"if they have but three weak monarchs more successively on the throne." It needed, as we now know, a good deal less than the " three weak monarchs." Goldsmith, who seems instinctively to have apprehended the conditions of change in Europe, predicted also with perfect accuracy that Sweden was hastening on to despotism; that the German Empire was on the eve of dissolution; and that Holland was only awaiting the advent of a foreign conqueror.[1] The first of these prophecies was fulfilled in ten years; the second in 1806; and the third in 1794. The American statesman, Hamilton, of whom Talleyrand said that he had "divined Europe," seems to have prophesied the concentration of commerce in London and New York as the great emporia of the world with remarkable sagacity.[2] Arthur Young's predictions of the results that France would derive from the Revolution—temporary distress from its violence, and permanent well-being from its reforms—were as wise as Burke's were unfortunate.[3] De Tocqueville foretold, thirty years before the event, that the Southern States were the one part of the American Union in which disruption was likely to be attempted;[4] Sir G. Cornewall Lewis recognised in 1856 that the outrage on Mr. Sumner was the first blow in a civil war;[5] and Victor Hugo appreciated the importance of John Brown's execution by comparing it
- ↑ Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, Letter 55.
- ↑ Talleyrand's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 185. Hamilton predicted that London would absorb Amsterdam, that Cadiz would be supplanted by an American port, and that Marseilles would lose the trade of the Levant—Ticknor's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 16.
- ↑ "The advantages derived to the nation are of the very first importance. On the other hand, the extensive and unnecessary ruin—all these are great deductions from public felicity."—Arthur Young On the Revolution in France, pp. 343, 344.
- ↑ Democracy in America, chap, xviii. p. 434.
- ↑ Letters of Sir G. C. Lewis, p. 315.
