[1] Nothing can exceed the paternal government of Austria to her hereditary states, or the severity of the police in her Italian dominions. In Hungary the Austrian power has never been sufficient to enable her to ameliorate the prominent defects of their still feudal system. The Italians, Sclavonians, and Hungarians, are still far from being amalgamated with the Austrians.
Railways and industrial establishments are becoming numerous in Austria; her navy is increasing on the Adriatic, and is a means of circulating her flourishing manufactures. Metternich has thus caused the age of labour to succeed to that of war and conquest. The ancient constitution of Germany was destroyed at the peace of Presburg, during the time of the contemptible and fragile assembly of the Confederation of the Rhine. The house of Austria then renounced the old imperial crown; but a new existence has opened for it, and, after innumerable reverses under the Republic and Napoleon, it again reared its head with a new state of political life and of military power. Since the year 1813, Austria has been constantly called upon to play a great part in the affairs of Europe, and Metternich has succeeded in giving to her politics a character of perseverance, or, rather, of immutability, the result of an idea nobly conceived, and then worked out like a mission he felt intrusted to accomplish.
The political life of a statesman is bound up in the work he has undertaken. It is not my habit as a historian to adopt the narrow views inspired by party-spirit or worn-out declamation: when a minister has achieved the greatness of an empire, resisted vassalage under Napoleon, and furnished the most extensive field for the page of history, I will not, from a weak patriotism, raise my voice against this master-mind. We may meet with enough men who destroy; we ought to feel respect for those capable of creating, and then maintaining their work.
Clement Wenceslaus, Count of Metternich-Winneburg-Ochsenhausen, was born at Coblentz, on the 13th of May, 1773, of a good German family, whose ancestors have served in former times against the Ottomans. I also find there were several officers of the name of Metternich in the company of Lanzknechts, in the time of the Reformation and of the League. His father, Count Metternich, a man of very moderate abilities, was greatly in the confidence of Prince Kaunitz, and his name is mentioned in all the business transacted concerning the Low Countries. Young Metternich received the names of Clement-Wenceslaus, after the Prince of Poland and Lithuania, Duke of Saxony, who stood godfather to him. At the age of fifteen he went to the university of Strasburg, at that time very celebrated, and the most frequented academy in Europe.