Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, May 1885

by Various

“I don’t altogether say that. It is not with countries as with individuals; the latter always pass from their second childhood into their graves. But for nations, who can say that there is not reserved a second youth? though history does not record an instance of any nation having ever attained to it. The process is probably a slow one; but in these days of rapid development, to say nothing of evolution, we cannot be sure even of that.”

“Still,”I pursued, a little nettled at the severity of his judgment in regard to my own country,—I did not care what he said about Russia, of which I was in no position to judge,—“I should like to know upon what grounds you base your opinion that England is an old idiot. The expression, I think, is scarcely parliamentary.”

“In using the term to which you object,” said Ivan,—“which, after reading the language recently used in debate in your House of Commons, I maintain is strictly parliamentary,—I was not so much alluding to England as to its Government; and I will endeavor to explain to you the reasons which lead me to think that the expression is not misapplied. There are at the present day, including the population of the United States, between eighty and ninety millions of people who owe their origin to the British Isles; who speak the English language as their mother-tongue; who possess in a more or less degree the national characteristics of the race from which they have sprung; who exercise an influence over a greater area of the surface of the earth than that of any other race upon it; who directly control over 250 millions of people not of their own race, and indirectly control many millions more; whose commercial relations are more extensive than those of all the other nations of the world put together; whose wealth is unrivalled; whose political institutions have hitherto served as a model, as they have been the envy of less favored peoples; and who may be said, without fear of contradiction, to lead the van of the world’s civilisation. It is difficult, when we spread a map out before us, to realise that so small a dot as Great Britain appears upon it, should have given birth to these stupendous forces; and one is led to examine into the processes by which so marvellous a position has been achieved in the world’s history as that which these small islands must occupy, even though that position seems now about to be destroyed by what appears to an outsider to be a combination of national decrepitude and administrative impotence,—for it is only when a nation has itself lost its vigor, that it tolerates imbecility on the part of its rulers. The greatness of England has been built up, not on the conquests of its neighbors, or of nations equally civilised with itself, as we have seen occur in the cases of other great empires, but in the comparatively easy subjugation of barbarous peoples; in the occupation and colonisation of countries sparingly inhabited by savage races; in the material development of vast tracts of the earth’s surface; in the creation of new markets, of new sources alike of supply and of demand; and in the energetic and profitable employment of capital in all the regions of the earth. This was possible, and possible only because her adventurous sons who went forth into wild and distant regions to occupy, to develop, and to create, always felt that they had behind them a motherland whose proud boast it was that she ruled the waves, and a nation and Government so thoroughly animated by their own daring and adventurous spirit, that they knew that none were too humble or insignificant to be watched over and protected; nay, more, they were encouraged in hardy enterprises, and often assisted to carry them out.

“During the last two or three years, the circumstances of my life, into which it is not necessary for me now to enter, have forced me not merely to circumnavigate the globe, but especially to visit those British possessions, and those seaboards of lands still relative if barbarous, upon which your countrymen are so thickly dotted as merchants or settlers, and where British subjects of foreign race abound, who carry on their avocations under that British protection which used to be a reality, but is now only a name. Familiar as I have been with Englishmen from my youth, I found a spirit of bitter discontent rife, which, even among your grumbling race, was altogether a new feature in their conversation, especially with a foreigner. Many were making arrangements to close up their business and abandon the commerce in which they were engaged; some, and this was especially the case among the British subjects of foreign race, were taking steps to change their nationality. In some of the colonies the language held sounded to my Russian ears little short of high treason; while I often heard Englishmen in the society of foreigners say that they were ashamed to call themselves Englishmen—a sentiment which I do not remember ever having heard one of your countrymen give vent to in my youth.

“I only mention these as illustrations of the fact which was forcibly impressed upon me during my travels, that the influence of England was waning, not in Europe, where it has waned, but where it might be recovered by a vigorous stroke of policy,—but in Asia, Africa, and America—in those continents from which she derives her position and her wealth. The waning of British influence in Europe means, comparatively, nothing, so far as British commerce is concerned. The waning of that influence in the three other continents means national decay. It has not been by her great wars, her European campaigns, that England has achieved greatness, but by her little ones in those distant countries which your Government seems ready to retire from, bag and baggage, at the first word of a new-comer; and yet one would suppose that nothing could be clearer to a people not in its dotage than this, that if they do not protect their merchants, the latter will not be able to compete with those who are protected. If you desire proof of this, look at the increasing substitution of German for English houses of commerce all over the world; and if commerce languishes, food becomes dearer for those very classes who cry out against those little wars which, when wisely turned to account have proved your best national investments, and have been the indirect means of giving food and employment to your starving millions. I see that there is some talk of a committee being appointed to inquire into the causes of the depression of trade. Those causes are not very far to seek; or rather, in another sense, they are very far to seek. You must travel from China to Peru to find them, and they will stare you in the face. I have been watching, while you are squabbling over your Franchise and your Redistribution Bills, how your trade is slipping from you. So you go on fiddling on the two strings of your electoral fiddle, while Rome is burning. One would have supposed that England was old enough by this time to have discovered that it would not improve her voters to give them another shuffle; that she had experience enough to know that electors were like playing cards, the more you shuffle them the dirtier they get. With the interests of the empire at stake, certainly in two if not in three continents, you play the ostrich, and bury your heads in parish politics—parish politics of the most pestilent and useless description.

“Do you want to know why trade languishes? It is summed up in a short sentence: Want of confidence on the part of the trader; it cramps his enterprise, damps his ardor, spoils his temper, and crushes all the manliness out of him. The commercial stability of England was not built up by a lot of unprotected females, which is the condition the British merchant abroad is rapidly being reduced to by the neglect and apathy and indifference to his interests of his Government. He is perfectly well aware in every port there is a consul, that he is considered a nuisance by that functionary, who knows that in the degree in which he prevents his complaints from reaching the department which is supposed to direct the foreign policy of England, he will be considered capable and efficient. No longer does he feel himself to be the Civis Romanus of old days. His sugar plantations may be destroyed in Madagascar, his commercial interests may be imperilled in China, he may be robbed and insulted in Turkey; but he is gradually being taught, by bitter experience, that it is hopeless to look to diplomatic interference for redress. Meanwhile the British taxpayer continues to pay for that expensive luxury whose function it is supposed to be to protect those commercial interests abroad upon which the prosperity and wealth of Great Britain depends. In like manner the ties between the mother country and her colonies are weakened by her persistent shrinking from the responsibilities and obligations which the welfare and security of those colonies involve. She sacrifices ruthlessly that prestige upon the maintenance of which the safety, and in some cases the allegiance, of her subjects depends. She deludes unhappy colonists into making investments and settlements in half-civilised States upon the faith of treaties, which she ignominiously shrinks from enforcing at the first appearance of danger, and calmly leaves her savage allies to be slaughtered and her colonists to be plundered, as in the case of South Africa; or she makes transparent display of her timidity and weakness, as has been conspicuously the case in her relations with her Australian possessions; or retreats from the protection of her natural frontiers, as she has lately done in India. And all this is in pursuance of a theory of political economy incomprehensible to the unprejudiced observer like myself, that it is cheaper and more advantageous to the national prosperity to sacrifice the commercial interests of the country than to incur the risks and expense of protecting them. The only explanation one can give of an infatuation so incredible, of a policy so short-sighted and so fraught with disaster, is, that it is based on ignorance—ignorance of the present injury that it is working, and ignorance of the dangers to which it is giving birth. There can be no surer way of precipitating the crisis which England seeks to avoid, and which, when it comes, must involve the utter ruin of her trade, than the invitation which her craven attitude offers to her covetous and unscrupulous neighbors, whether they be civilised or uncivilised, to encroach to their own profit, until at last the veil which is now before the eyes of the public in England will be torn away, and they will find themselves suddenly called upon to abandon the parochial details over which they have been wrangling, for sterner work. It will be too late then to regret the penny-wise and pound-foolish policy which plunged them into the mess: the only question they will have to consider is, whether it is not too late to get out of it.”

“I am a good deal surprised,”I remarked, after having listened to the unflattering utterances of my friend with some dissatisfaction, “that you entirely ignore all other considerations than those of mere policy and expediency. Granting, as you say, that the present policy of England imperils its commercial ascendency, are no other considerations to be allowed to guide the policy of a nation than those connected with its pocket? Have we no moral duties to perform, no example to set, no principles to maintain? Or are we ever to remain a nation of shopkeepers, fighting unscrupulously for markets; grabbing the territory of savages, under the pretext of civilising them, which is usually accomplished by the process of extermination; and jostling all other comers out of the markets of the world by fair means or foul? Because these means served us some centuries ago, and because, if you will, our national greatness is built upon them, does it follow that we should cling to them in these more enlightened days? If the moral instinct of the people of England begins to revolt against them, even to the prejudice of the national purse, do our money-bags constitute a sufficient reason why we should remain in the Cimmerian darkness and brutality of the middle ages? Of all men you were the last whom I expected to hear confound moral progress with political imbecility.”

“Nay,” returned Ivan, “I should be the first to congratulate you on a policy of moral progress, if, in that pursued at present by England, I could discover it. What moral progress is there in a policy which has resulted in the slaughter of thousands of unhappy Arabs in Egypt and the Eastern Soudan? Where does moral progress show itself in the expedition which has worked its weary way into the heart of Africa, to fight against the naked savages there? Where is the moral progress of a policy which has necessitated another military expedition to South Africa, and new annexations of territory there? What moral progress have you achieved in Turkey, where you are bound by treaty to institute reforms in that part of the empire over which you are supposed by the same treaty to exercise a protectorate, the very existence of which, under the policy of moral progress, it has been found convenient to ignore, because it involves responsibilities towards an oppressed and suffering people, whose oppression and whose sufferings it would now be expensive and troublesome to recognise, though political capital enough is made out of them when the exigencies of your local party warfare demand it? The question is, in what does real moral progress consist? Certainly not in the blatant profession of moral platitudes—the abstract truth of which everybody recognizes—when they are accompanied by a practice which gives them the lie direct. There can be nothing more demoralising to the moral welfare of a nation than a policy which is in flagrant contradiction to its lofty moral pretensions. Not only does it degrade the national conscience, but it renders that conscience an object of derision and contempt among foreign nations. To be logical and consistent, the politician ‘who is in trouble about his soul’ must follow one of two courses,—either he must recognise the fact that national egotism, like individual egotism, is a vice which admits of no compromise, and that the duty of his country is to love other countries better than itself; that the love of money, and therefore the making of it, is the root of all evil; that when the nation is metaphorically asked for its cloak, it should give its coat also—and when smitten on one cheek, should turn the other to the smiter;—when he is reluctantly convinced that, however desirable this higher law might be, and however indisputable its morality, it is, under the existing conditions of humanity, impracticable, then he has no alternative but to base the national policy upon the exactly opposite principle, which is that which governs the policy of all other nations, and assume that his duty consists in protecting the interests of his own country against those of rival countries, which are all engaged in an incessant competitive warfare against each other; and he will find, by experience, that any attempt to compromise with the opposite or altruistic principle will inevitably lead to disaster, for it will involve that hesitation and weakness in the conduct of affairs which will encourage those rivals to overt acts of offence and encroachment that must ultimately lead to bloody wars in defence of those national interests which a policy of vacillation and of moral inconsistency will have imperilled. Sooner or later, it is certain that the force of events will rip off the thin veneering of cant which had served to delude the ignorant masses, and to conceal either the stupidity or the insincerity of its professors. I say stupidity, for there can be little doubt that among those who guide the destinies of the nation are many who honestly share the belief with the public they help to mislead, that to shrink from responsibilities, to temporise in the face of danger, to make sacrifices and concessions in order to conciliate, will avert catastrophes instead of precipitating them; while there are others to whose common-sense it would be an insult to make any such assumption.”

“But these others,”I observed, “may, without any insult to their common-sense, be supposed to entertain the opinion that the possessions of the British empire are sufficiently extended and difficult to protect, to render any further annexation of territory, or acquisition of responsibility, undesirable.”

“Doubtless; and in this I agree with them. Indeed, the incapacity they have shown to protect what they have got, is the best reason they could assign for being unwilling to have more; but it does not touch the question of the principle upon which England’s policy should be based in her dealings with foreign nations, and with her own colonial possessions; in other words, what are the most economical and at the same time the most moral methods of self-preservation? I put economy before morality, because, whatever may be the professions of Governments in practice, as a consideration, it always precedes it. If bloodguiltiness was not always attended with so much expense, people’s consciences would be far less sensitive on the subject. Hence it happens that highly moral financiers are apt to regard things as wicked in the degree in which they are costly, while they are too short-sighted as statesmen to perceive that a prompt expenditure is often the best way of saving a far heavier amount, which must be the result of the delay—or, in homely phraseology, that a stitch in time saves nine. The most economical and the most moral method of self-preservation, then, will be found in consolidating, protecting, and extending the commercial position and moral influence of the great English-speaking people in all quarters of the globe. At this moment, though surrounded by enemies who envy and hate her, there is no country more safe from attack than Germany, because she is governed by a statesman who never shirks responsibility, cowers before danger, or, in moments of difficulty, takes refuge in compromise or concession. It is not England, with her horror of war, that has, during the last decade, been the Power which has prevented a European war, otherwise inevitable, from breaking forth; the statesman to whom the peace of Europe has been due, upon whom that peace now depends, and who is therefore doing the most for the moral progress of Europe, is exactly that statesman who never indulges in moral platitudes, and whom his worst enemy cannot accuse of hypocrisy. No one will pretend that peace is not more conducive to economy and moral progress than war; but to secure it, a great military position and a great national prestige are alike indispensable. England has, or should have, the first naval position in the world, and, until lately, her national prestige was second to none. These advantages confer on her great responsibilities; to part with them is to diminish her powers of usefulness in the world, and her mission of civilising it. As the champion of civil and religious liberty, she owes a duty to humanity, which it would be a crime alike in the eyes of God and man for her to relinquish, even though it may cost blood and treasure to maintain it,—for the amount expended to maintain it would be as nothing compared to the sacrifices of both life and money which the abandonment of this duty would entail upon the world. I speak feelingly, for I cannot conceive a greater disaster befall the human race, than to see the place of England usurped by the nation of which I have the honor of being a humble member,”here Ivan smiled bitterly. “So absorbed are you in your own vestry quarrels, that you either forget or are ignorant of the place you occupy in the regard of millions, who see in England the apostle of free thought, free speech, free institutions. Your standard, which we look up to as the flag of liberty, and which should be nailed to the mast, we watch you with dismay lowering to every piratical craft, while the crew are fighting about a distribution of provisions, and the pilot seems to prefer running his ship on the rocks to boldly facing the enemy’s cruisers. Nothing strikes us members of the oppressed and suppressed races as more anomalous and incomprehensible, than the fact that the party in England which are most ready to compromise the honor of that flag, and to haul it down on the least provocation, are precisely that party who are most loud-tongued in their profession of sympathy for those races to whom it is the banner on which their hopes are fixed—the symbol in their eyes of progress, civilisation, and political freedom. Hence it is that all those among us who are not absolute anarchists, find ourselves unconsciously withdrawing our sympathies from that political party in your country, who, while they style themselves the party of progress and of advanced thought, are in reality compromising the cause which I feel sure they honestly cherish and believe in, by destroying the prestige and lowering the influence of the one European Power which is its great representative—and, to our own great wonderment, are beginning rather to pin our hopes for the future upon those whom we have hitherto considered reactionary, because they called themselves Conservative and aristocratic, but who, in this crisis of the fortunes of their country, resist a policy calculated to impair its supremacy. Thus, on a higher principle than that appealed to by the political moralists who direct the helm of State, may the best interests of morality be reconciled with those of their own country; for it is by maintaining the supremacy of England that the principle which is identified with her institutions, her traditions, and the aspirations of her people, can be best secured in the interests of that universal society of which she forms part, and towards which she undoubtedly has moral obligations and responsibilities. The party which seeks to evade them, whether upon specious theories started by doctrinaires ignorant of international conditions, or upon penny-wise and pound-foolish grounds of economy, are in reality the party of reaction; for they are the best allies of reactionists, and are playing into their hands, as no people have better reason for knowing than the Russians, who have observed with dismay the sympathy of your Prime Minister with ‘the divine figure of the North,’ as he has styled our ruler, and his methods of government; while from our point of view, the party of progress in England, let them call themselves Conservative if they so please, are those who, true to the grand traditions of the country, are determined to keep it in the van of freedom, not merely because its wealth and prosperity are due to that absolute civil and political liberty which imposed no check upon individual enterprise or achievement, but because with the preservation of its greatness are bound up the most cherished interests of the human race.”