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

war. They possibly were caught in their own trap, and wished to get out of it at the earliest moment they could without absolute disgrace.

Russia has, we repeat, suffered no serious loss. What, then, have the allies really gained? Turkey is recognized as a member of the European family of nations, and placed under the European system of international law, a policy which France has pursued steadily for over three hundred years; but she is weaker, more distracted, and if possible, more corrupt than at the breaking out of the war, and really counts for less in the balance of power against Russia. France has, perhaps, secured the Napoleonic dynasty, made her emperor acknowledged as a legitimate sovereign, and gained him personally a high rank among contemporary monarchs. In revenge, she has created a ruinous speculative spirit at home, entered into the material system at the head of which stands Great Britain, and burdened herself with a heavy national debt, which for years to come, will place her interests at the mercy of Jews and stock jobbers. England has succeeded for the moment in destroying the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, but she has not destroyed Russia as a maritime power, as was her intention. She has not stripped Russia of Circassia and her trans-Caucasian provinces or influence; she has not got possession of the inland route of trade with the East, opened new outlets to her manufactures in upper Asia, or gained any additional security for her Indian empire, and has largely increased her national debt, and the taxes, already greater than her people were willing to bear. Austria gets the free navigation of the Danube, but is obliged, as she was not before, to share it with all the nations of the world, and has lost her northern ally, on whom she can no longer depend to sustain her in the fearful Italian question which, if not now, must soon be raised. Sardinia, perhaps, may boast of having obtained the protection of France and England in her anti-Catholic and tyrannical domestic policy, and perhaps the hope of one day adding to her states the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom,-a hope which may prove an illusion. The balance of power remains as far as ever from being adjusted, and the questions of the Danubian principalities and of the Christian population of Turkey are, we suspect, by no means definitively settled. Russia abandons her protectorate over the principalities, but she has not lost their affections, nor have the allies gained them. Russia

has, perhaps, abandoned her quasi-protectorate of the schismatic Greeks of the sultan's dominions, but the allies have only strengthened their attachment to her, and made them. even less disposed to look to them for their deliverance than they were before.

We place no confidence in the edict issued by the sultan proclaiming the civil and religious equality of his Christian subjects. The edict does not by any means establish perfect equality between the Christians and Mussulmans of the empire, and it contains clauses which reserve, if such is the pleasure of the sultan, the predominance of the Mussulmans. But even if the edict did proclaim entire equality, it would amount to nothing, because the government is and must continue, till it ceases to exist, in the hands of the infidels, who will have every facility of using its power against the Christians. Equality between the two classes is impossible. The Turkish state, as far as it is a state at all, is founded on the Koran, and is and must be a Mahometan state. The Koran contains not only its religion, but its legislation, and the government must be administered, so far as it is legally administered, in accordance with its principles. The Mahometan law must rule the courts, and regulate all political and civil transactions not subject to the arbitrary will of the sultan or his officials. In fact, all Turks are the slaves of the sultan, and we cannot see what liberty the Christian acquires by being placed on a footing of equality with them. They are relieved from the capitation tax, but in revenge they are compelled to perform military service. The policy of the measure is to make the Christians and Turks a single people, and to destroy the separate nationality of Christians; that is, to absorb the Christian nationality in the Turkish. Hitherto, the Christians, though conquered, have retained their religion and their nationality. Despised and ill-treated by the Turks as a conquered people, they certainly have been, but when they had paid the capitation tax, which was of the nature of a tribute, they were, in theory at least, left free to live under their own laws, and to observe their own religion and their own customs. Their bishops and priests were their ecclesiastical and civil rulers and magistrates. The new arrangement destroys at one blow their nationality, which has survived the conquest, sweeps away their national organization, deprives their bishops and clergy of all civil functions, and leaves them all to be governed by Mahometan