set aside,
agreement and concurrence with England and France would previously
have been necessary. In the next place, with regard to the reasons
which are given by the three Great Powers, and which are stated more
especially by Prince Metternich, on the part of the Court of Austria,
those reasons appear to me insufficient for the violent proceeding
which has taken place. I cannot myself imagine that there could not
have been precautions taken, which, however they limited the action
of the free and independent state of Cracow, would yet have been
a security that its name and its independence would have been
maintained; while all danger from refugees, from its being made a
place where strangers from all parts of the Continent came and planned
conspiracy, might have been encountered and prevented. It does seem to
me most extraordinary that, with this little state--this mere atom,
surrounded by Russia, by Austria, and by Prussia--these three great
and mighty monarchies, with such vast military forces, with such
unbounded means, having command of all the roads which lead to Cracow,
having the power of marching their troops at any moment into the city
of Cracow, having certain rights which were constituted and assigned
to them in the Treaty of Vienna--should have found themselves so
powerless as to be unable to prevent Cracow becoming dangerous to
their peace and welfare. I cannot, indeed, but suspect, especially
looking at the latter part of this transaction, when government was
dissolved in Cracow--when disorganization took place--that it was not
unwelcome, or altogether unpalatable to those three Powers, to be
enabled to say, 'All means of government are gone; Cracow is a scene
of anarchy and disorder, and no remedy remains but the total abolition
of the existence of that republic.' Therefore, Sir, both on the
grounds of the Treaty of Vienna, the distinctness of the stipulations
referring to Cracow, and with regard to the reasons which were urged
for its extinction, I think, in the first place, there was a manifest
violation of the Treaty of Vienna; and I believe, in the second, that,
if the question had been discussed in a congress or conference among
the Powers, there is no sufficient proof, so far as we have hitherto
seen, that the three Powers would have been in a position to show good
cause for the course they have adopted. Neither, Sir, am I convinced
by the instances that are furnished by the Minister of Austria, as