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INTERESTS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 461had its difficulties, and was perhaps never embarrassed withgreater than in the present instance. It was to be decidedwhether this intervention should be general,or to what extent itmight be carried. It was a favourite assertion of thepopular leader and popular writer of that time, that no foreign state ought to interfere in the domestic affairs of another state ;and even now we hear it asserted, that such aninterference is to be regardedas an attack itsupon independence and self-existence. That assertion holds good, solong as it is applied to states which, by their geographicalWhen reposition and political relations, stand separated.volutions occur in China and North America, it would bepreposterous to assert that France or Austria are authorizedto interfere.The case, however, is altogetherdifferent where states areintimately related to each other by geographical or politicalcontact, by a common union, a confederacy, or a statessystem,as is the case with the states of Europe. Here thedomestic concerns of the one are by no means always indifferent to the other; and cases may occur in which interference may be inevitable. Ifwe begin by taking a survey ofthe constitution of the different states, we shall find that withall their individual varieties, yet in the system, taken as awhole, either the monarchical or the republican principle ispredominant. The transition from the one to the other inany of the leading members of the system, must necessarily,by its unavoidable influence upon the whole, excite just apprehensions among the others. Thus an interest is awakenedwhich may certainly still remain unaccompanied by any active intervention. How intense, however, and how livelymust this interest be, and how just the apprehension, whenthe principles promulgated in the other states are diametrically opposed to those which were formerly received, andaltogether irreconcilable with them ! Does no common interest here find a place? "Would not therefore an activeinterference in such a case become just? Would not negotiations here be allowed ? Would not the revolutionary statefeel at liberty to reject these, with the contemptuous answer,that it would not allow of any foreign intervention ? Thenagain, what if these principles are not only in their natureopposed to others, but at the same time their propagation