owers,
organised an _emeute_ in Belgium with a sort of filibustering expedition
of their own. Several hundred socialists made their way into Belgium,
and used every effort to induce the people to join them, but in vain,--a
few only, who like themselves, held extreme and impracticable views of
democracy, made any insurrectionary movement; and the affair exploded as
harmlessly as Smith O'Brien's abortive attempt at revolution in Ireland.
Had any success, short of a complete revolution, attended the efforts of
the French "sympathisers," the armed intervention of England might have
been necessitated, and another long war with France have spread its
terrors, havoc, and ruin in Belgium.

GERMANY.

The people of Germany were ripe for revolt when the tidings of the
French revolution came suddenly as a flash along the electric wire. No
people had ever been more basely deceived by princes than the Germans.
Constitutions were promised, and the promises shamefully violated,
sometimes ostensibly conceded, but really never acted upon. The oaths
of kings were synonymous for falsehood throughout the great fatherland.
Schiller has sung--

"The human being:
May not be trusted with self-government;"

but the poet and philosopher must have understood that the human
being is as worthy to be trusted with self-government as with the
irresponsible government of other men, no way his inferiors--perhaps,
morally and intellectually, superior to him. The Prussian people could
have governed themselves with as much ability as the king governed them.
The Hanoverians could have managed their own affairs as morally as the
English Duke of Cumberland, or his son George conducted them. Nor did
the wisdom of the Austrian emperor, for matters of government, exceed
the intelligence of the educated citizens of Vienna.

The first vibration of the great French earthquake was felt in the grand
Duchy of Baden. The people, as one man, demanded liberty; the demand was
too unanimously made to be resisted; the victory was won without a shot.
On the 3rd of March the Rhenish provinces of Prussia felt the shock, and
Cologne was in arms; on the 4th, Wisbaden; on the 5th, Dusseldorf; on
the 8th, the Hessians of Cassel barricaded the streets, and flew to
arms--their victory was won without blood. Early in March the people of
Munich demanded their rights, which none but slaves consented to forego;
they were refused; the people responded to the first cr