THE DUKE OF COBURG’ S PAMPHLET.

Marlborough Press, Volume I, Issue 1, 6 January 1860, Page 4

THE DUKE OF COBURG’ S PAMPHLET.

Prince Albert’s brother, the Duke of Coburg, has published a remarkable pamphlet “On Russia.” During the reign of the Emperor Nicholas, it was universally believed that Russia was a conservative power, without whose aid every continental throne would crumble into dust. Here we have a Sovereign Prince who treats this opinion as a fallacy too worn out to require argument, and who, at the head only of a small German principality, seeks to arraign the Czar before Europe as the permanent disturber of its peace, and who brands him as the chief of the revolutionary conspiracy. After giving to Louis Napoleon a revolutionary character, lie continues “ Russia, too, is a revolutionary state. With her serfs and her slavish nobles, she does not possess those ingredients—namely, a free middle class and a free peasantry —which alone can secure for a nation stability and freedom. She is a revolutionary state, inasmuch as she has not yet established a sure succession to the throne. Even the late Czar only mounted the throne after cutting his guards to pieces. The Czar, therefore, as soon as he has seized the reins of Government, rules over an unresisting people; and, while other despots have the church to deal with, he is his own pope. Unfettered as his will is at home, when he turns to foreign countries he finds forms and institutions in his path that are unendurable to him, because they may endanger the present state of things in Russia. Russian policy has no regard for written laws, which are the foundations of states. Sworn constitutions and the rights of princes consecrated by centuries are empty sounds to her. Her state policy is, therefore, a revolutionary policy, directed against the rights, the laws, and the well-being of other states. We are acquainted with its purposes through the principles laid down in the.well-known will. of Peter the Great; and they are, mainly, the decomposition of Germany, the possession of the Sound and the Bosphorus, and the complete supremacy over Europe.”

The Russo-French alliance is attributed to a common purpose—the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. The relation between Lord Palmerston and Louis Napoleon is thus stated by the Prince Consort’s brother: —“Napoleon 111. was, and is, above all things, a revolutionist and a conspirator. As representative and hdad of the revolution, he desires to fashion the world according to his own imaginings, and conspiracy is the means by which his purpose is to he carried into effect. Lord Palmerston is the trusted confidant and brother-conspirator of Napoleon. At tho very moment that he was expelled from office for attempting to change the time-honoured laws of England, and to disgrace its soil by persecuting the unfortunates, Italians as well as Frenchmen, whom Napoleon, in his lawless might, had driven into exile, we find him in the most intimate relations with these very men, whom, without doubt, he will again betray; his object being to gain by their means laurels and increase of power for his friend Napoleon,and to inflict disgrace and ruin upon Austria.” We have quoted these extracts because, as the preface states, “ it must, be interesting to the English public to know what are the opinions on such a subject of a prince so closely allied to the royal family of England.” We have space only for one more extract : —“ If Germany should sacrifice every noble feeling to purchase the peace of slavery, its devotion to peace will only make war more certain in the end —war at an opportunity to be chosen by Napoleon. Tho judgments of God will then come upon us for our narrow-mindedness and folly. The Zouaves and the Mahommedan Turcos from the African coasts and the snowy heights of Atlas, led by the pretended liberator of nations, will teach us that if we know not how to defend ourselves, they, at least, know how to massacre, and burn, 'and plunder. Then will the curse of revolution crusli like an avalanclie one German state after another, until all Germany is brought under the hopeless yoke of despotism, and converted ; into a tool for the subjugation of the last refuge of freedom, the island home of our kindred Anglo-Saxons.” If the Duke of Coburg’s opinions had prevailed in this country, we might at this moment have been in the thick of a war with France. —News of the World.