The eastern Christians have received nothing from Great Britain except insult and injury. By an "untoward event" she aided in destroying the Turkish fleet at Navarino, but she used all her influence to prevent Hellas from becoming an independent state, and succeeded in restricting her to the smallest possible dimensions, for fear of having in her a rival commercial state. The worst enemy the Christians of the Greek schismatic communion have had has been the English resident minister at the Ottoman court, who used his influence with the sublime porte to strip their bishops and priests of important civil and political rights which they had held and exercised from the time of the conquest, because he found them in the way of the Exeter Hall policy of protestantizing, or rather rationalizing the East. Austria had done something occasionally for the Catholics of Bosnia, Albania, and the bordering provinces, but nothing for the mass of the Christians of the empire. Since rolling back the Mussulman hordes from Vienna in 1683, she has had as much as she could do to defend herself against France, Prussia, and her own revolted subjects, and has done little to meliorate the condition of the Christian populations of the East. Our own country, at an early day in its national existence, chastised the Barbary powers on the coast of Africa, and refused to pay tribute to be protected from the Algerine corsairs, but it has done nothing for the Christians of the East, save to annoy and vex them with a few Protestant missionaries.

It is not the fault of Russia, then, if the Christians of the East regard her with more affection than they do the western powers, and hope more from her than from them. She has been their only friend among Christian powers, and it has been owing to her continuation of the war of the crusades against Turkey that their condition has of late years been much ameliorated. Nobody can deny that her protection of the Danubian principalities has greatly served their material condition and promoted their social prosperity, and, if she had not been interfered with, the whole of ancient Greece-Thessaly, Macedonia, Epirus-would be now independent of the Ottoman despotism. It is with an ill grace that the western powers complain of Russia because the Christians of the East love her better than they do them; and to go to war with her on that account is hardly just or magnanimous. If they had done their duty, treated them as brethren, and used their influence for their emancipa

tion, they might have gained their affections, and prevented them from throwing themselves into the arms of Russia, or hoping their deliverance from Russian intervention.

These, and other considerations, have made us look upon the war from the first as a war of aggression on the part of the western powers. The pretence set up, in the first instance, that it was a war for the maintenance and integrity of the Ottoman empire, was futile, and could deceive no one of ordinary information on the subject. How could France honestly contend for the independence and integrity of the Ottoman empire, while she held Algeria; or England, while she held possession of Aden? Still more futile was the cry of the English press, that it was a war on behalf of civilization against barbarism. None but Englishmen,we should say English editors, we should suppose, could have the face to assert that a war to sustain the Ottoman rule over the fairest region of the globe is a war on behalf of civilization, and we doubt if many Englishmen even could be found to believe it. Russia may include barbarians within her vast dominions, as does England, but she is not a barbarous power; and, probably, there is no existing nation that has made such rapid advances in civilization during the last two hundred years as this same Muscovite nation; no sovereign ever labored more diligently and indefatigably for the civilization of his subjects than the late Emperor Nicholas; and, if we may judge from the conduct of each in the late war, the Russians are far more civilized than the English, who seemed at times to have retained all the barbarism of their old Norse ancestors, and to have been no unfit comrades of the Turks.

The purpose of the war, we suppose, was that of repressing Russia, and bringing Turkey within the pale of the European system of international law, as avowed by the French writers. Russia was too powerful, and seemed to threaten, not by her aggressive spirit, but by her natural expansion, the liberty and independence of western and southern Europe. She had already obtained the protectorate of the Danubian principalities, and could easily obtain their consent to incorporate them into her empire any day she chose. These principalities are the key of eastern and central Europe, and, possessing them, she could hold Austria in check, and advance on Constantinople, and absorb, by the aid of the Christian population, all European Turkey, almost without the necessity of striking a blow.

From her new acquisitions in Manchouria, on the North of China, she could overawe and gradually absorb the Celestial empire, while from Circassia and her trans-Caucasian provinces, she could, without much difficulty, extend her dominion over Persia, Khiva, Bokhara, Afghanistan, Beloochistan, and subjugate all Asia to the North of India, to the Indus on the East, and the Persian Gulf, Arabia, and the Mediterranean on the South, and thus establish an empire larger than that founded by Gengiskhan, larger than that founded by the Saracens, indeed larger than any empire that has hitherto existed. With this vast empire Russia could aspire to universal monarchy. It seemed, therefore, desirable to European statesmen to erect, in season, a barrier to her further extension.

We can understand, and, thus far, approve their policy, and we admit that the power of Russia was becoming too great for the perfect safety of western Europe, in their present divided condition. But many things might intervene to prevent the realization of the dream of a universal monarchy by Russia, if, in fact, she entertained it, and there were other and more efficient means of preventing it than war, or the attempt to make the Ottoman empire strong enough to hold the Russian in check. The danger will exist so long as the principalities are regarded as Ottoman territory, and the vast countries likely to be absorbed by Russia are subject either to Mahometan or to pagan princes. China will inevitably be absorbed either by England from the South, or by Russia from the North and West. Not all the power of the western nations can revive Turkey and Persia, and make them efficient barriers to a Christian power like Russia, planted on their northern frontiers; and if it were possible, it would create a greater danger to western civilization than can be apprehended from Russia, for Russia is a civilized power, and belongs to the Christian family of nations. The power of Islam is broken, and there is no hope for the Mussulman nations. They cannot be made to suffice for their own defence. Granting that the end the allies proposed was laudable, their policy as to the means or mode of securing it was singularly short-sighted

and inefficient.

war.

We are confirmed in this conclusion by the results of the We do not know the precise terms of the treaty, the exact extent of the conditions imposed upon Russia, or, if the reader prefers, of the concessions made by her; but it

is evident that no serious damage has been done to her power, and she comes out of the struggle, perhaps, really stronger than she went into it. The war has thus far proved that France and Great Britain alone are not an equal match for Russia. They have had against her, besides their own forces, the whole force of the Ottoman empire, the valuable aid of Sardinia, and the diplomatic influence of Austria, and yet, without the active accession of the Austrian army and the coöperation of Sweden, it is doubtful whether they could have made the campaign of 1856 without losing the game. It does not appear that Russia solicited peace, although she was willing to make considerable concessions in order to obtain it. The party, after Austria, most solicitous for peace, undoubtedly was the Emperor Napoleon, who could derive no advantage by continuing the war for a longer time. Russia seems to us to have lost none of her prestige in this war, and we confess that we appreciate more highly her civilization, her cultivation and humanity, and her power and resources, than we did before she engaged in the struggle. Nothing has been done by all the force arrayed against her to exhaust her resources, to diminish her power, or to damp her courage. Yet it is not every day that such a force can be arrayed against her. The alliance of France and England cannot be counted on as a permanent alliance. It will most likely be dissolved in a very few years, and may not occur again for a century. Without that alliance, or one still more difficult of France with Austria, there can be no combination against Russia strong enough to hold her in check.

We take it for granted that the Black Sea is neutralized, that Russia has bound herself not to rebuild her fleet, or refortify Sebastopol, to abandon her coast defences, and to reduce Nicolaief to a commercial port; but this for the moment is rather to her advantage than disadvantage. In closing the Black Sea to her fleets and naval armaments, the allies have closed it to their own, which will save her the expense of reconstructing her fleet, rebuilding Sebastopol, and keeping up her naval armaments and coast defences. The neutralization of the Black Sea leaves her free to complete her system of internal communications, and to connect Sebastopol, Odessa, Cherson, and Nicolaief by railroads with one another and with Moscow and St. Petersburg. The peace may last long enough for her to do that, and having done it, she will be prepared to disregard any im

pediments to the expansion of her power in the Euxine the treaty may contain, in defiance of any opposition of the western powers. All she wants is time. If she had had these railroads, the allies would never have been able to pass a winter in the Crimea. The agreement not to reconstruct the fortress of Bomarsund, or to fortify the Aland Isles may be a mortification, but it does her no injury. Her defences on the Baltic and the Gulf of Bothnia are much stronger than at the breaking out of the war, and she is at liberty to open channels of communication, which, while they serve the purposes of military defence, will develop the industry and material resources of her western provinces. In a word, the war seems to have shown Russia wherein lies her disadvantage in the face of the allies, and the peace, without really weakening her, leaves her free to remedy it, and to put herself in a posture, whether of defence or of attack, far more formidable than that in which she stood in

1853.

The allies, it seems to us, have done too much or too little. They have done enough to irritate Russia, to throw her back on herself, to stimulate her to develop her resources, to consolidate her power; but not enough to weaken her effectually, and to make it difficult for her to recover from the losses she has sustained. If they really wished so to weaken her as to prevent her from being able for a long series of years to threaten the balance of power, they should not, unless compelled, have made peace. They should have continued the war till they had effectually crushed her, and with the principalities and her southern provinces constituted an independent Christian state, capable, with moderate assistance from the West, of resisting her advance towards Constantinople. The fact of their having made peace when they did, and on terms so little unfavorable to Russia, creates a suspicion that they felt themselves unable to prosecute the war further without greater loss to themselves than they were likely to inflict on her, and also that they, as well as the late Russian emperor, had got involved in the war without wishing or intending it. It is very possible that the strong desire for peace manifested by the late Emperor Nicholas, and his obvious reluctance to engage in the war, deceived them, and encouraged them to rise in their demands. The readiness with which he accepted their first propositions made them believe, perhaps, that he would accept others still less favorable to him, rather than go to