THE INFLUENCE OF RUSSIA IN EUROPE.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 587, 19 March 1851, Page 4

THE INFLUENCE OF RUSSIA IN EUROPE.

[From the London Globe, Lord Palmerston's Or-

gan, November 7.]

We were enabled some days ago to antici* pate the German papers, in our announcement of the decisions taken at the late Warsaw conference. Our readers will remember that this assembly was attended by some of the foremost princes and statesmen in Germany, who produced their respective proposals for ths SvttlwiHCEt of Central Europe, to be accepted or rejected by the Emperor of Russia. These august pleaders have apparently agreed upon a compromise, which is intended to satisfy the points of greatest moment to either party, and which certainly embraces matter of the gravest interest to the non-German powers. On the one hand, Prussia consents that the whole Austrian Empire shall be included in the German confederation, and that this mass of territories shall have a Diet of Plenipotentiaries at its head. On the other hand Austria abandons the mock Diet assembled under her patronage at Frankfort, and she finds the less difficulty in doing so, after having unsuccessfully solicited its recognition from both France and England. Our first thought upon this statement is one of astonishment and indignation at the character of arbitrator thus coolly assumed by the Emperor of Russia, and recognised by the kings and princes of Germany ; for we lament to think that there is no distinction on this point. One and all, they have petitioned for the boons of liberty or dominion, and humiliated themselves before the insulting condescension of this barbarian crown. We could expect nothing else from Prince Schwarzenberg and his puppy Emperor; but Count Brandenberg should not have been the minister to represent Prussia in this ignoble rivalry of abasement. Napoleon, in all his glory, never exacted a more unqualified acknowledgement of his suzerianship than has been voluntarily yielded to the Czar by the Hapsbergs and Hohenzollerns. Nor is it unimportant to observe the altered position of the Russian crown in its own dominions. Warsaw is becoming to St. Petersburg what St. Petersburg was” to Moscow—an advanced post for surveying and dominating Europe. We are not envying for England the position thus accorded to Russia ; for we shall always be able to check its evil Consequences towards ourselves, But ns friends of European freedom and of monarchical institutions, we deeply regret that both should have been endangered by the recent agreement of Prussia and Austria. We lament that a barbarous power should have been assisted on its march to blight the civilisation and literature of the west. And we lament, almost equally, that the republican party in Germany should have acquired so just a right to charge her royal houses with this treason to their common nationality and independence. We shall not be charged with usually advocating the right of foreign countries to interfere in the settlement of Germany ; but we do not hesitate to say that this new turn of affairs makes that settlement a European question, and that it is the bounden duty of the other powers to observe the position of the new neighbour introduced among them, and jealously to limit her pretensions, ft should be clearly understood that, unless it is greatly modified at the approaching conferences, this admission of the whole Austrian empire into the German confederation, puts the entire armed force of Prussia, Bavaria, Central Germany, Austria, Hungary, Sclavonia, and Lombardy, at the disposition of the future Diet; and who can tell what such a force may be in the hands of another Frederic, or even of a Joseph II ? Happily, the erection of such a power is a point on which the rest of Europe has a right to demand a voice. We lavished millions of English lives and gold to prevent the annexation, first of Italy, then of Spain, to the empire of Napoleon; and this new unitary power contemplated by Prince

Schwarzenberg, is an object of apprehension as just and reasonable.