Confounded at such a series of events, so widely different from what they anticipated and had predicted from their measures, the free-traders have no resource but to lay them all on two external causes, for which they are not, as they conceive, responsible: these causes are, the French and German revolutions, and the potato famine in Ireland.
That the revolutions on the continent of Europe have materially affected the market for the produce of British industry, in the countries where they have occurred, is indeed certain; but are the Liberals entitled to shake themselves free from the consequences of these convulsions? Have we not, for the last thirty years, been labouring incessantly to encourage and extend revolution in all the adjoining states? Did we not insidiously and basely support the revolutions in South America, and call a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old? Was not the result of that monstrous and iniquitous interference in support of the rebels in an allied state, to induce the dreadful monetary catastrophe of December 1825, the severest, till that of 1847, ever experienced in modern Europe? Did we not, not merely instantly recognise the French revolutions of 1830 and 1848, but lend our powerful aid and countenance to extend the laudable example to the adjoining states? Did we not join with France to prevent the King of the Netherlands from regaining the command of Flanders in 1832, and blockade the Scheldt while Marshal Gerard bombarded Antwerp? Did we not conclude the Quadruple Alliance to effect the revolutionising of Spain and Portugal, and bathe both countries for four years with blood, to establish revolutionary queens on both the thrones in the Peninsula? Have we not intercepted the armament of the King of Naples against Sicily, by Admiral Parker's fleet, and aided the insurgents in that island with arms from the Tower? Did we not interfere to arrest the victorious columns of Radetsky at Turin, but never move a step to check Charles Albert on the Mincio? Did we not side with revolutionary Prussia against the Danes, and aid in launching Pio Nono into that frantic career which has spread such ruin through the Italian peninsula? Have we not all but lost the confidence of our old ally, Austria, from our notorious intrigues to encourage the furious divisions which have torn that noble empire? Nay, have we not been so enamoured of revolution, that we could not avoid showing a partiality for it in our own dominions--rewarding and encouraging O'Connell, and allowing monster meetings, till by the neglect of Irish industry we landed them in famine, and by the fanning of Irish passions brought them up to rebellion;--and establishing a constitution in Canada which gave a decided majority in parliament to an alien and rebel race, and, as a necessary consequence, giving the colonial administration to the very party whom, ten years ago, the loyalists put down with true British spirit at the point of the bayonet? All this we have done, and have long been doing, with impunity; and now that the consequences of such multifarious sins have fallen upon us, in the suffering which revolution has at last brought upon the British empire, the Liberals turn round and seek to avoid the responsibility of the disasters produced by their internal policy, by throwing it on the external events which they themselves have induced.