Now, last year our imports from Russia were larger than usual, and another house, taking an average year, had made them £11,000,000. In that calculation, the imports of wheat were taken at £2,000,000 instead of £4,000,000, and that made the difference. He was also credibly informed that Russian produce to the value of about £1,000,000 came down the Vistula to the Prussian ports of the Baltic, and was shipped thence to this country; so that our imports from Russia averaged about £12,000,000 sterling per annum, and included among them articles of primary importance to our manufactures. How was machinery to work, and how were locomotives to travel, without tallow to grease their wheels? (A laugh.) Look, too, at the imports of linseed to the value of £1,300,000. No persons were more interested than honourable gentlemen opposite in the reduction of the price of the food of cattle. Then take the articles of flax and hemp. There were districts in the West Riding which would suffer very serious injury and great distress if we should go to war and cut off our intercourse with Russia. (Hear.) Even with regard to the article of Russian iron, which entered into consumption at Sheffield, he was told it would be hardly possible to manufacture some of the finer descriptions of cutlery if the supply of Russian iron were interfered with.”

We shall not here take the trouble of criticising Mr Cobden’s figures, but take them as they stand, although they are exaggerated enough. His argument is obviously, that we must submit to any amount of aggression which Russia may choose to make upon neutral countries, and even upon our own Indian possessions, because that country supplies us yearly with thirteen millions’ worth of raw materials and food! The same was the humiliating position which the men of Tyre and Sidon, as recorded in Scripture, occupied towards Herod, when “they came of one accord to him, and having made Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, their friend, desired peace, because their country was nourished by the king’s country.” How, asks Mr Cobden, is machinery to work without tallow to grease the wheels? We are to have an anti-war cry from the farmers for the lack of Russian linseed; the West Riding of Yorkshire is to be stirred up into insurrection by the want of flax and hemp; and the fine cutlers of Sheffield cannot get on without the £70,000 worth of iron which they import from Russia! The main reliance of the peace-at-any-price party, we have no doubt, rests upon the probability of high prices of food, and their hope of producing in the minds of the masses the impression that the cause of those high prices is mainly the interruption of our usual imports of grain from the Russian ports of the Baltic and the Black Sea.

It is rather singular that it should not have struck so astute a man as Mr Cobden, that Russia is very likely to feel the loss of so excellent a customer as England appears to have been to her, quite as much as we are likely to feel the want of her tallow, her flax and hemp, her linseed, or even her wheat. The vendor of an article is generally the party who feels most aggrieved when his stock is permitted to accumulate upon his shelves. The Russian landowners cannot very conveniently dispense with the annual thirteen millions sterling which they draw from this country. Mr Cobden may depend upon it that, if we want it, a portion of their growth of staple articles will find its way to this country, through intermediate channels, although Russian ships no longer gain the advantages derived from its transport. The fact, however, of our absolute dependence upon Russia for these articles is too palpably a bugbear, either of Mr Cobden’s own creation, or palmed upon him by his friends, the “eminent merchants of the City,” to be worthy of serious notice, did it not betray the direction in which we are to look for the agitation, by which that gentleman and his friends hope to paralyse the hands of Government during the coming crisis of the country.

In the effort to form a correct estimate of the extent of interruption to our commerce to be anticipated from the existence of a state of war between this country and Russia, we must have, in the first place, reliable facts to depend upon, instead of the loose statements of Russian merchants, who are, as a class, so peculiarly connected with her as almost to be liable to the imputation of having Russian rather than British interests nearest to their hearts. We have a right also to look at the fact that, so far at least as present appearances go, Russia is likely to be isolated on every side during the approaching struggle, her principal seaports, both in the Baltic and the Black Sea, to be commanded by the united British and French fleets; whilst that produce, by the withholding of which she could doubtless for a time, and to a certain extent, inconvenience our manufacturers and consumers, may find its way to us either direct from Russian ports in neutral vessels, or through those neighbouring countries which are likely to occupy a neutral position in the quarrel. We have also to bear in mind that, with respect to many of the articles which we have lately been taking so largely from Russia, other sources of supply are open to us. It is remarkable to observe the effect produced by even temporarily enhanced prices in this country in extending the area on every side from which foreign produce reaches us. A few shillings per quarter on wheat, for example, will attract it from the far west States of America, from which otherwise it would never have come, owing to the inability of the grower to afford the extra cost of transport. All these considerations have to be borne in mind; and although it will perhaps have to be conceded that somewhat enhanced prices may have to be paid for some of the articles with which Russia at present supplies us, we think we shall be enabled to show that the enhancement is not at all likely to be such as to amount to a calamity, or cause serious pressure upon our people.

Before proceeding further, it may be desirable to explain the mode in which our trade with Russia, both import and export, is carried on. Russia is, commercially, a poor country. The description of her given by M‘Culloch, in an early edition of his Dictionary of Commerce, published two-and-twenty years ago, is as appropriate and correct as if it had been written yesterday, notwithstanding the vast territorial aggrandisement which has taken place in the interim. Her nobles and great landowners hold their property burdened by the pressure of many mortgages; and they are utterly unable to bring their produce to market, or to raise their crops at all, without the advances of European capitalists. These consist chiefly of a few English Houses, who have branch establishments at St Petersburg, Riga, and Memel on the Baltic, and Odessa on the Black Sea. The mode of operation is the following. About the month of October the cultivators and factors from the interior visit those ports, and receive advances on the produce and crops to be delivered by them ready for shipment at the opening of the navigation; and it is stated that the engagements made between these parties and British capitalists have rarely been broken. This process of drawing advances goes on until May, by which month there are large stocks ready for shipment at all the ports, the winter in many districts being the most favourable for their transport. The import trade is carried on in a similar manner by foreign capital; long credits, in many instances extending to twelve months, being given to the factors in the interior. A well-known statistical writer, the editor of the Economist, Mr John Wilson, in his publication of the 25th ult., says, upon the subject of the amount of British capital thus embarked in Russia at the period when her battalions crossed the Pruth: “The most accurate calculations which we have been able to make, with the assistance of persons largely engaged in the trade, shows that at that moment the British capital in Russia, and advanced to Russian subjects, was at least £7,000,000, including the sums for which Houses in this country were under acceptance to Russia.” We can perfectly believe this to have been the fact, under such a system of trading as that which we have described. We can believe, too, that a considerable number of British ships and sailors were at the same time in Russian ports, and would, in case we had treated the occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia by Russian troops as a casus belli, very probably have been laid under embargo. We could sympathise with those “persons largely engaged in the trade,” in rejoicing that, as one effect of a temporising policy, the whole of this capital, these ships, and these sailors, had been released from all danger of loss or detention. But we cannot bring ourselves to consider it decent in a gentleman holding an important office in the Government, whilst admitting, as he does, that we have been bamboozled by Russian diplomacy, to point triumphantly to this saving of “certain monies”—the property of private individuals, who made their ventures at their own risk and for their own profit—as in any sort balancing the loss of the national honour, which has been incurred by our tardiness in bringing decisive succour to an oppressed ally. Ill-natured people might suggest a suspicion that Mincing Lane and Mark Lane had been exercising too great an influence in Downing Street. And the public may hereafter ask of politicians, who thus ground their defence against the charges of infirmness of purpose and blind credulity, or “connivance,” as Mr Disraeli has, perhaps too correctly, termed it, upon this alleged saving of a few millions of the money of private adventurers—Will it balance the expenditure of the tens of millions of the public money which the prosecution of this war will probably cost, and which might have been saved by the adoption of a more prompt and vigorous policy in the first instance? Will it balance the loss of life—will it support the widows and orphans—will it lighten by one feather the burden upon posterity, which may be the result of this struggle? It would be a miserable thing should it have to be said of England, that there was a period in her history when she hesitated to strike a blow in a just cause until she had taken care that the offender had paid her shopkeepers or her merchants their debts! We pass over this part of the subject, however, as scarcely belonging to the question which we have proposed to ourselves to discuss.

Our imports from Russia, upon the importance of which so much stress has been laid, were in 1852 as given below, from official documents. We have ourselves appended the value of the various items upon a very liberal scale; and we may explain that we select that year instead of 1853, for reasons which we shall hereafter explain.

Quantities of Russian Produce imported into Great Britain during the year 1852.
Corn, wheat, and flour, qrs. 733,571 value £1,540,499
Oats, „ 305,738 366,855
Other grain, „ 262,348 327,935
Tallow, cwts. 609,197 1,187,700
Linseed, and flax seed, &c. qrs. 518,657 1,125,000
Bristles, lbs. 1,459,303 292,000
Flax, cwts. 948,523 1,897,046
Hemp, „ 543,965 861,277
Wool (undressed), lbs. 5,353,772 200,390
Iron (unwrought), tons 1,792 17,920
Copper (do.), „ 226 20,000
  Do. (part wrought), „ 1,042 120,000
Timber (hewn), loads 28,299 94,800
  Do. (sawn), „ 189,799 759,196
£8,810,618

We have taken for the above estimate the prices which prevailed in the first six months of 1852, after which they were raised above an average by peculiar circumstances. The year selected, moreover, was one of larger imports than usual of many articles. For example, our imports of Russian grain in 1852 amounted, in round numbers, to £2,235,300 sterling, against only £952,924 in 1850. Yet we have less than nine millions as the amount of this vaunted import trade from Russia, the interruption of which is to be fraught with such serious consequences to our internal peace, and to the “popularity” of the liberal representatives of our large towns.

But fortunately for the country, and rather mal apropos for those who would fain convert any diminution of our supplies of produce from Russia into the ground of an anti-war agitation, we have succeeded in procuring from that country during the past year supplies unprecedented in quantity. The following have been our imports from Russia in 1853, as compared with the previous year:—

Corn, wheat, and flour,qrs.1,070,909against733,571in 1852.
Oats,„379,059 305,738
Other grain,„263,653 262,238
Tallow,cwts.847,267 609,197
Seeds,qrs.785,015 518,657
Bristles,lbs.2,477,789 1,459,303
Flax,cwts.1,287,988 948,523
Hemp,„836,373 543,965
Wool,lbs.9,054,443 5,353,772
Iron,tons5,079 1,792
Copper (unwrought),„974 226
Copper (part wrought),„656 1,042
Timber (hewn),loads45,421 28,299
Timber (sawn),„245,532 189,799