Nevertheless, we are willing to allow that the actual shock will follow only in some very distant future. Gladly, too, will we bear to be pointed at as a false prophet. But how is it that English statesmen will proclaim as harmless the more and more manifest advance of their northern rival; how disguise and palliate the mischievous menace of that rival's aims?
The body of English politicians friendly to Russia is wont, whenever this question comes up for discussion, to reply that the neighbourhood of a well-ordered State is more acceptable to them, than several wild nomad tribes living in anarchy and plunder. An Englishman once asked me, whether I would not prefer to sit beside an elegantly-dressed fine gentleman, instead of a dirty and uncouth boor. People may wish success with all their might to a Muscovite neighbour; yet to me it is not at all clear, why those gentlemen should wish for the neighbourhood of a sly and powerful adversary in the room of an unpolished but essentially-powerless foe. What happened once in America, in the north of Africa, and even on Indian ground, between rising England on the one hand, and waning Holland and Portugal on the other, has often been and will yet often be repeated in the pages of history. As in ordinary life two strong, selfish individuals, will but rarely thrive in one same path; so does the same impossibility exist in the case of two States;—a fact, of which the long war between France and England for the superiority in India furnishes the best proof. Even if she followed the best aims, how could Russia, backed as she is by the gigantic power of the whole Asiatic continent;—she, whose policy for the last hundred years, has led her through desert regions with a perseverance so great, at a cost so lavish,—refuse a hearing at once to her own designs and to the insinuations of her abettors? Will she have sufficient self-control to forbear from profiting by the happy occasion which plays into her hands the Mohamedan population of India, more than thirty millions strong? The last-named, being the most fanatical of all who profess Islam, are filled with unspeakable hatred of the British rule. Their religious zeal, fostered on one side by Bokhara, on the other by the Wahabies, goes so far, that, in order to drain the cup of martyrdom, they often murder a British officer walking harmlessly about the bazaar, and even give themselves up to the headsman's axe.[61] In India, where religious enthusiasm has ever found a most fruitful soil, Islam has revealed itself in the oddest forms. The brotherhoods introduced in the days of the Taimurides, are there more powerful and important than elsewhere; and not Scoat alone, but every place has an Akhond of its own to show, whose summons to a crusade would be followed by thousands. In spite of the manifold blessings which English rule has secured to the Mohamedans, it is they alone who form the nest of revolutions; they alone who gave most support to the rebellion in its last disorders; they alone who take chief delight in conspiring for a Russian occupation, and proclaim in all directions the advantages of Muscovite rule.
Should we not also take this occasion to think of the Armenians, who, scattered through Persia and India, form single links of the chain wherewith the court of St. Petersburg conducts the electric stream of its influence from the Neva to the Ganges; aye, even to the shores of Java and Sumatra? The hard-working, wealthy Armenians, who in their religious sentiments are inclined to be more catholic than the Papist, more Russian, more orthodox than the Tzar himself, will assuredly not recommend the Protestant church and Protestant power to the natives of India, to the injury of supremely Christian Russia. How many zealous subjects of British rule in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, are not enrolled at Petersburg as yet more zealous promoters of Russian interests! Every member of this church in Asia is to be regarded as a secret agent of Muscovite policy; and if the moment came for a decision, the English would be amazed to see what kind of chrysalis emerged from this religious, moral, free and industrious people.
How, then, can England look on with indifference, to say nothing of her desire to have as neighbour a great and certainly unfriendly power, in a land where such inflammable elements are to be found? Trade will spring up, I hear from all sides; yet, to all seeming, the prospect of the commercial advantages, which British statesmen behold in Russia's oncoming, and in the removal of anarchical conditions in Central Asia, rests rather on a pretended hope than on true conviction. Is it not strange, that a people, so practical in its ways of thinking as the English, should for one moment entertain the hope that some profit would arise for England out of the plans which Russia has followed up for years with toil, and expense, and self-sacrifice; that English goods will get the upper hand in the markets of Central Asia, as soon as they have passed under the Russian rule? Henry Davies, in his commercial report, may point to the considerable figures which the export trade through Peshawar, Karachie, and Ladak, to Central Asia, has to show; and yet he must allow that this would be ten times larger, were it supported by English influence beyond the frontier of northern India. And in the same proportion will it diminish, in which the Russian eagle spreads out his wings over those regions. To Lord William Hay's plan for laying down a commercial road through Ladak, Yarkend, Issiköl, and Semipalatinsk, the Petersburg cabinet has given its seeming assent; yet, in fact, nobody wanted to support the plan, nor will it occur to any Russian statesman to carry it out. The Chinese are far superior not only to the Russians, but even to the English, in mercantile zeal; and yet they trade along the great commercial road from Pekin through South Siberia only to Maimatshin, while from Kiachta the Chinese exports are forwarded, mainly through Russian hands, to Petersburg and Europe. And how fared the Italian silk merchants, who, under Russian protection, found their way to Bokhara, but were there arrested and robbed of their goods and possessions? One of them, Gavazzi, lets us feel very forcibly in his report, that he could never place full faith in Russian letters commendatory, in spite of all after applications from St. Petersburg. The products of English manufacturing towns are wont to drive Russian manufactures out of every market. The merchants of Khiva and Bokhara still carry with them Russian articles from Nijni-Novgorod and Orenburg, which they sell to Central Asiatics under the name of Ingilis mali, or English wares; such being always in most demand among the latter. People in England forget that plain dealing will for some time yet be wanting to Russian policy, and that, on the commercial roads which its arms have opened out, it will throw, of a certainty, in the way of foreign interests, obstacles of a like nature, if not indeed the same, as one now meets with from Afghan rapacity, from Œzbeg lawlessness, on the commercial roads to the Oxus. In the year 1864-5 America alone disposed of more than fifteen million pounds' worth of linen and cotton goods, which was naturally possible only under the free institutions of England. Do the gentlemen in Calcutta expect any similar dealings with the Russians?
Ephemeral, alas! are the calculations formed by people in England on behalf of Russia's future policy with reference to India. Just as the fabric of security which the statesmen of Downing Street are now building within their brains, can soon be shattered to the ground; so the arguments for a future entente cordiale are but slight indeed. Instead of a bootless refutation, we would rather point out former mistakes, would rather touch on the means by which the danger of a direct collision,—that most perilous of all games for English interests,—may yet be avoided.
4. Russian Gains and the Disadvantages Of English Policy.
In order thoroughly to understand the misconceptions of English politicians concerning their Russian rivals, it is necessary for us to consider all the advantages which the latter always enjoyed, and still enjoy, on the field of action. In Europe, we are wont to look with amazement on Russia's gigantic empire in Asia; and yet nobody thinks of the means which have rendered essential service towards the acquisition of it. The Russians are Asiatics, not so much in consequence of their descent as of their geographical position and their social relations; and it is only because with the Asiatic laisser-aller they combine the steadfastness and resolution of Europeans, that they have mostly been a match for the Asiatic races. In their contact with Chinese, Tartars, Persians, Circassians and Turks, they have always shown themselves as Chinese, Tartar, Persian, and so forth, according to circumstances. An English historian says, pretty correctly, if not without ill-will, that the Russians moved forward like a tiger. "At first, creeping cautiously and gliding stealthily through the dust, until the favourable moment admits of its taking the fatal spring. With smiles of peace and friendship, with soft smooth words on their emissaries' part, have they often averted every fear, every precaution, until the certain success of their schemes made all fears profitless, and baffled every precaution. Blind, therefore, and ill-advised must every government be, which can go to sleep over Russian advances towards its frontiers, be those never so slow, or the interval between the conqueror and the goal of his endeavours be never so great!" As Asiatics, they are wont to hold out less rudely against their neighbours in manners, customs, and modes of thought, than the English, for whom, on account of their higher culture, such a renunciation would be a great sacrifice, incompatible with their efforts after civilisation. They seldom offend against the national ways of thinking, and easily conform to them when their interests require it. In England the Government has hitherto disdained to place itself in direct correspondence with the Ameer of Bokhara, for what the chief city in Zarif-Khan obtained up to this date from the British cabinet was always enjoyed through the Governor-General of India. In Russia they think differently; and even the haughty Nicholas, that stern autocrat, who long shrank from calling the French emperor "mon frère," behaves, in presence of the Tartar princes of Central Asia, not as Emperor of all the Russias, but as a Khan on the Neva. As a result of such procedure, we find the nations all along the Russian frontier of Asia, whether nomad or settled, Boodhist or Mohamedan, in such a state of intimacy at this moment, if not of actual friendship, with the Russians, as happens nowhere else in the foreign possessions of a European power.
These advantages, however, of Asiatic modes of thought, which might properly be specified as excessive slyness and craftiness, are, even in political intercourse, far more profitable than the open and upright language employed on principle by Englishmen from of old. It is only Great Britain's foes in Europe, only the enviers of her power, who can find fault with the English in India; and yet whoever is sufficiently informed as to their political dealings with native princes and neighbours on the border, whoever is thoroughly conversant with Asiatic character, will, in the utter absence of this very defect, discover the one great fault of English statesmen.
From the largest province on the Amoor, to the smallest of the possessions latest won by Russia on Asiatic ground, may we always find one same procedure of intrigues and wiles,—a scattering of the seeds of discord, bribery and corruption, through the vilest means,—all serving as forerunners of invasion. Men come first through commercial relations in contact with foreign elements; then the slightest differences come to be readily employed as casus belli; failing these, the ground will be undermined by emissaries, the chiefs bribed by presents, or bemuddled with lavish draughts of vodki (Russian brandy), and drawn on into the dangerous magic circle. A well-founded cause of war and of invasion would nowhere be easy to discover; and certainly the gigantic empire of the House of Romanoff has been builded up more through the wiles of its Asiatic statesmen than by the might of its arms. Moreover, in consequence of the qualities lately named, Russia is more conversant with the relations of Asiatic peoples, far better informed of all that is passing in the border-states, than the English and other Europeans. To the great watchfulness of her emissaries, to the unwearied zeal of her diplomatists, is she indebted for the fact that her cabinet is often more quickly and fully informed of the most private doings of her neighbours, than the particular native government itself. Passing over the fact that, in Petersburg, a company of the cleverest men can make money out of their experiences through the different parts of Asia, there is here and there a Kirghis, a Buryat, a Circassian, or a Mongol, who, after being trained in Russian learning and modes of thought, becomes a most serviceable tool against the wholly or half-subjected land of his birth.