The ground which the people have gained in fifty
years' course they have no intention of giving up, rather meaning to
strengthen it and to extend it.
This is the reason why Austria cannot very hopefully look for a revival
of her power, as it so often revived after defeat in old days, and under
an entirely different state of things from that which now exists. A
power has come into existence such as she has never been accustomed to
deal with, and of which her statesmen have no knowledge. An Austrian
statesman is scarcely more advanced than a Frenchman of the time of
Louis Quatorze; and we verily believe that Louvois or Torcy would be
quite as much at home in European politics at this moment as Mensdorff
or Belcredi. Had they been well informed as to the condition of the
times, they never would have so acted as to bring about the late war. It
was their reliance on the ability of mere governments to settle every
question in dispute, that caused them to plunge into a conflict with
Prussia and Italy, when their master's empire was bankrupt, and when
more or less of discontent existed in almost every part of that empire.
Statesmen who knew the age, and who were aware of the change that has
come over Europe in half a century, would have told the Emperor that to
rely on "something turning up," after the ancient Austrian custom, would
not answer in 1866, and that peoples as well as princes had much to do
with the ordering of every nation's policy; and with every people
Austria is unpopular.
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