ABSTRACT
First published in The Examiner, XI, 1 February 1818, pp. 75–6. It was reprinted in Reiman, Part C, vol. 1, pp. 433–4. The promise of global renewal that inspired Hunt at the end of the Revolutionary wars (see Vol. 1, pp. 323–8) had faded by 1818 into an undeniable recognition of solidifying political retrenchment both abroad and at home in England. Guarantees of national independence and political liberty from the Congress of Vienna in 1814–5 and the Holy Alliance of Russia, Prussia and Austria of 1815 (see Vol. 1, pp. 329–32, and headnotes above, pp. 1–2, 55–6) now seemed bitterly laughable given the calculated efforts of the victorious European powers to crush national independence movements in Poland, Saxony, Italy, Norway and elsewhere, while rolling the system of European government back to pre-revolutionary days. The consolidation of these reactionary trends seemed to be exemplified by the confirmed imposition of the ancient Bourbon dynasty on a subdued French nation and the political reconstitution of the Holy Alliance (England now included) late in 1818 to preserve the domination of old power systems over national aspirations for liberty. The utter failure of European leaders to fulfil the promise of 1814–15 struck Hunt as just another example (albeit, perhaps the most profound) of the reactionary political betrayals he had long lamented throughout the Regency years.
