Historical and Philosophical Essays Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865 Excerpt: ...and a facility of intercourse unequalled on the continent, afford reasonable grounds for hoping that this prayer may be granted. But many years must elapse before the Belgians can form a real nation--before they cease to be a mere aggregate of communities, separated in many instances by a mutual dislike, and in all by mutual jealousy, and kept together only by the pressure of the great monarchies which have assumed the control of their destiny. The treaty of 1827, by which the Kings of England and France, and the Emperor of Eussia, agreed to put a stop to the civil war between the Porte and the insurgent inhabitants of Greece, was perhaps, as far as France and England were concerned, the most disinterested interference of sovereigns in behalf of a people that has occurred in modern times. They were impelled, however, by a sympathy on the part of their own subjects with the Greeks, which the number and the force of its causes rendered irresistible. The long duration of the contest--the ferocity with which it was carried on by the Turks--the apparent success of Greece against her gigantic enemy until she was crushed by the invasion from Egypt--the fear of having to witness the utter extirpation of a Christian population by Mahometans, that Christian population being the descendants of those to whom the world owes its civilisation--all these were motives which it would have been hard to withstand, even if the interference had been matter of difficulty or danger. But the three powers did not choose to assign these as their exclusive, or even as their principal, motives. They expressed, indeed, a wish to stop the effusion of blood, but they justified their interference by 'the interest of the repose of Europe, and the impediments which the contest threw in the w...