of England to an amount lower than it had been at any period since 1828.  And these difficulties had hardly been surmounted when a new revolution in France overturned the dynasty of Louis Philippe and established a republic.  The revolutionary contagion spread to Italy, where, indeed, the movement had begun.  The Pope—­Pius IX.—­who had but lately succeeded to the tiara, was forced to flee from Rome in the disguise of a foreign courier, after his Prime-minister had been murdered by the mob.  Germany was scarcely less disturbed.  The administration of Metternich, who had governed Austria with authority little less than absolute for nearly forty years, was overthrown in a tumult in which he himself escaped with difficulty from the violence of the populace; dangerous riots took place at Munich, at Berlin, and at the capitals of most of the smaller principalities, and for some time everything seemed to portend the outbreak of a general war, likely to be the more formidable as being a war of the revolutionary and republican against the monarchical principle.  Happily, that danger was averted.  The only war which broke out between different nations was a brief contest in the north of Italy, which the superior numbers of the Austrian armies and the skill of Marshal Radetsky, a veteran who had learned the art of war under Suvarof nearly sixty years before, decided in favor of Austria, and which in the spring of 1849 was terminated by a peace on less unfavorable terms to Sardinia than she could well have expected.  And in the same season tranquillity was re-established even at Rome, which, from the peculiar character of the Papal power, contained special elements of provocation and danger.

But, though peace was thus generally maintained, these various events had produced a ferment of spirits which required some time to calm down, and so greatly embarrassed the government, that in the spring of 1852 Lord John Russell’s administration was dissolved, and a new ministry was formed by Lord Derby[272].  But the causes which had overthrown his predecessor remained to weaken him; so that for some time it seemed impossible to form a ministry which afforded any promise of stability.  Such a rapid succession of changes as ensued had had no parallel since the first years of George III.  Between February, 1852, and February, 1855, the country had no fewer than four different Prime-ministers, a fact which was at once both the proof and the parent of weakness in every administration.  Lord John Russell had attempted to procure a factitious support in the country by stimulating a fresh demand for parliamentary reform.  A year or two before, he had provoked the dissatisfaction of the “Advanced Liberals,” as they called themselves, by insisting on the finality of the Reform Bill of 1832, and by advising his followers “to rest and be thankful” for what had been then obtained.  But now he began to advance an opinion that that act required “some amendments to carry into more complete effect the principles on