"About 1850 the counter-action set in with peculiar violence. Lord Palmerston was rebuked by the Crown for his officious interference in continental matters. Mr. Cobden was at the summit of his fame. The Great Exhibition of 1851 was to inaugurate the reign of peace and good will amongst men, and international commerce was to cement the union of the Pan-European family. The Frenchman would never invade us. If he attempted so obsolete a step, our touching and charitable reception of him would melt the heart of the bearded Zouave and the Sapeur, to whom nothing is sacred. The army should be turned into a body of navvies; the navy was to be converted into police-ships and emigrant-ships. Posterity will marvel at this peace mania, and perhaps will sneer at the part which the peacemakers took in precipitating the Russian War of 1853. It reads like a tale of Bedlam, but it is not the less true. The secondary symptoms of the dread malady still ferment in the national constitution, and possibly we may not escape without tertiaries. But the perfect cure must come at last.
Eastern Politics.
"About 1863, when Russia had recovered from the fatigues of the Crimean campaign, her 'manifest destiny' began to show itself in what we vaguely term 'Central Asia.' It is not my purpose to trace her steps. England, and especially India, looked on uneasily, although a 'large portion of the thinking public, including the optimist class of Anglo-Indian politicians to a man, declared in favour of the Russian advance.' And no wonder. The actual civilization of the Russian Empire may not yet be of the highest order, yet it is long centuries in advance of the reckless barbarism which characterizes the Great Horde and the Usbeg Khanats. Whilst annexing the barren steppes, the eastern shores of the Caspian, the lands about the Aral, and the noble valleys of the Oxus and the Jaxartes, Russia's mission was terram aperire gentibus. She opened military roads and proposed railways; she built forts and meditated canals. She rendered the country passable to the traveller and to the trader. The European had no longer to fear being plundered or reduced to slavery, or being foully murdered. She enlisted sundry marauding tribes; she had made them disciplined soldiers and peaceful subjects, whilst many 'bad neighbours' were converted by example into 'good neighbours.'
"Again, the dash of Eastern blood in the veins of Russia enabled her to curb the fanatic spirit of her new lieges. Her enemies had predicted that she had disturbed a hornet's nest; that her lines were now cast in unpleasant places, amongst the most violent and bigoted of Mohammedan races. Even our latest writers dwell upon the prospects of an anti-Russian Jehád, or Holy War.
"But Russia is the only European Power which can successfully abate the evil; and we must seek the reason of her success in her despotic rule, the only regimen which the Oriental understands. She knows how to handle her Sáyyids and her Súfis; she 'grasps her nettle,' and this is the only treatment to which the ecclesiastical throat, priest or parson, Mullah or Brahmin, unconditionally submits.
"We, on the contrary, with our excess of toleration and penchant for liberty, too often degenerating into licence, make the natives subjected to our rule far more bigoted than they were when we first conquered them. Formerly, the Hindú would allow the 'Mlenchha' to drink out of his metal pot, which only required scouring to become pure once more; now he pours the water into a double leaf, or into the European's hand. Twenty-five years ago, when entering the mosques or mausolea, we removed our hats and wore our boots; now the Moslems insist upon our conforming to a practice which, in our case, means degradation. At Jeddah, the guardians of Eve's tomb only laugh when a terrier runs in and out of the doors; after a few years of British rule they would object to admitting not only the terrier, but the terrier's master. In her early relations with Persia, the Russian was as fanatical as the Persian, till the murder of an envoy taught him the more prudent way of dealing with Moslems. We have notably failed in this matter, and I should be sorry to see the experiment tried elsewhere.
"Some six years after Russia's first decided move eastwards (1869), she abandoned the direct Persian line, and adopted the new plan of turning her friend's flank by annexing the Balkan or Krasnovdsk Bay, and exploring the northern valley of the Atrek river, the road popularly known as the 'Atok,' or hill-skirt. Thereupon the alarmist openly denounced the annexation of the eastern coast of the Caspian, and the subjugation of the Turkomans, as a 'violation of treaty.' The good sense of the public refused to be scared. What sympathy, indeed, could England have with wretched Khiva, whose main industry was kidnapping Russians and enslaving Persians? What with hateful Bokhara, the very focus and head-quarters of Islamitic fanaticism; the city of barbarians, whose murderous chief, Nasr Allah, had foully put to death Stoddart and Conolly? Could we forget that, unable to reach this double-dyed assassin, despite the proverbial length of her arm, England was compelled to leave the slaughter of her envoys unavenged, to sit down and cry like an impotent crone?
"Again, the public saw no objection to the two great Powers, Russia and England, dividing between them the Empire of the East. Not a few of us were put to shame by the importance attached to establishing a craven 'neutral zone' of independent native states. The 'friendly partition of Asia, leaving no intermediate zone,' was the favourite idea of the Russian Press and of the public, especially the powerful and influential war party, or party of progress. Here, again, we took theoretically lower grounds than Russia. We were afraid to meet her; she did not fear to meet us. After all, the prize, such as it is, will fall to the better man: detur digniori will be the verdict of the world. If we can win the day, let us do so; if we cannot, let us cease to accumulate futile obstacles in the path of those who deserve to win.
"And we shall gain little or nothing by the strong flanking position secured by the reoccupation of the open country of Shaul, of Kandahar, and even of Herat. Men are ever hankering after Herat and its 'stupendous earthworks.' A still better line of outlying frontier, namely, Khelat, Quetta, and Jelalabad, would avail us as little. Wanting an army, English or native, we shall be driven to moral influence, to sympathy and moral support, to moral disapprobation—a pretentiously feeble tactic without the gros bataillons to give it vis. So the late Macgregor Laird defined moral influence in West Africa as a 68-pounder worked by British seamen.
"Our present policy must be a lively trust in the chapter of accidents, and looking forward to the day when we can place two millions of bayonets in the field. Russia has internal dangers of her own. She works cheaply; her invasions of Khiva cost her, we are told, £70,000, whilst we paid £15,000,000 for our occupation of Afghanistan. Still capitalists are beginning to inquire curiously about her budget, and she refuses to satisfy their curiosity. 'Russians' fell two per cent. in one day during last autumn, and a chilling report pronounced them to be 'shaky.' The fact is, a portion of the English Press has so long been preaching the doctrine of repudiation, that the world of debtors begins to lend its ear to the charmer: there are so many nations which can afford to payer les Anglais. South America may be pronounced to be 'going,' Turkey to be 'gone;' and the influence of such failures on a gigantic scale, especially when they extend to Europe and to England,—where at the present moment nothing is safe beyond ground-rents, railways, and three per cents.,—must sooner or later weigh upon Russia. Even she cannot go to war without the sinews of war; even her ingenuity will be puzzled to make la guerre nourrir la guerre amongst the impecunious peoples of Central Asia.