s might have
been expected, by economic stagnation. Agriculture languished, hampered, as
in France before the Revolution, by the feudal privileges of a noble caste
which no longer gave any equivalent service to the state; trade was
strangled by the system of high tariffs at the frontier and internal
_octrois_; and finally public credit was shaken to its foundations by
lavish issues of paper money and the neglect to publish the budget.

[Sidenote: Metternich's policy of stability.]

The maintenance within the empire of a system so artificial and so unsound,
involved in foreign affairs the policy of preventing the success of any
movements by which it might be threatened. The triumph of Liberal
principles or of national aspirations in Germany, or elsewhere in Europe,
might easily, as the events of 1848 proved, shatter the whole rotten
structure of the Habsburg monarchy, which survived only owing to the apathy
of the populations it oppressed. This, then, is the explanation of the
system of "stability" which Metternich succeeded in imposing for thirty
years upon Europe. If he persuaded Frederick William III. that the grant of
a popular constitution would be fatal to the Prussian monarchy, this was
through no love of Prussia; the Carlsbad Decrees and the Vienna Final Act
were designed to keep Germany quiet, lest the sleep of Austria should be
disturbed; the lofty claims of the Troppau Protocol were but to cover an
Austrian aggression directed to purely Austrian ends: and in the Eastern
Question, the moral support given to the "legitimate" authority of the
sultan over the "rebel" Greeks was dictated solely by the interest of
Austria in maintaining the integrity of Turkey. (See EUROPE: _History_;
GERMANY: _History_; ALEXANDER I. of Russia; METTERNICH, &c.)

Judged by the standard of its own aims Metternich's diplomacy was, on the
whole, completely successful. For fifteen years after the congress of
Vienna, in spite of frequent alarms, the peace of Europe was not seriously
disturbed; and even in 1830, the revolution at Paris found no echo in the
great body of the Austrian dominions. The isolated revolts in Italy were
easily suppressed; and the insurrection of Poland, though it provoked the
lively sympathy of the Magyars and Czechs, led to no actual movement in the
Habsburg states. For a moment, indeed, Metternich had meditated taking
advantage of the popular feeling to throw the weight of Austria into the
scale in favour of the