, taking a northerly course by Zutphen, and Deventer, to disgorge itself into the Zuyderzee. None of these channels, however, is called or reckoned the Rhine; that name is preserved to a small stream which leaves the Leck at Wyck, takes its course by the learned retreats of Utrecht and Leyden, gradually dispersing and losing its waters, till the magnificent river dwindles down into a muddy ditch, and, unable by its expiring strength to force. its way into the ocean, disappears among the downs in the neigh bourhood of Kulwyck. The Rhine itself, strictly speaking, being thus useless for the purposes of seanavigation, it had been agreed be tween Holland and her neighbours to consider the Leck as the continuation of the Rhine; and the government of the Netherlands afterwards consented that the Waal, as being deeper and better adapted to navigation, should be substituted for the Leck. Now the Waal, said the government of Holland, terminates at Gorcum, to which the tide ascends; there consequently ends the Rhine; all that remains of that branch from Gorcum to Gravelingen, Helvoetsluys, and the mouth of the

Meuse, is an arm of the sea, inclosed within our own territories, and therefore to be subjected to any imposts and regulations which we may think fit to establish.

In this interpretation, Holland was supported by France and Baden, but strenuously resisted by all the other powers of Germany, who inveighed against it as a quibbling attempt to evade the plain meaning of the treaty of Paris. Prussia, whose Rhenish provinces form the wealthiest and most manufacturing portion of her monarchy, addressed a memorial to the great powers who had been parties to the treaty of Paris, and the congress of Vienna, calling upon them to state what had been the real meaning of that treaty in regard to the navigation of the Rhine; and, in the mean time, on the ground of the delays of Holland, she retained in her hands a sum of fourteen millions of florins, raised by duties levied on the river where it passes through her territo ries, which ought, of right, to have been shared with Nassau, Baden, Darmstadt, and other small states. The allied powers put upon the treaty the same interpretation as the German states; but the government of the Netherlands hav ing returned an unfavourable answer to their joint remonstrance, the Austrian envoy at Brussels presented a note to that court, in February of the present year, in which he not only enforced what Austria held to be the true meaning of the diplomatic provisions of 1814 and 1815, but spoke in a style which much resembled reproach, of the ingratitude of the king of the Netherlands towards his political creators. "By the treaty of Paris," he argued, "the allied powers, in conjunction with

France, agreed that the sovereignty of the House of Orange should receive an accession of territory, and that the navigation of the Rhine, from the point where it is navigable to the sea (jusqu'à la mer), and vice versa, should be free. This last point was further confirmed in the separate article, which provides that the freedom of navigation in the Scheldt shall be established on the same principles as those on which the naviga tion of the Rhine is regulated by Article 5 of the present treaty. The allied powers farther reserved to themselves to determine, at the next Congress, the countries which should be united with Holland, and declared that then the princi-1 ples should be discussed, upon which the tolls to be levied by the States on the banks might be regulated in the most uniform manner and most advantageously to the commerce of all nations.c It appeared, from the simultaneous issuing of these two resolutions, that, among other conditions which the allies annexed to the incorpora tion of Belgium, this increase of territory was combined on their side, even before the establishment of the kingdom of the Netherlands, with the above obligation to restore the freedom of the navigation. There could certainly be no more express and positive obligation than that which is united with the foundation of a state, and which, in the present case, had been fully sanctioned by the accession of the king of the Netherlands to the treaty of Paris, and the act of Congress at Vienna. It was inconceivable how the government of the Netherlands could flatter itself with the hope of making a right obscure and doubtful, by prolix observations on the main

« ZurückWeiter »