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 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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RUSSIA 
 
 THE EASTERN QUESTION 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD COBDEN, ESQ., M.P. 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 AN AMERICAN CITIZEN. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY JOHN P. JEWETT & COMPANY. 
 
 CLEVELAND, OHIO: 
 
 JEWETT, PROCTOR AND WORTHINGTON. 
 
 1854. 
 
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 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. RUSSIA, TURKEY, AND ENGLAND, 9 
 
 II. POLAND, RUSSIA, AND ENGLAND, 47 
 
 III. THE BALANCE OF POWER 74 
 
 IV. PROTECTION OF COMMERCE, % 
 
 137 
 APPENDIX, 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by 
 
 JOHN P. JEWETT & CO., 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 STEREOTYPED ET HOBAKT AND BOBBINS, BOSTON. 
 
/ 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Richajrd Cobden, Esq., of England, is a name extensively and 
 i'avorat'y known. It would be difficult to find the man of the 
 present of more good, practical common-sense. In the lan- 
 guage of a personal friend, he is " England's prime-minister of 
 common-sense." His name alone is sufficient guarantee for the 
 extensive perusal of any production of his pen. The following 
 work on Russia was written by him, and first published in a 
 pamphlet form in Edinburgh, London, Manchester and Dublin, in 
 1836; but its principles and facts have not become essentially 
 changed since that time. They are such as the lapse of time 
 cannot materially affect. And it is believed that the present 
 position of the "Eastern Question," will invest it with fresh 
 interest, and render its reprint at the present time peculiarly 
 seasonable. Few men in our country are better acquainted with 
 European affairs than Rev. Dr. Baird, of New-York, and Foreign 
 Secretary of the " American, and Soreign Christian Union." He 
 was familiar and favorably impressed with this work of Mr. Cob- 
 den when it was first published in England, and he now says that 
 " he thinks its republication in this country, and at this moment, 
 would be eminently opportune." For these reasons, it is thought 
 expedient to recommend the work of Mr. Cobden, with a few 
 preliminary observations touching the Eastern Question, to the 
 American public. 
 
 Russia is, territorially, the largest civil division of the globe. 
 
4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Its total superficial area is estimated at eight millions of square 
 miles, being more than twice the area of the whole of the United 
 States, and comprising all the north of Europe and Asia, and the 
 north-west corner of North America. This immense territory has 
 given to the Russian empire an importance more imaginary than 
 real. For, as with individuals, so with nations, — nothing, to the 
 cursory observer, invests them so much with the appearance of 
 strength as large landed possessions. According to this idea, 
 however, the aborigines of this western world were a very power- 
 ful people, for the whole boundless continent was theirs ; and, 
 though divided into a great variety of tribes, they were linked 
 together by interests that made them the common foe of the white 
 man. Nevertheless, they melted away, at his approach, like the 
 snows of winter before the summer's sun. Something, therefore, 
 beside land, is requisite to national strength. 
 
 The original elements, also, of the Rusian nation, have doubtless 
 contributed to the prevalent exaggerated idea of its power. The 
 Sclavonic, Finnish and Lettish tribes on the northern, and the 
 Goths and Vandals on the southern borders of the Baltic, and 
 stretching across to the Black Sea, together with the Huns around 
 the Caspian, possessed great physical energy, common to rude 
 habits of life and northern latitudes ; and their incursions upon 
 their neighbors, and their overthrow of the empires both of Rome 
 and Constantinople, fifteen hundred years ago, struck terror 
 through all the more effeminate nations in the south of Europe. 
 These facts appear to have given rise to that mythological charac- 
 ter, the Great Northern Bear, whose reputation is so well known, 
 and has, for ages, found so fit a personification in the Autocrat, 
 whose power has extended over and absorbed all those barbarian 
 hordes. And these facts, in connection with the more recent 
 prowess and native energy of Peter the Great, and the providen- 
 tial defeat of Napoleon at Moscow, by the snows and frosts 
 rather than the arms of Russia, have contributed to foster the 
 notion of its invincibleness, and well-nigh made the world, civilized 
 as well as uncivilized, stand in awe. 
 
 Again, the absolute despotism of the Russian government has 
 conveyed to the world a factitious idea of its comparative power. 
 
INTRODUCTION. O 
 
 Despotism, in its very nature, is abhorrent to all enlightened and 
 liberal minds. But, in the case of Russia, it has been rendered 
 more so, and, consequently, become a greater object of dread, by 
 its connection with extensive dominion ; by its barbarian con- 
 quests of former ages as seen in the dim light of the past ; by its 
 more modern and equally tyrannical edicts and atrocious deeds ; 
 and, more than all the rest, by the opposite and increasing repub- 
 lican tendencies of the present age, in Europe as well as in our 
 own country. But despotism, even severely executed upon its 
 subjects and weak neighbors, is no criterion of power, in comparison 
 of other and more enlightened governments. Despotism at home 
 is not identical with power abroad. 
 
 And, now, if there are circumstances that go to diminish the 
 popular dread of Russian power, there are such as tend to miti- 
 gate, if they do not excuse, Russian intolerance. At least, there 
 are reasons why other governments should be slow in its con- 
 demnation, and why, in comparison of other nations, Russia has 
 a just claim upon our charity. Deeds, events, as well as objects, 
 wear different aspects as seen from different stand-points. There 
 are few questions that have not two sides, and it is not always 
 easy to get at both correctly, when we are so remote in time and 
 space as we are from most of those that have arrested the public 
 attention with regard to Russia. We cannot apologize for des- 
 potism. There can be no more excuse for nations than individuals 
 in the commission of moral wrong. Neither can the conduct of 
 the one nor the other be justified upon the principle that the end 
 sanctifies the means. We eschew it, by whomsoever advocated, 
 and wheresoever applied. The mantle of American republicanism 
 can hide its naked deformity no more effectually than Russian 
 despotism, which has justly merited the rebuke of the ciliviled 
 world. But it should be remembered that practical liberty is 
 sometimes found in strange juxtaposition with organized despot- 
 ism, and practical despotism in a similar relation to professed 
 liberty. As a matter of fact, no human government exists that 
 does not present the aspect of the most unnatural admixture of 
 these opposing elements. All, more or less, violate their own 
 principles, — some for the better, others for the worse. Hence, 
 1* 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 our own boasted republic is not so free from reproach as to render 
 it entirely unbecoming in it to speak with some moderation, and 
 a degree of charity even, of Russian rule. There is too much 
 glass in our house to allow of casting stones at others with 
 safety. For, if we compare the system of Russian serfdom with 
 that of American slavery, the balance is certainly against us; 
 and it is very much of a question, whether the future historian 
 will be able to discover any essential difference, unless it be in 
 favor of Russia, between the partitionings of Poland and Mexico. 
 Do Americans find an apology for the annexation of a large portion 
 of Mexico to the United States in the prospective improvement 
 in the condition of its inhabitants ? Let them be generous enough 
 to excuse Russia on the same ground, since the social and civil 
 condition of the masses of Poland has been confessedly much im- 
 proved since its dismemberment, and Russia has received its share 
 of the plunder. If the prospect of good is a sanction for doing 
 evil, certainly its realization is a sufiicient apology. If it is 
 right to do evil that good may come, we may well rest satisfied 
 after the evil is done, since good has come. But the prospective 
 or the actual results are no excuse in either case ; only, similar 
 indefensible aggressions of different nations upon their weak 
 neighbors call for mutual forbearance and charity. Or, what is 
 no less desirable is, that similar errors among the nations should 
 beget patience under the reproof of their mutual bad example, 
 and teach them to correct in themselves the faults that they see 
 mirrored forth in each other's character. Surely a faithful, recip- 
 rocal application of this principle between Russia and the United 
 States would be greatly to the advantage and honor of each, and 
 the augmentation of their combined influence for good upon the 
 world. 
 
 Again, the world has received much of its impressions respect- 
 ing Russia through the distorted media of English and French 
 prejudices. Speaking merely as Englishmen or Frenchmen, per- 
 sons have too often given us the impressions of one form of des- 
 potism, though it may be somewhat mitigated, against another 
 form. Their stand-points have been too low and too circumscribed 
 to give the fairest view ; whereas, the point from which to obtain 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 such a view of any government is the highest peak of liberty, and 
 no man, speaking simply as an Englishman or a Frenchman, nor yet 
 even merely as an American, can be a perfectly impartial judge 
 of other governments; because, the highest point — the Mount 
 Washington of genuine liberty — is yet outside of all existing 
 governments, and that man has attained nearest its summit who 
 feels and speaks most as a man, as one of the race unbiased 
 by national prejudice, and is possessed of the most enlightened 
 philanthropy and the largest Christian principle. 
 
 These thoughts, it is apprehended, are important to a right 
 consideration of the " Eastern Question," which is now exciting a 
 new and universal public interest. All eyes are turned, with deep 
 solicitude, to the scene of hostilities between Russia and Turkey. 
 Sympathies are enlisted, opinions are formed, hopes and fears 
 alternate, not so much in view of the issue of the contest with 
 respect to either or both of the two principal contending nations, 
 as of its final bearings upon the destinies, not only of Europe, 
 but of the world. ''Kings and emperors are on tiptoe looking out 
 for their crowns, politicians for their offices and salaries, mer- 
 chants for their commerce, and Christians for the truth that they 
 love more than all the rest. The friends of all that is good are 
 inclined to despond, and to fear, in the event of the success of 
 Russia, that all is lost ; and they are aided in this feeling both 
 by the long-cherished apprehension of the invincible power and 
 despotic aggression of Russia, and by their natural sympathy for 
 the weaker party, and, especially in this case, as of late they see, 
 or think they see, more indications of Christian toleration in Tur- 
 key than in her more powerful antagonist. 
 
 But commerce, learning and religion, have nothing to hope for, 
 but everything to fear, from Mahometanism. This is the lesson 
 of its history from the beginning. Nothing is to be feared, in 
 the long run, from the overthrow of the power of the Moslem, 
 by whomsoever it may be brought about. What of toleration it 
 has granted seems to be a mere conventional or political regula- 
 tion, forced upon it by the powers upon whom it is dependent for 
 national protection. There is still no toleration for the Turk, as 
 a reasoning, responsible being. Witness the recent beheading of 
 
8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 a man for renouncing the false prophet in favor of Christ. Let 
 Turkey be subdued and Greece be annexed to Russia, as would 
 probably soon be the case, and, though temporary embarrassments 
 might obstruct the progress of free institutions, yet those same 
 influences that have rendered Greece so indigestible to the Sul- 
 tan may make it equally so to the Autocrat, and lead to the 
 transformation of his empire, the popularizing of its government, 
 and the actual transfer of the seat of its power to Athens or 
 Constantinople. For, where the greatest degree of genuine Chris- 
 tian light and liberty shall prevail, there is the pledge and the 
 nucleus of a future and ultimate supremacy that shall bless man- 
 kind. And it has been said by high authority, of late, speaking 
 of Athens and Constantinople, — " In both these cities there is 
 more freedom of speech, pen and action, more political and re- 
 ligious tolerance, than in any other continental capitals." Though 
 this must be taken with considerable limitation, there is evidently 
 a light kindling there to scatter the darkness, and break the power 
 that has so long oppressed the surrounding nations. 
 
 It is well, therefore, to take enlightened and extensive views 
 of this " Eastern Question " before, as Americans, we allow our 
 sympathies to carry us decidedly to either side of the two prin- 
 cipal belligerent powers. Our mission, as Americans, is rather 
 still to cultivate our own field — to expend our national sympa- 
 thies at home, and be content to look on and see the nations of 
 the Eastern world work out their own political destiny. 
 
 J. C. W. 
 
 Hopkinton, Feb. 16, 1854. 
 
RUSSIA. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 RUSSIA, TURKEY, AND ENGLAND 
 
 Contents. — Persevering Efforts of an Individual to rouse the People of 
 Britain in favor of Turkey and against Russia. — Protest against any 
 "Wish to palliate the Violence and Aggression of Russia. — Peace and Non- 
 intervention the WriteFs sole Object. — Character of the Turkish Gov- 
 ernment — contrasted with that of Russia. — Consequences to Humanity 
 and Civilization of the Occupation of Constantinople by the Russians. — 
 Absurd Apprehension of Injury to our Trade from the Greatness of Russia. 
 
 — National Wealth the true Source of National Power ; not Extent of 
 Territory. — Immense Power of the Manufacturing Districts of England. 
 
 — Lord Dudley Stuart's and Mr. T. Attwood's Indiscreet Zeal for British 
 Interference with Russia. — State of the Caucasian Tribes — the Geor- 
 gians, Circassians, &o. — Condition of Wallachia and Moldavia — Persia — 
 the Crimea — Finland. 
 
 It has been somewhere remarked that, in former times, some 
 false alarms usually preceded or accompanied a new war. Thus, in 
 1792, Mr. Saunderson, then Lord Mayor, and soon afterwards made 
 a Baronet, got up in his place in the House of Commons, and 
 declared that he knew of a plot to surprise the Tower of London. 
 All England was thrown into a fear of the Jacobins, and the anti- 
 Jacobin war soon afterwards followed ; but of the conspiracy to 
 seize the Tower not another word was heard. Again, at the close 
 of the short peace, or, more properly speaking, the truce of 
 Amiens, it was alleged in all the public prints, and subsequently 
 inserted in the declaration of war, that Bonaparte had armies 
 ready to invade England ; and, in proof, it was adduced that in- 
 
10 
 
 RUSSIA. 
 
 structions had been given to the French diplomatic and commer- 
 cial agents to take surveys and soundings of our coasts and har- 
 bors.^ The people, thus deluded into an anti-Bonaparte war, 
 forgot that many different surveys of every part of our coast, and 
 of every harbor in the British dominions, might have been pur- 
 chased for a few shillings at every hydrographer's or chart-seller's; 
 and that no foreigner, by years of study, could have added an 
 iota to the information contained in the various pilot-books then 
 used in the different channels. We live in other times ; but still 
 the constitution of our government, which gives to the court the 
 power of declaring war, and to the Commons the privilege of pro- 
 viding for its expenses, remains the same ; and, however we may 
 be verging upon a more secure era, we confess we think there is 
 sufficient ground in the predominant influence which an aristoc- 
 racy essentially warlike exercises at this moment in the ministry, 
 to warn our readers and the public against the passion for a fool- 
 ish war, with which the minds of the people have been latterly 
 very industriously inflamed. We do not charge the noble lords 
 who form the great majority in the cabinet with a design to stim- 
 ulate the country to demand hostilities with Russia ; the policy 
 of the ministry may probably have stopped far short of that, and 
 aimed only at accomplishing an augmentation of the army or navy. 
 Certain it is, however, that one active mind has, during the last 
 two years, materially influenced the tone of several of the news- 
 papers of this kingdom in reference to the affairs of Russia and 
 Turkey, and incessantly roused public opinion, through every 
 accessible channel of the periodical press, against the former and 
 in favor of the latter nation. Certain it is, moreover, that this 
 
 * « When once Persia fell under the yoke of Russia, one great obstacle 
 to the acquirement of that which constituted our possessions in the East 
 would be removed. He hoped that its success was impossible, it was at least 
 problematical ; but this, at all events, was in no degree doubtful, that the 
 matter was very seriously entertained at St. Petersburg. In the war-office 
 there, maps and plans, drawn expressly for the purpose, were deposited, showing not 
 only the practicability of such a scheme of aggrandizement, but the various modes in 
 which it might be best carried into effect, and the way the several military stations nec- 
 essary for the purpose might be established." — Lord Dudley Stuart's Speech, 
 House of Commons, Feb. 19, 183G. 
 
RUSSIA. 
 
 11 
 
 individual, if not previously an agent of the government, has lat- 
 terly become so by being appointed to a diplomatic post in our 
 embassy at Constantinople.^ How far this indefatigable spirit 
 has been successful in his design to diffuse a feeling of terror and 
 a spirit of hatred towards Russia in the public mind, may be ascer- 
 tained by any one who will take the trouble to sound the opin- 
 ions of his next neighbor upon the subject, whom, it is ten to one, 
 he will find an alarmist about the subtlety of Pozzo di Borgo, the 
 cruelty of the Czar, and the barbarism of the Russians. He most 
 likely will find him to possess but vague feelings of apprehension, 
 and very little exactness of knowledge upon the subject ; he will 
 not know, perhaps, precisely, whether the province of Moldavia be 
 on the right or the left bank of the Danube, or whether the Bal- 
 kan and the ancient Haemus be an identical range of mountains ; 
 he will have but an indistinct acquaintance with the geography 
 of Asia Minor, and probably confound the Bosphorus with the 
 Dardanelles ; but still he shall be profoundly alarmed at the en- 
 croachments of Russia in those quarters, and quite willing to go to 
 war to prevent them. Such, we gravely assert, is the feeling and 
 such are the opinions of the great majority of those who take their 
 doctrines from some of the newspapers at this moment, upon the 
 question of Russian aggrandizement. Believing that the fate of 
 Turkey, and the designs of her great northern neighbor, are by no 
 means matters that affect the interests of England so vitally as 
 some writers imagine, we are yet more directly opposed to them, 
 by entertaining a conviction that, even if the worst of their fore- 
 bodings were to arrive, — if even Russia were to subjugate Tur- 
 key, — England would gain rather than suffer by th "^ event. In 
 order to state our views fairly upon this interesting and difficult 
 question, it will be necessary for us to glance hastily at the past 
 history and the present condition, as respects the government and 
 resources, of the two empires ; and then, having assumed that 
 Turkey had fallen a prey to the ambition of Russia, we will weigh 
 the probable consequences of, and meet the possible objections to, 
 such an event. 
 
 * We state these facts from personal knowledge. 
 
12 RUSSIA. 
 
 But, before entering upon our task, we would disavow all inten- 
 tion of advocating the cause of Russian violence and aggression. 
 It can only be necessary to say thus much at the outset of this 
 pamphlet in order to prevent the reader from anticipating our 
 design with an undue prepossession respecting our motives ; for the 
 whole spirit and purpose of the following pages will show that we 
 are hostile to the government of St. Petersburg, and to every 
 principle of its foreign and domestic policy. Our sympathies flow 
 altogether towards those free institutions which are favorable to 
 the peace, wealth, education and happiness, of mankind. 
 
 In comparing the Turkish government with that of Russia, how- 
 ever, it will be found that the latter is immeasurably the superior 
 in its laws and institutions ; and if, in the remarks which we shall 
 have occasion to make, we should appear to bestow commendations 
 upon that northern people, we entreat that the reader will con- 
 sider us to be only speaking in comparison with its more barbarous 
 and despotic Mahometan neighbor, and not from any abstract 
 predilection in favor of the Russian nation. Again, whilst we 
 argue that we should, in all probability, benefit by the subjuga- 
 tion of Turkey by Russia, we do not attempt to justify, or even to 
 palliate, the forcible spoliation of its territory ; still less do we advo- 
 cate the intervention of the English government for the purpose 
 of promoting such a conquest. Our sole object is to persuade the 
 public that the wisest policy for England is, to take no part in 
 those remote quarrels. To accomplish this end, we will endeavor 
 to examine every distinct source of danger which the advocates for 
 our interference in the affairs of states a thousand miles distant 
 adduce as arguments in defence of their policy. We shall claim 
 the right jf putting the question entirely upon a footing of self- 
 interest. We do not, for a moment, imagine that it is necessary 
 for us to show that we are not called upon to preserve the peace 
 and good order of the entire world. Indeed, those writers and 
 speakers who argue in favor of our intervention in the affairs of 
 Russia and Turkey invariably do so upon the pretence that our 
 commerce, our colonies, or our national existence, are endangered 
 by the encroachments of the former empire. We trust the futil- 
 
RUSSIA. 13 
 
 ity of such fears will be shown by the following appeal to reason, 
 experience and facts. 
 
 The Turks, a race of the Tartars of Asia, conquered Constanti- 
 nople in 1453. In the Succeeding century, this people struck ter- 
 ror into all Europe by their conquests. They subdued Egypt, 
 the Barbary States, and all the Arabian coasts on the Red Sea. 
 In Europe, they conquered the Crimea and the countries along the 
 Danube; they overran Hungary and Transylvania, and repeatedly 
 laid siege to Vienna. At sea, notwithstanding the gallant resist- 
 ance of the Venetians, they subdued Rhodes, Cyprus, and all the 
 Greek islands. Down to our own time, the Turks governed a 
 territory so vast and fertile that, in ancient ages, it comprised 
 Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, Greece, Carthage, Thrace, Pontus, Bithy- 
 nia, Cappadocia, Epirus, and Armenia, besides other less renowned 
 empires. From three of these states went forth, at various epochs, 
 conquerors who vanquished and subjected the then entire known 
 world. The present lamentable condition of this fine territory, so 
 renowned in former times, arises from no change in the seasons, or 
 defalcation of nature. It still stretches from thirty-four to forty-eight 
 degrees north, within the temperate zone, and upon the same parallels 
 of latitude as Spain, France, and all the best portion of the United 
 States. " Mount Haemus," says Malte Brun, " is still covered 
 with verdant forests ; the plains of Thrace, Macedonia and Thes- 
 saly, yield abundant and easy harvests to the husbandman ; a thou- 
 sand ports and a thousand gulfs are observed on the coasts, penin- 
 sulas, and islands. The calm billows of these tranquil seas still 
 bathe the base of mountains covered with vines and olive-trees. 
 But the populous and numerous towns mentioned by ancient 
 writers have been changed into deserts beneath a despotic govern- 
 ment." All the authorities upon this country assure us that the 
 soil of many parts of Turkey is more fruitful than the richest 
 plains of Sicily. When grazed by the rudest plough, it yields a 
 more abundant harvest than the finest fields between the Eure 
 and the Loire, the granary of France. Mines of silver^copper 
 and iron, are still existing, and salt abounds in the country. Cot- 
 ton, tobacco and silk, might be made the staple exports of this 
 region, and their culture admits of almost unlimited extension 
 2 
 
14 RUSSIA. 
 
 throughout the Turkish territory ; while some of the native wines 
 are equal to those of Burgundy. Almost every species of tree 
 flourishes in European Turkey. The heights on the Danube are 
 clad with apple, pine, cherry and apricot trees ; whole forests of 
 these may be seen in Wallachia ; and they cover the hills of 
 Thrace, Macedonia and Epirus; The olive, orange, mastic, fig, 
 and pomegranate, — the laurel, myrtle, and nearly all the beautiful 
 and aromatic shrubs and plants, — are natural to this soil. Nor 
 are the animal productions less valuable than those of vegetable 
 life. The finest horses have been drawn from this quarter to im- 
 prove the breeds of western Europe ; and the rich pastures of 
 European Turkey are, probabty, the best adapted in the world for 
 rearing the largest growths of cattle and sheep. 
 
 That, in a region so highly favored, the population should have 
 retrograded whilst surrounded by abundance, that its wealth and 
 industry should have been annihilated, and that commerce should 
 be banished from those rivers and harbors that first called it into 
 existence, must be accounted for by remembering that the 
 finest soil, the most genial climate, or the brightest intellectual 
 and physical gifts of human nature, are as nothing when sub- 
 jected to the benumbing influences of the government of Con- 
 stantinople. It is necessary to refer to the religion and the 
 maxims of its professors, which constitute all that serves as a 
 substitute for law with this Mahometan people, if we would know 
 the causes why ignorance, barbarism and poverty, now over- 
 spread the fairest lands of Asia and Europe. The Turks pro- 
 fess, as is well known, the most bigoted and intolerant branch of 
 the Mahometan faith ; they regard with equal detestation the 
 Persian Shiite and the follower of Christ ; nay, the more zealous 
 amongst their doctors contend that it is as meritorious to slay one 
 Shiite as twenty Christians. Their colleges, or madresses teach 
 nothing but the Mahometan theology; many years being sp-mt in 
 mastering such knotty points as whether the feet should be washed 
 at rising, or only rubbed with the dry hand. As the orthodox 
 Turk, of whatever rank, is taught to despise all other fields of 
 learning than the Koran, under the belief that Mahomet has, in 
 that sacred book, recorded all that his faithful followers are required 
 
RUSSIA. 15 
 
 to know, it follows, of course, that he is religiously ignorant 
 of all that forms the education of a Frenchman, German or 
 Italian ; he knows nothing of the countries beyond the bounds 
 of the Sultan's dominions. The Turks (unlike the liberal Per- 
 sians, who have made some advances in science) are unacquainted 
 with the uses of the commonest scientific instruments, which are 
 exhibited to them by travellers just as we do to amuse children. 
 Notwithstanding that this people have been for nearly four cen- 
 turies in absolute possession of all the noblest remains of ancient 
 art, they have evinced no taste for architecture or sculpture, 
 whilst painting and music are equally unknown to them. Nor 
 have they been less careless about the preservation of ancient 
 than the creation of modern works of labor and ingenuity. They 
 found, at the conquest of the Eastern empire, splendid and sub- 
 stantial public and private edifices, which have been barbarously 
 destroyed, or allowed to crumble beneath the hand of time ; and 
 huts of wood, compared by travellers to large boxes * standing 
 in rows, with their lids opening upon hinges, compose the streets 
 of modern Constantinople, and other large cities. Bridges, aque- 
 ducts and harbors, the precious and durable donations of remote 
 yet more enlightened generations, have all suffered a like fate ; 
 and the roads, even in the vicinity of the capital, which in former 
 ages maintained an unrivalled celebrity, are described, by the 
 last touristjt to be now in so broken and neglected a state as to 
 present a barrier against the progress of artillery as complete as 
 though it had been designed by an engineer for that purpose. 
 
 The cause of all this decay is ascribable to the genius of the 
 Turkish government, — a fierce, unmitigated, military despotism, 
 allied with the fanaticism of a brutalizing religion, which teaches 
 its followers to rely solely on the sword, and to disdain all im- 
 provement and labor. The Sultan, who is the vicegerent of the 
 prophet, holds both temporal and spiritual authority over his fol- 
 lowers; and this enables him to sway the lives and destinies of 
 the people with an absoluteness greater than was ever enjoyed by 
 
 * Willis — " Pencillings by the Way." 
 t Quin — "Voyage down the Danube." 
 
16 RUSSIA. 
 
 any tyrant of ancient times ; unchecked, too, by the growth of 
 cities, the increase of knowledge, or the accumulation of wealth, 
 — all which are alike incompatible with the present govern- 
 ment of the country. Every man who is invested with absolute 
 power is at liberty to delegate his power unimpaired to another : 
 the Sultan is the vicegerent of the prophet ; every pasha is a rep- 
 resentative of the Sultan, and every soldier who carries an order 
 the representative of the pasha. The situations of pasha and 
 cadi, or judge, are all given to the highest bidders, who are 
 removable at will, and, of course, take care to indemnify them- 
 selves at the expense of the governed. " It is a fact of public 
 notoriety," says Thornton,^ " that governments of every descrip- 
 tion are openly sold at the Porte ; they are held for the term of one 
 year only, and, at the ensuing bai?'am, the leases must be renewed 
 or transferred to a less parsimonious competitor. In the public 
 registers the precise value of every important post under govern- 
 ment is recorded, and the regular remittance of the taxes and 
 tribute is the only acknowledged criterion of upright administra- 
 tion." It is a fundamental principle that all the property con- 
 quered by the Turks belongs to the Sultan. Hence the Chris- 
 tians are accounted the slaves of the conqueror, and they are only 
 allowed to live by paying a heavy tribute, the receipt for which 
 bears that it is the ransom of their heads ! 
 
 Probably in nothing has this people been more unduly repre- 
 sented than in the praises which have been bestowed on their 
 unrestricted principles of trade. The Turk knows nothing, and 
 cares as little, about freedom of commerce; he disdains trade 
 himself, and despises it in others ; and, if he has failed to imitate 
 more civilized (though, certainly, in this point of view, not wiser) 
 nations, by fortifying his coasts with custom-houses, it is certainly 
 from no wise principle of taxation, but simply because such a 
 circuitous method of fiscal exaction would be far too complicated 
 and wearisome for the minds of Ottoman governors, who prefer 
 the simpler mode of raising a revenue by the direct extortion of 
 the pasha or the aga. Far from favoring the extension of com- 
 merce, one great cause of the present barbarism and the past 
 
 * « Present State of Turkey." 
 
RUSSIA. 17 
 
 unhappy condition of Turkey is to be found in the aversion and 
 contempt which its people bear for trade. " The Jews," says 
 Hadji-Khalfa, the Turkish writer, in speaking of Salonica, " em- 
 ploy many workmen in their different manufactories — support a 
 number of schools, in which there are not fewer than two hun- 
 dred masters. The caravans that travel from Salonica to Semlin, 
 Vienna, and Leipsig, are loaded with cotton, tobacco, carpets, 
 and leather. It is a shame," continues the orthodox Hadji- 
 Khalfa, " that so many Jews are allowed to remain in Salonica ; 
 the excitement thus given to trade is apt to blind true believers." 
 The fate of those vast and rich tracts bordering upon the Black 
 Sea and its tributary rivers affords ample proof that the genius 
 of Mahometanism is inimical to the interests of commerce and 
 agriculture. The trade carried on by the ancients upon the 
 shores of the Euxine was very considerable, and gave life and 
 wealth to several populous cities mentioned in history. In more 
 modern times, the Genoese formed establishments upon the coasts 
 of the Black Sea, and they took the lead in navigating those 
 waters down to the fifteenth century. At the taking of Con- 
 stantinople the Turks closed the Black Sea against the ships of 
 Europe, and from that time its navigation was lost to the com- 
 merce of the world for a period of more than three centuries. 
 
 By the treaty of Kanardgi, in 1774, the ships of Russia were 
 allowed to pass the Bosphorus ; other countries soon afterwards 
 obtained similar privileges ; some restrictions, which it was still 
 attempted to keep up, were removed by the treaty between the 
 Russians and Turks in 1829 ; and the Black Sea is now, for com- 
 mercial purposes, as open as the Mediterranean. The importance 
 of this vast extension of commercial navigation cannot, at present, 
 be fully appreciated, owing to the unfortunate condition of the 
 population which inhabits those regions. Some idea may, how- 
 ever, be formed of the extent and probable importance of those 
 great rivers which fall into the Black Sea, by the following esti- 
 mate, furnished by Malte Brun : 
 
 If all the rivers in Europe be as 1.000 
 
 Those which flow into the Black Sea, 0.273 
 
 " " Mediterranean, 0.144 
 
 9# 
 
18 RUSSIA. 
 
 Of all the features belonging to the Turkish national character, 
 there is none less favorable than that which relates to the neglect 
 and contempt with which that people has invariably treated 
 affairs of trade. Whether it be owing to that dogma of their 
 creed which forbids the receiving interest for money, or to that 
 other familiar text of the Koran, which says, " There is but one 
 law, and that forbids all communication with infidels," certain it 
 is that such an example as a Turkish merchant transacting mat- 
 ters of commerce with a foreign trader was scarcely ever known 
 in that country. This is an anomaly the more striking, when we 
 refer to other countries, less advantageously situated ; as, for 
 instance, China, where trade has acquired an importance, and is 
 conducted on a system the growth of ages of good government, 
 and of a like period of patient industry in the people. Nothing 
 but a tyrannical despotism, at once sanguinary and lawless, could 
 have had the effect of repelling commerce from the superb harbor 
 of Constantinople ; but, alas ! the thousand ships which might 
 find secure anchorage there would seek in vain for the rich 
 freights of silk, cotton and wool, which ought to await their 
 coming ; such is the character of its people and their rulers, that 
 no native capitalists have ever been emboldened to accumulate a 
 store of merchandise to tempt the rapacity of the Sultan ; and 
 vessels which trade to Constantinople have frequently occasion to 
 go to Salonica, Smyrna, or some other port, for return cargoes. 
 
 Before we turn away from this hasty and assuredly not very 
 pleasing glance at the Ottoman nation, it would be uncandid if 
 we omitted to notice the imputed virtues of the Turks ; foremost 
 amongst which stands charity, a quality enjoined to all true 
 believers by the words of Mahomet, and which includes within its 
 operation the inferior animals. They are reputed to be honorable 
 in their dealings, and faithful to their words — characteristics of 
 the haughty masters, as lying and chicane are natural to the 
 slave. The Turks are forbidden the use of wine ; but then they 
 console themselves by substituting the eternal coffee, tobacco and 
 opium, and by other sensual indulgences. 
 
 " We turn," in the words of a great writer, u from the soil of 
 
RUSSIA. 19 
 
 barbarism and the crescent, to a country whose inhabitants par- 
 ticipate in the blessings of Christianity and European civilization." 
 Russia comprises one-half of Europe, one-third of Asia, and 
 a portion of America ; and includes within its bounds nearly 
 sixty millions, or a sixteenth portion of the human race. Its terri- 
 tory stretches, in length, from the Black Sea to the confines of 
 Upper Canada ; and from the border of China to the Arctic Sea, 
 in width. The stupendous size of the Russian empire has excited 
 the wonder and alarm of timid writers, who forget that " it is an 
 identity of language, habits and character, and not the soil or 
 the name of a master, which constitutes a great and powerful 
 nation." Ruling over eighty different nations or tribes, the Auto- 
 crat of all the Russias claims the allegianee of people of every 
 variety of race, tongue, and religion. Were it possible to trans- 
 port to one common centre of his empire the gay opera lounger 
 of St. Petersburg, habited in the Parisian mode ; the fierce 
 Bashkir of the Ural Mountain, clad in rude armor, and armed 
 with bow and arrows ; the Crimean, with his camel, from the 
 southern steppes ; and the Esquimaux, who traverses with his 
 dogs the frozen regions of the north, — these fellow-subjects of 
 one potentate would encounter each other with all the surprise 
 and ignorance of individuals meeting from England, China, Peru, 
 and New Holland ; nor would the time or expense incurred in the 
 journey be greater in the latter than the former interview^ It 
 must be obvious to every reflecting mind that vast deductions 
 must be made from the written and statistical resources of a 
 nation possessing no unison of religious or political feeling, when 
 put in competition with other empires, identified in faith, lan- 
 guage, and national characteristics. The popular mind has been, 
 however, greatly misled by many writers on the Russian empire, 
 who have sought to impress their readers with the idea of the 
 overwhelming size of its territory, and who have, at the same time, 
 wilfully or ignorantly omitted to mention other facts, which, if 
 taken in connection, serve to render that very magnitude of sur- 
 face a source of weakness rather than power. We are furnished 
 by Malte Brun with some tables of the relative densities of the 
 population of the European empires, which will help to illus- 
 
20 RUSSIA. 
 
 trate our views upon this subject, and from which we give an 
 extract. 
 
 Inhabitants. 
 
 Russia, for each square league, 181 
 
 Prussia, 792 
 
 France, 1063 
 
 England, 1457 
 
 Now, the same law applies to communities as to physics — in 
 proportion as you condense you strengthen, and as you draw out 
 you weaken bodies ; and, according to this rule, the above table, 
 which makes Prussia more than four times as closely peopled as 
 Russia, would, bearing in mind the advantages of her denser pop- 
 ulation, give to the former power an equality of might with her 
 unwieldy neighbor, which, we have no doubt, is quite consistent 
 with the truth ; whilst the same tabular test, if applied to Russia, 
 France and England, would assign much the greater share of 
 power to the two latter nations, — which experience has demon- 
 strated to be the fact. Here, then, we have the means of exem- 
 plifying, by a very simple appeal to figures (ever the best reason- 
 ing weapons), how the vastness of territory of the Russians is the 
 cause of debility rather than of strength. It would be a trite 
 illustration of a self-evident truism if we were to adduce, as a 
 proof of our argument, the practice in military tactics. What 
 general ever dreamed of scattering his troops, by way of increas- 
 ing tiheir power ? Bonaparte gained his terrible battles by inan- 
 oeuvering great masses of men in smaller limits than any preceding 
 commanders. 
 
 But the same geographer supplies us with a graduated scale of 
 the relative taxation of these countries, which affords a yet more 
 convincing proof of the disadvantageous position of Russia. 
 
 Russia, each, inhabitant contributes to government, . . . £0 11 8 
 
 Prussia, " « « 17 6 
 
 France, « « « 18 4 
 
 England, " " " 3 13 4 
 
 Now, assuming, as we may safely do, that these governments draw 
 the utmost possible revenue from their subjects, what a dispropor- 
 tion here is between the wealth of the closely-peopled Britain and 
 the poverty of the scantily-populated Russia ! We find, too, that 
 
RUSSIA. 21 
 
 the gradation of wealth is in the direct proportion to the density 
 of the inhabitants of the four countries. Here, then, we have a 
 double source of weakness for Russia, which would operate in a 
 duplicate ratio to her disadvantage, in case that nation were 
 plunged into a war with either of those other states ; for, whilst 
 her armies must necessarily be mustered from greater distances, 
 at proportionate cost, and with less ability on her part to bear 
 those charges, her rivals would possess troops more compactly 
 positioned, and, at the same time, the greater means of transport- 
 ing them ; — in a word, the one party would require the funds, 
 and not possess them, whilst the other would, comparatively speak- 
 ing, have the money, and not want it. A necessary evil attends 
 the wide-spread character of the population of Russia, in the 
 absence of those large towns which serve as centres of intelligence 
 and nurses of civilization in other countries. Thus, in those vast 
 regions, we have the cities of 
 
 Petersburg, with a population of 305,000 
 
 Moscow, 190,000 
 
 Warsaw, 117,000 
 
 Kasan, 50,000 
 
 Kiow, 40,000 
 
 whilst we find the remainder of the large places on the map of 
 Russia to be only, in size, upon a par with the third-rate towns 
 of England. That in a country of such vast extent, and compris- 
 ing sixty millions of people, and where so few populous cities 
 exist, the great mass of the inhabitants are living in poverty, 
 ignorance and barbarism, scarcely rising above a state of nature, 
 must be apparent. Tribes of Cossacks and of Tartars, wandering 
 over the low countries of Caucasia, own a formal allegiance to 
 Russia. Other hordes, dignified by the alarmist writers on the 
 subject of Russian greatness with the title of nations, — such as 
 the Circassians, the Georgians, the Mingrelians, with more than 
 thirty other tribes, some Christians, others Mahometan, or of a 
 mixed creed, occupying the mountainous regions of the Caucasus, 
 — are wholly or partially subdued to the dominion of the Czar. 
 These fierce tribes are addicted to all the rude habits of savages ; 
 they live by the chase, or the cultivation of a little millet ; they 
 
22 
 
 RUSSIA. 
 
 commit barbarous outrages, and buy and sell each other for slaves, 
 often disposing of their own children, brothers and sisters, to 
 the Turks. Against these refractory and half-subdued neighbors 
 the Russians are compelled to keep fortresses along the frontier. 
 
 If we pass to northern Russia, we find the Samoiedes, a people 
 enduring nearly six months of perpetual night, and enjoying, in 
 requital, a day of two months. With them, corn is sown, ripened 
 and reaped, in sixty days. In the governments of Wologda, Arch- 
 angel, and Olonetz (for even in this almost uninhabitable region 
 man has established his ministerial arrangements and political 
 divisions) , the climate is of such a nature that human industry can 
 hardly contend against the elements, and the scanty produce of 
 his labor enables the husbandman scarcely to protract a painful 
 and sometimes precarious existence. Trees disappear on the 
 sterile plains, the plants are stunted, corn withers, the marshy 
 meadows are covered with rushes and mosses, and the whole of 
 vegetable nature proclaims the vicinity of the pole. 
 
 Over these desolate wastes a traveller might journey five hun- 
 dred miles, and not encounter one solitary human habitation. The 
 government or province of Orenburg is larger than the entire 
 kingdom of Prussia, and yet contains only a population of one 
 million souls ! 
 
 There are, however, vast districts — as, for example, the whole 
 of Little Russia, and the Ukraine — of fertile territory, equal in 
 richness to any part of Europe ; and it has been estimated that 
 Russia contains more than seven hundred and fifty thousand 
 square miles of land of a quality not inferior to the best portions 
 of Germany, and upon which a population of two hundred mil- 
 lions of people might find subsistence. Here, then, is the field 
 upon which the energies of the government and the industry of its 
 subjects should be, for the next century, exclusively devoted ; and 
 if the best interests of Russia were understood, or if its govern- 
 ment would attain to that actual power which ignorant writers 
 proclaim for it in the possession of boundless wastes and im- 
 penetrable forests, she should cease the wars of the sword, and 
 begin the battle with the wilderness, by constructing railroads, 
 building bridges, deepening rivers; by fostering the accumula- 
 
RUSSIA. 23 
 
 tion of capital, the growth of cities, and the increase of civilization 
 and freedom. These are the only sources of power and wealth 
 in an age of imjn'ovement ; and until Russia, like America, 
 draws from her plains, mountains and rivers, those resources 
 which can be developed only by patient labor, vain are her boasts 
 of geographical extent. As well might the inhabitants of the 
 United States vaunt of their unexplored possessions west of the 
 Rocky Mountains, or England plume herself upon the desert 
 tracts of New Holland. 
 
 If such be the true interests of Russia, it will be admitted, then, 
 that the conquest of those extensive and almost depopulated regions 
 now withering under the government of the Sultan would only be 
 a wider departure from this enlightened policy. Assuming that 
 such a conquest had taken place, it follows that the population of 
 the Russian empire would become still more diversified in charac- 
 ter, and of a yet more heterogeneous nature, whilst it at the same 
 time would diffuse itself over a far wider surface of territory ; and, 
 if the arguments which we have offered are founded in reason, 
 then the first effects of all this must be, that Russia would herself 
 be weakened by this still greater distension of her dominion. 
 What, then, becomes of our apprehensions about the safety of 
 India, or the possession of the Ionian Islands, the freedom of the 
 Mediterranean, our maritime supremacy, or the thousand other 
 dangers with which we are threatened as the immediate conse- 
 quence of the possession of Constantinople by the Russians ? 
 
 If we would form a fair estimate of the probable results of 
 that event, we ought to glance, for a moment, at the conduct 
 of the same people, under somewhat similar circumstances, 
 in another quarter. The policy pursued by Russia on the 
 G-ulf of Finland (where St. Petersburg arose, like an exhalation 
 from the marshes of the Neva), when those districts were wrested 
 by its founder from the maniac Charles XII., would, we have a 
 right to assume, be imitated by the same nation on the shores of 
 the Bosphorus. Let us here pause to do homage to that noblest 
 example of history, far surpassing the exploits of Alexander or 
 Napoleon — that sublime act of devotion at the shrine of com- 
 merce and civilization offered by Peter the Great, who, to instruct 
 
24 RUSSIA. 
 
 his subjects in the science of navigation and the art of ship-build- 
 ing, voluntarily descended from the throne, where he was sur- 
 rounded by the pomp and splendor of a great potentate, and 
 became a menial workman in the dock-yards of Saardam and Dept- 
 ford. We vindicate not his crimes or his vices, the common 
 attributes of the condition of society in which he lived ; his cruelty 
 was but the natural fruit of irresponsible power in savage life, 
 and his acts of grossness and intemperance were regarded by the 
 nation as honorable exploits ; but the genius that enabled him to 
 penetrate the thick clouds of prejudice and ignorance which 
 enveloped his people, and to perceive, afar off, the power which 
 civilization and commerce confer upon nations, was the offspring 
 of his own unaided spirit, and will ever be worthy of peculiar 
 honor at the hands of the historian. Everybody knows under 
 what trying disadvantages this metropolis, planted in the midst 
 of unhealthy and barren marshes, and in a latitude that, by the 
 ancients, was placed beyond the limits of civilization, sprung from 
 the hands of its founder, and stood forth the most wonderful phe- 
 nomenon of the eighteenth century. At present, this capital, which 
 contains upwards of three hundred thousand inhabitants, and is 
 termed, from the splendor of its public buildings, a city of palaces, 
 can boast of scientific bodies which are in correspondence with all 
 the learned societies of Europe. The government has sent out 
 circumnavigators who have made discoveries in remote regions of 
 the globe. St. Petersburg contains museums of art and literature ; 
 some of the first specimens of sculpture and painting are to be seen 
 in its public halls; its public libraries contain twice as many 
 volumes as those of London ; and the best collection of Chinese, 
 Japanese, and Mongol books is to be found on their shelves. All 
 the decencies and even elegances of life, observable in Paris or Lon- 
 don, are found to prevail over this northern metropolis ; and there 
 is nothing in the streets (unless it be the costume of the people, 
 necessary to meet the exigencies of the climate) to remind the eye 
 of the traveller that he is not in one of the more western Christian 
 capitals. 
 
 We may fairly assume that, were Russia to seize upon the 
 capital of Turkey, the consequences would not, at least, be less 
 
RUSSIA. 25 
 
 favorable to humanity and civilization than those which succeeded to 
 her conquests on the Gulf of Finland a century ago. The seraglio 
 of the Saltan would be once more converted into the palace of a 
 Christian monarch ; the lasciviousness of the harem would disap- 
 pear at the presence of his Christian empress ; those walls which 
 now resound only to the voice of the eunuch and the slave, and 
 witness nothing but deeds of guilt and dishonor, would then echo 
 the footsteps of travellers and the voices of men of learning, or 
 behold the assemblage of high-souled and beautiful women, of 
 exalted birth and rare accomplishments, the virtuous companions 
 of ambassadors, tourists and merchants, from all the capitals of 
 Europe. We may fairly and reasonably assume that such con- 
 sequences would follow the conquest of Constantinople : and can 
 any one doubt that, if the government of St. Petersburg were 
 transferred to the shores of the Bosphorus, a splendid and sub- 
 stantial European city would, in less than twenty years, spring up, 
 in the place of those huts which now constitute the capital of 
 Turkey ? — that noble public buildings would arise, learned 
 societies flourish, and the arts prosper ? — that, from its natural 
 beauties and advantages, Constantinople would become an attract- 
 ive resort for civilized Europeans ? — that the Christian religion, 
 operating instantly upon the laws and institutions of the country, 
 would ameliorate the condition of its people ? — that the slave- 
 market, which is now polluting the Ottoman capital, centuries 
 after the odious traffic has been banished from the soil of Christian 
 Europe, would be abolished? — that the demoralizing and un- 
 natural law of polygamy, under which the fairest portion of the 
 creation becomes an object of brutal lust and an article of daily 
 traflic, would be discountenanced ? — and that the plague, no 
 longer fostered by the filth and indolence of the people, would 
 cease to ravage countries placed in the healthiest latitudes and 
 blessed with the finest climate in the world ? Can any rational 
 mind doubt that these changes would follow from the occupation 
 of Constantinople by Russia, every one of which, so far as the 
 difference in the cases permitted, has already been realized more 
 than a century in St, Petersburg ? But the interests of England, 
 it is alleged, would be endangered by such changes. We deny 
 3 
 
26 RUSSIA. 
 
 that the progress of improvement and the advance of civilization 
 can be inimical to the welfare of Great Britain. To assert that 
 we, a commercial and manufacturing people, have an interest in 
 retaining the fairest regions in Europe in barbarism and ignorance, 
 — that we are benefited because poverty, slavery, polygamy, and 
 the plague, abound in Turkey, — is a fallacy too gross even for 
 refutation. 
 
 One of the greatest dangers apprehended (for we set out with 
 promising to answer the popular objections to the aggrandizement 
 of Russia in this quarter) is, from the injury which would be 
 inflicted upon our trade ; which trade, exclusively of that portion 
 of our nominal exports to Turkey which really goes to Persia, 
 does not much exceed half a million yearly, — an amount so con- 
 temptible, when we recollect the population, magnitude, and 
 natural fertility of that empire, that it might safely be predicted, 
 under no possible form of government could it be diminished. 
 But Russia is said, by the panegyrists of Turkey, to be an anti- 
 commercial country. We have already seen that to Russian 
 influence we are indebted for the liberation of the Black Sea from 
 the thraldom in which it had been held, by Turkish jealousy, for 
 three hundred years. If, however, we would judge of the proba- 
 ble conduct of that people after the conquest of Constantinople, 
 we must appeal to the experience which they have given us of 
 their commercial policy at St. Petersburg. The first Dutch 
 merchant vessel (whose captain was welcomed with honors and 
 loaded with presents by Peter the Great) entered that harbor in 
 1703 ; and, at the present time, fifteen hundred vessels clear out 
 annually from the capital of Russia for all parts of the world. 
 The internal navigation of this vast empire has been improved, 
 with a patience and perseverance, in the last century, which, bear- 
 ing in mind the impediments of climate and soil, are deserving 
 our astonishment and admiration, and which contrast strangely 
 with the supineness of that Mahometan people, whose habits are, 
 according to some writers, so favorable to trade, but in whose 
 country not one furlong of canal or navigable stream, the labor of 
 Turkish hands, has been produced in upwards of three hundred 
 years ! Three great lines of navigation, one of them fourteen hun- 
 
 
RUSSIA. 27 
 
 dred miles long, extend through the interior of Russia, by which 
 the waters of the Baltic, the Caspian, and the Black Sea are brought 
 into connection ; and by which channels the provinces of the Volga, 
 the plains of the Ukraine, and the forests and mines of Siberia, 
 transmit their products to the markets of Moscow and St. Peters- 
 burg.^ Much as may with truth be alleged against the lust for 
 aggrandizement with which Russian counsels have been actuated, 
 yet, if we examine, we shall find that it is by the love of improve- 
 ment, the security given by laws to life and property, but, 
 above all, owing to the encouragement afforded to commerce, 
 that this empire has, more than by conquest, been brought forth 
 from her frozen regions to hold a first rank among the nations of 
 Europe. 
 
 The laws for the encouragement of trade are direct and import- 
 ant; and their tendency is to destroy the privileges of the nobles, 
 by raising up a middle class, precisely in the same way by which 
 our own Plantagenets countervailed the powers of the barons. 
 Every Russian, carrying on trade, must be a burgher, and a 
 registered member of a guild or company ; and of these guilds 
 there are three ranks, according to the capitals of the members : 
 
 Ten thousand to fifty thousand roubles! entitles to foreign com- 
 merce, exempts from corporal punishment, and qualifies to drive 
 about in a carriage and pair. 
 
 Five thousand to ten thousand roubles, — the members of this 
 guild are confined to inland trade. 
 
 One thousand to five thousand roubles includes petty shopkeepers. 
 
 Besides these guilds for merchants, the porters of the large 
 towns associate together in bodies, called artels, resembling, in 
 some respects, the company of wine coopers in London, for the 
 purpose of guaranteeing persons employing one of them from any 
 loss or damage to his goods. Now, in a country, however far 
 removed from a state of freedom and civilization [and we main- 
 tain that, hi these respects, the condition of Russia is in arrear of all 
 other Christian states), where laws such as these exist, for encour- 
 
 * Boats may, we are told, go from St. Petersburg to the Caspian Sea, with- 
 out unloading. 
 
 t A rouble is about ten and one-half pence. 
 
28 RUSSIA. 
 
 aging industry, conferring privileges upon traders, and doing 
 honor to the accumulation of capital — in that country prodigious 
 strides have been already taken on the only true path to enlight- 
 enment and liberty. On this path the Turks have disdained to 
 advance a single step. Here we have, at one glance, the distinctive 
 characters of the Turkish and Russian, the Sclavonic and Mon- 
 golian races — the former unchanging and stationary, the latter 
 progressing and imitative. The very stringent laws which Russia 
 has passed against the importation of our fabrics are indications 
 of the same variety of character, evincing a desire to rival us in 
 mechanical industry ; whilst the apathy with which the Turk sees 
 every article of our manufactures enter his ports, without being 
 stimulated to study the construction of a loom or spinning-frame, 
 is but another manifestation of his inferior structure of intellect. 
 
 To return, then, to the oft agitated question, as to the danger 
 of our commerce consequent upon the conquest of Constantinople 
 by Russia, are we not justified in assuming that our exports to 
 Turkey would exceed half a million per annum, if that fertile 
 region were possessed by a nation governed under laws for the 
 fostering of trade such as we have just described ? Some persons 
 argue, indeed, that, although the productive industry of those 
 countries would augment under such supposed circumstances, still, 
 so great is the enmity of the Russians towards England, that we 
 should be excluded from all participation in its increase. But 
 how stands the case if we appeal to the policy of that people, as 
 already experienced, and find that, notwithstanding that our own 
 tariff at this time interposes a duty of one hundred per cent, against 
 the two staple articles of Russian produce, timber and corn, the 
 amount of trade carried on between Great Britain and St. Peters- 
 burg is equal to that of the latter with all the rest of the world 
 together; for, of the fifteen hundred vessels clearing annually 
 from that port, seven hundred and fifty are British? But 
 it is contended that, if Russia were put in possession of the 
 Turkish provinces, she would possess, within her own limits, 
 such a command of all the natural products as might enable 
 her to close the Hellespont against the world, and begin a 
 Japanese system of commercial policy. To this we reply, that 
 
RUSSIA. 29 
 
 commerce cannot, in the present day, turn hermit. It will not 
 answer for a people to try, in the words of Sheridan, to get " an 
 atmosphere and a sun of its own." Nay, better still, no country 
 can carry on great financial transactions except through the 
 medium of England. We are told by Mr. Rothschild, in his 
 evidence before the legislature, that London is the metropolis of 
 the moneyed world ; that no large commercial operations can 
 possibly be carried on, but they must be, more or less, under the 
 influence of this common centre of the financial system, round 
 which the less affluent states, like the humbler orbs of the solar 
 creation, revolve, and from whence they must be content to 
 borrow lustre and nourishment. Supposing, indeed, that Russia 
 were in possession of Turkey, and should commence a system of 
 non-intercourse (we are under the necessity of making these 
 whimsical suppositions in order to reply to grounds of argument 
 which are actually advanced every day by grave writers upon 
 this question), could she carry on those extensive manufactures 
 tvhich some people predict without deriving a supply of raw 
 ingredients from other countries ? It will suffice on this head, 
 if we observe that, to enable any one of our manufacturers to 
 conduct the simplest branch of his mechanical and chemical 
 industry, it is requisite that he be duly supplied with materials 
 the growth of every corner of the globe; — the commonest printed 
 calico, worn by the poorest peasant's wife, is the united product 
 of the four quarters of the earth; the cotton of America, the 
 indigo of Asia, the gum of Africa, and the madder of Europe, 
 must all be brought from those remote regions, and be made to 
 combine with fifty other as apparently heterogeneous commodities, 
 by ingenious arts and processes, the results of ten thousand phi- 
 losophical experiments — and all to produce a rustic's gown-piece ! 
 Whilst such are the exigencies of manufacturing industry, bind- 
 ing us in abject dependence upon all the countries of the earth, 
 may we not hope that freedom of commerce and an exemption 
 from warfare will be the inevitable fruits of the future growth 
 of that mechanical and chemical improvement, the germ of which 
 has only been planted in our day ? Need we add one word to 
 prove that Russia could not — unless she were to discover another 
 3* 
 
30 RUSSIA. 
 
 chemistry, which should wholly alter the properties of matter — 
 at the same time seclude herself from the trade of the rest of the 
 world, and become a rich and great manufacturing or commercial 
 nation ? Wherever a country is found to favor foreign commerce, 
 whether it be the United States, Russia, Holland, China, or Brazil 
 (we speak only of commercial nations, and, of course, do not 
 include France), it may infallibly be assumed that England par- 
 takes more largely of the advantages of that traffic than any other 
 state ; and the same rule will continue to apply to the increase 
 of the commerce of the world, in whatever quarter it may be, so 
 long as the British people are distinguished by their industry, 
 energy and ingenuity, and provided that their rulers shall keep 
 pace in wise reforms and severe economy with the governments 
 of their rivals. It follows, then, that, with reference to trade, 
 there can be no ground of apprehension from Russia. If that 
 people were to attempt to exclude all foreign traffic, they would 
 enter at once upon the high road to barbarism, from which career 
 there is no danger threatened to rich and civilized nations ; if, on 
 the other hand, that state continued to pursue a system favorable 
 to foreign trade, then England would be found at Constantinople, 
 as she has already been at St. Petersburg, reaping the greatest 
 harvest of riches and power, from the augmentation of Russian 
 imports. 
 
 By far the greater proportion of the writers and speakers upon 
 the subject of the power of Russia either do not understand or 
 lose sight of the all-important question, What is the true source 
 of national greatness ? The path by which alone modern empires 
 can hope to rise to supreme power and grandeur (would that we 
 could impress this sentiment upon the mind of every statesman 
 in Europe !) is that of labor and improvement. They who, point- 
 ing to the chart of Russia, shudder at her expanse of impenetra- 
 ble forests, her wastes of eternal snow, her howling wildernesses, 
 frowning mountains, and solitary rivers, — or they who stand aghast 
 at her boundless extent of fertile but uncultivated steppes, her 
 millions of serfs, and her towns the abodes of poverty and filth, — 
 know nothing of the true origin, in modern and future times, of 
 national power and greatness. This question admits of an appro- 
 
RUSSIA. 31 
 
 priate illustration, by patting the names of a couple of heroes of 
 Russian aggression and violence in contrast with two of their 
 contemporaries, the champions of improvement in England. At 
 the very period when Potemkin and Suwarrow were engaged in 
 effecting their important Russian conquests in Poland and the 
 Crimea, and whilst those monsters of carnage were filling the 
 world with the lustre of their fame, and lighting up one-half of 
 Europe with the conflagrations of war, two obscure individuals, 
 the one an optician, and the other a barber, both equally dis- 
 regarded by the chroniclers of the day, were quietly gaining 
 victories in the realms of science, which have produced a more 
 abundant harvest of wealth and power to their native country 
 than has been acquired by all the wars of Russia during the last 
 two centuries. Those illustrious commanders in the war of im- 
 provement, Watt and Arkwright, with a band of subalterns, — 
 the thousand ingenious and practical discoverers who have fol- 
 lowed in their train, — have, with their armies of artisans, con- 
 ferred a power and consequence upon England, springing from 
 successive triumphs in the physical sciences and the mechanical 
 arts, and wholly independent of territorial increase, compared 
 with which, all that she owes to the evanescent exploits of her 
 warrior-heroes shrinks into insignificance and obscurity. If we 
 look into futurity, and speculate upon the probable career of one 
 of these inventions, may we not with safety predict that the 
 steam-engine — the perfecting of which belongs to our own age, 
 and which even now is exerting an influence in the four quarters 
 of the globe — will at no distant day produce moral and physical 
 changes, all over the world, of a magnitude and permanency 
 surpassing the effects of all the wars and conquests which have 
 convulsed mankind since the beginning of time ? England owes 
 to the peaceful exploits of Watt and Arkwright, and not to the 
 deeds of Nelson and Wellington, her commerce, which now 
 extends to every corner of the earth ; and which casts into com- 
 parative obscurity, by the grandeur and extent of its operations, 
 the peddling ventures of Tyre, Carthage and Venice, confined 
 within the limits of an island sea. 
 
 If we were to trace, step by step, the opposite careers of 
 
32 RUSSIA. 
 
 aggrandizement, to which we can only thus hastily glance — of 
 England, pursuing the march of improvement within the area of 
 four of her counties, by exploring the recesses of her mines, by 
 constructing canals, docks and railroads, by her mechanical inven- 
 tions, and by the patience and ingenuity of her manufacturers in 
 adapting their fabrics to meet the varying wants and tastes of 
 every habitable latitude of the earth's surface; and of Russia, 
 adhering to her policy of territorial conquest, by despoiling of 
 provinces the empires of Turkey, Persia and Sweden, by sub- 
 jugating in unwilling bondage the natives of Georgia and Circassia, 
 and by seizing with robber hand the soil of Poland, — if we were 
 to trace these opposite careers of aggrandizement, what should 
 we find to be the relative consequences to these two empires ? 
 England, with her steam-engine and spinning-frame, has erected 
 the standard of improvement, around which every nation of the 
 world has already prepared to rally ; she has, by the magic of 
 her machinery, united forever two remote hemispheres in the 
 bonds of peace, by placing Europe and America in absolute and 
 inextricable dependence on each other. England's industrious 
 classes, through the energy of their commercial enterprise, are, 
 at this moment, influencing the civilization of the whole world, 
 by stimulating the labor, exciting the curiosity, and promoting 
 the taste for refinement, of barbarous communities, and, above all, 
 by acquiring and teaching to surrounding nations the beneficent 
 attachment to peace. Such are the moral effects of improvement 
 in Britain, against which Russia can oppose comparatively little, 
 but the example of violence, to which humanity points as a beacon 
 to warn society from evil. And if we refer to the physical effects, 
 — if, for the sake of convincing minds which do not recognize 
 the far more potent moral influences, we descend to a comparison 
 of mere brute forces, — we find still greater superiority resulting 
 from ingenuity and labor. The manufacturing districts alone — 
 even the four counties of England, comprising Lancashire, York- 
 shire, Cheshire, and Staffordshire — could, at any moment, by 
 means of the wealth drawn, by the skill and industry of its pop- 
 ulation, from the natural resources of this comparative speck of 
 territory, combat with success the whole Russian empire ! Liver- 
 
RUSSIA. 
 
 38 
 
 pool and Hull, with their navies, and Manchester, Leeds and 
 Birmingham, with their capitals, could blockade, within the waters 
 of Cronstadt, the entire Russian marine, and annihilate the com- 
 merce of St. Petersburg! And, further, if ' we suppose that, 
 during the next thirty years, Russia, adhering to her system of 
 territorial aggrandizement, were to swallow up successively her 
 neighbors Persia and Turkey, whilst England, which we have 
 imagined to comprise only the area of four counties, still persevered 
 in her present career of mechanical ingenuity, the relative forces 
 would, at the end of that time, be yet more greatly in favor of 
 the peaceful and industrious empire. This mere speck on the 
 ocean — without colonies, which are but the costly appendage * 
 of an aristocratic government — without wars, which have ever 
 been but another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing 
 commerce — would, with only a few hundred square leagues of 
 surface, by means of the wealth which by her arts and industry 
 she had accumulated, be the arbitress of the destiny of Russia, 
 with its millions of square miles of territory. Liverpool and 
 Hull, with their thousands of vessels, would be in a condition to 
 dictate laws to the possessor of one-fourth part of the surface of 
 the globe : they would then be enabled to blockade Russia in the 
 Sea of Marmora, as they could now do in the Gulf of Finland — 
 to deny her the freedom of the seas, to deprive her proud nobles 
 of every foreign commodity and luxury, and degrade them, amidst 
 their thousands of serfs, to the barbarous state of their ancestors 
 
 * Some people contend that our colonies are profitable to us, because they 
 consume our manufactures ; although it is notorious that they do not buy a 
 single commodity from us -which they could procure cheaper elsewhere, whilst 
 we take frequently articles from them of an inferior quality and at a dearer 
 rate than we could purchase at from other countries. But what do the 
 advocates of the present system say to the fact, that we are at this moment 
 paying thirty per cent, more for the colonial productions consumed in our 
 houses than is paid for similar articles, ■procured from our own colonies, too, by 
 the people of the continent 1 A workman in London, an artisan in Man- 
 chester, or a farmer of Wales, buys his Jamaica sugar and coffee thirty per 
 cent, dearer than the native of Switzerland or America, perhaps five hundred 
 miles distant from a port, and whose governments never owned a colony ! 
 But, it will be said, this is necessary taxation to meet the interest of the 
 debt. And what have we to show for the national debt, but our colonies 1 
 
34 RUSSIA. 
 
 of the ancient Rousniacs, and to confine her Czar in his splendid 
 prison of Constantinople.^ If such are the miracles of the mind, 
 such the superiority of improvement over the efforts of brute 
 force and violence, is not the writer of these pages justified in 
 calling the attention of his countrymen elsewhere t to the progress 
 
 * The amount of our exports of cotton goods, of which industry Manchester 
 is the centre, is double that of the exports of every kind from all the Russian 
 empire ; the shipping entering Liverpool annually exceeds the tonnage of 
 St. Petersburg eight-fold ! These facts, which we can only thus allude to 
 with epigrammatic brevity, convey forcibly to the reflecting mind an impres- 
 sion of the mighty influence which now slumbers in the possession of the 
 commercial and manufacturing portions of the community. IIow little they 
 understand the extent of their power may be acknowledged, when we recol- 
 lect that this great and independent order of society (for the manufacturing 
 interest of England is, from the nature of its position with reference to 
 foreign states, more independent of British agriculture than the latter is of 
 it) is deprived of the just reward of its ingenious labor, by the tyranny of 
 the corn-laws ; that it possesses no representation, and consequently no direct 
 influence, in one of the Houses of Parliament, — the members of which, to a 
 man, are interested in the manufacture and high price of food, — and that it 
 still lies under the stigma of feudal laws, that confer rights, privileges and 
 exemptions, upon landed possessions, which are denied to personal property. 
 
 ■f Since the publication of "England, Ireland, and America," the author 
 has had an opportunity of visiting the United States, and of taking a hasty 
 glance of the American people ; and his ocular experience of the country 
 has confirmed him in the views he put forth in that pamphlet. Looking to 
 the natural endowments of the North American continent, — as superior to 
 Europe as the latter is to Africa, — with an almost immeasurable extent of 
 river navigation, its boundless expanse of the most fertile soil in the world, 
 and its inexhaustible mines of coal, iron, lead, &c, — looking at these, and 
 remembering the quality and position of a people universally instructed and 
 perfectly free, and possessing, as a consequence of these, a new-born energy 
 and vitality very far surpassing the character of any nation of the Old World, 
 the writer reiterates the moral of his former work, by declaring his convic- 
 tion that it is from the west, rather than from the east, that danger to the 
 supremacy of Great Britain is to be apprehended ; that it is from the silent 
 and peaceful rivalry of American commerce, the growth of its manufactures, 
 its rapid progress in internal improvements, the superior education of its peo- 
 ple, and their economical and pacific government, — that it is from these, and 
 not from the barbarous policy or the impoverishing armaments of Russia, that 
 the grandeur of our commercial and national prosperity is endangered. And 
 the writer stakes his reputation upon the prediction, that, in less than twenty years, 
 this will be the sentiment of the people of England generally ; and that the same con- 
 viction will be forced upon the government of the country. 
 
RUSSIA. 
 
 35 
 
 of another people, whose rapid adoption of the discoveries of the 
 a<*e, whose mechanical skill and unrivalled industry in all the 
 arts of life, — as exemplified in their thousands of miles of rail- 
 roads, their hundreds of steamboats, their ship-building, manufac- 
 turing, and patent inventions, — whose system of universal in- 
 struction, and, above all, whose inveterate attachment to peace, 
 all proclaim America, by her competition in improvements, to be 
 destined to affect more vitally than Russia by her aggrandizement 
 of territory, the future interests of Great Britain ? 
 
 If, then, England, by promoting the peaceful industry of her 
 population, is pursuing a course which shall conduct her to a far 
 higher point of moral and physical power than Russia can hope 
 to reach by the opposite career of war and conquest, we must 
 seek for some other motive than that of danger to ourselves, for 
 the hostilities in which we are urged, by so many writers and 
 speakers, to engage with that northern people. 
 
 The great grievance, indeed, with us, is one which, all things 
 borne in remembrance, displays quite as much naivete in the 
 character of the British people as is consistent with a moderate 
 
 The writer has been surprised at the little knowledge that exists here with 
 respect to the mineral resources of America. Few are aware that in nothing 
 does that country surpass Europe so much as in its rich beds of coal. By a 
 government survey of the State of Pennsylvania, it appears that it contains 
 twenty thousand square miles of coal, with iron in proportion. This in one 
 state only ! whilst the whole of the Mississippi valley is more or less enriched 
 with this invaluable combustible. Several of his neighbors have been aston- 
 ished by the inspection of a specimen of bituminous coal, which the writer 
 procured from a pit at Brownsville, on the Monongahela river, above Pitts- 
 ourg, and which is pronounced equal to the very best qualities produced 
 from the mines in Yorkshire. The mode of working the pits is, to drive an 
 adit into the sloping banks of the navigable rivers, and, at a few yards dis- 
 tance, the coal stratum is usually found, six feet in thickness ; and, as the 
 miner is always enabled to work in an upright posture, one man will fre- 
 quently produce as much as one hundred loads a day. The steamboat in 
 which the author went from Brownsville to Pittsburg stopped at one of 
 those pits' mouths, and took in a supply of fuel, which was charged at the 
 rate of about three farthings a bushel. These are facts which bear more 
 directly upon the future destinies of this country than the marriages of 
 orowned heads in Portugal, the movements of savage forces in Russia, and 
 similar proceedings, to which we attach so much importance. 
 
36 RUSSIA. 
 
 share of self-knowledge. The Russians are accused by us oi 
 being an aggrandizing people ! From the day of Pultowa down 
 to the time of the passage of the Balkan, — say the orators, jour- 
 nalists, reviewers, and authors, — the government of St. Peters- 
 burg has been incessantly addicted to picking and stealing. But, 
 in the mean time, has England been idle ? If, during the lust 
 century, Russia has plundered Sweden, Poland, Turkey and 
 Persia, until she has grown unwieldy with the extent of her 
 spoils, Great Britain has, in the same period, robbed, — no, that 
 would be an impolite phase, — " has enlarged the bounds of his 
 majesty's dominions " at the expense of France, Holland, and 
 Spain. It would be false logic, and just as unsound morality, to 
 allow the Muscovite to justify his derelictions of honesty by an 
 appeal to our example ; but, surely, we, who are staggering under 
 the embarrassing weight of our colonies, with one foot upon 
 the rock of Gibraltar and the other at the Cape of Good Hope, 
 — with Canada, Australia, and the peninsula of India, forming, 
 Cerberus-like, the heads of our monstrous empire, — and with 
 the hundred minor acquisitions scattered so widely over the 
 earth's surface as to present an unanswerable proof of our whole- 
 some appetite for boundless dominion, — surely, we are not 
 exactly the nation to preach homilies to other people in favor of 
 the national observance of the eighth commandment ! * If zee 
 find all these possessions to be burdensome, rather than profitable, 
 
 * Extract from Mr. T. Attwood' 's speech, House of Commons, July 9, 1833. — 
 " The House will recollect that, for two centuries, Russia has been gradually 
 encroaching upon the territories of all her neighbors ; for the last hundred 
 and fifty years, her progress has been general on all sides, — east, west, 
 north, and south. A few years ago, she attacked Sweden and seized upon 
 Finland. Then she attacked Persia, and added some most important prov- 
 inces to her empire in the south. Not content with this, she appropriated, 
 in 1792, a great part of Poland ; and it is but lately she has attacked Turkey. 
 Thus, for years, she has gone on in her course of aggrandizement, in defiance 
 of the laws of God and man ! " If, for Sweden, Persia and Poland, we sub- 
 stitute France, Spain and Holland, and if instead of Turkey we put the 
 Burmese empire, how admirably the above description would apply to an- 
 other nation, of whose unprofitable aggrandizements in Europe, Asia, Africa 
 and America, Mr. Attwood may read a few particulars in Mr. Montgomery 
 Martin's "History of the British Colonies," — five volumes, octavo ! 
 
RUSSIA. 37 
 
 — if, in common with all marauders, we discover, by experience, 
 that the acquisitions of fraud or violence confer nothing but dis- 
 appointment and loss, — we shall not improve our case by going 
 to war to prevent Russia pursuing the same course, which will 
 inevitably conduct her to a similar fate, where the same retribu- 
 tion, which will ever accompany an infringement of the moral 
 laws, awaits her. England and Russia, in the act of scolding 
 each other on the reciprocal accusation of unjust aggrandizement, 
 present an appearance so ludicrous that it forcibly recalls to our 
 recollection the quarrel between the two worthies of the Beggars' 
 Opera, the termination of which scene we recommend to the 
 imitation of the diplomatists of the two courts. Like Lockit and 
 Peachum, the British lion and the Russian bear, instead of tear- 
 ing one another, had better hug and be friends, — "Brother 
 bruin, brother bruin, we are both in the wrong." 
 
 Lord Dudley Stuart (whose zeal, we fear without knowledge, 
 upon the subject of Poland, and whose prejudice against Russia, 
 have led him to occupy so much of the public time, uselessly, upon 
 the question before us), in the course of his long speech in the 
 House of Commons (February 19th), upon introducing the subject 
 of Russian encroachments, dwelt, at considerable length, upon the 
 lust of aggrandizement by which he argued that the government 
 of St. Petersburg was so peculiarly distinguished ; and he brought 
 forward, at considerable cost of labor, details of its successive con- 
 quests of territory during the last century. Where the human mind 
 is swayed by any passion, of however amiable a nature, or where 
 the feelings are allowed to predominate over the reason, in inves- 
 tigating a subject which appeals only to the understanding, it will 
 generally happen that the judgment is defective. We attribute 
 to the well-Jinown fervor of Lord Stuart's sentiments upon Russia 
 and Poland the circumstance that, during the fortnight which he 
 must have employed in collecting the dates of the several treaties 
 by which the former empire has wrested its possessions from 
 neighboring states, the thought never once occurred to him, — a 
 reflection which would have entered the head of almost any other 
 man of sense, who sat down coolly to consider the subject, -—that, 
 during the last hundred years, England has, for every square 
 4 
 
88 RUSSIA. 
 
 league of territory annexed to Russia, by force, violence or fraud, 
 appropriated to herself three. Such would have been the reflec- 
 tion which flashed across the mind of a statesman who sat down. 
 dispassionately, to investigate the subject of Russian policy ; and. 
 it must have prevented him, by the consciousness of the egotism 
 and arrogance, — nay, the downright effrontery^ of such a 
 course, — from bringing an accusation against another people 
 which recoils with three-fold t criminality upon ourselves. Nor. 
 if we enter upon a comparison of the cases, should we find that 
 the means whereby Great Britain has augmented her possessions 
 are a whit less reprehensible than those which have been resorted 
 to by the northern power for a similar purpose. If the English 
 writer calls down indignation upon the conquerors of the Ukraine, 
 Finland and the Crimea, may not Russian historians conjure up 
 equally painful reminiscences upon the subjects of Gibraltar, 
 the Cape, and Hindostan? Every one conversant with the 
 history of the last century will remember that England has, dur- 
 ing almost all that period, maintained an ascendency at sea ; and 
 colonies, which were in times past regarded as the chief source 
 of our wealth and power, being pretty generally the fruits of 
 every succeeding war, the nation fell into a passion for conquest, 
 under the delusive impression that those distant dependencies 
 were, in spite of the debt contracted in seizing them, profitable 
 
 * We allude to the nation, — the epithet cannot be applied to his lordship, 
 f We speak after due investigation and calculation, and not at random, 
 when we allege that England has acquired three times as much territory as 
 Russia during the last century. The Cape is computed at half a million of 
 square miles, Canada at half as much more, India and New Holland will be 
 found each with an area almost as large as that of the cultivable portion of 
 Europe ; not to mention other acquisitions, too numerous to be described 
 within the limits of a pamphlet ! 
 Progressive augmentation of the Russian empire : 
 
 Sq. milss. Population. 
 
 At the accession of Peter I., 1689, 2,980,000 15,000,000 
 
 At his death, 1725, 3,150,000 20,000,000 
 
 At the accession of Catherine II.. 1763, 3,700,000 25,000,000 
 
 At her death, 1796, 3,850,000 36,000,000 
 
 At the death of Alexander, 1825, 4,250,000 58,000,000 
 
 Malte Brim's Ocography, vol. vi. p. 622. 
 
Russia. oy 
 
 acquisitions to the mother country. Hence, the British govern- 
 ment was always eager for hostilities, the moment an excuse 
 presented itself, .with one of the maritime continental states 
 possessing colonies ; and of the several conflicts in which we have 
 been involved since the peace of Ryswick, at least three out of 
 four have been consequent upon declarations of war made by 
 England.* Russia, on the contrary, has been nearly surrounded 
 
 * The policy of England has been aggressive at all times ; but we are far 
 from exulting in the fact of having always dealt the first blow, as Mr. 
 Thomas Attwood, of Birmingham, would wish us to do, when he tells us, exult- 
 ingly, in the House of Commons, whilst speaking of Russia (see Mirror of 
 Parliament, 1833, p. 2874) — "We, the people of England, who have never 
 known what fear is ; who have been accustomed, for seven hundred years, to 
 give a blow first and to receive an apology afterwards : we, who have borne 
 the British lion triumphant through every quarter of the world, and are now 
 forced to submit to insults from this base and brutal, and this in reality weak 
 power, — a power which, from its mere physical force, contrives, like a great 
 bully, to intimidate the moral strength of Europe ! " Now, putting aside 
 the exquisitely ludicrous charge of bullying, alleged against Russia by one 
 who boasts that, for seven hundred years, we "have struck the first blow," 
 and which reminds us of the sc«ne between Sir Anthony Absolute and his " in- 
 solent, impudent, overbearing " son Jack, we have here a specimen of that 
 sort of sentiment which horses or buffaloes, if they could make speeches, 
 might very properly indulge in, but which is derogatory to the rank of 
 reasoning beings, who possess intellectual faculties in lieu of hoofs and 
 horns. 
 
 Mr. Attwood is an advocate for war and paper money, — the curse and 
 
 of the working classes ! "What do the Birmingham mechanics say to tbe 
 
 following picture of the effects of the last war upon the prosperity of their 
 
 town 1 The same results would follow a like cause, should a war be entered 
 
 into to gratify their favorite representative. 
 
 Extract from Mr. Grey's (now Lord Grey) speech on the state of the nation, March 
 25, 1801. See Hansard's Parliamentary History, vol. xxxv. p. 1064. 
 
 " I come now to speak of the internal state of the country. Two hundred 
 and seventy millions have been added to our national debt, exclusive of 
 imperial and other loans, and of the reduction effected by the sinking fund ; 
 and yet we are told, by the ex-ministers, that they leave the country in a 
 flourishing situation ! I ask any man whether, from diminished comforts or 
 from positive distress, he does not feel this declaration an insult. Ask the 
 ruined manufacturers of Yorkshire, Manchester, and Birmingham ; ask the 
 starving inhabitants of London and Westminster. In some parts of York- 
 shire, formerly the most flourishing, it appears, from an authentic paper 
 
40 RUSSIA. 
 
 by the territory of barbarous nations, one of which* — by the 
 very nature of its institutions ', warlike and aggressive, — was. 
 up to the middle of the last century, prompted, by a conscious- 
 ness of strength, and since then by a haughty ignorance of its 
 degeneracy, to court hostilities with its neighbors ; and the con- 
 sequence of this and other causes is, that, in the majority of 
 cases, where Russia has been engaged in conflicts with her neigh- 
 bors, she will be found to have had a war of self-defence for her 
 justification. If such are the facts, — if England has, for the 
 sake of the spoil which would accrue to her superiority of naval 
 strength, provoked war, with all its horrors, from weak and 
 unwilling enemies, whilst Russia, on the contrary, with ill-defined 
 boundaries, has been called upon to repel the attacks of fierce 
 and lawless nations, — surely, we must admit, unless pitiably 
 blinded by national vanity, that the gain (if such there be), 
 resulting from these contentions, is not less unholy in the former 
 than the latter case ; and that the title by which the sovereign of 
 St. Petersburg holds his conquered possessions is just as good, at 
 least, as that by which the government, of St. James' asserts the 
 right to ours. In the case of Poland, to which we shall again 
 have to recur by and by, there was, indeed, a better title than 
 that of the sword, but which, amidst the clamor of fine sentiments, 
 palmed by philanthropic authors and speakers upon the much- 
 abused public mind, about Russian aggressions in that quarter, 
 has never, we believe, been mentioned by any orator, reviewer, 
 or newspaper writer, of the present day. " The republic of Po- 
 land " (we quote the words of Malte Brun) " had been chiefly 
 composed of provinces wrested from Russia, or from the Great 
 Dukes of Galitch, Vladimir, Volynski, Polotzk, and particularly 
 Kiow, by Boleslas the Victorious, Casimir the Great, Kings of 
 
 which I hold in my hand, that the poor rates have increased from five hun- 
 dred and twenty-two pounds to six thousand pounds a year, though the 
 whole rack-rent of the parish does not exceed five thousand six hundred 
 pounds. In Birmingham, I know, from undoubted authority, there are near eleven 
 thousand persons who receive parochial relief, though the whole number of the inhab- 
 itants cannot exceed eighty thousand, — and this of a town reckoned one of the most 
 prosperous in England." 
 * Turkey. 
 
RUSSIA. 41 
 
 Poland, and by Gedirnir, Great Duke of Lithuania. Thus, the 
 nobles were the only persons interested in the defence of prov- 
 inces whose inhabitants were estranged from the Poles, although 
 they had remained under their government from the time 
 of the conquest. All the peasants of Podolia and Volhynia 
 were Rousniacs, or Little Russians, ignorant of the language or 
 customs of Poland; which may partly account for the success 
 of the Russians in their invasions of the Polish republic. The 
 Poles, who were persecuted by intolerant Catholic priests, who 
 disregarded the constitutions of the Polish diet, abandoned their 
 lords without reluctance, and received willingly their countrymen 
 the Russian soldiers, who spoke the same dialect as themselves. 
 The division of Poland was, on the part of Russia, not so much 
 a lawless invasion as an act of reprisal on former invaders. Had 
 the leading historical facts been explained in the Russian mani- 
 festo which was published in 1772, so much obloquy might not 
 have attached to the conduct of that people." 
 
 Leaving, however, the question of title, — which, whatever may 
 be the conflicting opinions of moralists and legists, is, in the case 
 of national tenures, usually decided according to the power of the 
 possessor to hold in fee, — we shall be next reminded of the great 
 benefits which British conquests have conferred upon remote and 
 uncivilized nations, particularly in the example of India; and 
 we shall be called upon to show in what manner Russia has com- 
 pensated for her violent seizures of independent territory, by any 
 similar amelioration of the condition of its people. Before doing 
 so, yje shall premise that we do not offer it as a justification of 
 the policy of Russia. If, by chance, the plunderer makes good 
 use of his spoil, that is not a vindication of robbery ; and because 
 the serf of Poland, the savage of Georgia, and the ryot of Ben- 
 gal, enjoy better laws under the sway of Russia and Great 
 Britain than they formerly possessed beneath their own govern- 
 ments, to argue that, therefore, these two powers stand morally 
 justified in having subjugated, with fire and sword, those three 
 less civilized states, would be to contend that America, instead of 
 contenting herself with imparting improvements to the unenlight- 
 ened communities of Europe, by the peaceful but irresistible 
 4# 
 
42 RUSSIA. 
 
 means of her high example, is warranted in invading Naples or 
 Spain, for the purpose of rescuing their people from the thral- 
 dom of monarchy, or marching to Rome, and, in place of the 
 Pope, installing a President in the palace of the Vatican ! * It 
 is, then, with no view to the justification of war and violence, but 
 solely for the purpose of answering, by a few facts of unques- 
 tionable authenticity, those spurious appeals to our sympathies, 
 based upon the false assumption of Russian aggrandizement being 
 but another term for the spread of barbarism and the extinction 
 of freedom and civilization, that we glance at the proofs which 
 are afforded in every direction of the vast moral, political and 
 commercial advantages that have been bestowed upon the coun- 
 tries annexed by conquest to that empire. 
 
 The writers who have attempted to lead public opinion upon the 
 subject have not scrupled to claim the interposition of our gov- 
 ernment with Russia, for the purpose of restoring to freedom and 
 indepeiidence those Caucasian tribes to which we have before 
 alluded, as having fallen under the partial dominion of Russia. 
 Their previous state of freedom may be appreciated, when we 
 recollect that, within our own time, a fierce war was waged 
 between the most powerful of these nations t and the Turks, in 
 consequence of their having refused to continue to supply the 
 harems of the latter with a customary annual tribute of the hand- 
 somest of their daughters ; offering, however, at the same time, in lieu, 
 a yearly contribution in money. We have already alluded to the 
 emancipating influence of Russian intervention over the commerce 
 of the Black Sea, the only channel by which the civilizing inter- 
 
 * Yet there are perverse and purblind moralists, who can see proofs of 
 God's interposition in every atrocious crime that happens, in its consequences, 
 to carry some alloy of good ; which merely proves that the great Ruler of 
 the universe has, in spite of us, set his fiat against the predominancy of evil. A 
 clergyman — we believe Dr. Buchanan — of high attainments and strict evan- 
 gelical doctrines, who passed many years in India, proposed a prize essay, on 
 his return to England, as to the probable designs of Providence in placing the Indian 
 empire in the hands of Great Britain ! This, from a contemporary of Warren 
 Hastings, is little less blasphemous than the Te Dexirns sung by Catherine 
 for the victories of Ismail and Warsaw. 
 
 f The Georgians. 
 
RUSSIA. 43 
 
 course with commercial nations can extend to these unenlightened 
 regions; and we have been told by the very highest authority,* 
 that their trade, agriculture, and social improvement, already 
 attest the beneficent effects of this improved policy. The follow- 
 ing extract from a work t of great and deserved reputation gives 
 the most recent information upon the countries under considera- 
 tion ; and it conveys, perhaps, all that could be said upon the 
 effects of Russian aggrandizement in these quarters : " The 
 southern declivity of these mountains is highly fertile, abounding 
 in forests and fountains, orchards, vineyards, corn-fields and 
 pastures, in rich variety. Grapes, chestnuts, figs, &c, grow spon- 
 taneously in these countries ; as well as grain of every descrip- 
 tion — rice, cotton, hemp, &c. But the inhabitants are barbarous 
 and indolent. They consist of mountain tribes, remarkably fero- 
 cious, whose delight is in war, and with whom robbery is a 
 hereditary trade ; and their practice is to descend from their fast- 
 nesses and to sweep everything away from the neighboring plains, 
 — not only grain and cattle, but men, women and children, who 
 are carried into captivity. The names of the different tribes are, 
 the Georgians, Abassians, Lesghians, Ossetes, Circassians, Tasch- 
 kents, Khists, Ingooshes, Charabulaks, Tartars, Armenians, Jews, 
 and in some parts wandering Arabs. They are mostly barbarous 
 in their habits, and idolatrous in their religion, worshipping stars^ 
 mountains, rocks and trees. There are among them Greek and 
 Armenian Christians, Mahometans, and Jews. Several of the 
 tribes, particularly the Circassians and Georgians, are accounted 
 the handsomest people in the world ; and the females are much 
 sought after by the Eastern monarchs, to be immured in their 
 harems. The inhabitants amount to about nine hundred thou- 
 sand, who are partly ruled by petty sovereigns, and partly by 
 their seniors. The most famous are the Lesghians, who inhabit 
 the eastern regions, and, living by plunder, are the terror of the 
 Armenians, Persians, Turks, and Georgians. Their sole occupa- 
 tion is war, and their services can at any time be purchased by 
 
 * M'Culloch — Commercial Dictionary, 7, p. 1108. 
 
 f Encyclopaedia Britannica, new edition, now publishing, vol. vi. p. 250 — 
 art. Caucasus. 
 
44 RUSSIA. 
 
 every prince in the neighborhood, for a supply of provisions and 
 a tew silver roubles. Since the extension of the Russian empire 
 in this quarter, many of these mountain tribes have been restrained 
 in their predatory habits. Under the iron rule of that poiverful 
 state, they have been taught to tremble and obey ; military posts 
 have been dispersed over the country, fortr esses have been erected, 
 towns have arisen, and commerce and agriculture begin slowly to 
 supplant the barbarous pursuits of war and plunder, in which 
 these mountain tribes have been hitherto engaged* But the work 
 of civilization in these wild regions is still slow ; it is difficult to 
 reclaim the people from their long-settled habits of violence and 
 disorder ; and it would not be safe for any traveller to pass alone 
 through these countries, where he would be exposed to robbery 
 and murder." 
 
 Another ground of ceaseless jealousy, on the part of our philo- 
 Turkish and Russo-maniac writers, has been discovered in the 
 recent intervention of the Russian diplomatists in the affairs of 
 Wallachia and Moldavia. The condition of these two Christian 
 provinces, situated on the right bank of the Danube, and so fre- 
 quently the scenes of desolating wars between Turkey and her 
 neighbors, has been, perhaps, more pitiably deplorable than the 
 lot of any other portion of this misgoverned empire. The hospo- 
 •dars or governors of Moldavia and Wallachia were changed every 
 year at the will of the Sultan, and each brought a fresh retinue 
 of greedy dependants, armed with absolute power, to prey upon 
 the defenceless inhabitants. These appointments, as is the case 
 now with every pachalic, were openly sold at Constantinople to 
 the highest bidder ; and the hospodars were left to recover from 
 their subjects the price of the purchase, to pay an annual tribute 
 to the Porte, which was usually levied in kind, giving scope for 
 
 * Yet the most active and persevering assailant of Russia, a writer to 
 whom we alluded in the beginning of this pamphlet, does not scruple to 
 invoke the aid of these hordes against their present rulers : " The Georgian 
 provinces would instantly throw off the yoke ; even the Wallachians, Mol- 
 davians, and Bessarabians, would join in the general impulse ; the millions 
 of brave and independent Circassians would pour across the Couban and 
 spread over the Crimea — and where would Russia be V* — See pamphlet, "Eng- 
 land, France, Russia and Turkey." 
 
RUSSIA. 45 
 
 the most arbitrary exactions ; and, besides, appease the favorites 
 at court, who might otherwise intrigue against them. Need we 
 be surprised that, under such a state of things, the population 
 decreased, agriculture was neglected, and commerce and the arts 
 of civilized existence were unknown in the finest countries of the 
 world ? Not more than one-sixth * part of the land of Walla- 
 chia is at present cultivated ; and Mr. Wilkinson, the late Eng- 
 lish consul, estimated that, without any extraordinary exertion, 
 the existing population of Wallachia and Moldavia might, if 
 property were secured, raise twice the quantity of corn and 
 double the number of cattle now produced in those provinces. 
 The treaty of 1829, between Russia and Turkey, stipulates that 
 the hospodars shall be elected for life, and that no tribute in kind 
 shall be levied ; it also engages that a quarantine shall be placed 
 on the Danube frontier, thus separating these provinces from the 
 rest of Turkey. This case of intervention is appealed to as a 
 proof of Russian ambition ; and Lord Stuart, in the course of 
 his speech before alluded to, complains that, by this policy, its 
 power is increased in those quarters. Admitting that Russia 
 interferes in behalf of those unhappy countries with no loftier 
 aim than an augmentation of her influence, and that the result 
 will be the separation of the Christian provinces of Moldavia and 
 Wallachia from the rest of the Turkish territory, — nay, admit- 
 ting that this should prove inimical to the interests of England 
 (though the supposition is absurd enough, since whatever tends to 
 advance the civilization and augment the wealth of any part of 
 the world must be beneficial, in the end, to us, who are the greatest 
 commercial and manufacturing people), still the English nation 
 would, we sincerely hope, feel a disinterested gratitude to the 
 power which, by its merciful interposition, has rescued this suf- 
 fering Christian community from the cruel, remorseless, and har- 
 assing grasp of its Mahometan oppressors. 
 
 Probably it will not be deemed necessary that we should trace 
 the effects of Russian government over the territories torn at 
 different epochs from the Persian empire : if, however, we did not 
 
 * The clergy, from being exempt from taxation, have become possessed of 
 a third of the soil. 
 
46 RUSSIA. 
 
 feel warranted in assuming that even those of our intelli- 
 gent readers who may be the most inimical to the power of the 
 Czar will readily admit the superiority of the organized despot- 
 ism of St. Petersburg over the anarchic tyranny of Teheran, 
 we should be prepared to afford proofs, from the works of travel- 
 lers themselves hostile to Russian interests, of the rapid amelio- 
 rations that have succeeded to the extension of this colossal 
 empire in those regions. Still less shall we be called upon to 
 pause to point out the benefits that must ensue from the annexa- 
 tion of the Crimea to the dominions of the Autocrat. Those 
 wandering tribes of Crim Tartars, who exchanged, for the service 
 of the Empress Catherine, the barbarous government of the 
 descendants of Genghis Khan, and who received, as the first 
 fruits of a Christian administration, the freedom of the commerce 
 of the world, by the opening of the navigation of the Black Sea, 
 which immediately succeeded to the encroachments of Russia in 
 that quarter, will gradually but certainly acquire the taste for 
 trade; and, as population increases and towns arise, they will 
 abandon, of necessity, their migratory habits, and become the 
 denizens of civilized society. 
 
 We shall, for the sake of brevity, restrict ourselves to the fol- 
 lowing short passage, from the highest authority that can be con- 
 sulted, upon the character of Russian policy towards her latest 
 maritime acquisition on the side of the Baltic. " Finland," says 
 Malte Brun, " was averse to the union with Sweden, and has lost 
 none of its privileges by being incorporated with Russia : it is 
 still governed by Swedish laws ; schools have been established 
 during the last twenty years, and the peasantry are in every 
 respect as well protected as in Sweden."^ 
 
 * Vol. vi. p. 499, Malte Brim's Geography 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 POLAND, RUSSIA, AND ENGLAND. 
 
 Coktents. — Protest against Russian Tyranny. — True Statement of the 
 Question as to British Interference. — Distinction between the Polish Aris- 
 tocracy and Polish People. — Tyranny of the Nobles and miserable Con- 
 dition of the People before the Partition. — Improved Condition under the 
 Russian Government. — True Cause of the Revolt of 1830. — The Incite- 
 ments of Public Writers and Speakers to a War with Russia considered. — 
 Lord Dudley Stuart. — Military Weakness and Poverty of Russia. — Her 
 Liability to Blockade by a small Marine Force. — Weakness the necessary 
 result of too extended Dominion. — No Pretence, consistent with Common- 
 sense, for England going to War with Russia. 
 
 The foregoing statements, with reference to portions of the 
 Russian acquisitions, founded upon unquestionable authority, are 
 calculated to awaken some doubts as to the genuineness of those 
 writings and speeches, upon the faith of which we are called upon 
 to subscribe to the orthodox belief in the barbarizing tendency 
 of all the encroachments of that country ; but these facts are un- 
 important, when we next have to refer to another of its conquests, 
 and to bring before our readers Poland, upon which has been 
 lavished more false sentiment, deluded sympathy, and amiable 
 ignorance, than on any other subject of the present age. This is 
 a topic, however, upon which it behoves us to enter with circum- 
 spection, since we shall have not only to encounter the preposses- 
 sions of the ardent and sincere devotee, but also to meet the 
 uncandid weapons of bigotry and cant. Let us, therefore, as the 
 only sure defence at all times against such antagonists, clothe our 
 arguments from the armory of reason in the panoply of truth. We 
 will, moreover, reiterate, for we will not be misunderstood, that it 
 is no part of our purpose to attempt to justify the conduct of the 
 
48 RUSSIA. 
 
 partitioning powers towards the Poles. On the contrary, we will 
 join in the verdict of murder, robbery, treason, perjury and base- 
 ness, which every free nation and all honest men must award to 
 Russia, Prussia and Austria, for their undissembled and unmiti- 
 gated wickedness on that occasion ; nay, we will go further, and 
 admit that all the infamy with which Burke, Sheridan and Fox, 
 labored, by the force of eloquent genius, to overwhelm the emis- 
 saries of British violence in India, was justly earned, at the very 
 same period, by the minions of Russian despotism in Poland. 
 But our question is, not the conduct of the conquerors, but the 
 present as compared with the former condition of the conquered. 
 The first is but an abstract and barren subject for the disquisition 
 of the moralist ; the latter appeals to our sympathies, because it 
 is pregnant with the destinies of millions of our fellow-creatures. 
 Of how trifling consequence it must be to the practical-minded 
 and humane people of Great Britain, or to the world at large, 
 whether Poland be governed by a king of this dynasty or of 
 that, — whether he be lineally descended from Boleslas the Great, 
 or of the line of the Jagellons, — contrasted with the importance 
 of the inquiries as to the social and political condition of its peo- 
 ple, — whether they be as well or worse governed, clothed, fed and 
 lodged, in the present day, as compared with any former period ; 
 whether the mass of the people be elevated in the scale of moral 
 and religious beings ; whether the country enjoys a smaller or 
 larger amount of the blessings of peace ; or whether the laws for 
 the protection of life and property are more or less justly admin- 
 istered. These are the all-important inquiries about which we 
 busy ourselves ; and it is to cheat us of our stores of philanthropy, 
 by an appeal to the sympathy with which we regard those vital 
 interests of a whole people, that the declaimers and writers upon 
 the subject invariably appeal to us in behalf of the oppressed 
 and enslaved Polish nation ; carefully obscuring, amidst the cloud 
 of epithets about " ancient freedom," " national independence," 
 u glorious republic," and such like, the fact, that, previously to 
 the dismemberment, the term nation implied only the nobles ; 
 that, down to the partition of their territory, about nineteen out 
 of every twenty of the inhabitants were slaves, possessing no 
 
Russia. 49 
 
 rights, civil or political ; that about one in every twenty was a 
 nobleman ; and that this body of nobles formed the very worst 
 aristocracy of ancient or modern times, — putting up and pulling 
 down their kings at pleasure ; passing selfish laws, which gave 
 them the power of life and death over their serfs, whom they sold 
 and bought like dogs or horses ; usurping to each of themselves 
 the privileges of a petty sovereign, and denying to all besides the 
 meanest rights of human beings ; and, scorning all pursuits as 
 degrading, except that of the sword, they engaged in incessant 
 wars with neighboring states, or they plunged their own country 
 into all the horrors of anarchy, for the purpose of giving employ- 
 ment to themselves and their dependants. 
 
 In speaking of the Polish nation^ previously to the dismem- 
 berment of that country by Russia, Prussia and Austria, we must 
 not think of the great mass of the people, such as is implied 
 by the use of that term with reference to the English or French 
 nation of this day. The mass of the people were serfs, who had 
 no legal protection and no political rights, who enjoyed no power 
 over property of any kind, and ivho possessed less security of life 
 and limb than has been lately extended to the cattle of this island 
 by the act of Parliament against cruelty to animals ! The nobles, 
 then, although they comprised but a mere fraction of the popula- 
 tion, constituted the nation ; the rest of the inhabitants, the mil- 
 lions of serfs who tilled the soil, worked the mines, or did the 
 menial labor of the grandees, were actually, in the eye of the 
 law, of no more rank — nay, as we have shown, they were ac- 
 counted less — than our horses, which, after the toil of the day, 
 lie down in security under the protection of Mr. Martin's benev- 
 
 * " Never was this corruption of the state so fearful as here, where the no- 
 iiiity constituted the nation, and where morals alone had made the want of a, 
 constitution less perceptible. Everything, therefore, deteriorated. The time 
 for awakening from this lethargy could not but come ; but what a moment 
 was it to be ! " — Heeren's Manual, vol. i. p. 370. " By the constitution of 
 1791, which changed the government from an elective to a hereditary mon- 
 archy, all the privileges of the nobility were confirmed ; some favors, though 
 very small, were accorded to the peasants ; these were slight, but more coald 
 not be granted, without irritating the former nation, the nobility.'" — Heeren, vol 
 ii. p. 231. 
 
 5 
 
50 RUSSIA. 
 
 olent act ; whilst the slave of Poland possessed no such guarantee 
 from the wanton cruelty of an arbitrary owner. 
 
 To form a correct estimate of the former condition of this coun- 
 try, it is not necessary to go back beyond the middle of the six- 
 teenth century — previously to which the Poles, in common with 
 the other northern states, were barbarians ; and, if they attained 
 to power, and exhibited some traits of rude splendor in their 
 court and capital, they were merely results of incessant war?, 
 which, of course, plunged the great mass of the people in deeper 
 misery and degradation. At this early period of their country, 
 we find them the most restless and warlike of the northern na- 
 tions ; and the Poles, who are now viewed only as a suffering and 
 injured people, were, during the thirteenth, fourteenth and fif- 
 teenth centuries, a most formidable and aggressive enemy to the 
 neighboring empires. They ravaged, successively, Russia, Prus- 
 sia, Lithuania, Bohemia and Hungary, and were, in turn, invaded 
 by the Turks, Tartars and Prussians. They knew no other em- 
 ployment than that of the sword ; war, devastation and bloodshed, 
 were the only fashionable occupations for the nobility, whilst the 
 peasants reaped the fruits of famine and slaughter. Yet the his- 
 torian whose volumes, perhaps, adorn the shelves of our colleges, 
 and are deposited in the hands of the rising generation, points to 
 the spectacle of intellectual and moral creatures grovelling in the 
 abuse of a brute instinct shared equally by the shark and the 
 tiger, and, pausing over the hideous annals of human slaughter, 
 ejaculates — Glory! 
 
 At the death, in 1572, of Sigismund Augustus, — the last of 
 the Jagello race, in whose house the throne of Poland had been 
 hereditary, — a new constitution was framed by the nation {that 
 is, the nobles), by which it was decreed that the monarchy should 
 be elective ; and the choice of the king was free and open to all 
 the nation {that is, the nobles). In this constitution, — which 
 was concocted for the exclusive benefit of the aristocracy, and 
 did not even notice the existence of the great mass of the 
 wretched people, the slaves, — it was agreed, amongst other 
 enactments, that the nobles should pay no taxes; that they 
 should have the power of life and death over their vassal ; that 
 
RUSSIA. 51 
 
 all offices, civil, military and ecclesiastical, should belong to 
 them ; and that, in choosing whom they would for a king, they 
 were privileged to lay him under what restrictions they pleased. 
 
 The mode of electing their kings, after the promulgation of 
 this new constitution, was characteristic of the nation. About 
 one hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred thousand nobles, 
 being the electors, assembled together in a large plain : those 
 who possessed horses and arms were mounted and ranged in bat- 
 tle array in the front ; whilst such as were poor, and consequently 
 came on foot, and without regular arms, placed themselves, with 
 scythes or clubs in their hands, in the rear ranks. Our readers 
 will readily believe that such an assembly as this, composed of 
 warriors accustomed to violence, and with their arms at hand, 
 would form a dangerous deliberative body ; and, unless actuated 
 by the loftiest feelings of patriotism and virtue, it would degen- 
 erate into two armies of sanguinary combatants. But what could 
 we expect from these elections, when we know that, from the 
 death of Sigismund, down to the time of the partition, Poland 
 became one universal scene of corruption, faction and confusion ? 
 The members of the diet, the nobles who had usurped the 
 power of electing their king, were ready to sell themselves to 
 t*he best bidder at the courts of Vienna, France, Saxony, Sweden 
 or Brandenburgh ; nay, in the words of the learned and philo- 
 sophical historian,* " A Polish royal election was, henceforth, 
 nothing more than a double auction of the throne — partly in 
 secret, for the benefit of the voters, partly in public, for the ben- 
 efit of the state ;" or, in the words of the same authority, when 
 alluding elsewhere to the change in the constitution at the death 
 of Sigismund, " A volcano, in a manner, burst forth in the midst 
 of Europe, whose eruptions, at almost every change of govern- 
 ment, threatened, in turn, every country, far and near. Of the 
 eleven kings of Poland, from Henry of Yalois, 1572, to Stanis- 
 laus, 1764, hardly three were unanimously elected : foreign 
 influence, and a wild spirit of faction, continued from first to 
 
 * Manual of the State Policy of Modern Europe, by Professor Heeren, 
 vol. i. p. 262. 
 
52 RUSSIA. 
 
 last." 1 * In lamentable truth, almost every election became the 
 signal for a civil war, which usually lasted during the greater 
 portion of the next reign ; and thus, for the whole period from 
 1572 down to 1772, when the first partition was perpetrated by 
 the three neighboring powers, Poland was the constant scene of 
 anarchy, and its attendant miseries, fire, bloodshed and famine. 
 There is nothing in the history of the world comparable, for con- 
 fusion, suffering and wickedness, to the condition of this unhappy 
 kingdom during these two centuries. " War, even in its mildest 
 form, is a perpetual violation of every principle of religion and 
 humanit}' - .''! But foreign war is carried on with recognized laws 
 for the mitigation of its evils, and under which the rights of 
 person and property are, excepting in well-understood cases, 
 secured to the peaceable portions of communities. Should an 
 invasion or a conquest take place, the army of the invader or 
 conqueror is compelled, for self-defence, to preserve discipline, and 
 to congregate, as much as possible, round one centre, by which 
 the enemy's country is preserved from the licentiousness of the 
 victorious soldiers, and the more remote provinces almost entirely 
 escape the miseries of war. Besides, it becomes immediately the 
 policy and the interest of the victor to restore the newly-acquired 
 territory to its former condition of quietness and prosperity ; and, 
 with this view, laws for the protection of the inhabitants are gen- 
 erally enforced. But civil war, or intestine war, as we prefer to 
 call it, allows of none of these palliations. It spreads throughout 
 the entire length and breadth of a country, and devastates alike 
 every section of the community ; leaving no spot where the olive 
 of peace may flourish and afford shelter to the innocent, and 
 sparing no city which shall serve for a refuge to the timid. It 
 desolates villages and farms, as well as towns and capitals; 
 carries the spirit of deadly animosity into every relation of life, 
 — setting neighbors against neighbors, servants against masters, 
 and converting friends into foes ; — nay, it penetrates into the 
 sacred precincts of domestic life, and often infuses a Cain-like 
 hatred into the hearts of brethren of . the same womb. Such is 
 
 * Heeren, vol. i. pp. 191 and 192. t Gibbon. 
 
RUSSIA. 53 
 
 intestine war, which owns no law and permits no neutrality. And 
 in the midst of this description of warfare Poland groaned and 
 bled, with scarcely the slightest intermission, from 1572 to 1772. 
 Many of those who will read this pamphlet have not the means 
 or the leisure to investigate, as they otherwise ought undoubtedly 
 to do, the history of the government ignorantly or mischievously 
 praised, by some of our writers and speakers, under the name of 
 the republic of Poland. Instead of such a government as we now 
 understand in speaking of the American republics, it was a des- 
 potism one hundred thousand times worse than that of Turkey at 
 this time, because it gave to one hundred thousand tyrants abso- 
 lute power over the lives of the rest of the community. The 
 annals of republican Poland, previously to its dismemberment, are 
 nothing but a system of anarchy ; and such is the title actually 
 given to a work^ that is only a horrible catalogue of tragedies, 
 in which the nobles are the actors; who crowd the scenes with 
 murders, fires, torturings and famines, until the heart sickens with 
 horror at the frightful spectacle. For nearly the whole of the 
 century immediately preceding the downfall of Poland, religious 
 discord was added to the other incalculable miseries of this coun- 
 try, owing to the rise of sects of dissenters from the prevailing 
 religion. Devastated by foreign and civil wars, and by famine 
 and the plague, that followed in their train, the exhaustion of 
 peace itself now served but to develop new miseries.! Fanat- 
 icism and bigotry armed themselves with the sword, as soon as 
 it was abandoned by the worshippers of Mars ; and they waged 
 a warfare against the souls and bodies of their enemies with a 
 fury that knew no bounds ; dealing out anathemas over wretches 
 expiring at the stake, pulling down churches, and even tearing up 
 the graves of the dead ! The historian who recounts the calami- 
 ties that were showered upon the unhappy millions, the slaves, 
 
 * **■ Histoire de PAnarchie de Pologne et du Demembrement de cette Re- 
 publique." Par C. Ruhliere. Paris : 1807. 4 vols. 8vo. 
 
 Tbe history of the anarchy of Poland, in four volumes octavo ! 
 
 t " The flame of religious discord was now added, and the Jesuits took care 
 that the fire should not be extinguished." — Heeren, vol. i. 344. 
 
54 RUSSIA. 
 
 during this career of rapine and sacrilege, exclaims, " 0, that 
 some strong despot would come, and in mercy rescue these people 
 from themselves ! " 
 
 The intrigues of Russia did not at first promote the growth of 
 this terrible disorder, as might be objected by some of our readers. 
 That power was itself struggling against powerful enemies, and 
 contending with the difficulties of internal reforms, down to 
 within half a century of the period when the partition of Poland 
 took place. Those wise reforms^ that gave to Russia, from the 
 hands of Peter the Great, the seeds of a power which has since 
 grown to such greatness, and which, if adopted by Poland, would 
 have, in all probability, conducted her to a similar state of pros- 
 perity, were absolutely rejected by the profligate nobles, because 
 they must necessarily have involved some amelioration of the fate 
 of the people. 
 
 The picture we have drawn of Polish wickedness and corrup- 
 tion is not too highly colored — or, if so, it is not by us ; we have 
 given the names and works of the authors from whom we derive 
 our information, and we appeal to them as the highest authorities 
 in the literature of Europe. What have been the retributive 
 conseqences to empires, in all ages, of such a career of internal 
 contention and profligacy as we have just described ? What was 
 the just fate of Persia, Greece and Rome, after they had filled 
 up the measure of their degeneracy ? When the oak is decayed 
 at its heart, the tree yields to the wind, and falls prostrate on the 
 earth ; a ship that is rotten no longer resists the pressure of sur- 
 rounding water, and she disappears from the face of the ocean ; 
 if, in constructing a bridge, the foundation of the piers be des- 
 pised and neglected, the entire edifice, superstructure and all, is 
 overwhelmed in the stream. And, knowing that the immutable 
 laws of nature govern equally the destinies of animated existence, 
 shall we marvel to find that an empire which had for two hundred 
 years been decaying to its very centre, whilst its boundaries pre- 
 sented no bulwark against the influx of raging enemies, — which 
 
 * " The nation (the nobles) carefully guarded against any reform, such as 
 was taking place in Russia." — Heeren, vol. i. p. 328. 
 
RUSSIA. 55 
 
 had all that time exhibited the nobility wallowing in licentious- 
 ness, and the laboring population, that ought to be the foundation 
 and support of a country, insolently despised and trampled under 
 foot, — ought we to wonder that such an empire at length reaped 
 the sad harvest of its iniquities, and was prostrated or swallowed 
 up by the force of surrounding nations ? The fate of Poland 
 was but a triumph of justice, without which its history would 
 have conveyed no moral for the benefit of posterity. The annals 
 of the world do not exhibit an example of a great nation — such, 
 for instance, as Prussia, united, well-governed, rising in intelli- 
 gence, morals and religion, and advancing in wealth and civiliza- 
 tion — falling beneath the destroying hand of a conqueror. Such 
 a catastrophe is reserved for the chastisement of the self-aban- 
 doned, depraved, disorganized, ignorant and irreligious communities, 
 and their anarchical governments — for Babylon and Persepolis 
 — for Poland and Turkey ! But, though the punishment was a 
 righteous infliction, we need not vindicate the executioners. The 
 murderer's sentence is just; but we are not therefore bound to 
 tolerate the hangman. 
 
 But we have yet to show, in the case of Poland, that the rod 
 of affliction is administered by the great Ruler of the universe in 
 a spirit not of vengeance, but of mercy. We are now to prove — 
 and without claiming for the instruments of the ameliorations the 
 merit of designing such happy results, or presuming to say that 
 the same or better effects might not have followed from more 
 righteous causes — that the dismemberment of that empire has 
 been followed by an increase in the amount of peace, wealth, lib- 
 erty, civilization and happiness, enjoyed by the great mass of the 
 people. We shall not touch upon the fate of those portions of 
 the Polish territory which, at the partition, fell to the spoil of 
 Austria and Prussia, further than to observe that the present 
 condition of their inhabitants, particularly of those of the latter, 
 is, when contrasted with that of any former era of their history, 
 only to be compared to the state of the blessed in the Elysian 
 regions, as opposed to the sufferings of Pandemonium: 
 
 Our business, however, lies with that portion of the (miscalled) 
 
56 RUSSIA. 
 
 republic which fell to the share of Russia ; and we shall, in the 
 first place, allude to the present state of that section of the in- 
 habitants, which, from being by far the most numerous, ought, 
 upon the soundest principle of justice, to attract the primary 
 notice of the inquirer. Slavery no more exists in Poland : the 
 peasant that tills the soil no longer ranks on a level with the 
 oxen that draw his plough; he can neither be murdered nor 
 maimed at the caprice of an insolent owner, but is as safe in life 
 and limb, under the present laws of Poland, as are the laborers 
 of Sussex or Kent. The modern husbandman is not restricted to 
 mere personal freedom ; he enjoys the right to possess property 
 of all kinds, not even excepting land,^ against which the nobles 
 of ancient republican Poland opposed insuperable prohibitions. 
 In a word, the peasantry of Poland now possess the control over 
 their own persons and fortunes, and are at liberty to pursue hap- 
 piness t according to their own free will and pleasure : which, 
 after all that can be said for one government in preference to 
 another, is nearly the amount of freedom that can be felt to be 
 possessed by the great mass of any nation. Let it not be sup- 
 posed that we wish to convey the impression that the laboring 
 classes of the country under notice are elevated to an equality 
 with the mechanics or husbandmen of England and America : 
 from the very nature of circumstances, and from no one more 
 than our iniquitous corn-laws, X — which have often starved our 
 artisans in the midst of idle looms, and, at the same time, doomed 
 the ploughman of Poland to nakedness or sheep-skins, whilst 
 surrounded by granaries bursting with the best corn in the world, 
 — such an equality is, in our day, impossible. But to show, in 
 as few words as possible, what were the natural fruits, after fif- 
 
 * " The whole of the lands are now alienable, and may be purchased by 
 the peasants, and all other classes except the Jews." — Jacob's Report to the 
 Lords, 1826, p. 66. 
 
 f " Some rare instances of perseverance, industry and temperance, are to bo 
 found ; and, unfavorable as their circumstances may be for the creation of 
 such habits, they are here attended by the usual correspondent results. Some 
 few peasants have been enabled to purchase estates for themselves." — Ja- 
 cob's Report, p. 66. 
 
 % Since abolished. 
 
RUSSIA. D< 
 
 teen years of peace and comparative good government, to a coun- 
 try that had, for two centuries, witnessed only the growth of dis- 
 cord, insecurity and famine, let us quote from a volmne * which 
 bears intrinsic evidence of containing an authentic and candid 
 compendium of the history of Poland : 
 
 "The condition of the country had continued to improve 
 beyond all precedent ; at no former period of her history was the 
 public wealth so great, or so generally diffused. Bridges and pub- 
 lic roads, constructed at an enormous expense, frequently at the 
 cost of the Czar's treasury ; the multitude of new habitations, 
 remarkable for a neatness and a regard to domestic comfort never 
 before observed ; the embellishments introduced into the buildings, 
 not merely of the rich, but of tradesmen and mechanics; the 
 encouragement afforded, and eagerly afforded, by the government, 
 to every useful branch of industry ; the progress made by agricul- 
 ture in particular, the foundation of Polish prosperity; the 
 accumulation, on all sides, of national and individual wealth ; and, 
 above all, the happy countenances of the inferior classes of society, 
 exhibited a wonderful contrast to what had lately been. The most 
 immense of markets, Russia, — a market all but closed to the rest 
 of Europe, — afforded constant activity to the manufacturer. To 
 prove this astonishing progress from deplorable, hopeless poverty 
 to successful enterprise, let one fact suffice. In 1815, there were 
 scarcely one hundred looms for coarse woollen cloths ; at the com- 
 mencement of the insurrection of 1830, there were six thousand."! 
 
 But it will very naturally and properly be inquired, " How did 
 it happen that the nation revolted against Russia in 1830, if the 
 people had enjoyed so much benefit from the connection with that 
 
 * Cabinet Cyclopaedia — History of Poland, p. 269. 
 
 f " Wherever Russia extended her sovereignty, there prevailed overwhelm- 
 ing tyranny, grinding oppression, unblushing venality, odious corruption, 
 treacherous espionages, spoliation, moral degradation and slavery. (Hear, 
 hear. ) What good did Russia ever accomplish 1 It was said that she might 
 civilize the barbarian Turks ; he believed they would hear no more about 
 that, after the conduct of Russia towards Poland. The Poles did not, as the 
 house well knew, rise until goaded into madness by a series of oppressions before un- 
 heard of; the country was watered by the tears of its inhabit a7^ts. ,, — Lord Stuart's 
 speech, House of Commons, Feb. 19, 1836. 
 
58 RUSSIA. 
 
 empire ? " We have thus far spoken only of the condition of the 
 mass of the people ; to answer this objection, it will be necessary 
 to refer to another class, whose interests had always been opposed 
 to the happiness and liberty of the population at large. From the 
 moment when Poland was constituted a kingdom, at the treaty of 
 Vienna, and made an appendage to the Russian crown, the nobles 
 never ceased to sigh for their ancient liberty (license) of electing 
 a king ; that is, of periodically selling themselves, by " a double 
 auction," as Heeren asserts, to the highest bidder. They sighed, 
 also, for those times when there was no law to protect the weak 
 from their outrages, and when a reign of violence and disorder 
 gave them perpetual occasions of making war upon each other, 
 and of ravaging the unprotected provinces. The laws which were 
 passed for the defence of the lives and properties of the peasants 
 were regarded with jealousy * by the nobles, who viewed such enact- 
 ments in the light of encroachments upon their privileges ; and 
 they looked back to the days when they alone constituted the 
 tuition, and all besides were but as the brutes of the field. It 
 was not merely indirectly, however, that the privileges of the aris- 
 tocracy were curtailed ; one of the first acts of the Emperor Alex- 
 ander being to restrict the use of titles to the possessors of prop- 
 erty in that country where, previously, the rank had descended to 
 every son,\ and continued to all their successors, thus multiplying 
 titles indefinitely, and adding a thousand-fold to the mischiefs of 
 conferring absolute power on a particular class, by suffering it to 
 be frequently possessed by desperadoes or paupers. But the 
 cause that, more than all others, had contributed to render the 
 nobles discontented, was the long-protracted peace, which deprived 
 them of their accustomed occupation and revenue ; and which, 
 however much it contributed to the happiness of the industrious 
 agriculturists and traders, brought nothing but ruin and discontent 
 to a body that retained too much of the pride and turbulence of 
 character inherited from their warlike ancestors to dream of 
 descending to pursuits of a commercial or peaceful character. To 
 present a clear view of the state of this order of society in Poland, 
 
 * Heeren, vol. ii. p. 231. t Jacob's Report, p. 60. 
 
RUSSIA. 59 
 
 we will extract a few lines upon the subject from the work of Mr. 
 Jacob, before quoted. It will place his authority beyond ques- 
 tion, if we remind our readers that he is the gentleman who was 
 selected, by a parliamentary committee, to make a journey through 
 'the northern portions of Europe, for the purpose of making to his 
 employers a report of the corn-trade of these regions. This indi- 
 vidual, — who was, of course, not only selected for his efficient 
 powers of observation, but also for his character for honor and 
 fidelity, — in speaking, incidentally, of the state of society of Prus- 
 sian Poland, in his official report, makes this observation upon the 
 Polish gentry : " The Polish gentry are too proud to follow any 
 course but the military career ; and the government, by its large 
 standing army, encourages the feeling, though the pay is scarcely 
 sufficient to supply the officers with their expensive uniforms. 
 Whatever difficulties may present themselves to the placing out 
 young men of good family, none have had recourse to commerce ; 
 and, if they had, such would be treated by others as having lost 
 their caste, and descended to a lower rank of society. The conse- 
 quence is, that all the trade and manufactures of the country are 
 in the hands of the Germans or the Jews." The former seek to 
 return home with the fortunes they make ; the latter do not pos- 
 sess the full rights of citizenship, and cannot be expected to take 
 great interest in the prosperity of the country. 
 
 The above account of the tone of feeling, and of the condition 
 of the aristocratic party of Poland, written in 1825, accounts for 
 the insurrection breaking out in 1830, when every other class of 
 its inhabitants was in the enjoyment of unprecedented happiness 
 and prosperity. And we hesitate not emphatically to assert that 
 it vms wlwlly, and solely, and exclusively, at the instigation, and 
 for the selfish benefit, of this aristocratic fraction of the people, that 
 tlw Polish nation suffered far twelve months the horrors of civil 
 war, was thrown back in her career of improvement, and has since 
 had to endure the rigors of a conqueror's vengeance.* The Rus- 
 
 * The peasants joined, to a considerable extent, the standard of revolt; but 
 this was to be expected, in consequence of the influence necessarily exercised 
 over them by the superior classes. Besides, patriotism or nationality is an 
 instinctive virtue, that sometimes burns the brightest in the rudest and least 
 
60 RUSSIA. 
 
 sian government was aware of this ; aDd its severity has since been 
 chiefly directed towards the nobility.^ In the ukase of the 9th 
 (21st) November, 1881, directing that five thousand Poles should 
 be transported into the interior of the empire, it is expressly pro- 
 vided that they be selected from the disaffected of the order of the 
 gentry. And, in the order issued to the Russian troops employed 
 to quell the insurrection, they are required, under severe penal- 
 ties, to respect the houses and property of the Polish peasants. 
 
 Now, we put it frankly to such of our readers as do not enjoy 
 the leisure, or perhaps possess the taste, for informing themselves 
 of the subject in hand, excepting through the periodical press and 
 the orations of public speakers, whether we were not justified in 
 asserting that they have been cheated of their stores of compas- 
 sion by those who call forth public sympathy for the oppressed 
 Polish people, by appealing to their former liberty, when the mass 
 of the nation was in slavery ; by deploring the tyranny of the 
 Russian government, which has served to give security and pro- 
 tection to the great body of the poor, against the oppressions of 
 
 reasoning minds ; and its manifestation bears no proportion to the value of 
 the possessions defended, or the object to be gained. The Russian serfs 
 at Borodino, the Turkish slaves at Ismail, and the lazzaroni of Naples, 
 fought for their masters and oppressors more obstinately than the free citi- 
 zens of Paris or "Washington did, at a subsequent period, in defence of those 
 capitals. 
 
 * We cannot help alluding to the unfortunate natives of this country who 
 are now seeking an asylum in England, and who belong entirely, we believe, 
 to the class here referred to. Our allusion is to the system which sacrificed 
 millions to hundreds of thousands, and not to persons, or even to generations 
 of persons. Above all, we would except the unfortunate stranger that is 
 now within our gates, imploring our help in a season of distress. In throwing 
 himself upon our shores, the unhappy Pole evinced his generous belief that 
 we would protect and succor him, and he will not discover that we want the 
 power or the will to do either; nor will we wait to inquire whether he be 
 peer or peasant. The bird that, to escape from the tyrant of the skies, flies 
 trembling to the traveller's bosom, is secure ; base, indeed, would he be first 
 to examine if his fluttering guest were a dove or a hawk. We cannot, how- 
 ever, approve of the lectures upon Polish history and literature, which have 
 been delivered in many parts of the kingdom, by some of these refugees. 
 They convey erroneous pictures of the former condition of that country ; ' 
 glossing over the conduct of the nobles, and suppressing all mention of the 
 miserable state of the serfs. 
 
 
RUSSIA. 61 
 
 the powerful nobles ; by lauding the ancient prosperity, wealth, 
 grandeur and happiness, of a country which, until the present age, 
 was, at no period of its history, for fifteen successive years exempt 
 from civil or foreign war ; from desolation, the plague or famine ;* 
 and by imploring the powers to restore the Polish nation to it>s 
 condition previously to the first partition in 1772, which would be 
 to plunge nineteen-twentieths of the inhabitants from freedom 
 into bondage, from comparative happiness into the profoundest 
 state of misery ? But worse effects than the waste of a little mis- 
 directed philanthropy follow from these misrepresentations. The 
 British indignation and hatred towards Russia t have been awak- 
 ened, and those fierce passions have taken possession of the public- 
 mind throughout the kingdom so strongly as to place us in that 
 most dangerous of all predicaments, where the majority is suffi- 
 ciently excited by national prejudice to be brought within view 
 of the hostile precipice, and only requires a further stimulus to 
 plunge the country into the horrible gulf of war. And who and 
 what are the writers and speakers that have made the subject of 
 Poland the vehicle for conducting public opinion to the verge of 
 such a catastrophe ? Are they cognizant or are they unaware of 
 the merits of the question which we have now been faithfully dis- 
 cussing ? In either case, out upon such quackery ! The empiric 
 who, under pretence of healing their bodily disorders, fires the 
 blood or deranges the bowels of his patients, suffers the penalty 
 of homicide for the death of his victim, without inquiry whether 
 the destructive nostrum was ignorantly or knowingly administered. 
 
 * See Appendix for extracts from history of Poland. 
 
 f The terms of abuse showered upon Nicholas in the British legislature are 
 new in taste ; and, we think, when applied to a potentate at peace with us, 
 *uch epithets as monster, Herod, miscreant, Ac, are not improvements upon 
 the terms that we find in the earlier volumes of Hansard. In any case, would 
 such language be honorable to the Parliament 1 Supposing a war should fol- 
 low, is it dignified to precede hostilities with vituperative missiles 1 Spring 
 and Langan set to with a better grace, by shaking hands at the scratch ; the 
 rules of the Fives-court had better be transcribed, for the benefit of St. 
 Stephen's. We are told, indeed, that it is a just manifestation of public 
 opinion. We have heard similar expressions of opinion at Billingsgate and 
 Clare market, and have observed that they sometimes lead to blows, bv* 
 never to conviction. 
 
62 KUSSIA. 
 
 And how long shall political quacks be permitted, without fear of 
 punishment, and with no better justification than the plea of 
 ignorance, to inflame the minds and disorder the understanding* 
 of a whole nation, by stimulating them to a frenzy of hatred 
 towards a people more than a thousand miles distant, and prepar- 
 ing them for probably millions of murders, by administering, 
 unchecked, their decoctions of lies, their compounds of invention 
 and imposture, or their deadly doses of poisoned prejudice, gilded 
 with spurious philanthropy ? 
 
 We have thus (in allusion to the objections of those who take 
 exceptions to Russian aggrandizement upon the ground that the 
 encroachments of that power are always accompanied by the in- 
 fliction of barbarous oppressions upon the conquered nations) 
 shown that, in all cases where neighboring states have been annexed 
 to that empire, the inhabitants have thereby been advanced in 
 civilization and happiness. We have, in the case of Poland., 
 which has undoubtedly benefited more than any other country by 
 its incorporation with Russia, dwelt at greater length upon this 
 point, both because we believe that the impression above referred 
 to is all but universal in reference to this people, and because we 
 are convinced that from this erroneous idea originates nearly all 
 the hostility which, in just and generous minds, — and they are 
 the great majority, — is entertained towards the Russian govern- 
 ment and people. 
 
 In examining the various giounds upon which those who dis- 
 cuss the subject take up their hostile attitudes towards the Russian 
 nation, we have — with infinite surprise, and a deep conviction of 
 the truth that a century of aristocratic government, and conse- 
 quent foreign interference, have impregnated all classes with the 
 haughty and arrogant spirit of their rulers — discovered that Great 
 Britain has been argued into a warlike disposition against that 
 remote empire, without one assignable motive or grievance which 
 could have even engendered a tone of resentment from our pub- 
 lic writers and speakers, had they been actuated only by the 
 principles of common-sense, modest forbearance, and a regard for 
 the benefit of the people. We have sought in vain for cases of 
 insult to our flag ; for an example of spoliation committed upon 
 
RUSSIA. 63 
 
 English merchants ; for the -appearance of hostile fleets in British 
 waters, threatening our shores ; for the denial of redress for in- 
 juries inflicted ; for the refusal to liquidate some just debt : we 
 have sought for such wrongs as these at the hands of the Russian 
 government, to justify an appeal to menaces, and a call for arma- 
 ments, from our Russo-rnaniac orators and writers ; but we find 
 only charges of spoliation of Turkish territory, assaults upon Po- 
 land, intrigues with Persia, designs upon Sweden, and conquests 
 in Georgia — affairs with which we have less interest in embroil- 
 ing ourselves than we have with the struggle now raging in the 
 province of Texas, between the Americans and Mexicans ! 
 
 If we refer to the speech of Lord Dudley Stuart, before alluded 
 to (which is a compendium of all the accusations, suppositions, 
 fears, dangers and suspicions, of which the subject is susceptible), 
 we shall find an alarming picture given of the future growth of 
 Russian dominion. Turkey, it seems, is to be only the germ of 
 an empire, which shall extend not merely from " Indus to the 
 Pole," but throw forth its arms over Europe and Asia, and em- 
 brace every people and nation between the Bay of Bengal and 
 the English Channel ! Turkey once possessed, and the devouring 
 process begins. Austria and all Italy are to be swallowed up at 
 a meal, Greece and the Ionian Islands serving for side-dishes. 
 Spain and Portugal follow as a dessert for this Dando of Constan- 
 tinople; and Louis Philippe and his empire are washed down 
 afterwards, with Bordeaux and Champagne. Prussia and the 
 smaller German States, having wisely formed themselves into a 
 trades-union of some thirty or forty millions, might be supposed 
 by some persons to be secure from this tyrannical master. Noth- 
 ing of the kind ! His lordship has discovered that this is a mere 
 trick of Russia for making them a richer prey. The German 
 goose is only penned in this Prussian league, that it may fatten 
 and be worthier of the fate that awaits it; when Michaelmas 
 arrives, it will be served up, in due state, to the Russian eagle. 
 Belgium, Sweden, Denmark and Holland, are to be but as entre- 
 mets for this national repast. And Persia, Egypt, Arabia and 
 India, in one large bouquet, will furnish the exotics to perfume 
 
64 RUSSIA. 
 
 and adorn this banquet of empires ! * One trifling matter, how- 
 ever, Lord Stuart altogether forgets to take into account : he omits 
 to say how all the viands shall be paid for ; in other words, in 
 what way the Russian Chancellor of the Exchequer will make 
 good his budget, when called upon to clothe, feed, and pay armies 
 to conquer a dozen powerful nations, some of them richer than 
 the conqueror — to meet the expenses of materiel, to furnish the 
 commissariat, hire baggage-wagons, charter transports, and to 
 cover the thousand other out-goings, including even the frauds and 
 impositions incidental to a state of warfare. His lordship for- 
 gets this ; and in doing so calls to our recollection a dream — 
 our readers have probably experienced something of the kind — 
 
 * " Russia, as honorable members must be well aware, was not at the least 
 pains to disguise her dissatisfaction at the present state of affairs in the 
 Peninsula ; and with a frontier so far advanced as hers now was, could any 
 man living doubt that she would very soon adopt plain modes of making that 
 dissatisfaction felt 1 He repeated, that, with a frontier so far advanced, 
 Italy was not safe from her grasp ; and Russia once established there, the 
 consequences to Austria must be tremendous. Russia was surrounding, 
 was enveloping Austria. Turkey would soon fall a prey to her lust of ex- 
 tended dominion. Greece would be a mere province of Russia ; indeed, 
 already, Greece was subjected to her influence ; and she scarcely hesitated 
 
 to menace France He would again say that the whole of the 
 
 Prussian league was at the instigation of Russia, the former being the mere 
 creature of the latter. When the present designs of Russia were accom- 
 plished, they would soon see how she was becoming jealous of Prussia, and 
 a pretext would not be long wanting for the destruction of that instrument 
 which the great northern power had used in erecting and confirming its own 
 ascendency. Prussia was prepared to do everything which Russia might dic- 
 tate, for the purpose of forwarding her designs ; but she might fully antici- 
 pate this — that as soon as the plans of the Autocrat were matured, he would 
 m a day (/) dismember and pull down his present allies ; and, after that, 
 Austria could not long resist. Then, in another quarter of her great empire, 
 let them only look at the advantages possessed by Russia. She had military 
 
 stations within thirty miles of the western coast of Norway 
 
 That country could furnish sailors inferior to none in the world, and the 
 whole district abounded with timber of the best quality. Russia would then 
 become a naval power of the first order (/) and might be joined by the Ameri- 
 cans or the Dutch, to the manifest disadvantage of England." (! !) — Times' 
 >eport of Lord Dudley Stuart's speech, Feb. 19, "1836. 
 
 These sentiments appear to have been delivered with gravity, and listened 
 to by the House of Commons without a smile ! 
 
RUSSIA. 65 
 
 ia which we found ourselves buoyed up in the air, and borne 
 along, we could not tell how. It was not walking, flying, or 
 swimming ; yet on we glided through space, quite independent of 
 all the laws of nature — hills disappearing, rivers drying up, 
 seas changing into terra firma, trees, walls and castles, vanishing 
 at our approach; despising all the usual impediments of sublu- 
 nary travelling, caring no more for inns than if we had been 
 a shooting star, and regardless, like Halley's comet, of a change 
 of horses, on we went, with no luggage to look after, or 
 hotel-bills to settle, or postilions to pay, till, alas ! we awoke, 
 and discovered that we were only a mortal biped, trammelled by 
 the law of gravitation, and enslaved by the rules of political 
 economy — privileged but to travel along coarse, dirty roads, and 
 compelled, before starting, not only to calculate the cost of the 
 journey, but to put the money in our purse for coaches, steam- 
 boats, turnpike-gates, and inns, as well as their waiters, boots, 
 porters and chambermaids, besides a round sum to cover extor- 
 tions, if we would keep our temper. Now, Lord Stuart's case 
 was precisely similar to ours, with the exception that he did not 
 awake from his vision of supernatural locomotion. But, to be 
 serious. To those who resort,, as a crowning bugbear, to the 
 threats of universal sovereignty as the ultimate aim of the Russian 
 government, we have already, in some degree, replied, by showing 
 the weakness of that empire, as exemplified in its uncultivated 
 surface; in the scattered position of its uncivilized people — 
 their poverty, ignorance, and diversified character; and in the 
 circumstance of its being behind Great Britain and other coun- 
 tries in the march of improvement and discovery. 
 
 Bat we can appeal to other facts, and to experience, to disprove 
 the exaggerated views that are put forth respecting the power of 
 Russia ; and in no instance were her weakness and inability to 
 concentrate and support an army more fully illustrated than at 
 the invasion of her territory by Bonaparte. At the battle of 
 Borodino — which was the first great affair that took place be- 
 tween the French and the forces of the Czar — we find, notwith- 
 standing the alarm of invasion had been trumpeted through 
 Europe eighteen months previously, that the number of combat- 
 ed 
 
66 RUSSIA. 
 
 ants brought on that bloody day, to the defence of their native 
 •soil, only amounted to one hundred and twenty thousand men, of 
 whom a large portion were without uniforms or arms, excepting 
 scythes, or other similar weapons. Now, to illustrate the very 
 superior strength of a nation whose inhabitants are at once con- 
 centrated and rich, let us suppose so absurd a circumstance as 
 that Russia, after eighteen months of open preparation and 
 threatening, were to march an army of nearly half a million of 
 ■soldiers into England ; should we be found, after so ample a warn- 
 ing, opposing only one hundred and twenty thousand fighting men, 
 and that number only half armed and clothed, in defence of our 
 homes, our wives and daughters, in the first battle-field ? London 
 alone could furnish and equip such an army, in so great a cause 
 within six months ! Nor did the deficiency of numbers arise 
 from want of patriotism. On the contrary, the Russians fought 
 with unequalled ardor and bravery,^ and the only reason that 
 Napoleon's troops were not on that occasion overwhelmed by ten 
 times their forceps, that the government had not money to pay 
 for transporting its subjects from remote provinces to the scene 
 of action, or funds to provide arms and support them when col- 
 lected together. 
 
 It has been well observed by a very sound authority t that China 
 affords the best answer to those who argue that Russia meditates 
 hostile views towards our Indian possessions. China is separated 
 from Russia by an imaginary boundary only ; and that country- 
 is universally supposed to contain a vast deposit of riches, well 
 worthy of the spoiler's notice. Besides, it has not enjoyed the 
 " benefit " of being civilized by English or other Christian con- 
 querors — an additional reason for expecting to find a wealthy 
 pagan community, awaiting, like unwrought mines, the labors of 
 some Russian Warren Hastings. Why, then, does not the Czar 
 
 * Regiments of peasants, who till that day had never seen war, and whe 
 <till had no other uniform than their gray jackets, formed with the steadiness 
 of veterans, crossed their brows, and, having uttered their national exclama- 
 tion, " Gospodee pomilo uin as ! " — God have mercy upon us! — rushed into* 
 the thickest of the battle. — Scott's Napoleon, chap. 77. 
 
 t Spectator newspaper, No. 3861 
 
RUSSIA. 67 
 
 invade the Chinese empire,^ which is his next neighbor, and con- 
 tains an unravaged soil, rather than contemplate, as the alarmist 
 writers and speakers predict he does, marching three thousand 
 miles, over regions of burning deserts and ranges of snowy moun- 
 tains, to Hindostan, where he would find that Clive and Wellesley 
 had preceded him ? The reason for such forbearance is, at the 
 present day, as it was when that splendid but immoral genius, 
 Catherine, proposed to undertake this very expedition, that there 
 is not in Russia sufficient available wealth to transport across its 
 own surface an army large enough to subjugate the Chinese. 
 How, then, will they reach India through enemies' territories, and 
 in spite of the power and influence of England ? To warrant the 
 attempt, the Czar ought to possess at least the command of one 
 hundred millions sterling. Last year, he required but one million 
 and a quarter ; t for which he was compelled to solicit the aid of 
 the capitalists of western Europe, and found great difficulty, even 
 after pledges of peace and protestations of good behavior, in obtain- 
 ing the necessary loan ! 
 
 " Russia once in possession of Constantinople, and farewell to the 
 liberties of Europe ! " is the cry of those who are "possessed " with 
 the dread of Muscovite ambition ; and the very repetition of this 
 prophecy is calculated to produce believers in its truth. How it 
 is that Russia is to conquer one hundred millions of people, supe- 
 
 * Unless his Muscovite majesty should adopt this suggestion quickly, 
 there appears some chance that Er.gland may be before him at Pekin. We 
 perceive that some of our writers are anxious that we should send some ships 
 of war to compel the Chinese government to open other ports to our vessels 
 besides Canton, and to dictate certain other regulations for carrying on trade 
 with us, which they are good enough to suggest to his Celestial Majesty. 
 Could not our ships of war call in on-the way, and compel the French people 
 to transfer the trade of Marseilles to Ilavre, and thus save us the carriage 
 of their wines and madders through the Straits of Gibraltar 1 Why should 
 not they force the Americans to restrict the export of their cotton to New 
 York, rather than to suffer the growth of Savannah and Mobile 1 Well may 
 the Chinese proclaim us " outside barbarians ; " for verily this is outside bar- 
 barous morality ! 
 
 t Double the amount might be raised, without difficulty, upon sufficient 
 security, in Manchester, in less than forty-eight hours, if the profit or other 
 motive offered an adequate inducement. 
 
68 RUSSIA. 
 
 rior to her own population in wealth, freedom, instruction and 
 morality, and armed with all the superiority of power which an 
 ascendency in those qalities ever has, and always will bestow upon 
 civilized communities over barbarous nations, not one of those 
 writers and speakers has condescended to explain ; the ways and 
 means are studiously avoided, or disregarded as of no consequence. 
 Yet, that Russia possesses no superhuman properties, which enable 
 her to disregard the ordinary impediments of nature, we have 
 already shown, in the example of her inability, when attacked, to 
 resist the invader, owing to a want of the money, food, arms 
 and clothing, necessary to the transport and maintenance of large 
 armies. With such an example of her weakness in defensive 
 operations as we have just given, we need not be surprised that we 
 have very abundant proofs of the feebleness of that empire when 
 engaged in aggressive warfare. All the hostilities carried on 
 between Russia and her barbarous neighbors, Turkey and Persia, 
 have been full of evidences of the difficulty with which the first 
 power achieved her successive conquests, and the precarious tenure 
 by which she has held them. Indeed, the last war with Turkey 
 was, from the combined causes of deficient means of transport, 
 defective commissariat supplies, and want of hospitals, — all aris- 
 ing from the poverty of the government, — protracted so long, and 
 attended with so great a loss of life to the invaders, that it left no 
 doubt with reflecting minds of the incompetency of Russia to sus- 
 tain a war of aggression with Prussia, Austria, or any other civil- 
 ized state. 
 
 But Poland is the best and latest witness of the weakness and 
 poverty of Russia. Notwithstanding that the insurrection in that 
 country broke out at a moment when the preparations were not 
 matured (owing to the rashness of the military youths of Warsaw), 
 and although the natives possessed no strong places, as in Belgium, 
 and their territory is destitute of mountain fastnesses, such as are 
 found in Spain, Scotland or Switzerland, yet a mere handful of 
 insurgents baffled the whole power of the Czar for twelve months, 
 several times defeating his ill-equipped armies with great slaughter, 
 and at last were subdued only through the perfidy of the Prussian 
 authorities. Surely, with this experience of Russian weakness 
 
RUSSIA. 69 
 
 and poverty to appeal to, we need not refer to the dangers appre- 
 hended for France, Germany and Spain, unless it be to ask whether 
 a British Parliament, possessing so many unsatisfied claims upon 
 its time and attention at home — from two millions of paupers in 
 a neighboring island, declared by authority to be without the 
 means of subsistence ; from the Dissenters of this kingdom and 
 the Catholics of Ireland ; and from the discontented tax-payers at 
 large — whether the British legislature might not very properly 
 leave the care of those independent and powerful empires to their 
 own governments, at least for the present, until the business of the 
 united empire shall have been more satisfactorily despatched. 
 
 "We shall, however, be told that, in arguing for the weakness 
 of this empire from past experience, we lose sight of the differ- 
 ence between Russia in the Baltic and Russia in the Mediterra- 
 nean. " The government of St. Petersburg once transferred to 
 Constantinople, and Russia thenceforth becomes the first maritime 
 power of Europe," is the universal cry of the alarmists. How ? 
 0, the oaks of Bosnia, which are the finest in the world for ship- 
 building, would be then at her command ! But where would the 
 sailors be found by a power possessing no mercantile marine ? 
 Napoleon thought vainly to create a navy from those very forests ; 
 he ordered tools to be forged in the country, and roads to be cut, 
 by which the French legions might penetrate into Illyria, and the 
 oaks of Bosnia be thus transported to the harbors on the Adriatic. 
 He, moreover, contrived to bring the forests of Switzerland to 
 Antwerp, by constructing the famous shoot down the side of Mount 
 Pilatus. The timber rotted in his harbors ; for how could the navies 
 arise, whilst England commanded the trade of the ocean ? Napoleon 
 Bonaparte was a madman in all that related to commercial science, 
 and his disastrous fate was the inevitable consequence ; but they 
 who, with his example before them, can assume the existence of 
 the largest navy in the world in the possession of a people whose 
 carrying trade is in the hands of another nation, without the pre- 
 vious growth of manufactures and commerce, are, in that partic- 
 ular, more hopelessly mad than the Corsican usurper. As well 
 and as wisely might they assume the existence of the ripened har- 
 vest when no soed had been sown, or reckon on the growth of a 
 
70 RUSSIA. 
 
 city where neither builders nor inhabitants had ever existed! 
 Until Russia becomes a great trading empire, she will not be in 
 even the path for surpassing us in naval power. We have else- 
 where shown that she cannot enlarge her commerce without there- 
 by enriching us, even more than any other people; how, then, 
 can Russia hope to become equal to ourselves upon the ocean, 
 unless England should, for the purpose of enabling her to do so, 
 resolve to stand still ?* 
 
 But supposing that Russia were to seize the first moment of her 
 occupancy of Turkey to begin to build ships of war, and, by aid 
 of Greek sailors, to man a fleet at Constantinople ; and presum- 
 ing, moreover, that, having obtained violent possession of Nor- 
 way, she were to employ similar means for erecting a naval power 
 in the Baltic, let us then call the attention of our readers to the 
 defenceless and dependent position in which her territory would 
 be placed, owing to the peculiar geographical features of those 
 quarters of the globe. The sole outlet for the waters of the Sea 
 of Marmora and the Black Sea is by the canal of the Dardanelles, 
 called the Hellespont ; a passage whose navigable width scarcely 
 exceeds two thousand yards for a length of nearly thirty miles, 
 To blockade the entrance of this strait would require that a couple 
 of ships of the line, a frigate, and a steamer, should be stationed 
 at its mouth : and with no larger force than this might the egress 
 of any vessel be prevented from the interior seas ; and not only so, 
 but, as these four men-of-war would constitute, in the eyes of all 
 foreign powers, and according to the law of nations, a sufficient 
 blockade, they would deprive Constantinople and the whole Turk- 
 ish empire of all foreign trade, besides shutting out from the com- 
 
 * When the measures for conciliating the respective commercial interests 
 of parties in the Irish union were arranging, the opinion of practical men 
 was taken as to the period at which the cotton manufacture of Ireland might 
 be able to go on, in competition with that of England, without the help of 
 protecting duties ; and Mr. William Orr, of Dublin, who had introduced the 
 manufacture into that country, was asked if he thought it likely that, in ten 
 years, the Irish manufacturers would overtake the English in skill. Mr. 
 Orr replied, " Yes, if the English can be persuaded, during that time, to 
 etand still." 
 
RUSSIA. 71 
 
 merce of the Mediterranean Sea, and the rest of the world, the 
 entire coast of the Euxine, and its thousands of miles of tributary 
 rivers. If we now transfer our attention to the northern portions 
 of the Russian empire, we shall find that the passage of the Sound, 
 through which all the trade of the Baltic is compelled to pass, is 
 scarcely' less narrow than that of the Hellespont ; and, provided 
 llussia had gained possession of the interior of these straits, 
 according to the supposition of the alarmists, then half a dozen 
 ships of war might hermetically seal the whole of northern Europe 
 against the trade of the world. In short, llussia, with the addi- 
 tion of Turkey, would possess but two outlets, each more con- 
 tracted than the river Thames at Tilbury fort ; and, as these 
 could be declared in a state of lawful blockade by less than a 
 dozen vessels of war, it is clear that nature herself has doomed 
 llussia to be in a condition of the most abject and prostrate sub- 
 jection to the will of the maritime powers. This is a point of 
 paramount importance in estimating the future growth of the 
 country under consideration. It should never be lost sight of for 
 a moment, in arguing upon the subject, that Russia, in possession 
 of Turkey and all the coasts of the Black Sea, besides her pres- 
 ent stupendous expanse of territory, would still be denied, by the 
 hand of nature herself, a navigation of more than three miles in 
 width, to connect her millions of square leagues of territory with 
 the rest of the globe, — a peculiarity the more striking since it 
 could not be found to exist in any other quarter of the earth. It 
 is deserving of notice, that these two narrow straits which guard 
 the entrances to the Black Sea and the Baltic are nearly six 
 months' sail distant from each other ; and the track by which 
 alone they can communicate lying through the Straits of Dover 
 and of Gibraltar, it must be apparent that, were Russia the mis- 
 tress of those channels, she could not pass from the one to the 
 other, unless she were in amicable connection with Great Britain.^ 
 
 * To illustrate the view taken, — during the war between Russia and the 
 Porte, in 1791, the government of St. Petersburg, anxious to send a fleet tc 
 attack the Turkish power in the Archipelago, requested permission of the 
 Dutch and English to be allowed to refit the vessels and take in stores at 
 one of their ports ; and, failing in this application, the expedition was aban- 
 doned. 
 
72 RUSSIA. 
 
 There remains but one more point requiring our consideration 
 in connection with the abstract question of Muscovite aggrandize- 
 ment. They who predict the unbounded extension of Russia for- 
 get the inevitable growth of weakness which, attends the undue 
 expansion of territorial dominion.^ Not only can they foresee, 
 without difficulty, the conquest of Germany, France, Spain, Per- 
 sia and India, but they are, at the same time, blind to the dan- 
 gers which must attend the attempt to incorporate into one cum- 
 brous empire these remote and heterogeneous nations. In all ages 
 and climes nature has given the boundaries for different commu- 
 nities ; and we find that not only are the several families of the 
 earth generally enclosed by seas or mountains, to mark the lim- 
 its of their respective territories, but the rivers usually flow through 
 lands inhabited by people of one language, thus constituting a 
 double natural line of demarcation. For example, the Alps and 
 the Pyrenees afford the barriers beneath the opposite sides of 
 which repose the French, Spanish and Italian nations, within 
 which arise the Rhone and Garonne of France, the Tagus and 
 Guadalquivir of the Peninsula, and the Po and Aclige of Italy ; 
 each of which may be almost said to water integral countries. 
 And, seeing that these allotments of the earth's surface are suffi- 
 ciently defined by the hand of nature to have drawn together, in 
 the earliest ages, the scattered seed of Adam into separate and 
 distinct families, how infallibly shall the same natural limits suf- 
 fice to preserve those distinctions, when aided by those potent safe- 
 guards of nationality, the diversified histories, religions, languages 
 and laws, of ancient and powerful empires ! These are reflections 
 that do not seem to have occurred to those writers who assign the 
 sovereignty of Europe and Asia over to Russia ; and, even if they 
 had crossed their minds, such trifling impediments could hardly 
 
 * " In large bodies, the circulation of power must be less at the extrem- 
 ities ; nature herself has said it. The Turk cannot govern Egypt as he gov- 
 erns Thrace, nor has he the same dominion in the Crimea and Algiers which 
 he has at Brusa and Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huck- 
 ster ; the Sultan gets such obedience as ho can ; he governs with a loose 
 rein, that he may govern at all ; it is the eternal law of extension and de- 
 tached empire." — Burke. 
 
RUSSIA. 73 
 
 have discouraged them, after having surmounted so much greater 
 obstacles. For assuredly they who can bestow upon Russia the 
 supremacy of the seas whilst her carrying trade is in the hands of 
 England, or who can award her the victory over rich, united and 
 powerful nations, without the previous possession of money, mate- 
 riel, or provisions for her armies, need not be daunted by such 
 trifling natural difficulties as the Himalayas or the Alps present 
 against the concentrations of a government over her conquests, or 
 feel a moment's alarm about regulating with the same tariff the 
 commerce of the Rhine, Danube, Neva, and Ganges. 
 
 We have now, we believe, noticed every argument with which 
 it has been the custom to urge us to participate in Russian and 
 Turkish quarrels and intrigues ; and we have endeavored to show, 
 by a candid appeal to facts, that the dangers with which we are 
 threatened in our commerce, colonies, or national dominion, from 
 the power of Russia, are chimerical. We have likewise shown 
 that the prejudices existing in the minds of the British people 
 against that power, and which have been industriously fostered by 
 the writers and speakers of the day, are founded in delusion and 
 misrepresentation ; that the spread of Russian empire has invari- 
 ably increased, instead of diminishing, the growth of civilization 
 and commerce ; that she owes her extension less to her own forces, 
 which we have shown to be weak, than to the disunion or barba- 
 rism of her neighbors ; and that the very nature of her geograph- 
 ical position must always keep her in dependence upon the good- 
 will of other maritime powers. Where, then, are the motives — 
 seeing that Russia has not inflicted the slightest wrong upon us, or 
 even contemplated one substantial injury to our people — for the 
 warlike spirit which now pervades the current writings and speeches 
 upon the subject of that nation? We do not kiuow — for we have 
 not been able in our researches upon this subject to discover — one 
 solitary ground upon which to found a pretence, consistent with 
 reason, common-sense or justice, for going to war with Russia. 
 7 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE BALANCE OF POWER, 
 
 Mischievous Passion of the English for Intermeddling with Foreign States. 
 — Supposed necessity of maintaining " an Imposing Attitude." — The Bal- 
 ance of Power Defined. — Inconsistency of the Definitions. — Chimerical 
 Nature of said Balance. — Lord Bacon's Policy of Nations. — Claims of the 
 Turks to the Protection of the "Balance." — Inconsistency of the Advo- 
 cates of the Balance of Power. — The Americans and the Balancing Sys- 
 tem. — Sound Policy of the United States. 
 
 Our object has not only been to deprecate war as the greatest 
 evil that can befall a people, but to show that we have no interest 
 in maintaining the statu quo of Turkey ; and, consequently, that 
 the armaments which, in a time of peace, are maintained, at an 
 enormous cost, for the purpose of making demonstrations in favor 
 of that country, and against Russia, might be reduced, and their 
 expense spared to the tax-payers of the British empire. 
 
 We shall here be encountered with a very general prepossession 
 in favor of our maintaining what is termed a rank amongst the 
 states of the continent, — which means, not that we should be free 
 from debt, or that our nation should be an example to all others 
 for the wealth, education, and virtues of its people, but that Eng- 
 land shall be consulted before any other countries presume to 
 quarrel or fight ; and that she shall be ready, and shall be called 
 upon, to take a part in every contention, either as mediator, 
 second, or principal. So prevalent and so little questioned has 
 this egotistical spirit become, that, when an honorable member 
 rises in Parliament, to call upon a minister of the crown to ac- 
 count for some political changes in Spain, Portugal or Turkey, 
 instead of the question encountering the laughter c p the house 
 
RUSSIA. 75 
 
 (as such an inquiry would probably do from the homely repre- 
 sentatives who meet to attend to their constituents' affairs at 
 Washington), or the questioner being put down by the function- 
 ary, with something after Cain's answer, " Am I the Span- 
 iard's keeper ? " the latter offers grave explanations and excuses, 
 whilst the audience looks on with silent attention, as though every 
 word of our foreign secretary were pregnant with the fate of 
 nations bowing to his sway. 
 
 If we go back through the parliamentary debates of the last 
 few reigns, we shall find this singular feature in our national 
 character — the passion for meddling with the affairs of foreign- 
 ers — more strikingly prominent in every succeeding succession ; 
 and, at the breaking out of the French revolution, the reader is 
 astonished to see that the characters of the leaders of the mobs 
 of Paris, Marseilles and Lyons, and the conduct of the govern- 
 ment of France, became the constant subjects of discussion in the 
 House of Commons, almost to the exclusion of matters of domes- 
 tic interest, — Pitt and Burke on one side, and Fox, Grey and 
 Sheridan, on the other, attacking and defending the champions of 
 the revolution, with the same ardor as if the British legislature 
 were a responsible tribunal, erected over the whole of Christen- 
 dom, and endowed with powers to decide, without appeal, the 
 destinies of all the potentates and public men of Europe.^ Un- 
 
 * That this spirit still survives in full vigor, may be shown by the motion 
 recently made in the House of Commons, by Mr. T. Buncombe, for interced- 
 ing with the French government in behalf of the state prisoners at Ham. 
 Prince Polignac and his confederates attempted by their coup d'etat to deprive 
 France of law, place the whole country in the hands of despots, and reduce 
 it to the monkish ignorance of the middle ages, by giving again to priests 
 and bigots the absolute power over the printing-press. In this attempt they 
 failed ; but freedom conquered at the cost of hundreds of victims. In Eng- 
 land, or any other country but France, those ministers would have suffered death. 
 Yet, after five years of confinement, behold us interfering with the course of 
 justice in an empire with whose internal concerns we are no more entitled to 
 mix than with those of China ! 
 
 Within a week of this display, a lad was transported from Macclesfield for 
 fourteen years, for stealing a pair of stockings ! We recommend this to our 
 facetious Gallic neighbors, as a fit opportunity for intervention. The mother 
 should be induced to write her case to M. Odillon Barrot, or some other pop- 
 ular member of the Chamber of Beputies. 
 
70 RUSSIA. 
 
 happily, the same passion had impregnated the minds of the 
 public generally (as it continues to do down to our own day), and 
 the result was, as everybody knows, the Bourbon crusade. But 
 England, in taking upon herself to make war with the spirit of 
 the age, encountered the Fates ; and, instead of destroying that 
 infant freedom which, however monstrous and hideous at its birth, 
 was destined to throw off its bloody swathes, and, in spite of the 
 enmity of the world, to dispense the first taste of liberty to all 
 Europe, she was herself the nurse that, by her opposition, rocked 
 the French revolution into vigorous maturity. 
 
 Our history during the last century may be called the tragedy 
 of " British intervention in the politics of Europe ;"' in which 
 princes, diplomatists, peers and generals, have been the authors 
 and actors, the people the victims ; and the moral will be 
 exhibited to the latest posterity in eight hundred millions of 
 debt. 
 
 We have said that our proposal to reduce our armaments will 
 be opposed, upon the plea of maintaining a proper attitude, as it 
 is called, amongst the nations of Europe. British intervention in 
 the state policy of the continent has been usually excused under 
 the two stock pretences of maintaining the balance of power in 
 Europe, and of protecting our commerce ; upon which two sub- 
 jects, as they bear indirectly on the question in hand, we shall 
 next offer a few observations. 
 
 The first instance in which we find the "balance of power" 
 alluded to in a king's speech is on the occasion of the last address 
 of William III. to his Parliament, December 31, 1701, where he 
 concludes by saying, " I will only add this, — if you do in good 
 earnest desire to see England hold the balance of Europe, it will 
 appear by your right improving the present opportunity." From 
 this period, down almost to our own time (latterly, indeed, the 
 phrase has become, like many other cant terms, nearly obsolete), 
 there will be found, in almost every successive king's speech, a 
 constant recurrence to the " balance of Europe ;" by which, we 
 may rest assured, was always meant, however it might be con- 
 cealed under pretended alarm for the " equilibrium of power " 
 or the " safety of the continent," the desire to see England "hold 
 
RUSSIA. 77 
 
 the balance." The phrase was found to please the public ear ; 
 it implied something of equity ; whilst England, holding the bal- 
 ance of Europe in her hand, sounded like filling the office of 
 justice herself to one-half of the globe. Of course, such a post 
 *of honor could not be maintained, or its dignity asserted, without 
 a proper attendance of guards and officers ; and we consequently 
 find that, at about this period of our history, large standing 
 armies began to be called for ; and not only were the supplies 
 solicited by the government, from time to time, under the plea of 
 preserving the liberties of Europe, but, in the annual mutiny-bill 
 (the same in form as is now passed every year), the preamble 
 stated, amongst other motives, that the annual army was voted 
 for the purpose of preserving the balance of power in Europe. 
 The "balance of power," then, becomes an important practical 
 subject for investigation ; it appeals directly to the business and 
 bosoms of our readers, since it is implicated with an expenditure 
 of more than a dozen millions of money per annum, every far- 
 thing of which goes, in the shape of taxation, from the pockets of 
 the public. 
 
 Such of our readers as have not investigated this subject will 
 not be a little astonished to find a great discrepancy in the sev- 
 eral definitions of what is actually meant by the " balance of 
 power." The theory — for it has never yet been applied to prac- 
 tice — appears, after upwards of a century of acknowledged 
 existence, to be less understood now than ever. Latterly, indeed, 
 many intelligent and practical-minded politicians have thrown the 
 question overboard, along with that of the balance of trade — 
 of which number, without participating in their favored attri- 
 butes, we claim to be ranked as one. The balance of power, — 
 which has, for a hundred years, been the burden of kings' 
 speeches, the theme of statesmen, the ground of solemn treaties, 
 and the cause of wars ; which has served, down to the very year 
 in which we write, and which will, no doubt, continue to serve for 
 years to come, as a pretence for maintaining enormous standing 
 armaments, by land and sea, at a cost of many hundreds of mil- 
 lions of treasure — the balance of power is a chimera ! It is not 
 a fallacy, a mistake, an imposture — it is an undescribed, inde- 
 7* 
 
78 RUSSIA. 
 
 ecribable, incomprehensible nothing; mere words, conveying to 
 the mind not ideas, but sounds like those equally barren syllables 
 which our ancestors put together for the purpose of puzzling 
 themselves about words, in the shape of Prester John, or the 
 philosopher's stone ! We are bound, however, to see what are the 
 best definitions of this theory. 
 
 " By this balance," says Vattel, " is to be understood such a 
 vlisposition of things as that no one potentate or state shall be 
 able, absolutely, to predominate and prescribe laws to the others." 
 — Law of Natio?is, b. 3, c. 3, § 47. 
 
 "What is usually termed a balance of power," says Gentz, 
 •' is that constitution subsisting among neighboring states, more or 
 less connected with one another, by virtue of which no one among 
 them can injure the independence or essential rights of another 
 without meeting with effectual resistance on some side, and conse- 
 quently exposing itself to danger." — Fragments on the Political 
 Balance, c. 1. 
 
 " The grand and distinguishing feature of the balancing system," 
 says Brougham, " is the perpetual attention to foreign affairs 
 which it inculcates ; the constant watchfulness over every nation 
 which it prescribes; the subjection in which it places all national 
 passions and antipathies to the fine and delicate view of remote 
 expediency ; the unceasing care which it dictates of nations most 
 remotely situated, and apparently unconnected with ourselves ; 
 the general union which it has effected of all the European powers, 
 obeying certain laws, and actuated in general by a common prin- 
 ciple ; in fine, the right of mutual inspection, universally recog- 
 nized, among civilized states, in the rights of public envoys and 
 residents." — Brougham's Colonial Policy, b. 3, § 1. 
 
 These are the best definitions we have been able to discover 
 of the system denominated the balance of power. In the first 
 place, it must be remarked that, taking any one of these descrip- 
 tions separately, it is so vague as to impart no knowledge even of 
 the writer's meaning ; whilst, if taken together, one confuses and 
 contradicts another — Gentz describing it to be " a constitution 
 subsisting among neighboring states, more or less connected with 
 each other ; " whilst Brougham defines it as " dictating a care of 
 
RUSSIA. 79 
 
 nations most remotely situated, and apparently unconnected with 
 ourselves." Then it would really appear, from the laudatory tone 
 applied to the system by Vattel, who says that it is " such a 
 disposition of things as that no one potentate or state shall be able 
 absolutely to predominate and prescribe laws to the others," as 
 well as from the complacent manner in which Brougham states 
 " the general union which it has effected of all the European 
 powers, obeying certain laws, and actuated in general by a common 
 principle," — it would seem, from such assurances as these, that 
 there was no necessity for that " perpetual attention to foreign 
 affairs," or that " constant watchfulness over every nation," which 
 the latter authority tells us the system "prescribes and inculcates." 
 The only point on which these writers, in common with many 
 other authors and speakers in favor of the balance of power, 
 agree, is in the fundamental delusion that such a system was ever 
 acceded to by the nations of Europe. To judge from the 
 assumption, by Brougham, of a " general union among all the 
 European powers," from the allusion made by Gentz to that 
 " constitution subsisting among neighboring states," or from Vat- 
 tel's reference to " a disposition of things" &c, one might be 
 justified in inferring that a kind of federal union had existed for 
 the last century throughout Europe, in which the several kingdoms 
 had found, like the States of America, uninterrupted peace and 
 prosperity. But we should like to know at what period of 
 history such a compact amongst the nations of the continent was 
 entered into ? Was it previously to the peace of Utrecht ? Was 
 it antecedent to the Austrian war of succession ? Was it prior to 
 the seven years' war, or to the American war ? Or did it exist 
 during the French revolutionary wars ? Nay, what period of the 
 centuries during which Europe has (with only just sufficient 
 intervals to enable the combatants to recruit their wasted energies) 
 been one vast and continued battle-field, will Lord Brougham fix 
 upon to illustrate the salutary working of that " balancing 
 system " which " places all national passions and antipathies in 
 subjection to the fine and delicate view of remote expediency " ? 
 
 Again, at what epoch did the nations of the continent subscribe 
 to that constitution, "by virtue of which," according to Gentz, 
 
80 RUSSIA. 
 
 11 no one among them can injure the independence or essential 
 rights of another " ? Did this constitution exist whilst Britain 
 was spoiling the Dutch at the Cape, or in the East ? — or when 
 she dispossessed France of Canada ? — or (worse outrage by far) 
 did it exist when England violated the " essential rights " of 
 Spain, by taking forcible and felonious possession of a portion of 
 her native soil ? * Had this constitution been subscribed by 
 Russia, Prussia and Austria, at the moment when they signed the 
 partition of Poland? — or by France, when she amalgamated with 
 a portion of Switzerland? — by Austria, at the acquisition of 
 Lombardy ? — by Puissia, when dismembering Sweden, Turkey 
 and Persia ? — or by Prussia, before incorporating Silesia ? 
 
 So far from any such confederation having ever been, by writ- 
 ten, verbal or implied agreement, entered into by the " European 
 powers, obeying certain laws, and actuated in general by a com- 
 mon principle," the theory of the balance of power has, we 
 believe, generally been interpreted, by those who, from age to 
 age, have, parrot-like, used the phrase, to be a system invented 
 for the very purpose of supplying the want of such a combination. 
 Regarding it for a moment in this point of view, we should still 
 expect to find that the " balancing system " had, at some period 
 of modern history, been recognized and agreed to by all the con- 
 tinental states ; and that it had created a spirit of mutual conces- 
 sion and guarantee, by which the weaker and more powerful 
 empires were placed upon a footing of equal security, and by 
 
 * The conquests of colonies have been regarded with some complacency, 
 because they are merely, in most instances, reprisals for previous depredations 
 by the parent state: but England for fifty years at Gibraltar is a spectacle of 
 brute violence, unmitigated by any such excuses. Upon no principle of 
 morality can this unique outrage upon the integrity of an ancient, powerful 
 and renowned nation, placed at a remote distance from our shores, be justi- 
 fied. The example, if imitated, instead of being shunned, universally, would 
 throw all the nations of the earth into barbarous anarchy, and deprive man- 
 kind of the blessings of law, justice, and religion. It is time not only to think 
 but to speak of these things in a spirit of honest truth. The people of this 
 country, the middling and working classes, have no interest, as we shall 
 by and by have to show, in these acts of unjust aggression and foreign 
 violence. Alas for the cause of morals, if they had ! 
 
RUSSIA. 81 
 
 which any one potentate or state was absolutely unable " to pre- 
 dominate over the others." But, instead of any such self-denial;, 
 we discover that the balance of Europe has merely meant (if it 
 has had a meaning) that which our blunt Dutch king openly avowed 
 as his aim to his Parliament — a desire on the part of the great 
 powers to " hold the balance of Europe." England has, for nearly 
 a century, held the European scales — not with the blindness of 
 the goddess of justice herself, or with a view to the equilibrium 
 of opposite interests, but with a Cyclopean eye to her own aggran- 
 dizement. The same lust of conquest has actuated, up to the 
 measure of their abilities, the other great powers; and, if we find 
 the smaller states still, in the majority of instances, preserving 
 their independent existence, it is owing not to the watchful 
 guardianship of the " balancing system," but to the limits which 
 nature herself has set to the undue extension of territorial domin- 
 ion, not only by the physical boundaries of different countries, 
 but in those still more formidable moral impediments to the 
 invader, the unity of language, laws, customs and traditions; 
 the instinct of patriotism and freedom ; the hereditary rights of 
 rulers ; and though last, not least, that homage to the restraints of 
 justice which nations and public bodies * have in all ages avowed, 
 however they may have found excuses for evading it. 
 
 So far, then, as we can understand the subject, the theory of a 
 balance of power is a mere chimera, a creation of the politician's 
 brain ; a phantasm, without definite form or tangible existence, 
 a mere conjunction of syllables, forming words which convey 
 sound without meaning. Yet these words have been echoed by 
 the greatest orators and statesmen of England : they jingled suc- 
 cessively from the lips of Bolingbroke, Chatham, Pitt, Burke, 
 Fox, Sheridan, Grey and Brougham, — ay, even whilst we were 
 in the act of stripping the maritime nations of the continent of 
 their colonies, then regarded as the sole source of commercial 
 greatness ; whilst we stood, sword in hand, upon the neck of Spain, 
 or planted our standard on the rock of Malta; and even when 
 England usurped the dominion of the ocean, and attempted to 
 
 * " Mankind, although reprobates in detail, are always moralists in the 
 gross." — Montesquieu. 
 
82 RUSSIA. 
 
 extend the sphere of human despotism over another element, by 
 insolently putting barriers upon that highway of nations — even 
 then the tongues of our orators resounded most loudly with the 
 praises of the "balance of power! "* There would be some- 
 thing peculiarly humiliating, in connection with this subject, in 
 beholding the greatest minds of successive ages, instead of exer- 
 cising the faculty of thought, become the mere automata of 
 authority, and retail, with less examination than the haberdasher 
 bestows upon the length, breadth, and quality of his wares, the 
 sentiments bequeathed from former generations of writers and 
 speakers, but that, unhappily, the annals of philosophy and of 
 past religions afford too many examples of the triumph of mere 
 imitativeness over the higher faculties of the human intellect. 
 
 We must not, however, pass over the " balance of power :} 
 without at least endeavoring to discover the meaning of a phrase 
 which still enters into the preamble of an annual act of Parlia- 
 ment for raising and maintaining a standing army of ninety 
 thousand men. The theory, according to the historian Robertson, 
 was first invented by the Machiavellian statesmen of Italy during 
 the prosperous era of the Florentine (miscalled) republic ; and it 
 was imported into western Europe in the early part of the six- 
 teenth century, and became " fashionable," to use the very word 
 of the historian of Charles V., along with many other modes bor- 
 rowed, about the same time, from that commercial and civilized 
 people. This explanation of its origin does not meet with the 
 concurrence of some other writers ; for it is singular, but still 
 consistent with the ignis fatuus character of the " balance of 
 
 * The phrase was actually adopted by Napoleon ! who told O'Meara, at St. 
 Helena, that he refused to permit the Emperor Alexander to occupy the Dar- 
 danelles, because, if Kussia were in possession of Turkey, the " balance of 
 power " in Europe would be destroyed ! Lord Dudley Stuart sees much to 
 admire in this regard to the balance of power by one who had himself been 
 in military occupation of all the principal states of Europe : — "But the 
 profound views of that great man, Napoleon, told him not to accede to either 
 the demands or entreaties of Alexander; and, on that occasion, though he had 
 invaded the Turkish empire himself, he saved it by refusing the passage of 
 the Dardanelles to Russia; nay, he saved Europe itself." — Lord Stuart's 
 speech, February 19. 
 
RUSSIA. 88 
 
 power," that scarcely two authors agree, either as to the nature 
 or the precise period of invention of the system. Lord Brougham 
 claims for the theory an origin as remote as the time of the Athe- 
 nians ; and Hume describes Demosthenes to have been the first 
 advocate of the " balancing system ; " very recommendatory, 
 remembering that ancient history is little else than a calendar of 
 savage wars ! There can be little doubt, however, that the idea, 
 by whomsoever or at whatever epoch conceived, sprang from that 
 first instinct of our nature, fear, and originally meant at least 
 some scheme for preventing the dangerous growth of the power 
 of any particular state ; that power being always regarded, be 
 it well remembered, as solely the offspring of conquest and 
 aggrandizement ; notwithstanding, as we have had occasion to 
 show in a former page of this pamphlet, in the case of England 
 and the United States, that labor, improvements and discoveries, 
 confer the greatest strength upon a people ; and that, by these 
 alone, and not by the sword of the conqueror, can nations, in 
 modern and all future times, hope to rise to supreme power and 
 grandeur. And it must be obvious that a system professing to 
 observe a " balance of power," by which, says Yattel, " no one 
 potentate or state shall be able absolutely to predominate ; " or, 
 according to Gentz, " to injure the independence or essential 
 rights of another;" by which, says Brougham, "a perpetual 
 attention to foreign affairs is inculcated, and a constant watchful- 
 ness over every nation is prescribed," — it must be obvious that 
 such a " balancing system," if it disregards those swiftest strides 
 towards power which are making by nations excelling in mechan- 
 ical and chemical science, industry, education, morality and free- 
 dom, must be altogether chimerical. 
 
 Lord Bacon, indeed, took a broader and more comprehensive 
 view of this question, when he wrote, in his essay on empire, 
 " First, for their neighbors, there can no general rule be given 
 (the occasions are so variable) save one, which ever holdeth ; 
 which is, that princes do keep due sentinel, that none of their 
 neighbors do overgrow so (by increase of territory, by embracing 
 of trade, by approaches, or the like) as they become more 
 able to annoy them than they were ; and this is generally the 
 
84 
 
 EUSSIA, 
 
 work of standing councils, to see and to hinder it." This appears 
 to us to be the only sound and correct view of such a principle as 
 is generally understood by the phrase " the balance of power." It 
 involves, however, such a dereliction of justice, and utter absence 
 of conscientiousness, that subsequent writers upon the subject have 
 not dared to follow out the principle of hindering the growth of 
 trade, and the like (which includes all advance in civilization) ; 
 although, to treat it in any other manner than that in which it 
 is handled by this "wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind," is to 
 abandon the whole system to contempt, as unsound, insufficient, 
 and illusory.^ As for the rule of Lord Bacon, were the great 
 enemy of mankind himself to summon a council, to devise a law 
 of nations which should convert this fair earth, with all its 
 capacity for life, enjoyment and goodness, into one vast theatre 
 of death and misery, more dismal than his own dark Pandemonium, 
 the very words of the philosopher would compose that law ! It 
 would reduce us even below the level of the brute animals. They 
 do not make war against their own instincts ; but this " rule " 
 would, if acted upon universally, plunge us into a war of annihila- 
 tion, with that instinct of progression which is the distinguishing 
 nature of intellectual man. It would forbid all increase in knowl- 
 edge, which, by the great writer's own authority, is power. It 
 would interdict the growth of morality and freedom, which are 
 power. Were Lord Bacon's " rule " enforced, not only would 
 the uninstructed Russians commence a crusade against our steam- 
 engines and our skilful artisans ; the still more barbarous Turk 
 would be called upon to destroy the civilization and commerce of 
 Petersburg ; the savage African would be warranted, nay, com- 
 
 * Lord Bacon's political maxims are full of moral turpitude. " Nobody 
 ean," says he, in speaking of kingdoms and estates, " be healthful without 
 exercise, neither natural body nor politic ; and certainly to a kingdom or 
 estate a just and honorable war is the true exercise." Accordingly, just 
 wars are necessary ; and, as there must be an opposite party to a just war, 
 ergo, unjust wars are necessary ! In speaking of kings, he calls them « mor- 
 tal gods on earth." And, in his chapter on seditions and troubles, he gives 
 many rules for governing and restraining but not one for instructing the 
 people. We speak of the moral sentiments of this great man, distinctly from 
 his intellectual powers. 
 
RUSSIA. 
 
 86 
 
 pelled to reduce the turbaned Osmanli to his own nakedness and 
 a wigwam ; nor would the levelling strife cease until either the 
 " rule " were abrogated, or mankind had been reduced to the only 
 pristine possessions, teeth and nails ! ^ 
 
 The balance of power, then, might, in the first place, be very 
 well dismissed as a chimera, because no state of things, such as 
 the " disposition," "constitution," or " union," of European powers, 
 referred to, as the basis of their system, by Vattel, Gentz and 
 Brougham, ever did exist ; and, secondly, the theory could, on 
 other grounds, be discarded as fallacious, since it gives no defini- 
 tion, — whether by breadth of territory, number of inhabitants, 
 or extent of wealth, — according to which, in balancing the respect- 
 
 * There appears to be one honorable member of the British legislature, and 
 only one, who is an advocate of this policy. Sir Harry Verney, in speaking 
 after Mr. T. Attwood, upon the subject of Russia (see Mirror of Parliament, 
 1833, p. 2878), said, " The honorable gentleman has represented Russia as 
 a state sunk in barbarism and ignorance, and hostile to every species of 
 liberty. I would to God that such a description of Russia were correct. (/ / /) I 
 believe the reverse to be the fact. I believe there is no power on earth which 
 resorts to such effectual means of propagating her power, civilizing her 
 country, promoting commerce, manufactures, the acquirement of useful in- 
 formation, and the propagation of every useful institution, as Russia. Does 
 the honorable gentleman know that at this moment steamboats navigate the 
 Volga, and that you may travel in all parts of Russia in the same way as 
 you may through the United States 1 Does the honorable gentleman know 
 that the Emperor of Russia sends abroad agents, in whom he can confide, to 
 obtain information relative to improvements and inventions which may be 
 useful to himself 1 * * * * I am quite sure that, if this country would 
 maintain the balance of power, we must oppose the encroachments of 
 Russia." 
 
 A Yankee punster would exclaim, » Sir Harry goes the whole hog with 
 Bacon upon the ' balance of power ' ! " 
 
 Yet Sir Harry is right. He and the noble author of the Novum Organum 
 are the only two philosophers who have taken a true and consistent view of 
 the question. We are far, however, from including them both under one 
 rule of inculpation. The honorable member for Buckinghamshire errs, per- 
 haps, intellectually, and not morally. His chief fault, or rather misfortune, 
 is, that he lives in Buckingham. Let him and the Marquis of Chandos go 
 through a course of Adam Smith and the economists, beginning with Harriet 
 Martineau, and they will then be convinced that we cannot profit by the bar- 
 barism of another people, or be injured by their progress in civilization, 
 any more than the British nation can gain by the corn-laws . 
 
 8 
 
RUSSIA. 
 
 ive powers, each state shall be estimated ; whilst, lastly, it would 
 be altogether incomplete and inoperative, from neglecting, or 
 refusing to provide against, the silent and peaceful aggrandize- 
 ments which spring from improvement and labor. Upon these 
 triple grounds, the question of the balance of power might be 
 dismissed from further consideration. We shall, however, assume, 
 merely for the sake of argument, that such an equilibrium existed 
 in complete efficiency; and the first inquiry that suggests itself 
 is, Upon what principle is Turkey made a member of this Euro- 
 pean system ? The Turks, at least, will be admitted by every- 
 body to form no party to this "union;" nor do they give that 
 " perpetual attention to foreign affairs which it inculcates ; " or, 
 that " constant watchfulness over every nation which it pre- 
 scribes." They never read of the balance of power in the Koran, 
 and they live in pious and orthodox ignorance of the authorities 
 for this " fine and delicate " theory ; for the names of Bacon, 
 Vattel and Brougham, are nowhere recorded by the prophet ! 
 Turkey cannot enter into the political system of Europe ; for the 
 Turks are not Europeans. During the nearly four centuries that 
 that people have been encamped upon the finest soil of the conti- 
 nent, so far from becoming one of the families of Christendom, 
 they have not adopted one European custom. Their habits are 
 still oriental, as when they first crossed the Bosphorus. They 
 scrupulously exclude their females from the society of the other 
 sex ; they wear the Asiatic dress ; sit cross-legged, or loll upon 
 couches, using neither chair nor bed; they shave their heads, 
 retaining their beards ; and they use their fingers still, in the place 
 of those civilized substitutes, knives and forks. Equally unin- 
 fluenced, after nearly four hundred years' contact with Europeans, 
 is the Osmanli's condition by the discoveries and improvements 
 of modern times. A printing-press may be said to be unknown 
 in Turkey ; or, if one be found at Constantinople, it is in the 
 hands of foreigners. The steam-engine, gas, the mariner's com- 
 pass, paper money, vaccination, canals, the spinning-jenny and 
 railroads, are mysteries not yet dreamed about by Ottoman phi- 
 losophers. Literature and science are so far from finding disciples 
 amongst the Turks, that that people have been renowned as twice 
 
RUSSIA. 87 
 
 the destroyers of learning : in the splendid though corrupt remains 
 of Greek literature, at Constantinople ; and by extinguishing the 
 dawn of experimental philosophy, at the subversion of the 
 Caliphate. 
 
 Down to within a few years of the present time, the Turks 
 were viewed only as the scourge of Christian Europe. When, 
 about a century and a half ago, Louis XIV. entered into an 
 alliance with the Sublime Porte, the whole civilized world rung 
 with indignation at the infamous and unnatural combination. 
 And when, more than a century later, on the occasion of the 
 capture of Ockzakow by the Russians, our most powerful minister 
 (Pitt) proposed to forward succors to the aid of Turkey, such was 
 the spirit of opposition manifested by the country, that the arma- 
 ments already prepared by the government, under the sanction of a 
 servile majority in the Parliament, were reluctantly countermanded. 
 On that occasion, both Burke and Grey, although advocates of the 
 balancing system, refused to acknowledge that the Turks formed 
 parties to it. " He had never before heard it set forth," ^ said the 
 former, " that the Turkish empire was considered as a part of the 
 balance of power in Europe. They had nothing to do with Euro- 
 pean power ; they considered themselves as wholly Asiatic. Where 
 was the Turkish resident at our court, the court of Prussia, or of 
 Holland ? They despised and contemned all Christian princes as 
 infidels, and only wished to subdue and exterminate them and their 
 people. What had these worse than savages to do with the powers 
 of Europe, but to spread war, destruction and pestilence, amongst 
 them ? All that was holy in religion, all that was moral and humane, 
 demanded an abhorrence of everything that tended to extend the 
 power of that cruel and wasteful empire. Any Christian power 
 was to be preferred to these destructive savages. He had heard, 
 with horror, that the emperor had been obliged to give up to this 
 abominable power those charming countries which border upon the 
 Danube, to devastation and pestilence." And, at a subsequent 
 debate upon «the same question, t Mr. Grey (now Eaj;l Grey), 
 
 * Burke's Speech, House of Commons, March 29, 1791. See Hansard's Par* 
 lumentary History, vol. xxix. pp. 76, 77. 
 
 f See Hansard's Parliamentary History, vol. xxix. p. 929. 
 
88 RUSSIA. 
 
 who has been a still more zealous champion of the balance of 
 power (having once declared that every peasant in England was 
 deeply interested in its preservation), said "that England had 
 pursued this object too far would not be denied, when it was 
 considered that, in her progress after it, she had travelled as far 
 as the banks of the Black Sea." 
 
 And are the Turks of our own day less cruel or savage, that 
 we should not only admit them within the pale of civilized nations, 
 but impose on our people, for their, defence, the burden of 
 enormous armaments ? We appeal to Doctor Walsh's late account 
 of the atrocities perpetrated at Constantinople upon the unarmed 
 Greeks, at the revolt of that people ; we refer to the horrible 
 massacre of the peaceful and civilized population of Scio. Is 
 this empire less wasteful now than when, forty-five years ago, 
 Burke mourned over those fine provinces which were consigned 
 to devastation and the crescent ? We again recur to the descrip- 
 tion given to us by Walsh, and every other recent traveller, of 
 the desolation that reigns throughout the Turkish dominions ; we 
 adduce those ruined cities, those deserted though still fertile 
 plains, and that population wasting away in regions where ten 
 times its numbers once found abundance ; we point to the deplor- 
 able condition of agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and all 
 the arts of life, in a country which comprised the ancient civilized 
 world, to prove the waste of human life, happiness, wealth and 
 civilization, that is suffered every year at the hands of this Ma- 
 hometan government. Has the pestilence ceased to ravage the 
 Turkish territory ? The quarantine now blockades, in a manner, 
 from Christian Europe, Constantinople, — standing upon the same 
 latitude as Naples, Oporto and New York, and chosen by Con- 
 stantine as the most salubrious spot on earth, — a city now the 
 impure nurse and victim of the plague ! Does Christianity or 
 public virtue call upon us, in 1836, more than they did in 1791, 
 to arm ourselves in behalf of Turkey ? We point to the Koran 
 and thosg orthodox vices which it inculcates, — we refer to the 
 slave-trade and to polygamy, abominations which still flourish in 
 that country, under the precept of the impostor of Mecca, — to 
 prove that neither religion nor morality can sanction the govern- 
 
RUSSIA. 89 
 
 merit of Great Britain in shedding a drop of the blood, or lavish- 
 ing the treasure of Englishmen, for the support of this " cruel," 
 " savage," " wasteful," " devastating," " pestilential " and " infi- 
 del " nation, in a conflict with Russia, or any other Christian 
 people. 
 
 There remains one, and but one, other point from which to 
 view the question of the balance of power ; and we may then bid 
 adieu to this monument of the credulity and facility of the human 
 intellect forever ; or, at least, until we happen, perchance, to 
 meet with it in the next year's mutiny bill, supplying the 
 " whereas " of an act of Parliament with a pretence for main- 
 taining a standing army of upwards of ninety thousand men ! 
 
 Russia, in possession of Constantinople, say the alarmists, 
 would possess a port open at all seasons ; the materials for con- 
 structing ships ; vast tracts of fertile land, capable of producing 
 cotton, silk, wool, &c. ; and she would be placed in a situation of 
 easy access to our shores, — all of which would tend to destroy 
 the balance of power, and put in danger the interests of the 
 British commerce, in particular. But New York, a port far more 
 commodious than Constantinople, is open at all seasons ; the 
 United States possess materials without end for ship-building ; 
 their boundless territory of fertile land is adapted for the growth 
 of cotton, silk, wool, &c. ; and New York is next door to Liver- 
 pool ; for, thanks to Providence ! there is no land intervening 
 between the American continent and the shores of this United 
 Kingdom. Yet, we have never heard that the North American 
 continent forms any part of the balance of power ! Twenty-four 
 sovereign, free and independent states, altogether forgotten in a 
 " balancing system, which dictates an increasing care even of 
 nations most remotely situated, and apparently unconnected with 
 ourselves " ! We doubt the equilibrium can hardly be maintained. 
 This is not all. There is the entire southern continent, from the 
 Isthmus of Panama to the point of Cape Horn, likewise entirely 
 omitted. Mercy on us ! one scale will certainly kick the beam ! 
 Twelve separate empires of South America, bounded on one 
 extremity by Mexico, and on the other by Patagonia ; and the 
 vast expanse of territory, settled and unsettled, under the domin- 
 8* 
 
90 
 
 RUSSIA. 
 
 ion of the government of Washington, and, altogether, comprising 
 one-third of the habitable globe, have been quite forgotten in a 
 balance of power ! 
 
 Not having been supplied by the authors of the theory with 
 any rule by which to judge of their mode of estimating or weigh- 
 ing the powers of the respective parties to the balancing system, 
 and being equally uninformed as to the qualifications required 
 from those states which aspired to the union, it would be pre- 
 sumptuous to guess upon what principle Turkey is admitted to a 
 connection with England, from which Brazil is excluded ; or why, 
 in forming a balance of the civilized powers, the United States 
 are rejected, in order to give room to admit Russia into one of 
 the scales. It cannot be from proximity that Turkey is pre- 
 ferred to the Brazils. A voyage from Rio Janeiro to Liverpool 
 will average about forty days ; whilst the time taken in going 
 from England to Constantinople usually reaches double that 
 period. Nor can it arise from a comparison of our commerce 
 with the two countries, which is four times as valuable with the 
 American as the European state. Then a wise and provident 
 regard to the future cannot be the guiding motive, since the pros- 
 pect is altogether in favor of the transatlantic empire, which 
 embraces within its bounds a territory equalling in extent the 
 whole of Russia in Europe, and forming the finest, and destined 
 in all probability to be, both as respects vegetable and mineral 
 riches, the most productive, amongst all the countries of the world. 
 Religion, language, national character, and the plague, all oppose 
 the claim of the Turk to this preference over the Christian rival ; 
 and we can only suspend our conjectures, and entreat that some 
 advocate of the " balancing system " will inform the world upon 
 what principle, commercial, social or political, — in short, upon 
 what ground, consistent with common-sense, — does the foreign 
 secretary involve Great Britain in the barbarian politics of the 
 Ottoman government, to the manifest risk of future wars, and the 
 present pecuniary sacrifice attending standing armaments ; whilst, 
 with another state, with which we are more deeply interested as 
 traders, more identified as men, and from which we are, navally 
 speaking, less distant, no political intercourse is found necessary ? 
 
RUSSIA. 91 
 
 The same argument applies, with more or less force, to the other 
 eleven South American states, with each of which our commerce 
 averages, probably, more in amount than with Turkey; yet, 
 although they are Christian communities, all but universally at 
 peace,^ and notwithstanding the future influence which they are 
 inevitably destined to exercise over the interests of the entire 
 world, these countries have not been thought worthy of admis- 
 sion into that system of civilized nations which is now agitated 
 from one extremity to the other with the fate of Mahometan 
 Turkey ! However impossible it may be to speculate successfullv 
 upon the intended operation of a system which, in reality, never 
 existed except in the precincts of the politician's brain, still it 
 must be remembered that, at the time the theory was first 
 invented, it proposed to give to the European powers owning 
 American colonies a weight proportioned to the extent of those 
 possessions ; and the question then arises, — which we shall 
 merely propound, and leave, in despair, for the solution of such 
 of our readers as may wish to pursue this chimerical inquiry still 
 further, — by what ingenious process was the balance of power 
 
 * We add an extract from a letter, dated January 26, 1836, addressed to 
 the author by a friend, — a gallant officer, and an enlightened and amiable 
 man, who, himself, holds an offioial rank at the British court from one of the 
 states of South America. 
 
 '« You, who are so strong an advocate for peace and freedom, will be glad to 
 hear of the tranquillity of America, and that our systems of government are 
 at last working well. Of the thirteen transatlantic republics, ten are now in 
 a perfect state of order and prosperity. The capture of Puerto Cabello from 
 a banditti who are in possession of it will restore that of Venezuela, and 
 the next news from Peru will give us that of the peaceable settlement of its 
 government. Mexico, therefore, will alone remain an exception to this peace- 
 ful state ; and I am afraid she will long remain so : yet, in spite of the 
 troubles of Mexico, she last year raised from her mines (according to the 
 official report of the minister of finance, and without including what was 
 smuggled) thirty millions of dollars, in gold and silver, being three millions 
 more than was ever produced under the most flourishing year of the old 
 Spanish government. As to the national debts of America, the bonds of the 
 United States were used to be sold by basketfuls in the first years of their 
 independence, yet they have now paid off the whole. 
 
 " You have about fourteen principal nations in Europe, and you know two 
 or three of them have internal dissensions." 
 
92 RUSSIA. 
 
 preserved, when England, Spain and Portugal, were deprived of 
 their transatlantic territories ? Canning, indeed, once talked of 
 11 calling into existence a new world, to adjust the balance of the 
 old;" but, as in many other oratorical flourishes of our state- 
 rhetorician, he meant quite a different practical object : in other 
 and more homely language, that statesman proposed to acknowl- 
 edge the independence of South America, ten years after every 
 private individual of judgment had predicted the freedom of that 
 continent. To this day those states, which once formed so im- 
 portant a part of the balancing system, as appendages to the 
 mother countries, are wanting in the scales of Europe; and by 
 what arts, whether by false weights or the legerdemain of the 
 nation still holding the balance, the equilibrium can be preserved 
 without them, constituting as they do nearly one-third of the ter- 
 restrial globe, is a mystery beyond the reach of our powers of 
 divination. 
 
 We glanced at the comparative claims of Russia and the 
 United States to be included in this imaginary States-union : a 
 very few words upon this point are all that we shall add to our 
 probably already too extended notice of the " balance of power.'* 
 
 Upon whatever principle the theory under consideration may 
 have been at first devised, — whether, according to Gentz, for the 
 purpose of uniting neighboring states, or, as Brougham asserts, 
 with a view to the union of all the European powers, — it is cer- 
 tain that it would have been held fatal to the success of the bal- 
 ancing system for any one power, and that one amongst the most 
 civilized, wealthy and commercial, to have refused to subscribe to 
 its constitution. Yet the United States (for the number of its 
 inhabitants), the richest, the most commercial, and, for either 
 attack or defence, the most powerful of modern empires, — a coun- 
 try which possesses a wider surface of fertile land than Russia 
 could boast even with the accession of Turkey, and, instead of 
 being imprisoned, like Russia, by the Dardanelles and the Sound, 
 owning five thousand miles of coast, washed by two oceans, and 
 open to the whole world, — the United States are not parties to 
 the balance of power ! Ignorant as we are of the rule of admission 
 to and exclusion from this balancing system, it would be vain to 
 
RUSSIA. 98 
 
 conjecture why Russia should be entitled, not only to be a mem- 
 ber of this union, but to engross its exclusive attention, whilst 
 North America is unknown or not recognized as of any weight 
 in the balance of power. It cannot be, on our part, from closer 
 neighborhood ; for Russia, even at Constantinople, would, com- 
 mercially and navally speaking, be three times as distant as New 
 York from Great Britain. Nor on account of the greater amount 
 of the European commerce transacted by Russia. The commerce 
 of the United States with the countries of Europe is nearly as 
 great in amount as that of the British empire with the continent, 
 twice as large as the trade of France with the same quarters, and 
 three times that of Russia. It cannot be because of the more 
 important nature of the trade which we carry on with Russia as 
 compared with that with America ; since the cotton of the latter 
 gives employment and subsistence to more than a million of our 
 people, and is actually indispensable to our commercial and polit- 
 ical existence. Here are cogent reasons why the transatlantic 
 power should form a party to the union of states, — why, at least, 
 it should, in place of an empire situated upon the Baltic or Black 
 Sea, be united in political bands with Great Britain. And 
 wherefore is this rich, commercial, and this contiguous country — 
 with a population more entirely enlightened than any besides, 
 and whose improvements and institutions England and all Europe 
 are eager to emulate — an alien to the " balancing system/' of 
 which Turkey, Spain and Persia, are members ? It would be dif- 
 ficult to find any other satisfactory answer than that which we 
 are able to give as the reason of this exclusion : America, with 
 infinite wisdom, refuses to be a party to the " balance of power ." 
 Washington (who could remember when the national debt of 
 England was under fifty-five millions ; who saw it augmented, by 
 the Austrian war of succession, to seventy-eight millions; and 
 again increased, by the seven years' war, to one hundred and 
 forty-six millions ; and who lived to behold the first fruits of the 
 French revolutionary wars, with probably a presentiment of the 
 harvest of debt and oppression that was to follow; — whose pater- 
 nal eye looked abroad only with the patriotic hope of finding, in 
 the conduct of other nations, example or warning for the instruc- 
 
94 RUSSIA. 
 
 tion of his countrymen), seeing the chimerical objects for which 
 England, although an island, plunged into the contentions of the 
 continent, with no other result to her suffering people but an 
 enduring and increasing debt, — bequeathed, as a legacy to his 
 fellow-citizens, the injunction that they should never be tempted, 
 by any inducements or provocations, to become parties to the 
 states' system of Europe. And faithfully, zealously and hap- 
 pily, has that testament been obeyed ! Down even to our day, 
 the feeling and conviction of the people, and consequently of the 
 government and the authors * of the United States, have con- 
 
 * Washington Irving has good-humoredly satirized this national propensity 
 for foreign politics, in the well-known sketch of " John Bull." " He is," 
 3ays that exquisite writer, " a busy-minded personage, who thinks, not 
 merely for himself and family, but for all the country round, and is most 
 generously disposed to be everybody's champion. He is continually volun- 
 teering his services to settle his neighbors' affairs, and takes it in great dud- 
 goon if they engage in any matter of consequence without asking his advice ; 
 though he seldom engages in any friendly office of the kind without finishing 
 by getting into a squabble with all parties, and then railing bitterly at their 
 ingratitude. He unluckily took lessons in his youth in the noble science of 
 defence ; and having accomplished himself in the use of his limbs and 
 weapons [that is, standing armies and navies'], and become a perfect master at 
 boxing and cudgel play, he has had a troublesome life of it ever since. He 
 cannot hear of a quarrel between the most distant of his neighbors, but he 
 begins incontinently to fumble with the head of his cudgel, and consider 
 whether interest or honor does not require that he should meddle in their 
 broils. Indeed, he has extended his relations of pride and policy so com- 
 pletely over the whole country [that is, by quadripartite treaties and quintuple 
 alliances'], that no event can take place without infringing some of his finely- 
 spun rights and dignities. Couched in his little domain, with those filaments 
 stretching forth in every direction, he is like some choleric, bottle-bellied old 
 spider, who has woven his web over a whole chamber, so that a fly cannot 
 buzz, nor a breeze blow, without startling his repose, and causing him to sally 
 forth wrathfully from his den. Though really a good-tempered, good-hearted 
 old fellow at bottom, yet he is singularly fond of being in the midst of con- 
 tention. It is one of his peculiarities, however, that he only relishes the 
 beginning of an affray ; he always goes into a fight with alacrity, but comes 
 out of it grumbling, even when victorious ; and, though no one fights with 
 more obstinacy to carry a contested point, yet, when the battle is over, and he 
 comes to a reconciliation, he is so much taken up with the mere shaking of 
 hands [Lord Castlereagh at the treaty of Vienna], that he is apt to let his 
 antagonists pocket all they have been grumbling about. It is not, therefore, 
 fighting that he ought to be so much on his guard against as making friends. 
 
RUSSIA. 
 
 95 
 
 stantly increased in favor of a policy from which so much wealth, 
 prosperity and moral greatness, have sprung. America, for fifty 
 years at peace, with the exception of two years of defensive war, 
 is a spectacle of the beneficent effects of that policy which may be 
 comprised in the maxim, As little intercourse as possible betwixt 
 the governments, as much connection as possible between the 
 ?iations, of the world. And when England (without being a repub- 
 lic) shall be governed upon the same principles of regard for the 
 interests of the people, and a like common-sense view of the 
 advantages of its position, we shall adopt a similar motto for our 
 policy ; and then we shall hear no more mention of that costly 
 chimera, the balance of power. 
 
 ... All that I wish is, that John's present troubles may teach him more 
 prudence in future [nothing of the kind : look at him now, fifteen years after 
 this was written, playing the fool again, ten times worse than ever, in Spain]; that 
 he may cease to distress his mind about other people's affairs ; that he may 
 give up the fruitless attempt to promote the good of his neighbors, and the 
 peace and happiness of the world, by dint of the cudgel ; that he may remain 
 quietly at home ; gradually get his house into repair ; cultivate his rich 
 estate according to his fancy; husband his income — if he thinks proper ; 
 bring his unruly children into order — if he can." — Sketch Book. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PROTECTION OF COMMERCE. 
 
 Contents. — Protection of our Commerce no just Pretext for maintaining 
 enormous Armaments. — Our Manufactures the true Source of our Com- 
 mercial Greatness. — Curious Illustration of the Uselessness of Military 
 and Naval Power, for the Protection of our Commerce against the Rivalry 
 of better and cheaper Articles than ours. — Mutual Dependence of Britain 
 and the United States on each other. — Prodigious Traffic between these 
 two Countries. — Instance of our being driven out of our own fortified 
 Market of Gibraltar, by the Competition of an unarmed Rival. — Former 
 Monopoly of the Sea possessed by Britain. — Its Consequences, the Na- 
 tional Debt, and the Instigation of other Nations to commence Manufac- 
 turing. — The American and French Manufactures avowedly called into 
 Competition with ours by Recollections of British Tyranny at Sea. — Prog- 
 ress of the American Cotton Manufacture. — Absurdity of all Apprehen- 
 sions of Foreign Invasion. — Cost of the Armaments for the Protection of 
 our Commerce — in the Mediterranean — on the West India Station. — 
 Causes and Consequences of British Wars. — No Class of Society really 
 benefited by War. — Non-intervention in Foreign Wars the true Policy of 
 Britain. •*— Superiority of the Influence of British Example, while culti- 
 vating the Arts of Peace, to British Violence or Intimidation. — A Word 
 at Parting to the Reader. 
 
 We began the preceding remarks upon a question which, how- 
 ever universally recognized in former times, has now almost fallen 
 into neglect, by quoting a passage from the last speech of King 
 William III. to his Parliament ; and, before proceeding to dis- 
 cuss that other, but still more popular, pretence for wars and 
 standing armaments, the protection of our commerce^ we shall 
 give an extract or two from the latest (though we sincerely hope 
 not the last) address of William IV. to his Reformed Parliament, 
 delivered on the 4th February, 1836: 
 
 " I continue to receive from my allies, and, generally, from all 
 
RUSSIA. 97 
 
 foreign powers, assurances of their unaltered desire to cultivate 
 with me those friendly relations which it is equally my wish to 
 maintain with them ; and the intimate union which happily sub- 
 sists between this country and France is a pledge to Europe for 
 the continuation of general peace." 
 
 After the above passage, which contains, one would suppose, 
 ample guarantees against war, — since it not only conveys assur- 
 ances of the peaceful disposition of all foreign powers towards 
 this country, but adds, by way of making those assurances doubly 
 sure, that the union which happily subsists between England and 
 France is a pledge for the continuance of a general peace, — 
 comes the following : 
 
 " The necessity of maintaining the maritime strength of the 
 country, and of giving adequate protection to the extended com- 
 merce of my subjects, has occasioned some increase in the esti- 
 mates for the naval branch of the public service." 
 
 Now, if we felt some difficulty in apprehending the question of 
 the " balancing principle," we confess ourselves to be much more 
 at a loss to understand what is here meant by the protection of 
 commerce through an increase in the navy estimates. Our com- 
 merce is, in other words, our manufactures ; and the first inquiry 
 which occurs necessarily is, Do we need an augmentation of the 
 naval force, in order to guard our ingenious artisans and indus- 
 trious laborers, or to protect those precious results of their 
 mechanical genius, the manufactories of our capitalists ? This 
 apprehension vanishes, if we refer to the assurances held out, in 
 the above double guarantee for the continuance of peace, that our 
 shores are safe from foreign aggression. The next idea that sug- 
 gests itself is, Does piracy increase the demand for vessels of 
 war ? We, who write in the centre of the largest export trade 
 in the world, have not heard of even one complaint of violence 
 done to British interests upon the ocean ; and probably there are 
 not to be found a dozen professed freebooters upon the face of the 
 aquatic globe. South America demands no addition to the force 
 upon its coasts at the present moment, when those several gov- 
 ernments are more firmly organized, and foreign interests conse- 
 quently more secure, than at any previous period. China presents 
 9 
 
98 RUSSIA. 
 
 no excuse ; for her policy is, fortunately for her territorial integ- 
 rity, invulnerable to foreign attempts at " intervention." The 
 rest of Asia is our own. Where, then, shall we seek for a solu- 
 tion of the difficulty, or how account for the necessity which 
 called for the increase of our naval strength ? 
 
 The commerce of this country, we repeat, is, in other words, 
 its manufactures. Our exports do not consist, as in Mexico or 
 Brazil, of the produce of our soil and our mines ; or, as in France 
 and the United States, of a mixture of articles of agricultural 
 and manufacturing origin : but they may be said to be wholly 
 produced by the skill and industry of the manufacturing popula- 
 tion of the United Kingdom.^ Upon the prosperity, then, of 
 this interest, hangs our foreign commerce, on which depends our 
 external rank as a maritime state ; our customs-duties, which are 
 necessary to the payment of the national debt ; and the supply 
 of every foreign article of our domestic consumption, every 
 pound of tea, sugar, coffee or rice, and all the other commodities 
 consumed by the entire population of these realms. In a word, 
 our national existence is involved in the well-doing of our 
 manufacturers. If our readers — many of whom will be of the 
 agricultural class, but every one of them, nevertheless, equally 
 interested in the question — should ask, as all intelligent and 
 reasoning minds ought to do, To what are we indebted for this 
 commerce ? — we answer, in the name of every manufacturer and 
 merchant of the kingdom, The cheapness alone of our manu- 
 factures. Are we asked, How is this trade protected, and by 
 what means can it be enlarged ? The reply still is, By the cheap- 
 ness of our manufactures. Is it inquired how this mighty indus- 
 try, upon which depends the comfort and existence of the whole 
 empire, can be torn from us? — we rejoin, Only by the greater 
 cheapness of the manufactures of another country. These truths 
 are, we presume, very well known to the government of Great 
 Britain ; at least, one member of the present cabinet is vigilantly 
 alive to their momentous character, as we are going to show, by 
 
 * We stated this familiar fact in a former pamphlet ; but it is one that 
 cannot be too frequently plaoed broadly before the publie eye. 
 
RUSSIA. 99 
 
 referring to a fact coming within our personal experience, and 
 which bears pointedly upon the question in hand. 
 
 The directors of the Chamber of Commerce of Manchester (of 
 which board the author has the honor of being a member) were 
 favored, a short time since, with a communication from the Right 
 Hon. C. P. Thomson, accompanied by an assortment of samples 
 of various fabrics, which, in the diligent fulfilment of his official 
 duties, he had caused to be procured from the several manufac- 
 turing districts of the continent ; and requesting a report as to 
 the comparative relation which, after due examination, they might 
 be found to bear towards the manufactures of England. Among 
 these, were patterns of Swiss Turkey-red chintz prints, and of 
 mixed cotton and linen Saxony drills, — both of which commod- 
 ities have been, for some time, sold in those quarters, — superior, 
 both in cheapness and quality, to similar articles produced in this 
 country ; and, consequently, in reporting to the Board of Trade, 
 the directors of the Chamber of Commerce had the disagreeable 
 duty of stating that, in those particular products of the loom and 
 printing-machine, we were beaten by our foreign rivals, and su- 
 perseded in third or neutral markets. The causes of the advan- 
 tages thus possessed over us by our competitors on the continent, 
 and which were pointed out to the attention of the Right Hon- 
 orable President, are the heavy imposts still fettering our manu- 
 facturing energies, and the greater cost of the food of our work- 
 men : the remedy is, obviously, a reduction of the duties on 
 com, oil, soap, &c. But if, instead of naming such causes and 
 remedies as these, the Manchester Chamber of Commerce had 
 stated, in its report, that the prints of Switzerland and the drills 
 of Saxony (the governments of which two countries do not to- 
 gether own a ship of war, as we believe) were cheaper than the 
 like articles fabricated here, because the British navy was not 
 sufficiently strong, and had advised, for relief, that half a million 
 a year should be added to the navy estimates, would not a writ 
 de lunatico inquirendo have justly been issued against those intel- 
 ligent directors, the writer's colleagues, without further evidence 
 of their insanity ? Yet, having seen that the only way in which 
 we can protect our commerce is by the cheapness of our manu- 
 
100 RUSSIA. 
 
 factures, what other object can be meant, when the government 
 calls for an augmentation of the navy, with a view to the protec- 
 tion of our commerce, but some plan, however inappreciable to 
 common minds, for reducing the expenditure of the country, and 
 thereby relieving us from some of the burdensome imposts with 
 which our race of competition is impeded? 
 
 But there is, in the second passage which we have just quoted 
 from his Majesty's speech, a part which tends to throw more light 
 upon the whole, where it refers to the necessity of giving ade- 
 quate protection to the u extended " commerce of the country. 
 By which we are to infer that it is the principle of the govern- 
 ment that the extension of our trade with foreign countries 
 demands, for its protection, a corresponding augumentation of the 
 royal navy. This, we are aware, was the policy of the last cen- 
 tury, during the greater part of which the motto, " Ships, Colo- 
 nies and Commerce,"^ was borne upon the national escutcheon, 
 became the watchword of statesmen, and was the favorite senti- 
 ment of public writers ; but this, which meant, in other words, 
 " Men of war to conquer colonies, to yield us a monopoly of 
 their trade," must now be dismissed, like many other equally 
 glittering but false adages of our forefathers, and in its place we 
 must substitute the more homely but enduring maxim, — Cheap- 
 ness, which will command commerce, and whatever else is needful 
 will follow in its train. 
 
 At a time when all beyond the precincts of Europe was colonial 
 territory, and when the trade of the world was, with the excep- 
 tion of China, almost wholly forced into false channels, by the 
 hand of violence, which was no sooner withdrawn than, by its own 
 inherent law, — the law of nature, — it again sought its proper 
 level course, the increase of^the navy necessarily preceded and 
 accompanied an extension of our commeree. The policy of na- 
 tions then, if judged by the standard which we apply to the 
 conduct of individuals now, — and there can be no exculpation in 
 multitudinous immorality, — was, to waylay their customers, whom 
 
 * This is still a favorite toast at the annual meetings of the Pitt clubs, 
 drunk by those consistent politicians who will not yield even to the inexora 
 ble reforms of trade. 
 
RUSSIA. 101 
 
 they first knocked down and disabled, and afterwards dragged into 
 their stores, and compelled to purchase whatever article they chose 
 to offer, at such prices as they chose to ask ! The independ- 
 ence of the New World has forever put an end to the colonial 
 policy of the Old, and, with it, that system of fraud and violence 
 which for centuries characterized the commercial intercourse of 
 the two hemispheres. And in that portentous truth, the Ameri- 
 cans are free, teeming as it does with future change, there is 
 nothing that more nearly affects our destiny than the total revolu- 
 tion which it dictates to the statesmen of Great Britain in the 
 commercial, colonial^ and foreign policy of our government. 
 America is once more the theatre upon which nations are contend- 
 ing for mastery : it is not, however, a struggle for conquest, 
 in which the victor will acquire territorial dominion, — the fight 
 is for commercial supremacy, and the battle will be won by the 
 cheapest. 
 
 Whilst our trade rested upon our foreign dependencies, as was 
 the case at the middle of the last century, — whilst, in other 
 words, force and violence were necessary to command customers 
 for our manufactures, — it was natural and consistent that almost 
 every king's speech should allude to the importance of protecting 
 the commerce of the country, by means of a powerful navy ; 
 but whilst, under the present more honest principles of trade, 
 cheapness alone is necessary to command free and independent 
 purchasers, and to protect our commerce, it must be evident that 
 such armaments as impose the smallest possible tax upon the cost 
 of our commodities must be the best adapted for the protection of 
 
 * We shall not enter upon the subject of the profit and loss of our colonies, 
 which would require a volume. An acute writer of the day estimates the 
 annual loss by our dependencies at something like four millions ; but he loses 
 sight altogether of the interest of the money spent in conquering them, which 
 is twenty or thirty millions a year more. Leaving these unprofitable specula- 
 tions as to the past, let us beg our readers to look at a chart of the world, 
 and, after comparing the continent of free America with the specks of islands 
 forming our colonial possessions, to ask himself whether, in choosing our 
 future commercial course, the statesman who presides at the helm of affairs 
 ought to take that policy for his guide which shall conduct us to the market 
 of the entire hemisphere, or that which prefers the minute fraction of it. 
 
K0B8IA. 
 
 our trade. B dictating the disuse of warlike establish- 
 
 ments, free trade (for of that beneficent doctrine we an 
 arras its votaii irn pacific nature, in that eternal truth, 
 
 the more any nation traffics abroad upon free and hone. 
 U it will be in danger of wars. 
 
 pay of example, we refer to the present commercial 
 intercourse between the i;d this empire, how com- 
 
 pletely dc ate the force of the above maxin 
 
 period of I - ople, aliens to each other by birth, 
 
 government, laws and institutions, united indissolubly by one 
 common interest and mutual dependence, like these di 
 nations. One-third* of our whole export 
 manufactures, the raw material of which is produced from the 
 soil of the Uni( . More than a million of our population 
 
 depend upon the due supply of this cotton wool for the la ; 
 every succeeding day, and for the regular payment of their 
 week sometimes hear objections against the free 
 
 importation of corn made on the ground that we should be- 
 come dependent upon foreigners for bread ; but here we fa 
 million of people, whose power of purchasing not only bread, but 
 meat, ay, or even potato . as clothing, is supplied from 
 
 the annual growth of lands posses- independent nation, 
 
 more than three thousand miles off. The equilibrium t of this 
 stupendous industry aa punctual arrival, from 
 
 :iited States, of a quantity ot n, averaging fifteen 
 
 thousand! bales weekly, or more than two thousand bales a day; 
 and it dep upon the equally constant weekly departure 
 
 of more than a quarter of a million. rth of cotton _ 
 
 ted to foreign w. what preca :en by the 
 
 * About one-half of oar exports is of cotton origin ; bat we take one- 
 third ■ ":ed up from North American material. 
 
 men, who talk so eloquently in fa* 
 going to war the equilibrium of Europe, or the balance of power 
 
 in Turkey, would eond _• ire a thought as to its effects upon the 
 
 equilibrium of our cotton manufacture. 
 
 da our illuftratire remarks to that part which we asrume to be 
 the growth of the United States ; the total of our imports and exports of 
 f course, more than stated here. 
 
RUSSIA. 103 
 
 government of this country to guard and regulate this precious 
 flood of traflic ? How many of these costly vessels of war, which 
 are maintained at an expense to the nation of many millions 
 of pounds annually, do our readers suppose, are stationed at 
 the mouths of the Mersey and Clyde, to welcome and convoy 
 into Liverpool and Glasgow the merchant ships from 
 York, Charleston or New Orleans, all bearing the inestimable 
 freight of cotton wool, upon which our commercial and social 
 existence depends ? Not one ! What portion of our standing 
 army, costing seven millions a year, is occupied in defending this 
 more than Pactolus — this golden stream of trade, on which 
 floats not only the wealth, but the hopes and existence, of a great 
 community ? Four invalids, at the Perch Rock battery, hold the 
 sinecure office of defending the port of Liverpool ! But our ex- 
 ports to the United States will reach, this year, perhaps, in real 
 or declared value, more than ten millions sterling, and nearly 
 one-half of this amount goes to New York : — what portion of 
 the royal navy is stationed off that port, to protect our merchants' 
 ships and cargoes ? The appearance of a king's ship at New 
 York is an occurrence of such rarity as to attract the especial 
 notice of the public journals; whilst, along the entire Atlantic- 
 coast of the United States — extending, as it does, more than 
 three thousand miles, to which we send a quarter of our whole 
 yearly exports — there are stationed two^ British ships of war 
 only, and these two have also their station at the West Indies. 
 No ! this commerce, unparalleled in magnitude, between two 
 remote nations, demands no armament as its guide or safeguard ; 
 nature herself is both. And will one rational mind recognize 
 the possibility of these two communities putting a sudden stop to 
 such a friendly traflic, and, contrary to every motive of self-inter- 
 est, encountering each other as enemies ? Such a rupture would 
 be more calamitous to England than the sudden drying up of the 
 river Thames ; and more intolerable to America than the cessa- 
 
 * See the United Service Journal for June, 1836, for a list of the ships of war 
 and their stations, June 1st : — North America and West India stations, on© 
 seventy -four and one fifty-two guns. 
 
104 RUSSIA. 
 
 tion of sunshine and rain over the entire surface of one of her 
 maritime states ! 
 
 And if such is the character of free trade (or, in other words, 
 all trade between independent nations) that it unites, by the 
 strongest motives of which our nature is susceptible, two remote 
 communities, rendering the interest of the one the only true 
 policy of the other, and making each equally anxious for the 
 prosperity and happiness of both, — and if, moreover, every addi- 
 tion to the amount of traffic between two independent states 
 forges fresh fetters, which rivet more securely these amicable 
 bonds, — how can the extension of our commerce call for an in- 
 crease in our armaments, or how will a government stand excused 
 from the accusation of imposture, unless by the plea of ignorance, 
 when it calls for an augmentation of the navy estimates, under 
 the pretence of protecting our extended commerce ? 
 
 But, to put this matter in another point of view, let us sup- 
 pose that this mighty traffic between England and the United 
 States, which is wholly governed by the talismanic law of " cheap- 
 ness," were suddenly interrupted, in the only way in which it can 
 be disturbed — by some other people producing cheaper hard- 
 ware, woollens, pottery, &c, to whom the Americans, guided 
 solely by that self-interest which controls alike the commerce of 
 every nation, could sell their cotton for a greater amount of those 
 manufactures in return — could our royal navy, were it even 
 augmented to ten-fold its present monstrous force, protect us from 
 the loss of our commerce ? To answer this question, we need 
 only appeal to the experience of facts to be found at this time 
 operating in another quarter. 
 
 At the moment when we write, the British naval force stationed 
 in the Mediterranean amounts to thirty-six vessels of war,^ mount- 
 ing altogether one thousand three hundred and twenty guns, being 
 rather more than a third of the death-dealing metal afloat in our 
 king's ships. Our entire trade to all the nations bordering on 
 this sea, and including the whole of that with Spain and France, 
 
 * See the United Service Journal, June 1, 1836, for a list of the stations of 
 the British navy. 
 
RUSSIA. 105 
 
 amounts to very nearly the same as our exports to the United 
 States — in value and importance, however, it is not equal to the 
 latter. Now, leaving for the present the question of the profita- 
 bleness of carrying on a traffic with such heavy protecting ex- 
 penses annexed, let us proceed to ascertain whether or not this 
 prodigious and costly navy affords an efficient protection to our 
 commerce in those quarters. The reader will bear in mind our 
 statement that the Chamber of Commerce of Manchester had the 
 unpleasant task of reporting to the Board of Trade that the drill 
 manufacturers of Saxony and the calico printers of Switzerland 
 had superseded goods of the same descriptions, made in England, 
 in third or neutral markets : — those markets were in the Medi- 
 terranean ! This is not all. One of those markets from which 
 our manufactures were reported to have' been expelled, by a de- 
 cree of far more potency than was penned by the hand of violence 
 at Berlin and Milan, and prohibited by an interdict ten times 
 more powerful than ever sprang from the Prussian league — the 
 interdict of dearness: — one of those markets was Gibraltar ! ! 
 (We promised, a few pages back, to prove that the industrious 
 middling and working classes of this empire have no interest in 
 the violent and unjust seizure and retention of an integral portion 
 of the Spanish territory ; and we have, in this simple fact, re- 
 deemed our pledge.) We give it to the reflecting portion of our 
 readers, as a truth authenticated by the very best authority, and 
 worthy of deep attention from the economist, the statesman, and 
 the advocate of peace and of a moral ascendency over physical 
 force, that the artisans of Switzerland and Saxony have achieved 
 a victory over the manufacturers of England, upon her own for- 
 tress, the free port of Gibraltar ! We kiss the rod ; we dote 
 upon this fact, which teaches, through us, a lesson to mankind, 
 of the inefficacy of brute violence in the trading concerns of 
 the world. Let us pause, then, to recapitulate our facts. On the 
 one hand, behold a commerce with America, amounting to the 
 quarter of the whole trade of the kingdom, — upon which depends, 
 from week to week, the subsistence of a million of people, and 
 whereon rests our very existence as a commercial empire, — con- 
 ducted regularly, day by day, without the aid or intervention of 
 
106 RUSSIA. 
 
 ships of war, to guide or coerce it ; on the other, an armament, 
 avowedly to protect our commerce, of one thousand three hundred 
 and twenty cannon, unable to guard our manufactures against the 
 successful cheapness of the poorest, the weakest and humblest 
 community of the continent, — a community destitute of fleets, 
 and without a standing army. The inference is plain, — we 
 have succeeded in establishing our premises ; for, having proved 
 that the (physically speaking) impregnable fortress of Gibraltar, 
 with its triple lines of batteries, aided by thirty-six vessels of 
 war, and altogether combining a greater quantity of artillery than 
 was put in requisition to gain the victory of Waterloo, Trafalgar 
 or the Nile, surrenders our commerce into the hands of the Swiss 
 and Saxons, unable to protect us against the cheaper commodities 
 of those countries, we need not go further to show, since these 
 two countries, without navies, are our witnesses of the facts, that 
 armed fleets, armies and fortresses, are not essential to the exten- 
 sion of commerce, and that they do not possess the power of pro- 
 tecting it against the cheapness of rivals. These may appear 
 trite and familiar truths to our intelligent readers ; our justifica- 
 tion may be found, if needed, in the fact that the government has 
 demanded and obtained an addition to our navy estimates, this 
 session of Parliament, amounting to nearly half a million sterling 
 per annum, under the pretence of protecting our commerce ; and 
 we do not recollect that one of our representatives rose from his 
 seat to tell the minister, as we now tell him, that his is that kind 
 of protection which the eagle affords to the lamb, — covering it 
 to devour it. 
 
 It will be seen that all which has been stated bears indirectly, 
 but conclusively, upon the question of Russia and Turkey, and af- 
 fords an unanswerable argument against going to war to defend our 
 commerce by means of naval armaments; since it is plain, from 
 the example of Gibraltar, that, even were Constantinople in our 
 own power, its commerce could be retained only by our selling 
 cheaper than other nations ; whilst, supposing it to be in the 
 possession of Russia, or any other people, the cheapness of our 
 commodities will eventually command that market, in the same 
 manner as the cheap drills and prints of Saxony and Switzerland 
 
RUSSIA. 107 
 
 supplant our goods, in spite of the batteries and fleets which 
 defend our Spanish fortress. 
 
 Having thus shown that cheapness, and not the cannon or the 
 sword, is the weapon through which alone we possess and can 
 hope to defend or extend our commerce, — having proved, also, 
 that an increase of trade, so far from demanding an augmentation 
 of warlike armaments, furnishes an increased safeguard against 
 the chances of war, — is it not clear that, to diminish the taxes 
 and duties which tend to enhance the cost of our manufactures, 
 by a reduction of our navy^ and army, is the obvious policy of a 
 ministry which understands and desires to promote the true 
 interests of this commercial nation ? Were our army and navy 
 reduced to one-half of their present forces, and the amount saved 
 applied to the abolition of the duties upon cotton, wool, glass, 
 paper, oil, soap, drugs, and the thousand other ingredients of our 
 manufactures, such a step would do more towards protecting and 
 extending the commerce of Great Britain than an augmentation 
 of the naval armaments to fifty times their present strength, even 
 supposing such an increase could be effected with no addition to 
 the national burdens. 
 
 Experience has shown that an overwhelming power at sea, 
 whilst it cannot dictate a favorable commercial treaty with the 
 smallest independent state (for such a spectacle of violence was 
 never seen as a victorious admiral, sword in hand, prescribing 
 the terms of a tariff to his prostrate foe), has had the effect of 
 rousing national fear, hatred and envy, in the breasts of foreign- 
 ers; and these vile feelings of human nature, awakened and 
 cultivated by our own appeal to the mere instinct of brute force, 
 have been naturally directed, in every possible way, to thwart 
 and injure our trade. During the latter half of the French 
 revolutionary wars, England, owing to successive victories, be- 
 
 * The public papers have announced that, owing to the demand for sailors 
 for the royal navy, the merchants have been compelled to advance the wage.- 
 of their hands. We have read the following notice upon the quay at Liver- 
 pool : " Wanted, for his majesty's navy, a number of petty officers and 
 bodied seamen." It would seem that there is no want of commissioned oftk-- 
 which accounts for the increase of the navy estimates, we suspect. 
 
108 
 
 RUSSIA. 
 
 came the mistress of the ocean ; her flag floated triumphantly 
 over every navigable parallel of latitude, and her merchants and 
 manufacturers commanded a monopoly of the markets of the 
 globe. For a period of more than ten years, an enemy's ship was 
 scarcely to be seen, unless as a fugitive from the thunder of our 
 vessels of war; no neutrals were allowed to pass along that 
 thoroughfare of nations, the ocean, without submitting to pay the 
 homage to British power of undergoing the humiliation of a 
 search by our cruisers. There was something inconceivably flat- 
 tering to the vulgar mind in this exhibition of successful violence. 
 Our naval supremacy, consequently, became the theme and 
 watchword of all those orators, statesmen and writers, who had 
 an interest in perpetuating the war. Poets, too, were put in 
 requisition ; and a thousand songs, all breathing such sentiments 
 as " Rule Britannia," were heard in the theatres, taverns, and 
 streets. Cupidity, as well as pride, was appealed to. Our 
 merchants were continually reminded, by the minister and his 
 minions, that they alone possessed the markets of the world ; 
 and, even whilst our yearly national expenditure reached nearly 
 double the amount of the whole of our exports, such was she 
 intoxication, such the infatuation of the moment, owing to the 
 gross appeals made to national vanity, that the multitude were 
 not only impressed with the belief that our commerce was profit- 
 able, but convinced that England was destined to remain perma- 
 nently the same trading monopolist. Peace cured us of this 
 maddening fever ; but, in exchange, it brought the lumbago of 
 debt, which still oppresses and torments our body politic. Not 
 only this : the moral is yet to follow. The brute force which we 
 had exercised towards foreign nations, at sea, during the war, had 
 naturally excited the animal feelings of hatred, fear and revenge, 
 in return. Every country began to establish manufactures, in 
 order to become independent of and secure against Great Britain. 
 Russia, Austria and France, now commenced the war of interdicts ; 
 and Ferdinand of Spain* had no sooner succeeded in reestab- 
 
 * Our former intervention in the concerns of Spain was characterized by 
 wisdom itself, when compared with the unadulterated folly of tho part we are 
 
KUSSIA. 109 
 
 lishing the inquisition, than he — for whom, to the everlasting 
 infamy of that epoch of our history, the blood and treasure of 
 England were squandered — repaid us with a prohibition of our 
 cottons ! 
 
 We cannot give proofs of the motives which actuate the coun- 
 cils of despotic princes, for they furnish none to the world ; but 
 the discussions on the tariff laws, in France and the United 
 States, which were necessarily public, fully disclosed that the 
 reason which led their governments to seek to become themselves 
 manufacturers was to render those countries independent of 
 the power of Great Britain at sea. The French nation — 
 which, in 1786, had concluded a treaty of commerce with Great 
 Britain, upon terms very favorable to the latter, and which would, 
 had it not been interrupted by war, have consolidated the two 
 countries, by a complete identification of interests, long before 
 the period we are now speaking of — proceeded, immediately on 
 the close of hostilities, to prohibit the introduction of every 
 
 at present taking in Peninsular affairs. Here is a family quarrel, between 
 two equally worthless personages, who dispute the right of reigning over ten 
 millions of free people ; and England sends a brigade of four or five thousand 
 men (by what right ?) to decide this purely domestic question ! We have 
 been informed, by a friend long resident in Spain, upon whose authority we 
 can rely, that there is not an honest public functionary in the country ; that, 
 from the minister down to the lowest tide-waiter, all are as corrupt now as 
 when Wellington endured the treachery of this people. Villiers and Evans 
 are experiencing that treatment, at the hands of Isturiez and Cordova, which 
 Frere and Sir John Moore encountered, thirty years ago, from the agents of 
 the government. That the people are not improved by our last sacrifices for 
 the dynasty of Ferdinand, may be proved by their atrocities and female mas- 
 sacres, unheard of out of Turkey. When the affairs of the British empire 
 are conducted with as much wisdom as goes to the successful management of 
 a private business, the honest interests of our own people will become the study 
 of the British ministry ; and then, and not till then, instead of being at tho 
 mercy of a chaos of expedients, our foreign secretary will be guided by the 
 principle of non-intervention in the politics of other nations. " A people," 
 says Channing, " which wants a savior, which does not possess an earnest and 
 pledge of freedom in its own heart, is not yet ready to be free." In the 
 mean time, it cannot be too widely known that our interference in the pri- 
 vate quarrels of these semi-barbarians will cost us, this year, half a million 
 sterling ; whilst, with difficulty, we have obtained ten thousand pounds for 
 establishing Normal Schools ! 
 
 10 
 
110 RUSSIA. 
 
 article of our manufacture. The spirit which operated then is 
 still alive, and with the avowal of the self-same motives ; for, dur- 
 ing the late discussions in the Chamber of Deputies,^ upon the 
 revisal of the tariff, a discriminating duty was laid upon the coal 
 coming from this country (by the unprecedented scheme of divid- 
 ing France into three zones for that very purpose), and it was 
 defended upon the plea of protection against inconvenience during 
 war ! 
 
 America, however, presents us with the severest lesson, as the 
 moral of that policy which relie3 upon violence and war for the 
 support or acquisition of comnKrce. In the report of the com- 
 mittee on manufactures of cotton, presented to the Congress of the 
 United States, February 13, 1816 (a paper drawn up with great 
 moderation and delicacy, so far as relates to the allusions to 
 British violence during the war just concluded), it is stated that, 
 "Prior to the years 1806 and 1807, establishments for manufac- 
 turing cotton wool had not been attempted, but in a few instances, 
 and on a limited scale. Their rise and progress are attributable 
 to embarrassments to which commerce was subjected, which em- 
 barrassments originated in causes not within the control of human 
 prudence." The causes here alluded to are the British orders in 
 
 * The ignoranoe manifested in the French Chamber of Deputies upon com- 
 mercial affairs, during the recent discussions, and the folly and egotism of 
 the majority of the speakers, leave little hope of an increased intercourse 
 between the two countries. M. Thiers openly avowed that we were to be 
 manufacturing rivals, but political friends ; we disclaim both these relation- 
 ships. The French, whilst they are obliged to prohibit our fabrics from their 
 own market, because their manufacturers cannot, they say, sustain a compe- 
 tition with us, even with a heavy protecting duty, never will become our 
 rivals in third markets, where both will pay alike. This boast of the prime 
 minister of France is like the swagger of one who, having barricaded him- 
 self securely in his own house, blusters about giving battle in a neighboring 
 oounty. For the English ministry to form a mere political connection with 
 the present unstable government and dynasty of France, to the exclusion of 
 trading objects, would be to put us in partnership with a party in a desperate 
 state of fortune, who resolved not to mend it. There can be no real alliance 
 unless by a union of interests. Schoolboys have sufficient knowledge of 
 human nature to feel this, when they throw their marbles into a common bag, 
 and become friends. 
 
RUSSIA. Ill 
 
 council and Bonaparte's decrees. Then follows a statement of the 
 quantity of cotton wool manufactured at successive periods in the 
 United States : 
 
 1800, . . 500 bales. 
 
 1805, 1000 " 
 
 1810, 10,000 " 
 
 1815, 90,000 « 
 
 And afterwards it goes on to say, in speaking of Great Britain : 
 " No improper motives are intended to be imputed to that govern- 
 ment. But does not experience teach a lesson that should never 
 be forgotten, that governments, like individuals, are apt ' to feel 
 power and forget right'? It is not inconsistent with national 
 decorum to become circumspect and prudent. May not the gov- 
 ernment of Great Britain be inclined, in analyziug the basis of her 
 political power, to consider and regard the United States as her 
 rival, and to indulge an improper jealousy, the enemy of peace 
 and repose ? " And in proposing, on February 12, 1816, a new tariff 
 to the Senate, in which cotton goods are subjected to thirty-three and 
 a third per cent, duty, the Secretary of the Treasury, in the course 
 of his report, has this passage : " But it was emphatically during the 
 period of the restrictive system and of the war that the import- 
 ance of domestic manufactures became conspicuous to the nations, 
 and made a lasting impression upon the mind of every statesman 
 and every patriot." It is not, however, by state papers that we 
 can fully estimate the sentiments of the nation at large. Immedi- 
 ately on the cessation of war, a strong feeling was manifested, in 
 all parts of the Union, in favor of protecting the manufactures of 
 the country. This feeling prevailed with the democratic party, 
 which was then in the ascendant, quite as much as with the fed- 
 eralists, although the former had previously been opposed to pro- 
 tecting duties. We cannot better illustrate this than by giving 
 the following extract from a letter written at this time by the 
 great leader and champion of that party, Jefferson, who, in his 
 11 Notes on Virginia," written in 1785, had given his opinion 
 " that the workshops of Europe are the most proper to furnish the 
 supplies of manufactures to the United States ; " but, after the 
 
112 RUSSIA. 
 
 experience of the war, changed his opinion to the following : 
 " The British interdicted to our vessels all harbors of the globe, 
 without they had first proceeded to some one of hers, there paid trib- 
 ute proportioned to their cargo, and obtained a license to proceed to 
 the port of destination. Compare this state of things with that of 
 1785, and say whether an opinion founded in the circumstances of 
 that day can be fairly applied to those of the present. We have 
 experienced, what we did not then believe, that there does exist 
 both profligacy and power enough to exclude the United States 
 from the field of intercourse with foreign nations. We, therefore, 
 have a right to conclude that, to be independent for the comforts 
 of life, we must fabricate them for ourselves. We must now place 
 the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist. The question 
 of 1785 is suppressed, or rather assumes a new form. The ques- 
 tion is, Shall we manufacture our own comforts, or go without 
 them at the will of a foreign nation ? He, therefore, who is now 
 against domestic manufactures must be for reducing us to a depend- 
 ence upon foreign nations. I am not one of these." 
 
 We have illustrated this matter with reference to the United 
 States more clearly than in relation to France, because, as we have 
 elsewhere stated, it is our conviction, after giving considerable 
 attention to the subject, that future danger to our manufacturing 
 and commercial supremacy impends from America, rather than 
 from any European nation. It will be seen, from the preceding 
 quotations, that, from the first independence of that country, the 
 democratic party was inimical to the establishing of protective 
 duties; that party, under Jefferson, then was, and down to this 
 day it continues to be, triumphant; and we therefore possess 
 unquestionable evidence that, by the hand of violence of England 
 herself in 1806 and subsequently, the cotton manufacture was 
 planted in the United States ; and it may be seen, in the foregoing 
 table, how, watered by the blood of our succeeding ten years' 
 French war, it flourished an hundred and eighty fold! That 
 manufacture is not destined to perish ; it now equals the fifth of 
 our own staple industry. We do not predict such a retributive 
 visitation ; we are proof against despair when the energies of our 
 countrymen are the grounds of hope ; but if, in consequence of 
 
RUSSIA. 113 
 
 past wastefulness or future extravagance and misgovernment here, 
 a people beyond the Atlantic, free of debt, resolute in peaceful- 
 ness, and of severe economy, should wrest, by the victory of " cheap- 
 ness" that main prop of our national prosperity, the cotton manu- 
 facture, from our hands, how greatly will it aggravate a nation's 
 suffering to remember the bitter historical truth, that that people 
 was goaded to the occupations of the spinning-jenny and the loom 
 by the violence of Great Britain herself ! 
 
 We mention these facts for the purpose of appealing, on a fresh 
 ground, against the policy of maintaining enormous standing arma- 
 ments. It has been seen that armies and ships cannot protect or 
 extend commerce; whilst, as is too well known, the expenses of 
 maintaining them oppress and impede our manufacturing industry 
 — two sufficient grounds for reducing both. There is another 
 motive in the above facts. That feeling which was awakened by 
 our overwhelming power at sea, at the conclusion of the war, — 
 the feeling of fear and mistrust lest we should be, in the words of 
 the American state paper just quoted, " apt to feel power and 
 forget right," — is kept alive by the operation of the same cause, 
 which tends still, as we have seen by the last debates in the 
 French Chamber of Deputies, to afford excuses for perpetuating 
 the restrictive duties upon our fabrics. The standing armies and 
 navies, therefore, whilst they cannot possibly protect our com- 
 merce, — whilst they add, by the increase of taxation, to the cost 
 of our manufactures, and thus augment the difficulty of achieving 
 the victory of "cheapness," — tend to deter rather than attract 
 customers. The feeling is natural ; it is understood in the indi- 
 vidual concerns of life. Does the shopkeeper, when he invites 
 buyers to his counter, place there, as a guard to protect his stock 
 or defend his salesmen from violence, a gang of stout fellows, 
 armed with pistols and cutlasses ? 
 
 There is a vague apprehension of danger to our shores experi- 
 enced by some writers, who would not feel safe unless with the 
 assurance that the ports of England contained ships of war ready 
 at all times to repel an attempt at invasion. This feeling arises 
 from a narrow and imperfect knowledge of human nature, in sup- 
 posing that another people shall be found sufficiently void of per- 
 10* 
 
114 HUSS1A. 
 
 ception and reflection — in short, sufficiently mad — to assail a 
 stronger and richer empire, merely because the retributive injury 
 thereby inevitably entailed upon themselves would be delayed a 
 few months by the necessary preparation of the instruments of 
 chastisement. Such are the writers by whom we have been told that 
 Russia was preparing an army of fifty thousand men to make a 
 descent upon Great Britain, to subjugate a population of twenty- 
 five millions ! Those people do not, in their calculations, award 
 to mankind even the instinct of self-preservation which is given for 
 the protection of the brute creation. The elephant is not forever 
 brandishing his trunk, the lion closes his mouth and conceals his 
 claws, and the deadly dart of the reptile is only protruded when 
 the animal is enraged ; yet we do not find that the weaker tribes 
 — the goats, the deer, or the foxes — are given to assaulting 
 those masters of the forest in their peaceful moods. 
 
 If that which constitutes cowardice in individuals, namely, the 
 taking of undue and excessive precautions against danger, merits 
 the same designation when practised by communities, then Eng- 
 land certainly must rank as the greatest poltroon among nations. 
 With twenty-five millions of the most robust, the freest, the rich- 
 est, and most united population of Europe, enclosed within a 
 smaller area than ever before contained so vast a number of inhab- 
 itants ; placed upon two islands, which, for security, would have 
 been chosen before any spot on earth, by the commander seeking 
 for a Torres Vedras to contain his host ; and with the experience 
 of seven hundred years of safety, during which period no enemy 
 has set foot upon their shores ; — yet behold the government of 
 Great Britain maintaining mighty armaments by sea and land, 
 ready to repel the assaults of imaginary enemies ! There is no 
 greater obstacle to cheap and good government than this feeling 
 df danger which has been created and fostered for the very pur- 
 poses of misgovernment.^ 
 
 * " Nothing is worthy of more attention, in tracing the causes of political 
 hviI, than the facility with which mankind are governed by their fears, and 
 the degree of constancy with which, under the influence of that passion, they 
 are governed wrong. The fear of Englishmen to see an enemy in their coun- 
 try has made them do an infinite number of things which had much greater 
 tendency to bring enemies into their country than to keep them away. 
 
RUSSIA. 115 
 
 Instead of pandering to this unworthy passion, every journalist 
 and public writer ought to impress upon the people of these realms 
 that neither from the side of Russia, nor from any other quarter, 
 is this industrious, orderly, moral and religious community threat- 
 ened ; that it is only from decay and corruption within, and not from 
 external foes, that a nation of twenty-five millions of free people, 
 speaking one language, identified by habits, traditions and institu- 
 tions, governed by like laws, owning the same monarch, and placed 
 upon an insular territory of less than one hundred thousand square 
 miles, can ever be endangered. History, as we have before remarked, 
 affords no example of a great empire, — such, for instance, as Prus- 
 sia, — consolidated, enlightened and moral, falling a prey to barba- 
 rous invaders. But the British empire, with more than double 
 the population and twenty times the wealth, possesses, in the sea- 
 girt nature of its situation, a thousand times the security of Prus- 
 sia. To attempt to augment such a measure of safety by oppress- 
 ive armaments by land and sea, is it the part of wisdom and 
 prudence, or of improvidence and folly ? 
 
 But to return to that course of inquiry from which our argu- 
 ment has slightly swerved. We recur to the subject of protecting 
 our commerce by armed ships ; and it becomes necessary next to 
 examine whether, even supposing our naval force could defend 
 our trade against the attacks of rivals (which we have conclu- 
 sively proved it cannot), the cost of its protection does not, in 
 some cases, more than absorb the gain of such traffic. The real 
 or declared value of all the British manufactures and other prod- 
 uce exported to the Mediterranean, including the coast of Africa 
 and the Black Sea, will, this year, amount to about nine million 
 five hundred thousand pounds. Under the groundless plea of pro- 
 tecting this commerce, we find, from the United Service Journal 
 
 " In nothing, perhaps, have the fears of communities done them so much 
 mischief as in the taking of securities against enemies. When sufficiently 
 frightened, bad governments found little difficulty in persuading them that 
 they never could have securities enough. Hence come large standing armies, 
 enormous military establishments, and all the evils which follow in their 
 train. Such are the effects of taking too much security against enemies." — 
 Ency. Bnt. New edition. Vol. vii. p. 122. 
 
116 RUSSIA. 
 
 of June 1st, that a naval armament, mounting more than thirteen 
 hundred guns, being upwards of a third of the national force, is 
 stationed within the Straits of Gibraltar. Taking the annual cost 
 of the entire British navy at five millions, if we apportion a third 
 part of this amount, and add the whole cost of the fortifications 
 and garrisons of the Mediterranean, with their contingents at the 
 war-office, ordnance, &c, we shall be quite safe, and within the 
 mark, in estimating that our yearly expenditure, in guarding the 
 commerce of this sea, amounts to upwards of three millions ster- 
 ling, or one-third of our exports to those quarters. Now what 
 kind of a business would a wholesale dealer or merchant pro- 
 nounce it, were his traveller's expenses, for escort alone, to come to 
 six shillings and eight-pence * in the pound on the amount of his 
 sales ! Yet this is precisely the unprofitable character of our 
 yearly trade to the Mediterranean. Most people approach the 
 investigation of a nation's affairs with the impression that they do 
 not come under the same laws of common-sense and homely wis- 
 dom by which private concerns are governed, than which nothing 
 
 * We shall offer no excuses for so frequently resolving questions of state 
 policy into.matters of pecuniary calculation. Nearly all the revolutions and 
 great changes in the modern world have had a financial origin. The 
 exaction of the tenth penny operated far more powerfully than the erec- 
 tion of the Council of Blood, to stir the Netherlander into rebellion in 
 1569 against the tyranny of Charles V. Charles I. of England lost his head 
 in consequence of enforcing the arbitrary tax called ship-money. The inde- 
 pendence of America, and indirectly, through that event, all the subsequent 
 political revolutions of the entire world, turned upon a duty of three-pence 
 a pound, levied by England upon tea imported into that colony. Louis XVI 
 of France, when he summoned the first assembly of the Estates-General, did 
 so with the declared object of consulting with them upon the financial embar- 
 rassments under which his government was laboring ; that was the first of a 
 6eries of definite changes, which eventually cost the king his life, and Europe 
 twenty years of sanguinary wars. The second French revolution, in 1830, 
 was begun by the printers, who were deprived of the means of subsistence by 
 the ordinances of Charles X. against the press. How much of our own lie- 
 form Bill was the fruits of a season of distress *? 
 
 Remembering that to nineteen-twentieths of the people (who never encoun- 
 ter a higher functionary than the tax-gatherer, and who meet their rulers only 
 in duties upon beer, soap, tobacco, &c.) politics are but an affair of pounds, 
 shillings and pence, we need not feel astonished at such facts as the preceding. 
 
RUSSIA. 117 
 
 ean be more erroneous. America, which carries on a traffic oi>- 
 half as extensive as Great Britain, with only a sixth * of our nav y 
 expenses, and with no charge for maintaining colonies or garrisoBS, 
 is every year realizing a profit to her people, beyond that of her 
 extravagant rival, in proportion to her more economical establish- 
 ments ; just exactly in the same way that the merchant or shopkeeper 
 who conducts his business at a less cost for rent, clerks, &c, will, 
 at each stock-taking, find his balance-sheet more favorable than 
 that of his less frugal competitor. And the result will be in the 
 one case as the other — that the cheaper management will pro- 
 duce cheaper commodities ; which, in the event, will give a victory 
 in every market to the more prudent trader. 
 
 But if, instead of the Mediterranean generally, we apply this 
 test to an individual nation situated on that sea, we shall be able 
 
 * The following is the American navy in commission, February 27, 1836; 
 One ship of the line, four frigates, eleven sloops, six small vessels ; and this 
 after a threatened rupture with France, when every arrival from Europe 
 might have brought a declaration of war ! Compare this statement with the 
 fact that the British government, with a force, at the same time, more than 
 six-fold that of the United States, demanded an increase of more than the 
 entire strength of the American navy, and with the same breath avowed the 
 assurance of permanent peace ; and let it be remembered, too, that the 
 House of Commons voted this augmentation, under the pretence of protecting 
 our commerce ! 
 
 A few plain maxims may be serviceable to those who may in future have 
 occasion to allude to the subject of commerce, in kings' speeches or other 
 state papers. 
 
 To make laws for the regulation of trade, is as wise as it would be to legis- 
 late about water finding a level, or matter exercising its centripetal force. 
 
 So far from large armaments being necessary to secure a regularity of sup- 
 ply and demand, the most obscure province on the west coast of America and 
 the smallest island in the south Pacific are, in proportion to their wants, as 
 duly visited by buyers and sellers as the metropolis of England itself. 
 
 The only naval force required in a time of peace, for the protection of com- 
 merce, is just such a number of frigates and small vessels as shall form an 
 efficient sea-police. 
 
 If government desires to serve the interests of our commerce, it has but 
 one way. War, conquest aud standing armaments cannot aid, but only oppress 
 trade ; diplomacy will never assist it ; commercial treaties can only embar- 
 rass it. The only mode by which the government can protect and extend our com- 
 merce is by retrenchment, and a reduction of the duties and taxes upon the ingre- 
 dients of our manufactures and the food of our aitisans. 
 
118 RUSSIA. 
 
 to illustrate the matter more plainly. In the same work from 
 which we have before quoted, we find it stated that there arc 
 (June 1st) thirteen British ships of war lying at Lisbon, carrying 
 three hundred and seventy-two guns; a force about equal to the 
 whole American navy employed in protecting the interests of that 
 commercial people all over the world ! That part of our annual 
 navy estimates which goes to support this amount of guns, with 
 contingent expenses fairly proportioned, will reach about seven 
 hundred thousand pounds. Turning to M'Culloch's Commercial 
 Dictionary (article Oporto), we find that the declared value of 
 exports of British manufactures and produce to the entire kingdom 
 of Portugal reached, in 1831 (the latest year we have at this 
 moment access to), nine hundred and seventy-five thousand nine 
 hundred and ninety-one pounds. Here, then, we find, even allowing 
 for increase, the escort costing nearly as much as the amount sold. 
 In a word, Portugal is, at this moment, paying us at the rate of 
 five hundred thousand pounds a year clear and dead loss ! Our 
 commerce with that country, on this 1st of June, was precisely of 
 the same ruinous character to the British nation as it would be in 
 the case of an individual trader who turned over twenty thousand 
 a year, and whose expenses in clerks, watchmen, rents, &c, were 
 fifteen thousand pounds. If anything could add to the folly of such 
 conduct, — conduct which, if proved against an individual brought 
 before an insolvent debtors' tribunal, would be enough to consign 
 him to prison, — it is, to recollect that no part of such a nautical 
 force can possibly be of the slightest service to our trade with 
 Portugal, which is wholly independent of such coercion. Even 
 our foreign secretary — a functionary who, during the last hun- 
 dred and fifty years, has travelled abroad for this commercial 
 empire with no other result to the national ledger but eight hun- 
 dred millions of bad debts — has, we are happy to see, discovered 
 this truth; for, on being questioned by Mr. Robinson, in the 
 housed as to a recent grateful augmentation of duties upon Brit- 
 ish goods, amounting to fourteen per cent., by the government of 
 Lisbon, our present foreign secretary. Lord Palmerston, avowed 
 
 * House of Commons' Report, June 6. 
 
RUSSIA. 119 
 
 that the Portuguese were free to put whatever restraints they 
 chose upon our trade with their country ; and he merely threatened, 
 
 if the tariff was not satisfactory, that he would attack them 
 
 how do our readers suppose ? — with the thunder of our ships in 
 the Tagus ? — with soldiers and sailors ? — with grape, musketry, 
 shot, shell and rocket ? — all of which we provide for the pro- 
 tection of our commerce. No with retaliatory duties ! 
 
 To proceed to a worse case. On the 1st of June, our naval 
 force on the West India station (see United Service Journal) 
 amounted to twenty-nine vessels, carrying four hundred and seven- 
 ty-four guns, to protect a commerce just exceeding two millions 
 per annum. This is not all. A considerable military force is 
 kept up in those islands, which, with its contingent of home 
 expenses at the war-office, ordnance-office, &c, must also be put to 
 the debit of the same account. Add to which our civil expendi- 
 ture, and the charges at the colonial-office, on behalf of the West 
 Indies, and we find, after due computation, that our whole expend- 
 iture in governing and protecting the trade of those islands 
 exceeds, considerably, the total amount of their imports of our 
 produce and manufactures. Our case here is no better than that 
 of Jenkins & Sons, or Jobson & Co., or any other firm, whose 
 yearly returns are less than the amount of their expenses for trav- 
 ellers, clerks, &c. ; and, if the British empire escapes the ruin 
 which, at the close of the year, must inevitably befall those im- 
 provident traders, it is only because we have other markets and 
 resources, — the Americas and Asia, and the productive industry 
 of these islands, — to draw upon, to cover the annual loss sus- 
 tained by our West India possessions. (?) 
 
 Or, for another parallel case, let our readers suppose that a 
 Yarmouth house, engaged in the herring trade, were to maintain, 
 besides the fishermen who, with their boats and nets, were em- 
 ployed in catching the fish, as many yachts, full of well-dressed 
 lookers-on, as should cost a sum equal to the value of all the her- 
 rings caught; that house would, at the end of the year, have 
 sacrificed the whole of the money paid for the labor of the fisher- 
 men, besides the interest and wear and tear of the capital in boats, 
 nets, &c. This is precisely the situation of our commerce with the 
 
120 RUSSIA. 
 
 West Indies at this moment. The British nation — the product- 
 ive classes — pay, in taxation, as much to support well-dressed 
 lookers-on, in ships of war, garrisons and civil offices, as their 
 goods sell for to the West Indians ; and, consequently, the whole 
 amount expended for wages and material, together with the wear 
 and tear of machinery, and loss of capital incurred in making cot- 
 tons, woollens, &c, besides the hire of merchants' ships and sea- 
 men to convey the merchandise to market, is irredeemably lost 
 to the tax-payers of this country.^ Here is a plain statement of 
 the case ; and in America, where everything is subjected to the 
 test of common-sense, the question would be at once determined by 
 such an appeal to the homely wisdom of every-day life. If, in that 
 country, it could be shown that a traffic between New York and 
 Cuba, to the yearly amount of ten millions of dollars, was con- 
 ducted at a cost to the community of the same amount of taxation, 
 it would be put down, by one unanimous cry of outraged prudence, 
 from Maine to Louisiana. And how long will it be before the 
 policy of the government of this manufacturing and commercial 
 nation shall be determined by at least as much calculation and 
 regard for self-interest as are necessary to the prosperity of a pri- 
 vate business? Not until such time as Englishmen apply the 
 name rules of common-sense to the affairs of state that they do to 
 their individual undertakings. We will not stop to inquire of 
 what use are those naval armaments to protect a traffic with our 
 own territory. It is customary, however, to hear our standing 
 army and navy defended, as necessary for the protection of our 
 colonies, as though some other nation might otherwise seize them. 
 Where is the enemy (?) that would be so good as to steal such 
 property ? We should consider it to be quite as necessary to arm 
 in defence of our national debt ! 
 
 * We invite the attention of public-spirited members of Parliament to these 
 lacta : they are submitted for the investigation of the conductors of the 
 newspaper press. Every chamber of commerce in the kingdom is interested 
 in the subject ; this is not a question of party politics, but of public business. 
 Every prudent trader must feel outraged at such a display of reckless cxtrav- 
 aganoe by a commercial people ; nay, every economical laborer and frugal 
 housewife must be scandalized by this wasteful misdirection of the industry of 
 the state. 
 
RUSSIA. 
 
 121 
 
 Enough has been said to prove that, even if armaments for the 
 protection of commerce could effect the object for which they are 
 maintained (although we have shown the false pretensions of the 
 plea of defending our trade), still the cost of supporting these 
 safeguards may often be greater than the amount of profit gained. 
 This argument applies more immediately to Turkey and the East, 
 upon which countries a share of public attention has lately been 
 bestowed far beyond the importance of their commerce.^ It 
 world be difficult to apportion the precise quota of our ships of 
 war, which may be said to be, at this moment, maintained with a 
 view to support our influence, or carry into effect the views of 
 our foreign secretary in the affairs of Constantinople. The late 
 augmentation of the navy, — the most exceptionable vote which 
 has passed a Reformed House of Commons, — although accom- 
 plished by the ministry without explanation of its designs, further 
 
 * Pitt, whose views of commercial policy were, at the commencement of 
 his career, before he was drawn into the vortex of war by a selfish oligarchy, 
 far more enlightened and liberal than those of his great political opponents 
 (as witness the opposition by Burke and Fox to his French treaty, on the 
 vulgar ground that the two nations were natural enemies), entertained a just 
 opinion of the comparative unimportance of the trade of the east of the 
 Mediterranean, after the growth of our cotton manufactures and the rise of 
 the United States had given a new direction to the great flood of traffic. 
 
 " Of the importance of the Levant trade," said Mr. Pitt (see Ha7isard\* 
 Pari. Hist. vol. xxxvi. p. 59), " much had formerly been said ; volumes bad 
 been written upon it, and even nations had gone to war to obtain it. The 
 value of that trade, even in the periods to which he had alluded, had been 
 much exaggerated ; but even supposing those statements to have been cor- 
 rect, they applied to times when the other great branches of our trade, to 
 which we owe our present greatness and our naval superiority, did not exist ; 
 he alluded to the great increase of our manufactures, — to our great internal 
 trade, — to our commerce with Ireland, — with the United States of America; 
 it was these which formed the sinews of our strength, and, compared with 
 which, the Levant trade was trifling." This was spoken in 1801 ; since 
 which time, our trade with the United States has increased three-fold ; and, 
 by the emancipation of the South American colonies, another continent, of 
 3till greater magnitude, offers us a market which throws, by its superior 
 advantages, those of the Levant and Turkey into comparative insignificance, 
 and adds proportionably to the force of the argument in the above quota- 
 tion. Yet we have statesmen of our day who seem to have scarcely recog- 
 nised the existence of America ! 
 11 
 
122 RUSSIA. 
 
 than the century-old pretence of protecting our commerce, 1 * was 
 generally believed to have been aimed at Russia in the Black 
 Sea. Our naval force in the East was considerable previously ; 
 but, taking only the increase into calculation, it will cost more 
 than three times the amount of the current profits of our trade 
 with Turkey, whilst it can bestow no prospective benefits ; since, 
 even if we possessed Constantinople ourselves, we should only be 
 able to command its trade by selling, as at Gibraltar, cheaper 
 than other people. Our nautical establishments devoted to the 
 (pretended) guardianship of British commercial interests (for we 
 can have no other description of interests a thousand miles off) 
 in Turkey are, the present year, costing the tax-payers of this 
 country, upon the lowest computation, more than three times the 
 amount of the annual profit of our trade with that country. Not 
 content with this state of things, which leaves very little chance of 
 future gain, some writers and speakers would plunge us into a war 
 with Russia, in defence of Turkey, for the purpose of protecting 
 this commerce ; the result of which would inevitably be, as in 
 former examples of wars undertaken to defend Spain or Portu- 
 gal, that such an accumulation of expenses would ensue as to 
 prevent the possibility of the future profit upon our exports to 
 
 * Two letters have since been published in the Manchester Guardian, May 
 28, which are written by Lord Durham, and addressed to Mr. Gisborne, the 
 British consul at Petersburg, giving the most positive assurances that no 
 interruption will take place in our friendly commercial relations with Russia. 
 Will the navy be reduced 1 We may apply the lines of Gay, written upon 
 standing armies, a century ago, to sailors : 
 
 " Soldiers are perfect devils in their way, — 
 When once they 're raised, they 're deuced hard to lay." 
 
 Apropos of soldiers. In 1831, during the progress of the Reform Bill, and 
 when the country was upon the eve of a new election, in which, owing to the 
 excitement of the people, tumults were justly to be dreaded, an augmentation 
 of the army, to the extent of seven thousand six hundred and eighty men, 
 was voted by the Parliament. Mr. Wynn, the then War Secretary, declared 
 that this increase had no reference to continental affairs. He should be re- 
 joiced, he said, if the causes which led to this augmentation should cease, 
 and enable the government to reduce the estimates, before the end of three 
 months. No reduction yet — 1836 ! Where is Mr. Hume 1 
 
RUSSIA. 123 
 
 the Ottoman empire even amounting to so much as should dis- 
 charge the yearly interest of the debt contracted in its behalf. 
 
 We had intended, and were prepared, to give a summary of 
 the wars, — their causes and commercial consequences, — in which 
 Great Britain has been, during the last century and a half, from 
 time to time, engaged ; but we are admonished that our limited 
 space will not allow us to follow out this design. It must suffice 
 to offer, as the moral of the subject, that, although the conflicts 
 in which this country has, during the last hundred and fifty years, 
 involved itself, have, as Sir Henry Parnel * has justly remarked, 
 in almost every instance, been undertaken in behalf of our com- 
 merce, yet we hesitate not to declare that there is no instance 
 recorded in which a favorable tariff, or a beneficial commercial 
 treaty, has been extorted from an unwilling enemy at the point 
 of the sword. On the contrary, every restriction that embar- 
 rasses the trade of the whole world, all existing commercial jeal- 
 ousies between nations, the debts that oppress the countries of 
 Europe, the incalculable waste owing to the misdirected labor 
 and capital of communities, — these, and a thousand other evils, 
 that are now actively thwarting and oppressing commerce, are all 
 the consequences of wars ! How shall a profession which with- 
 draws from productive industry the ablest of the human race, 
 and teaches them, systematically, the best modes of destroying 
 mankind, — which awards honors only in proportion to the num- 
 ber of victims offered at its sanguinary altar, — which overturns 
 cities, ravages farms and vineyards, uproots forests, burns the 
 ripened harverst, — which, in a word, exists but in the absence 
 of law, order, and security; — how can such a profession be 
 favorable to commerce, which increases only with the increase of 
 human life, — whose parent is agriculture, and which perishes or 
 flies at the approach of lawless rapine ? Besides, they who pro- 
 pose to influence, by force, the traffic of the world, forget that 
 affairs of trade, like matters of conscience, change their very 
 nature, if touched by the hand of violence ; for as faith, if forced, 
 would no longer be religion, but hypocrisy, so commerce becomes 
 
 * " Finanical Reform." 
 
124: RUSSIA. 
 
 robbery, if coerced by warlike armaments.* If, then, war has, 
 in past times, in no instance served the just interests of com- 
 merce, whilst it has been the sole cause of all its embarrassments ; 
 if, for the future, when trade and manufactures are brought under 
 the empire of " cheapness," it can still less protest, whilst its costs 
 will yet more heavily oppress it; and having seen that, if war 
 could confer a golden harvest of gain upon us, instead of this 
 unmixed catalogue of evils, it would still be not profit, but 
 plunder ; — having demonstrated these truths, surely we may 
 hope to be spared a repetition of the mockery, offered to this 
 commercial empire, at the hands of its government and legisla- 
 ture, in the proposal to protect our commerce by an increase of 
 the royal navy ! On behalf of the trading world, an indissoluble 
 alliance is proclaimed with the cause of peace ; and, if the unnat- 
 ural union be again attempted, of that daughter of Peace, Com- 
 merce, whose path has ever been strewed with the choicest gifts 
 of religion, civilization and the arts, with the demon of carnage, 
 War, loaded with the maledictions of widows and orphans, reeking 
 with the blood of thousands of millionst of victims, with feet fresh 
 from the smoking ruins of cities, whose ears delight in the groans 
 of the dying, and whose eyes love to gloat upon the dead ; — if 
 such an unholy union be hereafter proposed, as the humblest of 
 the votaries of that commerce which is destined to regenerate 
 and unite the whole world, we will forbid the banns ! 
 
 It was our intention, had space permitted it, to have proved, 
 
 * " To me it seems that neither the obtaining nor the retaining of any 
 trade, however valuable, is an object for which men may justly spill each 
 other's blood ; that the true and sure means of extending and securing com- 
 merce is the goodness and cheapness of commodities ; and that the profit of 
 no trade can ever be equal to the expense of compelling it, and of holding 
 it by fleets and armies." — Franklin's letter to Lord Howe, quoted in Hughes' 
 History of England, vol. xv. p. 254. 
 
 f Burke, in his first production, — A Vindication of Natural Society, — sums 
 up his estimate of the loss of human life, by all the wars of past ages, at 
 seventy times the population of the globe. It is not a little lamentable to 
 reflect that this great genius, among other inconsequential acts of his life, 
 afterwards contributed, more than any other individual, to fan the flame of 
 the French revolutionary wars, in which several millions more were added to 
 his dismo summary of the victims of " glory." (!) 
 
RUSSIA. 
 
 125 
 
 from facts which we had prepared for the purpose, that no class 
 or calling, of whatever rank in society, has ever derived substan- 
 tial or permanent advantage from war. The agriculturist, indeed, 
 might be supposed to be interested in that state of things which 
 yielded an augmentation of price for his produce; and so he 
 might, if hostilities were constant and eternal. But war is, at 
 best, but a kind of intermittent fever ; and the cure or death of 
 the patient must at some time follow. This simile may be justly 
 applied to the condition of the farmer during the French wars, 
 and subsequently ; at which former period, exposed to the effects 
 of the bank restriction, of enormous loans, and of paper issues, 
 the pulsation of prices sometimes alternated biennially, with 
 dreadful consequences to the febrile sufferer, the agriculturist. 
 What management or calculation, on the part of the farmer, 
 could be proof against such fluctuations in the markets, — arising 
 from continental battles, or the violence or wickedness of a power- 
 ful and corrupt government, — as we find when wheat, which, in 
 1798, averaged two pounds, ten shillings and threepence a quarter, 
 had, in 1800, reached five pounds, thirteen shillings and seven- 
 pence, and again sold, in 1802, at three pounds, seven shillings 
 and fivepence ; a state of things which exposed the capitalist and 
 the adventurer, the prudent man and the gambler, to one common 
 fate of suffering and ruin ? The dull, and, to many, fatal peace, 
 brought a state of convalescence more intolerable than the excite- 
 ment of war. After more than twenty years of this latter species 
 of suffering, the invalid is, even now, scarcely cured ; — will he 
 permit his wounds to be reopened, merely that he may again 
 undergo the self-same healing process ? But the great majority 
 of agriculturists, the laborers, so far from deriving any advantages 
 from it, suffered grievously from the effects of that war, which is 
 sometimes excused or palliated on account of the pretended bene- 
 fits it conferred upon the " landed interests." 
 
 Whilst the prices of every commodity of food and clothing 
 were rising, in consequence of the depreciation of the currency, 
 and other causes incidental to the state of war, the laborers' 
 earnings continued pretty much the same. The consequence 
 was, that bread sometimes became a luxury, as is now the case 
 11* 
 
126 RUSSIA. 
 
 in Ireland, too dear for the English husbandman's resources ; that 
 the cruel salt-tax interposed a barrier between him and that necessary 
 of life, which frequently compelled him, when providing his winter 
 stock of provisions, to exchange one-half of his pig for the means of 
 curing the other ; that good beer rose to a price nearly as prohibit- 
 ory to the peasant's palate as port wine ; and that, owing to the 
 high cost of clothing, he possessed little more change of habiliments 
 than the Russian serf of the present day. What greater proof 
 can be required that war prices conferred no blessings upon the 
 husbandmen than is afforded in the fact, that the poor-rates were 
 the heaviest in the agricultural districts at a time when wheat 
 was at its highest market price ? In a word, at no period were 
 the peasantry of this country enjoying so great an amount of com- 
 forts as they possess at this time ; and the primary cause of which 
 is the twenty years' duration of peace. 
 
 Had we space to enter upon the statistics of our trade and man- 
 ufactures, it would be easily shown, by an appeal to a comparison of 
 the bankruptcies in times of peace and war, by reference to the past 
 and present condition of our manufacturing districts, — as exem- 
 plified in the relative amounts of poor-rate, crime and turbulence, 
 among the working classes, — and in the comparative prosperity of 
 the capitalists and employers, that these vital interests have no 
 solid prosperity excepting in a time of peace. We feel that there 
 is little necessity for enlarging upon this point ; the manufactur- 
 ing population do not require to be informed that they can derive 
 no benefit from wars. So firmly are they convinced of the advan- 
 tages of peace, that, we venture to afiirm, in the behalf of every 
 thinking man of this the most important body in the kingdom (in 
 reference to our external and commercial policy), that they will 
 not consent to a declaration of war in defence of the trade of 
 Turkey ,^ or for any other object, except to repel an act of aggres- 
 sion upon ourselves. 
 
 * At a meeting of a literary society of which the author is a member, the 
 subject of discussion lately was, " Would, or would not, the interests of the 
 civilized world, and those of England in particular, be promoted by the con- 
 quest of Turkey by Russia 1 " Which, after an interesting debate, on the 
 part of a body of as intelligent individuals as can be found in a town more 
 
RUSSIA. 127 
 
 A very small number of the ship-owners — men who are suffi- 
 ciently old to be able to look back -to the time when the British 
 navy swept the seas of their rivals — entertain an indistinct kind 
 of hope that hostilities would, by putting down competition, again 
 restore to them a monopoly of the ocean. This impression can 
 only exist in minds ignorant altogether of the changes which have 
 taken place in the world since the time when the celebrated orders 
 in council were issued, thirty years ago. The United States, con- 
 taining twice the population of that period, and the richest inhabit- 
 ants in the world, with a mercantile marine second in magnitude 
 only to our own, and with a government not only disburthened of 
 debt, but inconveniently loaded with surplus riches, — the United 
 States will never again submit, even for a day, to tyrannical 
 mandates levelled against their commerce at the hands of a Brit- 
 ish cabinet. The first effects, then, of another European war, in 
 which England shall become unwisely a party, must be that Amer- 
 ica will profit at our expense, by grasping the carrying trade of 
 Europe ; and the consequences which would, in all probability, 
 ultimately follow, are, that the manufacturing and trading pros- 
 perity of this empire will pass into the hands of another people — 
 the due reward of the peaceful wisdom of their government, and 
 the just chastisement of the warlike policy of our own. 
 
 We are, then, justified in the assertion that no class or calling 
 of society can derive permanent benefit from war. Even the aris- 
 tocracy, which, from holding all the offices of the state, profited 
 exclusively by the honors and emoluments arising from past hostil- 
 ities, would derive no advantages from future conflicts. The gov- 
 erning power is now wholly transferred to the hands of the mid- 
 dling class ; and, although time may be necessary to develop all 
 the effects of this complete subversion of the former dominant 
 influence, can any one for a moment doubt that one of its conse- 
 quences will be to dissipate among that more numerous but now 
 authoritative class those substantial fruits of power, the civil and 
 
 deeply interested in the question than any in the kingdom, was decided 
 affirmatively. The assumed possession was alone considered as affecting tho 
 interests of society. The morality of the aggression was not the question 
 entertained, and therefore did not receive the sanction of the society. 
 
128 RUSSIA. 
 
 military patronage, which, under the self-same circumstances, were 
 previously enjoyed exclusively by the aristocracy ? The electors 
 of the British empire are much too numerous a body to possess 
 interests distinct from those of the rest of their countrymen ; and, 
 as the nation at large can never derive advantages from war, we 
 regard the Reform Bill, which has virtually bestowed upon the ten- 
 pounders of this country the guardianship of the temple of Janus, 
 to be our guarantee, for all future time, of the continuance of 
 peace. 
 
 Before concluding, let us, in a very few words, recur to the sub- 
 ject more immediately under consideration. It has been custom- 
 ary to regard the question of the preservation of Turkey, not as an 
 affair admitting of controversy, but as one determined by the wis- 
 dom of our ancestors; and the answer given by Chatham, that 
 " with those who contended we had no interest in preserving 
 Turkey he would not argue," may probably be quoted to us. The 
 last fifty years have, however, developed secrets for the guidance 
 of our statesmen, which, had that great man lived to behold them, 
 he would have profited by ; he, at least, would not view this matter 
 through the spectacles of his grandfather, were he now presiding 
 at the helm of state, and surrounded by the glare of light which our 
 past unprofitable wars, the present state of the trade of the colonies, 
 and the preponderating value of our commerce with free America,^ 
 throw around the question of going to war in defence of a nook of 
 territory more than a thousand miles distant, and over which ioe 
 neither possess 7ior pretend to have any control. That question 
 must now be decided solely by reference to the interests of the 
 people of this country at this present day, which we have proved 
 are altogether on the side of peace and neutrality. Our inquiry 
 is not as to the morality or injustice of the case, — that is not 
 an affair between Russia and ourselves, but betwixt that people 
 
 * It will be apparent to any inquiring mind, which takes the trouble to 
 investigate the subject, that our commerce with America is, at this time, 
 alone sustaining the wealth and trade of these realms. Our colonies do not 
 pay for the expenses of protecting and governing them, leaving out of the 
 question the interest of the debt contracted in conquering them. Europe has 
 been a still more unprofitable customer. 
 
RUSSIA. 129 
 
 and the great Ruler of all nations ; and we are no more called 
 upon, by any such considerations, to wrest the attribute of ven- 
 geance from the Deity, and deal it forth upon the northern aggress- 
 or, than we are to preserve the peace and good behavior of Mex- 
 ico, or to chastise the wickedness of the Ashantees. 
 
 It has been no part of our object to advocate the right of Rus- 
 sia to invade Turkey or any other state ; nor have we sought to 
 impart too favorable a coloring to our portraiture of the govern- 
 ment or people of the former empire ; but what nation can fail to 
 stand out in a contrast of loveliness, when relieved by the dark 
 and loathsome picture which the Ottoman territory presents to 
 the eye of the observer ? It ought not to be forgotten that Rus- 
 sian civilization (such as it is at this day) is a gain from the 
 empire of barbarism ; that the population of that country, how- 
 ever low its condition may now be, was, at no former period, so 
 prosperous, enlightened or happy, as now ; and that its rapid 
 increase in numbers is one of the surest proofs of a salutary gov- 
 ernment ; whilst, on the other side, it must be remembered that 
 Mahometanism has sat, for nearly four centuries, as an incubus 
 upon the fairest and most renowned regions of the earth ; and has, 
 during all that period, paralyzed the intellectual and moral ener- 
 gies of the noblest portions of the human species ; under whose 
 benumbing sway those countries which in former ages pro- 
 duced Solomon, Homer, Longinus and Plato, have not given one 
 poetic genius or man of learning to the world ; beneath which the 
 arts have remained unstudied by the descendants of Phidias and 
 Praxiteles ; whilst labor has ceased where Alexandria, Tyre and 
 Colchis, formerly flourished, and the accumulation of wealth is 
 unknown in the land where Croesus himself once eclipsed even the 
 capitalists of the modern world.^ If, then, we refer to the crite- 
 
 * It is a saying of Montesquieu, that " God Almighty must have intended 
 Spain and Turkey as examples to show to the world what the finest countries 
 may become when inhabited by slaves." Yet these two nations are now the 
 objects of British protection, and the source of considerable annual expendi- 
 ture to the people of these realms ; whilst the statu quo of Turkey seems to 
 be the aim of our politicians. In speaking of the cost of our interference in 
 Spain, we assume (safely enough) that the loan of arms by the British gov- 
 ernment will not be repaid. 
 
130 RUSSIA. 
 
 rion afforded by the comparison of numbers, we shall find, in the 
 place of the overflowing population which, in former ages, poured 
 out from these regions to colonize the rest of the world, nothing 
 but deserted wastes and abandoned cities ; and the spectacle of 
 the inhabitants of modern Turkey melting away, whilst history 
 and the yet existing ruins of empires attest the richness and fer- 
 tility of its soil, affords incontestible proof of the destructive and 
 impoverishing character of the government of Constantinople. 
 
 Our object, however, in vindicating Russia from the attacks of 
 prejudice and ignorance, has not been to transfer the national 
 hatred to Turkey, but to neutralize public feeling, by showing that 
 our only wise policy — nay, the only course consistent with the 
 instinct of self-preservation — is to hold ourselves altogether inde- 
 pendent of and aloof from the political relations of both these 
 remote and comparatively barbarous nations. England, with her 
 insular territory, her consolidated and free institutions, and her 
 civilized and artificial condition of society, ought not to be, and 
 cannot be, dependent for safety or prosperity upon the conduct of 
 Russia or Turkey ; and she will not, provided wisdom governs her 
 counsels, enter into any engagements so obviously to the disadvan- 
 tage of her people, as to place the peace and happiness of this em- 
 pire at the mercy of the violence or wickedness of two despotic 
 rulers over savage tribes, more than a thousand miles distant from 
 our shores. 
 
 11 While the government of England takes ' peace ' for its motto, 
 it is idle to think of supporting Turkey," * says one of the most 
 influential and active agitators in favor of the policy of going to 
 war with Russia. In the name of every artisan in the kingdom, 
 to whom war would bring the tidings, once more, of suffering and 
 despair ; in the behalf of the peasantry of these islands, to whom 
 the first cannon would sound the knell of privation and death ; on 
 the part of the capitalists, merchants, manufacturers and traders, 
 who can reap no other fruits from hostilities but bankruptcy and 
 ruin ; in a word, for the sake of the vital interests of these and all 
 other classes of the community, we solemnly protest against Great 
 
 * " England, France, Russia and Turkey," fifth edition, p. 149. 
 
RUSSIA. 131 
 
 Britain being plunged into war with Russia, or any other coun- 
 try, in defence of Turkey — a war which, whilst it would inflict 
 disasters upon every portion of the community, could not bestow a 
 permanent benefit upon any class of it ; and one upon our success 
 in which no part of the civilized world would have cause to 
 rejoice. Having the interests of all orders of society to support 
 our argument in favor of peace, we need not dread war. These, 
 and not the piques of diplomatists, the whims of crowned heads, 
 the intrigues of ambassadresses, or schoolboy rhetoric upon the 
 balance of power, will henceforth determine the policy of our gov- 
 ernment. That policy will be based upon the bona fide principle 
 (not Lord Palmerston's principle) of non-intervention in the 'polit- 
 ical affairs of other nations ; and from the moment this maxim 
 becomes the load-star by which our government shall steer the 
 vessel of the state, from that moment the good old ship Britannia 
 will float triumphantly in smooth and deep water, and the rocks, 
 shoals and hurricanes, of foreign war, are escaped forever. 
 
 If it be objected that this selfish policy disregards the welfare 
 and improvement of other countries, — which is, we cordially 
 admit, the primary object of many of those who advocate a war 
 with Russia in defence of Turkey, and for the restoration of 
 Poland, — we answer that, so far as the objects we have in view are 
 concerned, we join hands with nearly every one of our opponents. 
 Our desire is to see Poland happy, Turkey civilized, and Russia 
 conscientious and free ; it is still more our wish that these amelio- 
 rations should be bestowed by the hands of Britain upon her less 
 instructed neighbors ; so far the great majority of our opponents 
 and ourselves are agreed ; how to accomplish this beneficent pur- 
 pose is the question whereon we differ. They would resort to the 
 old method of trying, as "Washington Irving says, " to promote 
 the good of their neighbors, and the peace and happiness of the 
 world, by dint of the cudgel." Now, there is an unanswerable 
 objection to this method : experience is against it ; it has been 
 tried for some thousands of years, and has always been found to 
 fail. But, within our own time, a new light has appeared, which 
 has penetrated our schools and families, and illuminated our pris- 
 ons and lunatic asylums, and which promises soon to pervade all 
 
132 RUSSIA. 
 
 the institutions and relations of social life. We allude to that 
 principle which, renouncing all appeals, through brute violence, to 
 the mere instinct of fear, addresses itself to the nobler and far 
 more powerful qualities of our intellectual and moral nature. 
 This principle, — which, from its very nature as a standard, tends 
 to the exaltation of our species, has abolished the use of the rod, 
 the fetters, the lash, and the strait waistcoat, and which, in a 
 modified degree, has been extended even to the brute creation, by 
 substituting gentleness for severity in the management of horses * 
 and the treatment of dogs, — this principle we would substitute for 
 the use of cannon and musketry, in attempting to improve or 
 instruct other communities. In a word, our opponents would "pro- 
 mote the good of their neighbors by dint of the cudgel ; " we 
 propose to arrive at the same end by means of our own national 
 example. Their method, at least, cannot be right; since it 
 assumes that they are at all times competent to judge of what is 
 good for others — which they are not ; whilst, even if they were, 
 it would be still equally wrong ; for they have not the jurisdiction 
 over other states which authorizes them to do them even good by 
 force of arms. If so, the United States and Switzerland might 
 have been justified, during the prodigal reign of George IV., in 
 making an economical crusade against England, for the purpose 
 of " cudgelling " us out of our extravagance and into their frugal- 
 ity, which, no doubt, would have been doing good to a nation of 
 debtors and spendthrifts ; instead of which, those countries perse- 
 vered in their peaceful example. And we have seen the result ; 
 Swiss economy has enabled its people to outvie us in cheapness, 
 and to teach us a lesson of frugal industry on our own fortress of 
 Gibraltar. It is thus that the virtues of nations operate both by 
 example and precept ; and such is the power and rank they con- 
 fer, that vicious communities, like the depraved individual, are 
 compelled to reform, or to lose their station in the scale of 
 society. States will all turn moralists, in the end, in self-defence. 
 
 * See the volume on The Horse, published by the Society for the Diffusion of 
 UsefxU Knowledge, for the stress laid upon the superiority of mild treatment 
 in the breaking of that animal. 
 
RUSSIA. 133 
 
 Apply this principle to Russia, which we will suppose had con- 
 quered Turkey. Ten years, at least, of turbulence and bloodshed, 
 would elapse before its fierce Mahometan inhabitants submitted to 
 their Christian invaders ; which period must be one of continued 
 exhaustion to the nation. Suppose that, at the end of that time, 
 those plundered possessions became tranquillized; and the govern- 
 ment, which had been impoverished by internal troubles, began to 
 reflect and to look abroad for information as to the course of pol- 
 icy it should pursue. England, which had wisely remained at 
 peace, pursuing its reforms and improvements, would, we have a 
 right to assume, present a spectacle of prosperity, wealth and 
 power, which invariably reward a period of peace. Can there be 
 a doubt that this example of the advantages to be derived from 
 labor and improvement, over those accruing from bloodshed and 
 rapine, presented in the happiness of the peaceful and the mis- 
 ery of the warlike nation, would determine the future career of 
 Russia in favor of industry and commerce ? The mere instinct 
 of self-love and self-preservation must so decide. Had England, 
 and all Europe, been plunged in war to prevent Russia from 
 effecting her conquest, there would have been no such example 
 of the fruits and blessings of peace, at the close of hostilities, as 
 we have here supposed her to present. 
 
 The influence which example has exerted over the conduct of 
 nations — more potent and permanent than that of the " cudgel" 
 — might form in itself the subject of a distinct and interesting 
 inquiry. It should not be confined to the electric effects of state 
 convulsions, which shock simultaneously the frames of neighbor- 
 ing empires. The tranquil and unostentatious educational reforms 
 in Switzerland, the temperance societies of America, and the rail- 
 roads of England, exercise a sway as certain, however gradual, 
 over the imitativeness of the whole world, as the " glorious " 
 three days of France, or the triumph of the Reform Bill. But, 
 however interesting the topic, our space does not allow us to pur- 
 sue it further. Yet, even whilst we write, a motion is making in 
 the House of Commons for a committee to inquire into the mode 
 in which the American government disposes of its waste lands. 
 A Swiss journal informed us, the other day, that, at a recent 
 12 
 
134 RUSSIA. 
 
 meeting of the Vorort of that country, a member called for a 
 municipal reform measure similar to the English Corporation 
 Act ; and, in a Madrid journal, which is now before us, the writer 
 recommends to the ministers of police a plan for numbering 
 and lettering the watchmen of that metropolis, in imitation of the 
 new police of London. Such is example, in a time of peace ! 
 
 One word, at parting, between the author and the reader. This 
 pamphlet, advocating peace, economy, and a moral ascendency 
 over brute violence, as well as deprecating national antipathies, 
 has, as our excellent and public-spirited publisher will avouch, 
 been written without the slightest view to notoriety or gain 
 (what fame or emolument can accrue from the anonymous publi- 
 cation of an eightpenny work ?) ; and we therefore run no risk of 
 invidious misconception, if, in taking leave of our readers, we do 
 so, not with the usual bow of ceremony, but after a fashion of 
 our own. In a word, as trade and not authorship is our proper 
 calling, they will, we hope, excuse our attempting to make a bar- 
 gain with them before we part. And, first, for that very small 
 portion of our friends who will only step out of their way to do 
 an acceptable act provided good and sufficient claims be estab- 
 lished against them : they will compel us, then, to remind them 
 that this petty production (which we frankly admit reveals noth- 
 ing new) contains as much matter as might have been printed in 
 a volume, and sold at above ten times its charge ; and, therefore, 
 if those aforesaid customers approve the quality of the article, 
 indifferent as it is, our terms of sale are that they lend this 
 pamphlet to at least six of their acquaintances for perusal. This 
 is the amount of our demand; and, as we are dealing with 
 " good " men, we shall book the debt, with the certainty that it 
 will be duly paid. 
 
 But by far the larger portion of our readers will be of that 
 class who, in the words of Sterne, do good " they know not why, 
 and care not wherefore :" to them we say, " If in the preceding 
 pages you discover a sincere, however feeble, attempt to preserve 
 peace, and put down a gigantic national prejudice ; an honest 
 though humble resistance to the false tenets of glory ; an ardent 
 but inadequate effort, by proving that war and violence have no 
 
RUSSIA. 135 
 
 unison with the true interests of mankind, to emancipate our 
 moral and intellectual nature from the domination of the mere 
 animal propensity of combativeness ; if, in a word, you see sound 
 views of commerce, just principles of government, freedom, im- 
 provement, morality, justice and truth, anxiously and yet all 
 ineffectively advocated, then, and not otherwise, recommend this 
 trifle to your friends, place it in the hands of the nearest news- 
 paper editors, and bring it in every possible way before the eye 
 of the public ; and do this, not for the sake of the author, or the 
 merit of his poor production, but that other and more competent 
 writers may be encouraged to take up, with equal zeal and far 
 greater ability, the same cause, which, we religiously believe, is 
 the cause of the best interests of humanity." 
 
 Note. — The circumstance of each of the preceding chapters having been 
 stereotyped as soon as written, precludes the insertion of the few following 
 words as a note in another and more appropriate part of the pamphlet. 
 
 The predominant feeling entertained with reference to Russia, and the one 
 which has given birth to the other passions nourished towards her, is that of 
 fear — fear of the danger of an irruption of its people into western Europe, 
 and the possibility of another destruction of civilization at the hands of those 
 semi-barbarous tribes, similar to that of ancient Rome by their ancestors. 
 But the Goths and Huns did not extinguish the power and greatness of the 
 Romans : the latter sunk a prey, not to the force of external foes, but to 
 their own internal vices and corruptions. Those northern nations which in- 
 vaded that empire, and whom we stigmatize as barbarians, were superior in 
 the manly qualities of courage, fortitude, discipline and temperance, to the 
 Roman people of their day. The Attilas and Alarics were equally superior 
 to their contemporaries, the descendants of the Caesars ; and they did not 
 sweep with the besom of destruction that devoted land until long after the 
 " dark, unrelenting Tiberius, the furious Caligula, the stupid Claudius, the 
 profligate and cruel Nero, the beastly Vitellius, and the timid, inhuman Dom- 
 itian," had, by exterminating every ancient family of the republic, and 
 extirpating every virtue and every talent from the minds of the people, pre- 
 pared the way for the terrible punishment inflicted upon them. 
 
 Modern Europe bears no resemblance, in its moral condition, to that of 
 ancient Rome, at the time we are alluding to. On the contrary, instead of a 
 tendency towards degeneracy, there is a recuperative principle observable in 
 the progress of reforms and improvements of the modern world, which, in its 
 power of regeneration, gives ground for hope that the present and future 
 ages of refinement will escape those evils which grew up alongside the wealth 
 and luxury of ancient states, and ultimately destroyed them. 
 
 But the application of the powers of chemistry to the purposes of war fur- 
 
136 EUSSIA. 
 
 rushes the best safeguard against the future triumph of savage hordes over 
 civilized communities. Gunpowder has forever set a barrier against the 
 irruption of barbarians into western Europe. War, without artillery and 
 musketry, is no longer possible ; and these cannot be procured by such peo- 
 ple as form the great mass of the inhabitants of Russia. Such is the power 
 which modern inventions in warfare confer upon armies of men, that it is i< 
 exaggeration to say that fifty thousand Prussian soldiers, with their com- 
 plement of field-pieces, rockets and musketry, are more than a match for all 
 the savage warriors, who, with their rude weapons, at different epochs, rav- 
 aged the world, from the time of Xerxes down to that of Tamerlane ; whilst 
 those countless myriads, without the aid of gunpowder, would be powerless 
 against the smallest of the hundreds of fortified places that are now scat- 
 tered over Europe. Henceforth, therefore, war is not merely an affair of 
 men, but of men, material and money. 
 
 For some remarks upon the possibility of another irruption of barbariars, 
 see Gibbon's Rome, ch. 8. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM VARIOUS WRITERS, ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE 
 CONDITION OF TURKEY. 
 
 Indeed, it was impossible to conceive a more dismal scene of horror and 
 desolation than the Turkish capital now presented. Every day some new 
 atrocities were committed, and the bodies of the victims were either hang- 
 ing against the doors and walls, or lying without their heads, weltering and 
 trampled on, in the middle of the streets. At this season, flights of kites, 
 vultures, and other unclean birds of prey, return after their winter's 
 migration ; and, as if attracted by the scent of carcasses, were seen all 
 day wheeling and hovering about, so as to cover the city like a canopy, 
 wherever a body was exposed. By night, the equally numerous and raven- 
 ous dogs were heard about some headless body, with the most dismal howl- 
 ings, or snarling and fighting over some skull which they were gnawing 
 and peeling. In fact, ail that Byron has feigned of Corinth, or Bruce has 
 described of Abyssinia, or you have elsewhere read that is barbarous, 
 disgusting and terrible, in Eastern usages, was here realized. — A Resi- 
 dence in Constantinople during the Greek and Turkish Revolutions. By 
 Hie Rev. R. Walsh, LL.D. 
 
 TURKISH DESOLATION. 
 
 My way lay along the shores of the Hellespont ; the weather had now 
 become moderate, and the storm was succeeded by a balmy sunshine. I 
 cannot describe to you the exquisite beauty of the undulating downs which 
 extend along the Asiatic side of this famous sea ; the greensward sloping 
 down to the water's edge, intersected every mile by some sweet wooded val- 
 ley, running up into the country at one extremity, and terminating in the 
 other by a romantic cove, over whose strand the lucid waves rippled. 
 Here it was that the first picture of Turkish desolation presented itself to 
 me. While those smiling prospects which a good Providence seems to have 
 formed for the delight of man invite him to fix his dwelling among them, 
 all is desert and desolate as the prairies of the Missouri. In a journey of 
 nearly fifteen miles along the coast, and for half the length of the Helles- 
 pont, I did not meet a single human habitation ; and this in the finest 
 climate, the most fertile soil, and once the most populous country, in the 
 world. — Walsh. 
 
 A victory obtained at Patras was certified to the Sultan by the very 
 intelligible gazette of a wagon loaded with the ears and noses of the slain, 
 Avhich were exposed in a heap, to gratify the feelings of pious Mussulmans. 
 Dr. Walsh went to see this ghastly exhibition, which he thus describes in 
 
 12* 
 
138 APPENDIX. 
 
 his Residence in Constantinople : " Here I found, indeed, that the Turks 
 did actually take human features as the Indians take scalps, and the 
 trophies of ears, lips and noses, were no fiction. At each side of the gate 
 were two piles, like small hay-cocks, formed of every portion of the counte- 
 nance. The ears were generally perforated and hanging on strings. The 
 noses had one lip and a part of the forehead attached to them ; the chins 
 had the other, with generally a long beard ; sometimes the face was cut 
 off whole, and all the features remained together ; sometimes it was 
 divided into scraps, in all forms of mutilation. It was through these 
 goodly monuments of human glory the Sultan and all his train passed 
 every day, and, no doubt, were highly gratified by the ghastly aspects they 
 presented ; for here they were to remain till they were trampled into the 
 mire of the street. Wherever the heaps were partly trodden down, the 
 Turks passed over them with perfect indifference. The features, growing 
 soft by putridity, continually attached themselves to their feet, and fre- 
 quently a man went off with a lip or a chin sticking to his slippers, which 
 were fringed with human beard, as if they were lined with fur. This dis- 
 play I again saw by accident on another occasion ; and when you hear of 
 sacks of ears sent to Constantinople, you may be assured it is a reality, and 
 not a figure of speech. But you are not to suppose they are always cut 
 from the heads of enemies, and on the particular occasion they are sent to 
 commemorate. The number of Greeks killed at Patras did not exceed, per- 
 haps, one hundred ; but noses, ears and lips, were cut indiscriminately 
 from every skull they could find, to swell the amount." 
 
 GEOGRAPHY AND THE USE OF THE GLOBES. 
 
 Lord Strangford sent the Porte a valuable present. He had brought 
 with him a pair of very large globes from England ; and, as the Turks had 
 latterly shown some disposition to learn languages, he thought it would be 
 a good opportunity to teftch them something else ; and he determined to 
 send them over to the Porte, and asked me to go with them and explain 
 
 their object This important present was brought over with 
 
 becoming respect. A Choreash went first with his baton of office ; then 
 followed two Janissaries, like Atlases, bearing worlds upon their shoulders ; 
 then myself, attended by our principal dragoman in full costume ; and, 
 finally, a train of Janissaries and attendants. When arrived at the Porte, 
 we were introduced to the Reis Effendi, or Minister for Foreign Affairs, 
 who, with other ministers, was waiting for us. When I had the globes 
 put together on their frames, they came round us with great interest ; and 
 the Reis Effendi, who thought, ex officio, he ought to know something of 
 geography, put on his spectacles and began to examine them. The first 
 thing that struck them was the compass in the stand. When they observed 
 the needle always kept the same position, they expressed great surprise, 
 and thought it was done by some interior mechanism. It was mid-day, 
 and the shadow of the frame of the window was on the floor. I endeavored 
 to explain to them that the needle was always found nearly in that direc- 
 tion, pointing to the north ; I could only make them understand that it 
 always turned towards the sun ! The Reis Effendi then asked me to show 
 him England. When I pointed out the small comparative spot on the great 
 globe, he turned to the rest, and said, "Keetchuk," little; and they 
 repeated all round, "Keetchuk," in various tones of contempt. But 
 when I showed them the dependencies of the empire, and particularly the 
 respectable size of India, they said, "Beeyuk," with some marks of 
 
APPENDIX. 139 
 
 respect. I also took occasion to show them the only mode of coming from 
 thence to Constantinople by sea, and that a ship could not sail with a cargo 
 of coffee from Mocha across the Isthmus of Suez. The newly-appointed 
 dragoman of the Porte, who had been a Jew, and was imbued with a 
 slighter tincture of information, was present ; so, after explaining to him 
 as much as I could make him comprehend, I left to him the task of further 
 instructing the ministers in this new science. Indeed, it appeared to me 
 as if none of them had ever seen an artificial globe before, or even a mari- 
 iner's compass. — Walsh's Constantinople. 
 
 It has been often remarked that the Turks are rather encamped than 
 settled in Europe. Far from improving the countries they govern, they 
 scathe everything that comes within their reach ; they destroy monuments, 
 but build none ; and when, at length, they are driven out by the chances 
 of war or revolution, the only traces they leave of their sway are to be 
 found in the desolation with which they everywhere encompass themselves. 
 They may be compared to a flight of locusts, eating up and destroying 
 whatever they alight upon ; conferring no benefits in return ; and, at last, 
 when swept from the face of the earth by some kindly blast, only remem- 
 bered from the havoc they had committed. — Encyclopaedia Britannica, 
 new edition, vol. iv. p. 12 ( J. irt. Athens. 
 
 The barbarous anarchic despotism of Turkey, where the finest countries 
 in the most genial climates in the world are wasted by peace more than any 
 countries have been worried by war, — where arts are unknown, where 
 manufactures languish, where science is extinguished, where agriculture 
 decays, where the human race itself melts away and perishes under the eye 
 of the observer. — Burke. 
 
 The following is extracted from a work published in America, under the 
 title of Letters from Constantinople and its environs, by an American ; 
 and attributed to the pen of Commodore Porter, the United States Charge 
 d'affaires at the Sublime Porte : At length we discovered, about two 
 miles to the left of our road, a Turkish village, which may always be 
 known by the cypress-trees and the burying-ground ; and, soon after this, 
 an Armenian village, which may be known by the neat cultivation, the fine 
 shady trees, the mill-race, and an air of primitive, patriarchal sort of com- 
 fort which seems to- be thrown over it. You can, once in a while, see, at 
 a distance, something like a petticoat moving about ; and here are herds 
 of cattle, flocks of sheep, goats, &c. But none of these are visible on your 
 approach to a Turkish town, where all is still and gloomy. Shopkeepers 
 you will find sitting cross-legged, waiting for their customers, too lazy and 
 indolent to rise, for the purpose of taking down an article for inspection. 
 It is a truth that I have never seen a Turk buy anything since I have been 
 in the country. They are absolutely too indolent to buy. Neither have I 
 ever seen a Turk work, if there was a possibility of his being idle. I have 
 never seen one stand, if there was a possibility of his being seated. A 
 blacksmith sits cross-legged at his anvil, and seats himself when he shoes 
 a horse. A carpenter seats himself when he saws, bores holes, or drives a 
 nail, planes, dubs with his small adze, or chops with his hatchet (I be- 
 lieve I have named all his tools), if it be possible to do so without 
 standing. 
 
 Nothing can be more gloomy than the appearance of things on entering 
 a Turkish village. It is as quiet as the grave ; the streets are narrow ; the 
 doors all shut and locked ; the windows all latticed ; not a human being to 
 be seen in the filthy streets. A growling, half-starved dog, or a bitch with 
 her hopeful progeny, which depend for their subsistence on some depository 
 of filth, is all you meet with of animated nature. You proceed through 
 
140 APPENDIX. 
 
 the inhospitable outskirts, despairing of meeting wherewith to satisfy the 
 calls of nature, or a place of shelter, when you at length arrive at, per- 
 haps, half a dozen filthy little shops of six feet square, in each of which you 
 discover a solitary, squatting, silent, smoking Turk. He may glance his 
 eyes at you, but will not turn his head : that would be too much trouble. 
 Now, investigate the contents of these shops, and you will find as follows : 
 five, or, perhaps, six girths, for pack-horses, made of goats' hair ; half a 
 dozen halters for horses ; fifteen or twenty pounds of rancid Russian butter ; 
 a small box, containing from one to two pounds of salt, and half a pound 
 of ground pepper. A few bars of curd cheese, looking very like Marseilles 
 soap ; not much better in taste, and not so good for digestion. One quart 
 of black, salt olives ; half a pound of sewing twine, cut into needlefuls ; 
 one clothes-line ; half a dozen loaves of brown bread ; and two bunches 
 of onions, with a string of garlic. Nine times out of ten, you will find this 
 to be the stock in trade of a Turkish village shopkeeper ; and, over this, in 
 his pitiful box, will he sit and smoke, day after day, without seeking a pur- 
 chaser, or apparently caring whether one comes or not. If one calls and 
 asks if he has any particular article, his answer is, simply, without raising 
 his eyes, "Yoke." (No.) " Can you inform me where I may procure the 
 article?" "Yoke." It is of no use to try to get anything more out of 
 him. He is as silent as the grave. If he has the article asked for, he 
 hands it to you, and names the price. When the money is laid on the 
 counter, he merely brushes it with his hand through the hole in the till, 
 and then relapses into his former apathy. No compliments, no " thanks 
 for favors received, " no " call again if you please. ' ' Not the slightest emotion 
 can be discovered. He never raises his eyes to see who his customer is or 
 was ; he sees nothing but the article sold, and the money ; and he would 
 disdain to spend a breath or perform an action that was not indispensable 
 
 to the conclusion of the bargain Give a Turk a mat to sleep 
 
 on, a pipe, and a cup of coffee, and you give him the sum total of all 
 
 earthly enjoyments 
 
 The magnificent plain of Nice burst on our view. I have often dwelt 
 with pleasure on the recollection of my agreeable surprise, when, descend- 
 ing the mountains at a place (I think) called the Vent of Cordova, the 
 lovely view of the valley of Mexico first presented itself to my astonished 
 sight. No one, I will venture to say, who has travelled from Vera Cruz 
 to Mexico, but recollects the spot I have reference to, and felt as I have felt. 
 Let him recall to his mind the splendor of that scene, and he may then 
 imagine the plain of Nice, in all its fertility and beauty ; not, indeed, so 
 extensive, but more studded with trees, and equally so with villages, and 
 presenting a picture to the eye and the imagination not to be surpassed. 
 But, after a painful descent from our lofty eminence, by a very steep road, 
 we found that, like the plain of Mexico, it was distance that gave to the 
 
 scenery its principal enchantment Like Mexico, everything is 
 
 beautiful in the distance, but nothing will bear examination. View the 
 scene closely, and the charm vanishes. The large and fertile fields are miles 
 from any human habitation ; and, if a solitary being or two happen to be 
 laboring near, you find them covered with rags and vermin. The shepherd, 
 with his numerous flocks and herds, is a half-starved, miserable wretch, 
 covered with filthy sheep-skins, and disgusting to look at. His food, a dry 
 crust, with perhaps an onion. Enter the villages, the streets are almost 
 impassable from filth, and you meet only a ragged, dirty, squalid popula- 
 tion of beggars. The noble fields and vineyards are the property of some 
 hungry and rapacious lord, whose interests are confided to a cruel, hard- 
 
APPENDIX. 141 
 
 hearted, and rapacious aga. The few in power, revelling in affluence and 
 splendor, have reduced the mass of the people to a degree of misery which 
 appears insupportable. This is Turkey. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM LARDNER'S CABINET CYCLOPAEDIA. 
 
 HISTORY OF POLAND. 
 Lewis. 1370—1382. 
 
 By yielding to the exorbitant demands of the turbulent and interested 
 nobles, by increasing their privileges and exempting them from the neces- 
 sary contributions, he threw a disproportionate burden on the other orders 
 of the state, and promoted that aristocratic ascendency before which mon- 
 arch and throne were soon to bow. — p. 101. 
 
 Hedwig. 1382—1386. 
 
 The death of Lewis was speedily followed by troubles, raised chiefly by 
 the turbulent nobles. Notwithstanding their oaths in favor of Mary and her 
 husband Sigismund, — oaths in return for which they had extorted such 
 great concessions, — they excluded both, with the design of extorting still 
 greater from a new candidate. Sigismund advanced to claim his rights. A 
 civil war desolated several provinces. — p. 102. 
 
 Casimir IV. 1445—1492. 
 
 Under this monarch aristocracy made rapid progress in Poland. When, 
 on the conclusion of the war, he assembled a diet for the purpose of devis- 
 ing means of paying the troops their arrears, it was resolved to resist the 
 demand in a way which should compel him to relinquish it. Hitherto the 
 diets had consisted of isolated nobles, whom the king's summons or their 
 own will had assembled ; as their votes were irresponsible, and given gener- 
 ally from motives of personal interest or prejudice, the advantage to the 
 order at large had been purely accidental. Now, that order resolved to 
 exercise a new and irresistible influence over the executive. As every noble 
 could not attend the diet, yet as every one wished to have a voice in its 
 deliberations, deputies were elected to bear the representations of those who 
 
 could not attend What in England was the foundation of 
 
 rational freedom, was in Poland subversive of all order, all -good govern- 
 ment : in the former country, representation was devised as a check to 
 feudal aristocracy, which shackled both king and nation ; in the latter it 
 was devised by the aristocracy themselves, both to destroy the already too 
 limited prerogatives of the crown, and to rivet the chain of slavery on a 
 
 whole nation. — pp. 121,122 This very diet annulled the 
 
 humane decree of Casimir the Great, which permitted a peasant to leave his 
 master for ill usage, and enacted that in all cases such peasant might be 
 demanded by his lord, — nay, that whoever harbored the fugitive should 
 be visited with a heavy fine. This, and the assumption of judicial authority 
 over their serfs, — for peasants they can no longer be called, — was a 
 restoration of the worst evils of feudality. — p. 123. 
 
142 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 John Albert I. 1492— 150G. 
 
 Evils of a nature still more to be dreaded menaced the murmuring king- 
 dom. Aided by the Turks and Tartars, the Voivode of Wallachia pene- 
 trated into Podolia and Polish Russia, the nourishing towns of which 
 he laid in ashes, and returned with immense booty and one hundred 
 
 thousand captives. — p. 125 Under his reign, not only was 
 
 the national independence in great peril, but internal freedom, the freedom 
 of the agricultural class, was annihilated. At the diet of Petrikaus (held in 
 1496), the selfish aristocracy decreed that henceforth no citizen or peasant 
 should aspire to the ecclesiastical dignities, which they reserved for them- 
 selves alone. The peasantry, too, were prohibited from other tribunals than 
 those of their tyrannical masters ; they were reduced to the most deplorable 
 slavery. — p. 127. 
 
 Alexander. 1501 — 1506. 
 
 Thus ended a reign more deplorable, if possible, than that of John Albert. 
 — p. 129. 
 
 Sigismund I. 1506—1548. 
 
 He had, however, many obstacles to encounter ; neither the patriotism of 
 his views nor the influence of his character could always restrain the restless 
 tumults of his nobles, who, proud of their privileges and secure of impunity, 
 thwarted his wisest views whenever caj)rice impelled them. Then the oppo- 
 sition of the high and petty nobility ; the eagerness of the former to distin- 
 guish themselves from the rest of their order, by titles as well as riches ; the 
 hostility of both towards the citizens and burghers, whom they wished to 
 enslave as effectually as they had done the peasantry ; and, lastly, the 
 fierceness of contention between the adherents of the reformed and old 
 religion, filled his court with factions and his cities with discontent. — 
 p. 136. 
 
 Interregnum. Henry de Valois. 1572 — 1574. 
 
 The death of Sigismund Augustus, the last of the Jagellos, gave the Polish 
 nobles what they had long wanted — the privilege of electing their monarchs, 
 and of augmenting their already enormous powers, by every new pacta con- 
 
 venta.* At first, it was expected that the election would be 
 
 made by deputies only ; but, on the motion of a leading palatine, that, as 
 all nobles were ecpaal in the eye of the law, so all ought to concur in the 
 choice of a ruler, it was carried by acclamation that the assembly should 
 consist of the whole body of the equestrian order — of all, at least, who were 
 disposed to attend. This was another fatal innovation ; a diet of two or 
 three hundred members, exclusive of the senators, might possibly be man- 
 aged ; but what authority could control a hundred thousand ? — pp. 148, 149. 
 
 This feeble prince soon sighed for the banks of the Seine ; amidst the 
 ferocious people whose authority he was constrained to recognize, and who 
 
 despised him for his imbecility, he had no hope of enjoyment 
 
 The truth is, no criminal ever longed to flee from his fetters so heartily as 
 
 Henry from his imperious subjects His flight was soon made 
 
 known A pursuit was ordered ; but Henry was already on 
 
 the lands of the empire before he was overtaken by the grand chamberlain, 
 to whom he presented a ring and continued his journey. — p. 157. 
 
 * Pacta conventa meant a fresh bargain which was made by the nobles at every succeed- 
 ing election of a king, and by which their own powers and privileges were constantly 
 augmented. 
 
APPSNDTX. 143 
 
 Stephkx. 1575—1586. 
 
 After the deposition of Henry, no less than five foreign and two native 
 
 princes were proposed as candidates for the crown During 
 
 the struggle of Stephen with his rebellious subjects, the Muscovites had laid 
 waste Livonia. To punish their audacity, and wrest from their grasp the 
 conquests they had made during the reign of his immediate predecessor, was 
 now his object. War, however, was more easily declared than made ; the 
 treasury was empty, and the nobles refused to replenish it. Of them it 
 might truly be said, that, while they eagerly concurred in any burdens 
 laid on the other orders of the state, — on the clergy and the burghers, — 
 those burdens they would not so much as touch with one of their fingers. 
 
 The Polish nobles were less alive to the glory of their country 
 
 than to the preservation of their monstrous privileges, which they appre- 
 hended might be endangered Under so vigilant and able a ruler 
 
 Hcwever signal the services which this great prince rendered to the republic, 
 he could not escape the common lot of his predecessors — the jealousy, the 
 opposition and the hatred, of a licentious nobility ; nor could he easily quell 
 the tumults which arose among them. — pp. 158, 160, 161, 165. 
 
 Sigismuxd III. 1586—1632. 
 
 As usual, the interregnum afforded ample opportunity for the gratification 
 of individual revenge, and of the worst passions of our nature. The feud 
 between Zborowskis and Zamoyskis was more deadly than ever. Both fac- 
 tions appeared in the field of election, with numerous bodies of armed adher- 
 ents. The former amounted to ten thousand ; the latter were less strong in 
 
 number, but more select. — p. 167 His reign was, as might 
 
 be expected from his character, disastrous. The loss of Moldavia and Wal 
 lachia, of a portion of Livonia, and perhaps, still more, of the Swedish crown 
 for himself, and the Muscovite for his son, embittered his declining years. 
 Even the victories which shed so bright a lustre over his kingdom were but 
 too dearly pui'chased by the blood and treasure expended. The internal 
 state of Poland during this period is still worse. It exhibits little more than 
 his contentions with his nobles or with his Protestant subjects, and the 
 oppression of the peasants by their avaricious, tyrannical and insulting 
 masters — an oppression which he had the humanity to pity, but not the 
 vigor to alleviate. — -p. 178. 
 
 Uladislas VII. (Vasa.) 1632—1618. 
 
 But all the glories of this reign, all the advantages it procured to the 
 republic, were fatally counterbalanced by the haughty and inhuman policy 
 of the nobles towards the Cossacks. In the central provinces of the republic 
 their unbounded power was considerably restrained in its exercise by their 
 habitual residence among their serfs ; but the distant possessions of the 
 Ukraine never saw the face of their rapacious landlords, but were abandoned 
 
 to Jews, the most unpopular and hateful of stewards Obtaining 
 
 no redress from the diet, — the membei*s of which, however jealous of their 
 own liberties, would allow none to the people, — they had laid their com- 
 plaints before the throne of the late monarch, Sigismund III. With every 
 disposition, that monarch was utterly powerless to relieve them ; Uladislas 
 was equally well-intentioned, and equally unable to satisfy them. On one 
 occasion the latter prince is said to have replied to the deputies from these 
 sons of the wilderness, " Have you no sabres ? " Whether such a reply wai 
 given them or not, both sabres and lances were speedily in requisition. 
 
144 APPENDIX. 
 
 Their first efforts were unsuccessful. This failure rather enraged than dis- 
 couraged them ; and their exasperation was increased by the annihilation 
 of their religious hierarchy, of their civil privileges, of their territorial reve- 
 nues, and by their degradation to the rank of serfs ■ — all which iniquities 
 were done by the diet of nobles, 1638. Nay, a resolution was taken, at the 
 same time, to extirpate both their faith and themselves, if they showed any 
 disposition to escape the bondage doomed them. Again they armed, and, by 
 their combination, so imposed on the troops sent to subdue them, that a 
 promise was made them of restoring the privileges which had been so wick- 
 edly and so impolitically wrested from them. Such a promise, however, 
 was not intended to be fulfilled ; the Cossacks, in revenge, made frequent 
 irruptions into the palatinate of the grand duchy, and no longer prevented 
 the Tartars from similar outrages. Some idea may be formed of the extent 
 of these depredations, when it is known that from the princely domains of 
 one noble alone thirty thousand peasants were carried away, and sold as 
 slaves to the Turks and Tartars. Things were in this state, when a new 
 instance of outrageous cruelty, inflicted upon the family of a veteran Cos- 
 sack, Bogdan Chmielnicki by name, — whose valor, under the ensigns of 
 the republic, was known far beyond the bounds of the nation, — spread the 
 flames of insurrection from one end of the Ukraine to the other, and lent 
 
 fearful force to their intensity The bolt of vengeance, so long 
 
 suspended, at length fell. At the head of forty thousand Tartars, and oi 
 many times that number of Cossacks, who had wrongs to be redressed as 
 well as he, and whom the tale of his had summoned around him with electric 
 rapidity, he began his fearful march. Two successive armies of the republic, 
 which endeavored to stem the tide of inundation, were utterly swept away 
 by the torrent, their generals and superior officers led away captives, and 
 seventy thousand peasants consigned to hopeless bondage. 
 
 At this critical moment expired Uladislas, a misfortune scarcely inferior 
 to the insurrection of the Cossacks ; for never did a state more urgently 
 demand the authority of such a monarch. Under him, the republic was 
 prosperous, notwithstanding her wars with the Muscovites and Turks ; and, 
 had his advice been taken, the Cossacks would have remained faithful to her, 
 and opposed an effectual barrier to the incursions of the Tartars. But 
 eternal justice had doomed the chastisement of a haughty, tyrannical and 
 unprincipled aristocracy, on whom reasoning, entreaty or remonstrance, 
 could have no effect, and whose understandings were blinded by hardness of 
 heart. In their conduct during these reigns there appears something like 
 fatality, which may be explained by a maxim confirmed by all human expe- 
 rience — Quern Deus vult perdere,prias dementat.* — pp. 182 — 185. 
 
 Interregnum — John Casimir. 1698. 
 
 Never was interregnum more fatal than that which followed the death of 
 Uladislas. The terrible Bogdan, breathing vengeance against the republic, 
 seized on the whole of the Ukraine, and advanced towards Red Russia. He 
 was joined by vast hordes of Tartars from Bessarabia and the Crimea, who 
 longed to assist in the contemplated annihilation of the republic. This con- 
 federacy of Mussulmans, Socinians and Greeks, all actuated by feelings of 
 the most vindictive character, committed excesses at which the soul revolts ; 
 the churches and monasteries were levelled with the ground, the nuns were 
 violated, priests were forced, under the raised poniard, not merely to con- 
 tract but to consummate marriage with the trembling inmates of the clois- 
 ters, and, in general, both were subsequently sacrificed ; the rest of the 
 
 * Those whom God would destroy he first deprives of reason. 
 
APPENDIX. 145 
 
 clergy were despatched without mercy. Bat the chief weight of vengeance 
 fell on the nobles, who were doomed to a lingering death, whose wives and 
 daughters were stripped naked before their eyes, and, after violation, were 
 whipped to death in sight of the ruthless invaders. — p. 186. 
 
 Scarcely an evil can be mentioned which did not afflict the kingdom 
 during the eventful reign of this monarch. To the horrors of invasion by 
 so many enemies, must now be added those of domestic strife. — p. 196. 
 . . . . In this beautiful picture of disasters abroad and anarchy at 
 home, of carnage and misery on every side, the disbanded military now took 
 a prominent part. — p. 197 In short, the reign of this mon- 
 arch, while it exhibits a continued succession of the worst evils which have 
 afflicted nations, is unredeemed by a single advantage to the republic ; its 
 only distinction is the fearfully accelerated impulse which it gave to the 
 decline of Poland. The fact speaks little either for monarch or diet ; but he 
 must not be blamed with undue severity, — his heart was better than his 
 head, and both were superior to those of the turbulent, fierce and ungovern- 
 able men who composed a body at once legislative and executive. 
 
 Michael. 1668—1673. 
 
 The first act of the diet of nobles was to declare that no Polish king should 
 hereafter abdicate ; the fetters he might assume were thus rendered ever- 
 lasting. — p. 199 At this time, no less than five armed con- 
 federacies were opposed to each other : of the great against the king ; of 
 the loyal in his favor ; of the army in defence of their chief, whom Michael 
 and his party had resolved to try, as implicated in the French party ; of 
 the Lithuanians against the Poles ; and, finally, of the servants against their 
 masters, the peasants against their lords. — p. 203. 
 
 John III. (Sobieski.) 1674—1696. 
 
 Though he convoked diet after diet, in the hope of obtaining the necessary 
 supplies, diet after diet was dissolved by the fatal veto ; for the same reason, 
 he could not procure the adoption of the many salutary courses he recom- 
 mended, to banish anarchy, to put the kingdom on a permanent footing of 
 defence, and to amend the laws. — p. 209. 
 
 Frederick Augustus. 1696 — 1733. 
 
 Frederick Augustus died early in 1763. His reign was one continued 
 scene of disasters ; many of which may be imputed to himself, but more, 
 perhaps, to the influence of circumstances. — p. 225. 
 
 Frederick Augustus II. 1733 — 1763. 
 
 Though, under Frederick Augustus, Poland entered on no foreign war, 
 his reign was the most disastrous in her annals. While the Muscovite and 
 Prussian armies traversed her plains at pleasure, and extorted whatever 
 they pleased ; while one fiction openly opposed another, not merely in the 
 diet, but on the field ; while every national assembly was immediately dis- 
 solved by the veto, the laws could not be expected to exercise much 
 authority. They were, in fact, utterly disregarded ; the tribunals were 
 divided, or forcibly overturned, and brute force prevailed on every side. 
 The miserable peasants vainly sought the protection of their lords, who 
 were either powerless or indifferent to their complaints. While thousands 
 expired of hunger, a far greater number sought to relieve their necessi- 
 ties by open depredations. Bands of robbers, less formidable only than the 
 13 
 
146 APPENDIX. 
 
 kindred masses congregated under the name of soldiers, infested the country 
 in every direction. Famine aided the devastations of both ; the population, 
 no less than the wealth of the kingdom, decreased with frightful rapidity. 
 
 — p. 232. 
 
 Stanislas Augustus. 1763 — 1795. 
 
 During the few following years, Poland presented the spectacle of a 
 country exhausted alike by its own dissensions and the arms of its enemies. 
 The calm was unusual, and would have been a blessing could any salutary 
 laws have been adopted by the diets. Many such, indeed, were proposed, 
 the most signal of which was the emancipation of the serfs ; but the very 
 proposition was received with such indignation by the selfish nobles, that 
 Russian gold was not wanted to defeat the other measures with which it was 
 accompanied — the suppression of the veto, and the establishment of an 
 
 hereditary monarchy. — p. 242 The republic was thus erased 
 
 from the list of nations, after an existence of near ten centuries. That a 
 country without government (for Poland had none, properly so called, after 
 the extinction of the Jagellos, 1572), without finances, without army, and 
 depending for its existence, year after year, on tumultuous levies, ill-disci- 
 plined, ill-armed, and worse paid, should have so long preserved its inde- 
 pendence, in defiance, too, of the powerful nations around, and with a great 
 portion of its own inhabitants, whom ages of tyranny had exasperated, hostile 
 to its success, is the most astonishing fact in all history. What valor must 
 that have been which could enable one hundred thousand men to trample 
 on a whole nation naturally prone to revolt, and bid defiance to Europe and 
 Asia, to Christian and Mussulman, both ever ready to invade the republic ! 
 
 - p. 256. 
 
 MR. COBDEN ON THE « EASTERN QUESTION." 
 Though it has been stated in the " Introduction " that the principles and 
 facts of Mr. Cobden's preceding work are such as time cannot essentially 
 change, it may be objected that such changes have taken place in the con- 
 dition of Turkey as very materially modify them. How far such an 
 objection is well grounded, — at least, of how much consideration it appears 
 worthy in the mind of Mr. Cobden, — may be seen from his recently expressed 
 opinions. And they will be read with the more interest, as they bear directly 
 on the present aspect of the " Eastern question." It may seem to the 
 reader whose prejudices are strongly enlisted in behalf of Turkey as against 
 Russia that Mr. Cobden's position is directly the reverse,— that he is in 
 favor of Russia as against Turkey. But it will be seen that such an opinion 
 does him injustice. He is a friend of peace. Peace is his great national 
 policy. And, in his opinion, no advantage can accrue to England from an 
 armed intervention on behalf of Turkey, to compensate for the injury done 
 to the arts and institutions of peace in England, and consequently her 
 greatest and most enduring influence for good on the world. 
 
 The following is an extract of a letter from Mr. Cobden, found in the 
 
APPENDIX. 147 
 
 National Era for January 5th, 1854, with a few preliminary editorial 
 remarks. 
 
 MR. COBDEN AND THE EASTERN QUESTION. 
 
 The position of Mr. Cobden, the great apostle of free trade in England, 
 has been widely misrepresented both in that country and in this. He is 
 continually charged with hostility to the Turks and sympathy with the 
 Russians, when the truth is, he is simply anxious to preserve England from 
 the curse of war, and to break up the old balance of poAver policy. He i3 
 for neutrality, and would leave those whom he regards as little more than 
 semi-barbarians, on both sides the Prutli, to fight out their own battles'. 
 But this would be a very "un-English " policy ; " for when," asks Mr. 
 Cobden, " did John Bull ever allow fighting to go on, in any part of the 
 world, without trying to have a hand in it ? " 
 
 To illustrate more fully the position of Mr. Cobden, we take the liberty 
 of transcribing the following passage from a letter which we lately received 
 from him : 
 
 " Our fire-eaters are clamorous for war to uphold the ' integrity and 
 independence (!) of the Turkish empire;' and they urge arguments in 
 defence of their policy, with which I have to combat, by showing that 
 liberty, commerce, civilization and progress, are not involved (as they 
 maintain) in the preservation of Turkey, but that these precious interests 
 are quite as likely to be promoted by the Russians as the Turks, though 
 I would not willingly trust them to either. Instead of refuting my state- 
 ments, my opponents turn upon me, and charge me with being the friend 
 of Russia. My views upon the received maxims of our foreign policy are 
 about as little in harmony with the current feelings of the day as yours are 
 upon slavery. I disbelieve in the old superstitions of the ' balance of 
 power,' the ' Eastern question,' &c. I am far more concerned about the 
 ' Western question' — I mean the progress in wealth, numbers and intel- 
 ligence, of the United States — than the brute force of Russia. Your school- 
 masters are more to be dreaded by us than the drill-sergeants of the Czar. 
 I consider that the importance of these Eastern countries is very much 
 exaggerated. Constantinople was a great seat of empire when the whole 
 civilized world was confined to the eastern end of the Mediterranean. It 
 is now in a cul-de-sac, remote from the great avenues of commerce. When 
 I am told that the possession of this city would make Russia the mistress 
 of the world, I laugh, and ask why four hundred years' possession of it has 
 brought the Turks to their present decrepid condition ? However, I am 
 quite in a minority with these opinions. 
 
 " The ' Eastern question ' looks very complicated and awkward just now. 
 * * The first gun fired between Russia and the western powers may be 
 a signal for a European conflagration. If you are wise in America, you 
 will cling to your traditional policy of neutrality, and profit by the inculp- 
 able folly and wickedness of the Old World. But I see you are following 
 our bad example in your policy of annexation. Apropos of the Cuban 
 question, — Are your journals really serious in what they profess to believe 
 of our designs upon that island ? If so, all the canards are not to be found 
 on the Thames ! Such credulity would be a dangerous element in the 
 hands of a designing government. I have a strong presentiment that, if 
 you get possession of Cuba, it will be the grave of American slavery. God 
 does sometimes allow such spectacles as that of a great nation going blindly 
 and passionately forward in a course certain, if successful, to lead to the 
 ruin of the cause which it seeks to uphold ! " 
 
148 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 The following is a speech delivered by Mr. Cobden in the " Peace Confer- 
 ence," held in Edinburgh last October : 
 
 Mr. Cobden, M.P., then rose, and was received with loud and prolonged 
 applause. He said : Perhaps it was proper that our esteemed chairman, 
 and the gentlemen who have preceded me, should enter into a few explana- 
 tions as to the peculiar tenets of this Conference at the present moment, 
 deeming it necessary that we should not be misunderstood at a time when 
 they conceived that this movement was encountering peculiar opposition. 
 Well, I am glad that they did so, though I don't intend myself to assume 
 the tone of one acting on the defensive on this occasion ; but it is well that 
 our friends have explained what are the peculiar objects, and what are the 
 doctrines, of this association. My experience in past movements of a pub- 
 lic kind teaches me this, that it is difficult, very difficult, when you have 
 got hold of a good cause, to bring its opponents to a fair and candid discus- 
 sion of what you really mean. It is a great deal easier to misrepresent you 
 than to meet you when you happen to be right ; and therefore, instead of 
 meeting us such as we are, and opposing our objects such as we represent 
 them to be, when we hold a meeting like this, our opponents raise the cry, 
 " ! these are a set of fanatics, who, if the enemy were at our gates, 
 would cry ' Peace, peace ! ' these are the people who want us immediately 
 to disband every soldier and every sailor that we have, and thus to invite 
 the invasion of some foreign foe ; these are the people who would lay us 
 prostrate at the feet of the first horde of brigands who chose to land upon 
 our shores." Now, I wish to make my profession of fiiith most distinctly 
 with regard to this, and I shall do so very shortly. I don't believe that 
 anybody is coming to attack us at all. I have never heard or read in 
 modern history of anybody that meditated an attack upon our shores ; I 
 will hardly except even that of Napoleon the Great, because he came and 
 took a look at us, and then he turned away to a more inviting foe. But 
 what my reading and experience have taught me is this, that the danger 
 which the English people have to apprehend arises from that peculiarity 
 in their temperament, that idiosyncrasy of their nature, — for nations have 
 idiosyncrasies as well as individuals, — Avhich leads us constantly to go and 
 seek grounds of quarrel and objects of hostility, even to the remotest parts 
 of the globe. I have seen that in past times Englishmen have been success- 
 ively fighting the battles of almost every people on the globe ; but I have 
 seen also that — whether the objects of our intervention in these remote quar- 
 rels have been to advance the principles of civil and religious liberty, as I 
 have sometimes heard it said, or to promote the progress of a freer com- 
 mercial intercourse — I have seen that our objects have steadily eluded our 
 grasp ; and the only result, almost the only practical result, which I have 
 seen to this characteristic of our country, is this, that we have loaded our- 
 selves with an amount of debt greater than that of all the nations of the 
 world besides, and that we are mistrusted, and not liked, by almost every 
 nation in Christendom. Nor do I see that the spirit of late times has been 
 Tery much changed for the better; for, if we cannot be persuaded to go and 
 attack somebody else, then it seems to be equally easy to persuade us that 
 somebody is coming to attack us. Now, I beg it most emphatically to be 
 understood that, when I attend these peace meetings, it is not that I wish to 
 bow down our necks and invite invaders to come amongst us ; nobody in- 
 tends to invade you, nobody wants to invade you ; the quarrels which you 
 have had, the wars which you have been engaged in, and the debts which 
 you have contracted, have been all of your own seeking. And what I want 
 now — and it was never more necessary than at the present moment — 
 
APPENDIX. 149 
 
 what I want now is this, to put a check, however feeble, on the tendency of 
 a portion of the people of this country, who seem to me bent upon erecting 
 into a maxim that which we have hitherto fincied only to apply to princes 
 and despots, — that peoples learn nothing and forget nothing. And when 
 I speak of our people, I am not to draw down upon myself the taunt or re- 
 buke, which would place me in so disadvantageous a position, that I am ap- 
 pearing here conscious that I am opposing the direct and settled opinions 
 and convictions of the great mass of my countrymen. No ; the great mass 
 of our countrymen in this question are now standing, observing, and ready 
 to hear and learn, and to be convinced. But I speak of men who, if we 
 were not here, might take possession of the public mind, and, if they can 
 represent the whole people, then the policy of the country must follow their 
 dictates. I say we have seen lately that it is not difficult to persuade the 
 English people that others are coming to attack them. I do not want to 
 refer to what has occurred six months ago, for the purpose of triumph or 
 exultation. I have never alluded, as far as I am aware, in the House of 
 Commons or elsewhere, to that most consummate triumph which this Con- 
 ference has enjoyed, in the change that has taken place, since we last met in. 
 Manchester, on the subject of the French invasion. But it is necessary to 
 allude to it now, because the very same pens are being dipped in venom to 
 record the gibes and sneers at this Conference which we had to encounter 
 when we were in Manchester. And although I do not want to deprive 
 them of the pleasure of abusing and caricaturing us, I think we have a fair 
 right to ask the people of this country to estimate the force of the present 
 attacks of those individuals by the value of their opinions just six months 
 ago. But, more than that, I say that the position in which this country is 
 at present placed, with reference to the Russian question, is distinctly to be 
 traced to the conduct which these foolish people pursued nine months ago. 
 I don't speak vaguely or idly. I speak from a knowledge short only of in- 
 formation from the first parties acting in these proceedings, when I say that 
 that which has been done in the East by the Emperor of Russia was done 
 from the deliberate calculation that it was impossible that France and Eng- 
 land could unite to oppose him. We all know that it is an old and tradi- 
 tional policy of the Russian empire to encroach upon the dominions of the 
 Mahometan people that are at their side. We know that that has been a 
 maxim of state policy in Russia for the last hundred and fifty years. But 
 we know also that the encroachments of Russia upon Turkey have been 
 steadily resisted, not at all times successfully, but still resisted by the com- 
 bined action of the western powers of Europe, who have made it part of 
 the state policy of Europe to oppose the aggrandizement of Russia in the 
 East. The Russian emperor saw not only in the public prints of this 
 country, but he observed in the speeches of our statesmen in the House of 
 Commons, the expression of an opinion and feeling of mistrust and of hor- 
 ror of the character of the sovereign of our next neighbor, France. He 
 saw that in the House of Commons we had made pi'o vision for calling out 
 the militia, avowedly in order to resist a French invasion ; he heard men 
 who, we are now told, were the very trustworthy peacemakers of this coun- 
 try — he heard these men, and I heard them myself, say that in one single 
 night sixty thousand French soldiers might come from Cherbourg and land 
 upon our shores ; we were told that for us, the peace party, to assume for 
 a moment the possibility that the Emperor of France was not a brigand and 
 a pirate — to argue for a moment that the French people were not capable 
 of coming and throwing themselves upon our shores, without any previous 
 notice being given, without any declaration of war, without any cause of 
 offence, like a party of buccaneers or pirates — to assume that such was not 
 
 13* 
 
150 APPENDIX. 
 
 their natural course of action, argued that we were the most credulous and 
 foolish fanatics in Britain. The Emperor of Russia heard and saw all this, 
 and he naturally concluded that it was utterly impossible that the French 
 and English could unite again t« join in one armament to resist his en- 
 croachments in the east of Europe. And his plans have been laid in the 
 southern parts of Russia ever since last September or October ; ever since 
 this cry began they have beeD' steadily pursued ; as this foolish spirit of 
 hostility to our neighbors the French came more and more to prevail in 
 high quarters, they were the more determinedly persevered in ; and now 
 the consequence is that the Emperor of Russia has found, when it is too 
 late, that those foolish people whom he mistook for the public opinion of 
 England have entirely misled him. 
 
 But what do we see, — we, who were denounced as the most credulous fools 
 for presuming to say that the Emperor Napoleon did not meditate an inva- 
 sion of our shores ? What do we see now ? The very minister who talked 
 of the French coming from Cherbourg in one night, with sixty thousand 
 men, to invade our coasts, I myself heard say, that, now the French and 
 English were united, and had one common bond of interest, and were united 
 by sentiments of mutual confidence and esteem, they were a power against 
 which it was in vain for Russia to contend, for all Europe would be power- 
 less against such an irresistible combination. And what did I hear at the 
 end of last session of Parliament in the Queen's speech, as if it was to give 
 to the peace party the climax of your triumph ? Not only does the Queen 
 in her speech in Parliament, ere it separated, declare that she is on the best 
 terms of amity with the French nation, but she rather goes out of the way 
 to add that she is also on the best possible footing with the Emperor of the 
 French. Now, I have often thought of supposing the case of an individual 
 who had been ordered away from this country, as many persons are for the 
 benefit of their health, and supposing he had left our snores last January 
 to take a voyage to Australia, returning again without remaining there, 
 merely making the circuit of the globe for the benefit of his health. He 
 left England preparing her militia, and fortifying her coasts, general 
 officers writing to me offering to lay a wager that the French would come 
 and invade us. And he saw our inspectors of cavalry and artillery moving 
 about the southern coasts, deputations from the railway companies waiting 
 upon the Admiralty and the Ordnance to see how soon the commissariat 
 and the ordnance supplies could be transmitted from the Tower to Dover, 
 or to Portsmouth ; he left in the midst of all these preparations for the 
 French invasion ; he makes the circuit of the globe, and, as he could see no 
 newspaper, — for one great motive in sending a care-worn individual on 
 such a voyage is to keep him away from politicians and the post-office, — 
 he knows nothing of what has occurred during his absence. Well, he 
 lands here in September, and the first thing he reads of in the newspapers 
 is, that the French and English fleets are lying side by side in Besika Bay. 
 He immediately says that there is to be a great battle ; he turns to the 
 leading article of the \Qry paper that had told him before he left the coun- 
 try that the French emperor was a brigand and a pirate, and that the 
 French people were about to invade England, without notice or declaration 
 of war, — he turns to a leader in this paper — the very first he has seen 
 after he has arrived in England, — and there he finds the English and 
 French are so cordially united that their fleets are lying in Besika Bay, 
 under the command of Admiral Dundas ; that we are prepared, if neces- 
 sary, to send an army to be put under a French general, and that we are 
 going into action probably to-morrow with the Russian fleet. Now, the first 
 thing that we would naturally ask would be this, — But can you trust this 
 
APPENDIX. 151 
 
 individual whom, when I left Britain, you were chai*acterizing as a brigand 
 and a pirate ? What has happened ? Has anything happened to prove that 
 these peace people have been right, and that you were wrong ? What change 
 has taken place ? What does this mean ? What guarantee has this man 
 given you that when you go into action with the Russian fleet, he has not 
 previously come to an understanding with the Emperor of Russia, and that, 
 instead of joining you in firing broadsides into the Russian fleet, he will 
 not join Russia in demolishing yours ? And then, unless he has undergone 
 a great change, — and you have not explained to me how it happened, — what 
 proofs have you that when he has joined the Russian fleet in destroying 
 yours, he will not come and ravage your coasts, burn down your houses, 
 seize the bank, and carry off the Queen ? Of all these things there is no 
 explanation. I must confess, and I say it with the greatest regret, that my 
 experience of late does not make me think more highly than I used to do 
 of 'the statesmanship in this country ; because, if the men having the con- 
 duct of our public affairs were in earnest in what they told us nine months 
 ago regarding this government and this individual, — if they were in earnest, 
 and not charlatans imposing on us from day to day, — how are they now justi- 
 fied in putting our ships alongside of the ships of such a man ? If they were 
 not in earnest, then what sort of men have you got in power ? I want to 
 have their explanation about this. If I did not pity all those people who 
 were attacking us nine months ago, . — if I were not, in the spirit of a friend 
 of peace, to forget and forgive, — I could not have had a greater triumph than 
 to have brought down the papers and read extracts from what they were 
 saying when we met in Manchester, and anticipated what they are getting 
 ready for us in two or three days to come. Why, don't you remember the 
 caricature in which your humble servant was represented with very long 
 ears, thus — (placing his hands to his head, amidst loud laughter) . — be- 
 cause he stood up and declared that he did not believe that the French were 
 coming to invade us ? Who has got the long ears and the fool's cap, now ? 
 Well, I have alluded to all this, to show that there is a large number of 
 people in this country who are ready to believe anything that is told them 
 about some foreign foe coming to attack us ; and the reason is this — we 
 have too many people who are ignorant of the state of society abroad, and 
 who don't do justice to the condition in which people are placed in other 
 countries. They have too depreciating an opinion both of their economical 
 condition and also of their moral qualities, or they never would believe 
 these things. And it is the ignorance of what is going on in other coun- 
 tries — it is the fact that we are not sufficiently informed, and cannot be 
 sufficiently informed, of what is going on in other countries — that is one 
 great reason why I argue against our lending ourselves to interference in 
 the affairs of other countries. The Spaniards, who have a great number 
 of wise sayings, tell us that a fool knows more of what is going on in his 
 own house than the wise man does of that which is passing in his neigh- 
 bor's. But now you find those who are not wise men going together to 
 call out for war with Russia about the Eastern question, and I confess to 
 you that I have seen with perfect amazement the amount of ignorance 
 regarding the Turkish empire ; an amount of ignorance just exactly par- 
 allel to that displayed with reference to the condition of France, and by the 
 same persons — persons whom I would have expected, of all men in the 
 world, to have had more knowledge of these affairs. For instance, with 
 regard to the condition of Turkey in Europe, and the condition of the 
 Christian part of the population of European Turkey, why, our people, I 
 should have thought, would have sympathized with the mass of the people 
 in Turkey ; but I find that all their sympathies went for the minority of 
 
152 APPENDIX. 
 
 the people — for that dominant class or caste who are oppressing the majority 
 of the people of Turkey. Now, I don't say that this is any ground why we 
 should go to war in order to remedy the evils which exist in Turkey. But 
 I mean to say this, that, if we are going to war, it is of all things necessary 
 to know what we are going to do, otherwise we may incur all the expense 
 which was incurred in the last French war, and you may end in totally 
 failing to accomplish what you sought to effect. Now, I tell you, from my 
 knowledge of the Turkish empire, that not only all the king's horses and all 
 the king's men, but all the horses and the men of all the kings and emperors 
 in the world, cannot maintain the Mahometan population of Turkey in 
 Europe. There are seeds of decay and dissolution to be found, which, in the 
 very nature of things, you cannot combat against by fleets or armies. 
 
 Well, it may be said to me, " Why are you so presumptuous as to say 
 that you know this?" I don't profess to know more than other people 
 might know, if they chose to inquire about it. Nearly twenty years ago, 
 as my friend Mr. Tait, the publisher, happens to know, when there was 
 some outcry about this Eastern question, I commenced writing upon it. It 
 does not follow, however, because I wrote then on the Turkish question, 
 that I knew more than other people ; for we find every day how easy it is 
 for people to write upon the subject and know nothing about it. But during 
 the interval from that time to this I have paid a visit to Turkey, and I 
 have endeavoi-ed to make myself acquainted with everything which has 
 passed, and with everything which has been written by others who have 
 been there. And I confess that I see with utter amazement the prev- 
 alent ignorance that exists in this country as to what they are going 
 to fight about. They are going to fight to maintain Mahometanism in 
 Europe. But the precepts of the Koran are in opposition to the laws of 
 nature, which are the laws of God ; and the people who have that Koran 
 for their law cannot be perpetuated in Europe alongside of a Christian 
 population. Why, you have in Turkey in Europe three or four millions 
 of Turks ; and you have ten or twelve millions of Christians. I speak of 
 what is generally admitted ; because, as there is no census of the people, 
 one cannot speak with precise accuracy. Well, the Turks have been for 
 four hundred years the dominant race ; they have had all the power in the 
 country ; they have administered the laws ; they are the sole part of the 
 population that has been armed. The Christians have been treated like 
 dogs, and are called dogs ; they have had no social status whatever ; the 
 Koran acknowledges no relation between the Mahometan conquerors and 
 the Christians, but that of master and slave ; either kill them or make 
 them pay tribute is the distinct law of the Koran. Up to this moment, 
 there is no other relationship between the Mahometan governors and the 
 Christian subjects than that which I have described. Well, in spite of all 
 that, what is the state of matters at this moment ? The Turks are a decay- 
 ing people ; as Lamartine said, — and if any man was favorable to them, 
 it was Lamartine, — " Turkey is perishing for want of Turks." Well, not- 
 withstanding all these advantages, I say the Turks are a declining popu- 
 lation , while the Christians are constantly increasing by their side. But not 
 merely so ; all the wealth, all the accumulation of wealth, all the enterprise, 
 all the intelligence, all the progress, whether moral or material, belong to the 
 Christian population of European Turkey. Now, you may hear of a superior 
 governing an inferior race, as in the case of our own Indian empire ; but that 
 is only the case when the intelligence, the wealthy all the real progi-ess of a 
 country, and all the resources of science, are on the side of the dominant 
 race ; but you never yet knew, and you never will know, a race perpet- 
 uating the rule over another where these conditions are all reversed, and 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 153 
 
 where that race is the more ignorant, the least wealthy, the least enter- 
 prising, and altogether, in every respect by which you could mark the pro- 
 gress of power in a people, inferior to those whom they pretend to govern. 
 Well, this being the condition of things, the Emperor of Russia steps in, and 
 he says, " I intend to insure to these Christians in Turkey in Europe the 
 same treatment ; I intend to insure to these Christians under the authority 
 of the Porte the same treatment which Christians having the protection of 
 the French government have in Turkey." Well, that is what he asks ; and 
 England steps in, and France steps in, to resist this, and to advise the 
 Sultan to oppose it, because they say Russia meditates some selfish and 
 aggressive designs. That is very true ; but let me tell you that the people of 
 this world — that is, the unprivileged masses of all countries — have ever 
 gained their privileges and franchise by being lifted up by some nobles, or 
 by some tyrants of kings, who had sinister objects in trying to enlist their 
 sympathies. They wanted to gain something out of them ; and it was by 
 catering for the sympathies of the millions by nobles and kings in this 
 country that the masses of the people were lifted from their serfdom into 
 citizenship ; and, no doubt, the Emperor of Russia has the same sinister 
 object in view. He wishes to establish an imperium in imperio in Turkey, 
 and I have not the least doubt that he will succeed. I speak with great 
 diffidence, because I do not think that anybody not there on the spot, and 
 having the best opportunities of knowing what is the condition of things 
 there, is capable of speaking with authority ; but, from all I can learn, it 
 is this, — Christians are glad to get increased and improved toleration and 
 security against Mussulman wrong and violence, be it by the intervention 
 of Russia or anybody else. Take one fact which has transpired. It has 
 come out that, until Russia made this interference, the Christian population 
 of Turkey in Europe could not give evidence in a court of law against a 
 Mussulman for murder or theft, or any one who committed any act of 
 violence, either in the family or on the persons or property of any of them. 
 That is a state of society worse than even negro slavery in America. But 
 we are told that since the intervention by Russia an edict has emitted from 
 the Sultan, giving to the Christians the right to give evidence against a 
 Mussulman in a court of law. Does anybody doubt that the Christians will 
 attribute this great boon they have received — a boon which, for the first 
 time for four centuries, gives them the rights of citizenship — to the inter- 
 vention of the Emperor of Russia ? 
 
 My opinion is, that from the first there has been a great mistake in this 
 matter. If we intended to interfere in the matter, we should have done 
 what I believe we will come to do yet. We should have joined Russia in 
 insisting on the fullest religious liberty and perfect social equality for the 
 great majority of the Christians in Turkey in Europe : that is, if we inter- 
 fere at all — for my opinions are too well known to render it possible for 
 me to disguise them. What I would say is, leave them to themselves ; but, 
 if you interfere in any way at all, the only practicable way in which you 
 could hope to accomplish any good is, to join with Russia, as you have 
 joined with her when she was not one whit more sincere than now, in ob- 
 taining those rights and franchises which the Christian people of Turkey 
 demand. But there seems to me to be a leaning towards the Turks in this 
 matter, which would have appeared to me, unless we had been accustomed 
 to see those passing hallucinations and fantasies of our time, impossible. 
 The leaning in this country seems to be on the side of Turkey, simply 
 because Russia is coming with some sinister design upon Turkey ; and there 
 have been sent abroad the most gross misrepresentations as to the condition 
 of the Turkish population in Turkey. I must confess I never was more 
 
154 APPENDIX. 
 
 astonished in my life than on hearing a nobleman, who has been for ten or 
 twelve years foreign minister in this country, and who, if any man in 
 England ought to know the condition of Turkey in Europe, ought to know 
 something about it, say, in his place in Parliament, " I assert, without 
 fear of contradiction, that Turkey, so far from having gone back within the 
 last thirty years, has made greater progress and improvement, in every 
 ^possible way, than perhaps was ever made by any other country during the 
 same period. Compare the condition of Turkey now with what it was in 
 the reign of the Sultan Mahmoud, either with regard to the system of gov- 
 ernment as bearing upon the interests of the inhabitants, the state of the 
 army and navy, the administration of justice, the condition of agriculture, 
 manufactures and commerce, or religious toleration. I venture to say that, 
 in all these respects, Turkey has made immense progress during the period 
 I have mentioned." 
 
 Now, I say, where are the proofs of that ? Consult any writer who has 
 visited Turkey. Consult Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who, when he left the 
 embassy on leave of absence eighteen months ago, was entertained by the 
 British population at Constantinople to a banquet, and who there referred 
 to " the corruption which eats into the very foundations of society, and a 
 combination of force, fraud and intrigue, which obstruct the march of 
 progress, and poison the very atmosphere in which they prevail." And 
 again, he alludes, with the profoundest grief, " to the signs of weakness and 
 error which surround him, to the financial embarrassments of the govern- 
 ment, and the great charter issued by the present Sultan being discredited 
 by the non-execution of its promises." This is the opinion of a grave, 
 sedate, and long-experienced diplomatist, speaking in public : and if he 
 could say as much as that, and if every recent writer on the subject, up to 
 the latest, gives the same opinion, what must the present condition of Turkey 
 in Europe be ? I must confess that I never was more astonished in my life 
 than on hearing that statement of the noble lord. It appears to me that 
 we are running, from some motive or other, precisely the same course as in 
 the French invasion panic. For a moment of temporary triumph, for a 
 mere momentary cheer, we have statesmen making statements of this 
 description ; and I record here my deliberate and solemn conviction that 
 what I have read here of the speeeh of Lord Palmerston was the very 
 thing which, of all others, he would be most reluctant to see reproduced on 
 this or any other occasion. 
 
 But, I say, what can be the motive of misleading the people of the 
 country on this or any other subject ? Are we to be expected to go blindly 
 into a war to accomplish an impossibility ? Does anybody that knows 
 Turkey believe that a war with Russia would ever leave the Turks remain- 
 ing as a people in Europe, with three times the number of Christians around 
 them, and these possessing all the wealth and all the enterprise of the 
 country, though totally disarmed. I say, why are we proposing to rush 
 blindly into this war ? There may be one interpretation of it. It is pos- 
 sible that our government has told Turkey that if Turkey will resist these 
 attempts of Russia we shall support her ; and I have no hesitation in say- 
 ing that, if our government has said this, they ai*e bound to support 
 Turkey. If I were not standing here, I would say that if you take a feeble 
 man and tell him that, instead of yielding to the strong man that is coming 
 against him, you will join him in fighting him, — whether it is the case of 
 a nation or an individual, — I say that he is a skulking scoundrel that runs 
 away after giving that advice. But we are not going to have war now. 
 Wars do not happen on the Danube in November or October. We have got 
 till April at least ; and, in the mean time, all this matter will be so changed 
 in position, if not totally reversed, that we can take a new choice of atti- 
 
^0 
 
 APPENDIX. 155 
 
 tude upon the Eastern question. The sooner the people of England under- 
 stand the position cf Turkey, the better. It is not a question of Russian 
 invasion on us. It is an invasion, no doubt, on an unoffending power. 
 Russia has no quarrel with the Turkish government ; but is it on that 
 ground that we are called upon to exercise vengeance upon Russia, because 
 Russia encroaches upon Mahometan power in Europe ? Why, we have 
 ourselves the Great Mogul, a Mahometan sovereign, who ruled over three 
 times the dominion of the Sultan, divested of his authority, and shut up 
 as a puppet in Delhi. We have trampled down an empire in Burmah, 
 and with as little ceremony, as little reason and justice, as a ruffian would 
 go into the market-place, and kick down an apple-stall. Are we, who do 
 these things in the face of the world, to exercise God's vengeance on any 
 other country for doing the same things ? No ! That is not a ground we 
 can take up. I hope there is not hypocrisy enough extant to say that we 
 are bound to go to war to prevent injustice to the Mahometans in Europe, 
 when we have done far worse to Mahometans where they are more at 
 home — I mean in Asia. 
 
 But they say it is because we have treaties with the Turks that we are 
 going to fight their battles. I am just throwing these things before you ; 
 you will have plenty of time to consider them, as we are not going to have a 
 fight on the Danube in the month of November. The opposing armies there 
 will have to fight, not with one another, but with pestilence, and swamp, 
 and cold, and starvation, and fever ; they will be too much occupied with 
 these grim enemies to contend against each other. You are not going to fight 
 for treaties ; you have no treaties to fight about. Look into any of these 
 newspapers that are raising the wai'-cry, and calling for the fulfilment of our 
 treaties with Turkey. They do not know but what we have a treaty which 
 binds us to fight for the maintenance of Turkey ; that is, to keep the lines 
 on the map the same as they now are, though I hardly know anybody who 
 knows what the bounds of Turkey are. The thing is an absurdity. We 
 have no such treaty with Turkey. There have been settlements from time to 
 time, as that in which Turkey called on France and England to rescue her 
 from the Pasha of Egypt, in 1840. Then there were certain conditions made 
 defining how the Pasha of Egypt should have Egypt hereditary in his family ; 
 and there are other treaties of a similar kind to which we were parties. But 
 we are not bound by any treaty to defend the integrity of the Turkish 
 empire. If America were to take Turkey to-morrow, — if she were to take 
 possession of Asia Minor, and keep it for her debt, — we are not bound to go 
 to war with America. And so in regard to other arguments we have heard. 
 We are not bound in any way to be parties to anything that may happen in 
 Turkey. We are not bound to interfere either externally or internally. We 
 are bound not to violate the treaties we have made, by upsetting the settle- 
 ment which we have been parties to ; but we are not bound to fight to pre- 
 serve those territorial arrangements, if other people choose to interfere with 
 them. It has been settled with regard to the greatest territorial treaty that 
 ever was entered into, — the treaty of Vienna, by which the whole boundaries 
 of Europe were defined, — it has been settled by the Earl of Aberdeen and the 
 Duke of Wellington, by the whig party, and all who were parties to it, that, 
 while we are bound not to violate that treaty, we are not bound to go to war 
 to maintain the integrity of the countries whose boundaries were fixed by 
 that treaty. Therefore, if you hear anybody filling up a phrase about a 
 treaty, ask him to tell you where that treaty is, the date of it, and where to 
 find it. And so it is in regard to the word " ally." We are bound to go to 
 war to defend our ancient ally. We have had more alliances with Russia 
 than with Turkey ; and we are not bound by any treaties whatever to main- 
 **-^« Turkey, any more than to maintain Tuscany, or Holland, or any other 
 
156 APPENDIX. 
 
 power. Divest the question of these points that touch the honor of the 
 nation, and then you bring it to what it really is — to a question of self- 
 interest. I am not going to enter into that subject ; I am sorry I have tres- 
 passed so long upon your time ; but I am going to enter into that subject 
 to-morrow at the public meeting. Let us have as large a public meeting as 
 we can have, and let us have the matter discussed here, and let us throw 
 down the truth before the public, and they will, I have no doubt, receive it, 
 and be more disposed to take the truth from you now, than they will to take 
 error from those who proved themselves so unworthy to be their guides nine 
 months ago. 
 
 
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