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Kief, in Poland, or at Moscow, its subjects have been of the same Sclavic race. Russia has been conquered by the Tartars, and subjugated by Poland, but it has never subjected an independent state of another family, for the Baltic provinces and Finland were not independent states when they came under her dominion, and the barbarians she has subjected in the Caucasus were no more states than are our Indian tribes. Poland was of the same race, and originally an integral part of Russia; afterwards she became an independent kingdom, and twice subjected Russia, even in the seventeenth century. Besides, the partition of Poland and her extinction as an independent state were not the work of Russia alone. Its chief instigator and prime mover was Frederic the Great of Prussia, and Russia only shared the spoils with that most unscrupulous prince and the house of Austria. We do not approve the act, we condemn it; but its guilt is less that of the Sclavic power than of the two German powers. The conquests of Russia in the East are only a just retaliation on the Turks and Tartars, and have really done little more than recover the possessions of her grand dukes, wrested from them by Tartar and Turkish aggressions. The Black Sea was in the tenth and eleventh centuries known as the Mare Russicum, and Georgia in Asia voluntarily became a fief of Russia in the sixteenth century.

These considerations prove that the Sclavic race is not a conquering race, and that Russia is by no means to be singled out as an aggressive power. Her eastern conquests-and she shows no disposition to extend her dominions westwardly have warded off from Europe a greater danger than is to be apprehended from her. By them she has chas tised the Tartar hordes, and saved Europe and southern Asia from the dread of new Timours and Genghiskhans, as well as broken the terrible Ottoman power, and opened the way to the redemption of the Christian populations of the East. The Catholic powers of Europe had been false to their mission, France above all the rest, and notwithstanding the shock given to the Turkish power at the battle of Lepanto, it did not cease to be formidable to Europe, especially to Austria, weakened by the divisions of Germany introduced by Protestantism, and constantly obliged to defend herself against French aggression, till Russian policy and arms had conquered the Crimea, and gained the command of the Black Sea. Russia for the last hundred and fifty

years and more has really been fighting the battles of Christendom against the followers of the Prophet, in continuation of the old crusades preached by the popes; and if God gives her her reward, it is not for those to murmur who neglected the interests of Christendom to fight one another. We are sorry that the madness and folly of the Catholic powers of Europe should have left these battles to be fought by a schismatic power, but Christian Europe ought to be grateful that they have been fought, and places itself in a very contemptible light when it makes her having fought and won them the pretext of fighting her. Schismatic as Russia is, we should be glad to find a single Catholic power. that during the last hundred and fifty years has not proved itself less Christian in its foreign politics.

We are no apologists for Russia, but we deny that she is. a peculiarly aggressive power, or that she shows any remarkable disposition to turn her power against the rights or possessions of her neighbors. Since the time of Peter the Great, she may have added by conquest and policy some twenty millions to her population, counting her share of Poland. During the same time, by sheer conquest, without a shadow of a claim, without any pretence of a right, Great Britain has added to the number of her subjects at least one hundred and twenty millions, and her protectorate in Central America and the Spanish peninsula will more than offset the Russian protectorate in Moldavia and Wallachia. The czar reigns probably over about seventy millions of people. Queen Victoria, counting the colonies, reigns over more than twice that number, and as a maritime power is more formidable to the independence of nations than her northern rival can be. Whatever the faults of Russia, Great Britain is the last power on earth that has the right to call her to account for them. Let her look at Ireland and India, and at her colonies wrested from France, Spain, Portugal, and Holland, and blush to accuse Russia of aggression. It is not seemly for Satan to rebuke sin.

France has hands not a whit more clean, though she has been less happy in retaining her conquests. How long is it since she invaded and subjugated all Italy, not excepting the Papal States, and annexed it virtually, if not formally, with the exception of Venice, to her empire? How long is it since the Italian peninsula, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Holland, Rhenish Germany, the duchy of Warsaw, &c., were governed either by vassal kings or prefects of France,

and a French army swelled by recruits from twenty tributary nations invaded Russia, and penetrated to Moscow, her ancient capital? We are only a middle-aged man, and we have seen all Europe twice in arms to prevent France from establishing a universal monarchy, and extinguishing the last spark of liberty and national autonomy in the Old World. Never since the great Tartar robbers, Tamerlane and Genghiskhan, has the spirit of aggression and conquest had so brilliant a representative as the world saw and felt in Napoleon the First, but not the last. How long is it, again, since France took possession of Algiers, a tributary of the Turkish sultan, and which she still holds, notwithstanding her talk about maintaining the independence and integrity of the Ottoman empire? Let her recall these facts, and the acquisition of Bretagne, French Flanders, and Lorraine, let her reflect on her present longings to absorb Savoy and Belgium, perhaps to restore and extend the limits of the Napoleonic empire, and spare the world her moral lectures on the grasping ambition and aggressive spirit of Russia.

We do not accept the reasons or the reasoning set forth in the manifestoes of France and England. We do not believe that either has any respect for Turkey, or any wish to maintain the existing balance of power. The prime mover, we take it, is the emperor of the French. His policy we think is patent enough. To conciliate France and the European powers, he consented to waive in his personal case the hereditary principle, and to succeed to the empire by popular election; but he considers himself, we cannot doubt, the heir of the empire of his uncle, and bound in honor to do his best to restore the limits it had in 1812, prior to the disastrous Russian campaign. Why has he married into a private family and proclaimed himself a parvenu? Why does he delay his coronation? Be assured that there is significance in all this, and that he is resolved, as far as in him lies, to revenge the disasters of the French arms, to wipe off the disgrace of France, to realize the dream of his uncle, and to reestablish the empire of Charlemagne, -to which possibly he intends to add or prepare the way for his successors to add, the empire of the East, so that imperial France shall be more than coextensive with imperial Rome in her proudest days. Two powers only are capable of preventing him from binding his brows with the crown of Charlemagne. These are Russia and Great Britain, and these he must, if possible, place hors de combat.

In 1852, Great Britain was in ill odor on the continent. She had, by her course in the revolutionary movements of 1848, gained the ill-will of every continental state, except Sardinia. The first thought of the prince-president, soon to be his imperial majesty, was, under cover of this continental ill-feeling, to invade England, and either make her a French province, or so cripple her power as to disable her from interfering with his future proceedings. In this he was defeated by the conciliatory continental policy of the Derby minstry, and by the union and good understanding of the Russian and English courts at Constantinople. He must then divide these two powers, and use Great Britain to help him to dispose of Russia. His present policy is, we presume, by the aid of Great Britain and such other European powers as they can coax or bully into a coalition with them, to reduce the power of Russia, by stripping her of her maritime provinces and shutting her out from the Baltic and the Euxine, to raise him up a powerful ally in the East, strengthened by the restoration of the Crimea and the Asiatic provinces conquered by Russia, and a good friend in the North, by the reannexation of Finland and the Baltic provinces to Sweden, and then to divide his allies and beat them in detail. The war with Russia is intended to confine the northern bear within his hyperborean regions, so that he will be unable to afford assistance to the German powers when the time comes to attack them, and to exhaust in a war in his interest the resources of Great Britain, so that he can have no fear in his future operations of her hostility. These two powers crippled or exhausted, he can easily dispose of Germany. By the aid of Italy, Hungary, and Turkey, he can bring Austria to terms, and then it will be but child's play to dispose of Prussia and the Low Countries, Spain, and Portugal. Then he may go to Rome and demand of the Holy Father the crown of Charlemagne, and start on his conquest of the East.

This is extravagant, no doubt, but not too extravagant for a Bonaparte clothed with absolute power, and seated on the throne of France. That it will be accomplished, we do not believe; but if Russia is worsted in the present war, it may not be impossible, and we have not the least doubt but that Prussia and Austria, whether they join with the allies or remain neutral, will be reduced to a deeper humiliation than they reached under Napoleon I., and Germany, like Italy, will become a simple geographical expression. As

long as Napoleon was at war with the revolutionists, Germany had nothing to fear from him; his and her enemies were the same. But by espousing the cause of Turkey, allying himself with England, and making war on Russia, he makes her enemies his friends, enlists the revolutionists on his side, and becomes their leader against her. Do you hear him any longer denounced by Kossuth, Mazzini, or any of the red-republican chiefs? What means their ominous silence? What means it, but that they regard France and England as fighting their battles? The only European statesman who seems to have foreseen the danger to Europe from the reëstablishment of the Napoleonic dynasty was the Emperor Nicholas, who, at the earliest moment, attempted to form those diplomatic combinations which might preserve the peace of the world. His confidential conversations with the British minister at his court in the beginning of last year, so shamefully misinterpreted, are brilliant proofs of his foresight, his statesmanship, and his loyalty. But Napoleon has contrived to hoodwink the English court, and to induce it to treat those conversations, so frank and so loyal, as proofs of the czar's ambitious designs against the Ottoman empire.

Great Britain, we think, did not originally wish to engage in a war against Russia; she has been drawn into it by France, partly to escape the threatened French invasion, which we believe was seriously intended, partly to save her commercial interest in the Ottoman empire, and partly to prevent the advance of Russia, not to Constantinople, where she has no wish to go at present, but to the Persian Gulf, which would transfer her commercial supremacy to her northern rival. If Russia should advance to the Persian Gulf, she would, till rivalled by us, be the first commercial power in the world, and reduce England to a thirdrate power. It is, if any one considers in what direction it is the tendency of Russia to advance, and the routes her trade takes, a far more important position for her than Constantinople, and Persia is likely to fall under Russia much sooner than Turkey in Europe. England, whose soul is in trade, and who has a quick eye to every commercial advantage, no doubt sees this danger to her commerce, and has wished to avert it, by undertaking, in concert with France, to prevent Russia from becoming a great maritime power, and getting command of the southern routes of the trade of Asia, as she already has of the northern. Looked at

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