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WO months ago most of us believed that this country stood on the brink of war with Russia, and perhaps also with Prussia-with the two strongest military Powers of the present day. The casus belli was, not an actual attack, but an intention expressed by Russia to establish an arsenal and fleet which might, in time to come, be used in an attack on Constantinople, And when we sought for allies, we found only Austria which could be counted on with certainty to give us effectual aid.

Happily we have escaped the danger this time. But we have not always been so fortunate. Sixteen years ago we were actually plunged into war with Russia to defend Turkey; and

on that occasion

Austria, for whose help we lately looked so confidently, did not think herself called upon to fight, although, as Kinglake says, the outrage then complained of was the occupation of two provinces which abutted on the Austrian dominions; and of all the great Powers, Austria was the chief sufferer.'

The champion who then stood by us in our conflict with the Giant of the North in defence of the beautiful Queen of the Bosporus was France. Yet only fourteen years before we had run the greatest risk of war with that very Power by lending the Sultan the aid of our forces to subdue his rebellious vassal, Mehemet Ali.

These three occasions are the salient points in a course of policy which England has steadily pursued for upwards of forty years. During that time no nation has ever gone before her in the endeavour to uphold the Empire of the Sultan, and she has watched over his territories as jealously as if they had been her own. Yet it has not of late years been the usual habit of British statesmen to interfere lightly in the

embroilments of Continental governments, either with each other or with their subjects. Thus we have seen Austria and Prussia league together to seize provinces from Denmark; Sardinia has won back Italy from Austria and the petty sovereigns amongst whom it had been divided; Prussia has carved out for herself an empire with the sword; and revolutions have succeeded or been crushed in almost every country in Europe; without England stretching forth her arm to help or hinder.

It is certain that the English Government and the English people, who are nearly always at one with their Government in this matter, must think they see some very vital interest of their own bound up with the welfare of the Ottoman Empire. It will be useful at the present time, when there is likely to be much discussion of the Eastern Question throughout Europe, to look closely into this forward and jealous policy of ours, and to search diligently whether there be in very truth any good and sufficient reason for it. For our motives here are by no means so obvious, as they are in the only other case in which we habitually depart from our general rule of non-intervention. A glance at the map will show anyone why we look after Belgium; and it will also show him that there are scarcely two countries, with a sea-bord in Europe, whose relative positions towards England are more different than those of Belgium and Turkey.

In this enquiry we naturally turn first to the reasons given by the Ministry which engaged in the great conflict with Russia in 1854. On the night on which Parliament was called upon to express its approval of the declaration of war, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs said:

In entering on the war now, we do so to repel aggression and to secure a peace honourable to Turkey. I believe there is not a man in the dominions of the Czar who does not expect that Constantinople will ultimately belong to Russia. It will be

our duty, as far as we possibly can, to prevent the realisation of that expectation, and to take care that a Russian occupation may never begin there. Were it to succeed,

and were Russia to be in possession of Constantinople, commanding, as she would then do, the Black Sea and its shores, being enabled, as she would, to occupy Circassia and Georgia and to convert the populations of these frontier countries into one mighty army, having access to the Mediterranean and a vast naval fleet in the Baltic, and determined, as she now is, to increase her naval power by all those facilities which steam and modern inventions have afforded for the transport of troops with all these advantages, were Russia in possession of Constantinople, it would not be too much to anticipate that more than one Western Power would have

to undergo the fate of Poland. The wealth

And the more

and the intelligence and the civilisation of Europe would be no more a barrier against encroachments on the part of Russia than were the intelligence and civilisation of ancient Rome against the encroachments of the Huns and Vandals. we examine this question the more gigantic is the aspect it assumes. It is not merely the protection of Turkey against the aggression of Russia which is concerned in the Eastern Question, as it is commonly called, but it is the battle of civilisation against barbarism for the maintenance of the independence of Europe. Already,

without territorial aggrandisement, the policy pursued by Russia has, in a great measure, placed the nations of Germany in a state of dependence. Several foreign governments, but more particularly those of Germany, have been acted upon by Russia with a strength and influence which have been, and always will be, exercised to check education, the free expression of opinion, and that progress which is essential to civilisation.

From this speech we gather that England was obliged to go to war in the due performance of her devoir as the champion of civilisation, progress, constitutional liberty, and national independence throughout the world. But two difficulties meet us in our way to the acceptance of this theory. Although our Foreign Office, ever since it first came under the control of Canning's

mind, has freely offered its sympathy to those who gave their lives and energies for the furtherance of freedom abroad, it has never deemed it the duty of this country to take up arms in their behalf. It is hard to believe that England went to war to prevent the remote contingency of some Western State undergoing the fate of Poland, though she has never lifted a finger to help the Poles themselves in their desperate attempts to avert their fate. But harder still is it to believe that she upheld the despotism of the Sultan and the domination of the Turk over the Christian only in the general interests of liberty and progress. That statesman must indeed have had a remarkable sort of foresight who could see in the harem the nursery of enlightened education, in an administration of the Oriental type an institution favourable to the free expression of opinion, and in universal stagnation and corruption the seeds of the progress which is essential to civilisation.

But whatever may have been the motives of Ministers in going to war, Lord Clarendon's words most certainly did not express the motives of the people in supporting and urging

them forward. That small section of Englishmen which holds any opinion at all about the state of Turkey may be divided into two classes. One regards the Turkish conquerors as

tyrannising over vastly larger populations of patient, industrious Christian rayals, forcing them to obey a law which disposes of life, property, and honour without any fixed adherence to the rules of sound reason or of common ex

perience, and is founded on the precepts of a religion which they disbelieve and detest; neutralising one of the finest climates and devas-` tating one of the most fertile soils in the world by oppressive taxes and arbitrary administration.

The other school consists of the disciples of those imaginative tra

vellers who, going to Eastern countries in early life and becoming charmed with their glimpse of the grand, simple, violent world that they had read of in their Bibles coming home, bring back with their chibouques and their scymitars a zeal for the cause of Turkey.' These look with equal contempt on the Christian rayahs, and disapproval towards the numerous modern reforms which the Western Powers have lately been forcing the Government of the Sultan to engraft on the venerable trunk of Mahometan simplicity. Surely neither of these classes could persuade themselves that in taking up arms for the Turk they did so in furtherance of the cause of liberty and progress. We must look for some other clue to our policy than that afforded by Lord Clarendon.

The commercial interests of this country are frequently assigned as a sufficient reason for keeping Russia away from Constantinople at all costs. Now, supposing that the prosperity of the trade with Turkey does depend on the continuance of the present régime, England's stake in it is not so much higher than that of other nations as to account for her willingness to bear a burden of difficulty and danger which they will scarce touch with one of their fingers. In fact the English ships. which annually enter the Golden Horn are absolutely fewer in number than those which sail thither under the flag of at least one Mediterranean State. And it is incredible that England should be ready at any moment to subject to the injuries of war the vast ramifications of her trade in all parts of the world for the sake of fostering one of its smallest branches; whilst other nations, to which the traffic with Turkey is a main source of wealth, rest comparatively indifferent to attempts made to destroy it.

But what is the present state of Turkey, the continuance of which is so essential to trade? With the

exception of a short line of railway the country is absolutely without roads. A recent traveller describes how throughout the greater part of his journey along the principal (socalled) highway leading from Varna he had to make a détour through the fields to avoid the road, which was utterly impassable! In most districts, however, highways do not exist even in theory; and another traveller informs us that whenever a great officer of State has occasion to go from one place to another the whole population is turned out to clear a road for him, which becomes overgrown and useless again after he has passed by. Such is the state of things in European Turkey. In Asia Minor they seem to be just as bad; for it is said that there are districts-that of Sivas, for instance -where grain is so abundant as to sell for an old song, for want of roads; whilst on the Black Sea coast, not a hundred miles off, the rival produce of Russia commands. a high price.

Again, the chief export of Turkey is grain. Here is what two authors, staunch advocates of the Mahometan rule, tell us of the benign and economical way in which the tax on the production of this staple is gathered:

The day of harvest arrives, and the grain is cut. But not a sheaf may be carried home until the tax-farmer or his delegate comes to take his share. The Beylikji frequently appears two or three weeks after the corn is cut, during the whole of which time it remains at the mercy of the weather, or of the pigeons, who never fail to exact their tithe from it. In looking at the sheaves thus left upon the fields have frequently noticed that, from the heat of the sun and other causes, much of the grain falls out, and that, instead of sixty or seventy grains in the ear, we could rarely find more than one-third of that number, whilst every day the loss became greater and greater.

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The loss thus occasioned cannot be estimated at less than six or eight per cent., and the tithe costs the peasant sixteen or eighteen instead of ten per cent. through the negligence of the tax-farmer, who, though he must be aware that he loses in

proportion, probably regards such an infinitesimal percentage as of no account, being occupied during this time with other affairs, which bring him in from one hundred to one hundred and fifty per cent., and which enable him to disregard the loss of a few hundred piastres in the village whilst he is making some hundreds of pounds in the town.

It is needless to allude to the maze in which civil justice is now hidden at Constantinople, through which Greek cunning alone is equal to the achievement of threading its way to mercantile success. And as for the myth concerning the bias of Turkish statesmen towards free trade principles, we recommend any believer in it to certain instructive studies on this subject to be found in Sir Henry Bulwer's Life of Lord Palmerston. Enough has been said to show that our position in the Eastern Question cannot be justified on commercial grounds.

Two objects remain to be considered, which are commonly held to give England a concern above, and apart from, that of any other nation in the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire. First, the safety of India, which is supposed to be endangered by the growing power of Russia; second, the necessity of keeping open our communications with our Eastern possessions by the Isthmus of Suez.

In examining the first of these reasons, one is struck at the outset with surprise that the two great propagators of European civilisation in Asia should be looked upon as natural enemies, rather than as the sources of immense moral support to each other. The Russians in Central Asia are at least so far like ourselves in India that they are Christians and Europeans in the midst of heathen and Asiatic peoples. Russia may not yet have reached the same grade in civilisation on which Great Britain stands, but the chiefs of her forces, and the leading men in her colonies in Central Asia, who must to a great extent mould the opinions of their

countrymen in Eastern politics, have probably acquired in European society the same tastes and modes of thought which form the characters of our own civil and military officers. They pursue science as zealously as ourselves. The great object of their aggressions, as of ours, is to open out the continent of Asia to commerce; and surely in that continent there is room enough for us both. So long as we are operating, as we now are, in widely separated fields-so long as there stands between the sunny plains which we possess, and the rich valleys which Russia as yet only covets, the broad and high barrier of the rugged, inhospitable, profitless mountain land of the Hindu Koosh and the northern and eastern parts of Afghanistan, it seems strange that we should regard each other with distrust and apprehension. Nor is it easy to understand why our commercial interests should clash with hers. Just as the natural outlets for the trade of the countries south of the Hindu Koosh are the coasts of the Indian Peninsula, so the natural and only convenient outlets for that of the countries to the north of those mountains are the Caspian and Aral seas; whilst the way between these two tracts is blocked by such gigantic obstacles, that the trade between them must for many a long year, if not for ever, be utterly insignificant. One would think that before England searches for new fields of enterprise beyond an almost impassable range of hills, she has much to do towards the cultivation of the rich country which__she already possesses in the East; whilst Russia, occupied in conquering and developing a land capable of producing corn, cotton, silk, tobacco, sugar, and opium, and rich in silver, lead, copper, iron, and coal, might well refrain from looking askance towards India.

But these natural anticipations are belied by the fact. Russia's

jealousy for her monopoly of the trade of Central Asia is kept in a continual ferment by the appearance every now and then of English intruders in lands which she has marked for her own; and India for many years has not ceased to be disquieted by the phantom of a Russian attack, and the more substantial danger of Russian intrigue. This anxiety on both sides may have some ground to rest on, or it may be utterly vain; but that it results in a very real injury to us there can be no doubt whatever. The vague idea of a coming trial of strength between the English and the Russians, by encouraging disaffection, by checking the growth of a spirit of contentment, by its tendency to be continually loosening the rivets of that moral hold which it is so important for us to have over the minds of the natives, is the source of more expense, weakness, and danger than anything else in the political condition of India.

We need not search deep into history for the foundation of the fears and aspirations caused in caused in India by Russia's presence in Central Asia; and we shall not have to go much farther to find how unsound that foundation is. All the conquerors of Hindustan, before ourselves, came out of the NorthWest. Thence came the Hindus who first subdued the aborigines of the land; thence came Alexander; thence came the two Mahometan dynasties which successively ruled at Delhi; and thence came the devastator Nadir Shah. If Lord Clarendon, in the House of Lords, compared the encroachments of Russia in Europe to those of the Huns and Vandals on the empire of ancient Rome, it is not surprising that less discriminating politicians in Patna or Benares should another Baber in the Czar. Moreover the stubborn opposition of the French, which marked the first half century of our struggle for empire in the East, suggests the probability

of another of the great military Powers of Europe challenging our right to hold the prize. The last remnants of the French corps had scarcely vanished from amidst the ranks of our enemies when the form of Russia was first seen looming on the distant horizon. It was not unnatural that people should believe she was coming to fill the place lately yielded by France.

But any analogy between the Russians and either the former conquerors of India, or the French who were our early rivals there, is merely fanciful. The hosts which broke up the old Empires of India invaded the country either for the sake of making a plundering raid or with a view to migrate. Which of these objects is likely to tempt the Russians to such an enterprise? An attack on India by land would now-a-days be much too costly an undertaking to be compensated by all the movable treasure which could possibly be carried off; and it is little likely that the Czar will exchange his capital near the Baltic for one on the banks of the Jumna, or by the shores of the Bay of Bengal. The only object which Russia could have in an invasion of India would be to occupy and hold it as a province; and the impossibility of her doing this until she has opened out the whole country from Moscow to Peshawur by railways, or until her flag is supreme at sea, ought to reassure those minds which are oppressed by the expectation of a Russian invasion of Hindustan.

Again, we now stand towards Russia in Asia on widely different terms than those under which we formerly met the French. They entered the field simultaneously with us, and at the same point. She, coming from another direction, finds us already firmly established in India. France during almost the whole period of her rivalry with us in the East was engaged in deadly warfare with our nation at home.