CHAPTER XIX.

RIVALRY BETWEEN RUSSIA AND ENGLAND IN CENTRAL ASIA.

It is three years ago since, in the closing chapter of my Travels in Central Asia, I expressed my surprise and dissatisfaction at the indifference of Englishmen towards Russian progress in those regions. I then indicated not only the exact course of Russian procedure on the Yaxartes, but also its steadily approaching influence on British India. Abstaining purposely from all far-reaching political reflections, I was as brief and concise as possible, and could hardly have believed that the unassuming remarks of a European, just returned home from Asia, would be found worthy of closer consideration. Nevertheless, these few lines were discussed and dwelt upon by almost every organ of the English and Indian press, from the _Times_ to the _Bengal Hirkáru_. Only a very small proportion of those various journals attached itself in any measure to my ideas; the most of them, on the contrary, rejected my good counsel; and without directly ridiculing my judgment, raised from all sides a loud-sounding Hosannah over the happy change in English politicians, who, being less short-sighted now than they were thirty years back, discovered in the advance of the Russians only a disagreeable event; nay, would even regard it with pleasure, and cry success to their march southward over the snow-capped peaks of the Hindu-Kush and the Himalayas.

In these three years, however, a great change has taken place. Far though I be from wishing as an ex-dervish to exult over the fulfilment of my prophecies, still I cannot help referring to the lines in which I happened to proclaim the progress of the Russian arms. While I was in Central Asia the furthest out-posts of the Cossacks lay at Kale-Rehim, thirty-two miles from Tashkend. Forts 1, 2, and 3, on the Yaxartes, if actually conquered, were not yet wholly in safe keeping. On the north of Khokand, too,--on the west of the Issikköl and the Narin, the Court of St. Petersburg could show but few tokens of success. The Kirghis were embittered and hostile to the strange intruders, and the Œzbeg tribes on the northern frontier of Khokand would then have deemed a Russian occupation equivalent to the destruction of the world; so much did they hate and scout the Unbelievers. Three years have passed, and what has happened in that time? Not only has Khodja-Ahmed-Yesevi, that holiest patron of the Kirghis, become a Russian subject in Hazreti-Turkestan; not only has Tashkend, the most important trading town, the great mart of Central-Asiatic and Chinese trade with Russia, been absorbed into the northern Colossus; not only does the Russian flag wave from the citadel of Khodjend, the second town of importance in Khokand; it may now be also seen on the small fortress of Zamin, Oratepa, and Djissag. The dreaded Russ has set himself up as lord-protector in the eastern Khanat of Turkestan: the Hazret, the Khan, as also the Hazret or High Priest of Namengan, strive for the favour of one who, but a year before, would have filled their very dreams with mortal terror. Nay, not Khokand only, but the Tadjik population also throughout Bokhara and Khiva, the great number of freedmen and slaves in service, and even the wealthier merchants from Mooltan and other parts of India, who once trembled before the Œzbeg power, now whisper delightedly into each other's ears that the Russians are slowly drawing nearer, and that Œzbeg lordship and Œzbeg absolutism are coming to an end.

For three years have these metamorphoses in the oasis-countries of Turkestan been carried on with sure and steady hand from the banks of the Neva. As an erewhile traveller, for whom those spots had been full of interest from my youth up, I had already kept, albeit from a distance, a watchful eye on all that went on amidst the plains of the Yaxartes. I devoured alike the newspaper reports and the scanty notices which my fellow pilgrims from Turkestan communicated to me through their westward journeying brethren. That I took a hearty interest in everything will surprise no one, little as the utterances of the English press and the writings of British Indian diplomatists during these occurrences claimed my full attention. To the prophecies of the Dervish neither the one party nor the other gave a thought. The note of satisfaction struck three years before was kept up without a break. People were no longer content with the bare assertion, that Russian progress in Central Asia was a thing to welcome, but tried their utmost to show convincing grounds for that assertion, in order to represent the success of the Muscovite arms as tending more and more profitably for English interests.

To solve this problem the more happily, to convince all thoughtful Englishmen the more unanswerably of the profit to be gained from Russian successes, the question was debated by a light which was sure to be equally welcome to all the different classes. The scientific world was informed by the learned President of the Royal Geographical Society touching the excellent service rendered to science at large by the trigonometrical, geographical, and geological societies of Russia. Russian voyages of discovery were exalted above everything; Russian scholars were deified; nay, it was only lately that even Vice-Admiral Butakoff was presented with the large gold medal for his discoveries on the Sea of Aral. Social Reformers, on the contrary, were taught to compare Tartar savagery with Russian civilisation. The picture which I myself drew of Central Asia was contrasted with the young Russia of to-day: the emancipation of slaves, the Russian endeavours after national enlightenment, the great change in manners, the mighty strides by which Russia was approaching England in civilised ideas, were all brought into the foreground; and in every thread of this tissue was expression given to the great usefulness of Russian supremacy in Asia. The trading world was shown the advantage which must accrue from safe means of communication, now that Russian arms are on the point of smoothing a way through the inhospitable steppes of Turkestan towards India. Some journals, indeed, were carried so far away by their zeal as to point out to the honest workmen of Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, &c., that only English wares and English capital would travel to and fro along the new Russian commercial road to Central Asia. Even the military class had a friendly word whispered into its ear. To the sons of Mars it was needful to represent a Russian invasion of India as a ridiculous bugbear. From every stand-point, moral, physical, strategical, was such an attempt proved to be an impossibility. How, indeed, could Russia overcome the enormous difficulties of those parched steppes that stretched week after week before her; how master the warlike Afghans, or win through the dreaded Khyber Pass? And even if she succeeded in that also, how roughly would she not be handled by the British Lion, who would lie waiting leisurely for her in his luxurious palankeen? Nay, even to the Church, that mightiest of English levers, should a lullaby be chanted forth. People hinted at a happy union between the Orthodox Church of Russia and that of England. Dr. Norman Macleod is an authority; and his cry, "The Greek Church is not yet lost," has aroused the hopes of many; and very learned church dignitaries have looked forward with blissful smiles to the moment when the three-fold Greek Cross shall rise from the Neva up to the proud dome of St. Paul's in London, for the kiss of brotherhood, and the two united churches shall become a powerful weapon against Papal ideas.

Independent pamphlets and thundering newspaper articles alternated on the field of this question with the expositions above-named. The warning voice of a small minority could not succeed in making head against the Optimists, against those apostles of the new political doctrine. Sir Henry Rawlinson, whose perfect conversance with the circumstances of that region no one can dispute, a man whose practical experience is at one with his theoretic insight, has here and there in the _Quarterly Review_ pointed out the errors of such speculations in solidly written essays; and though, as doubting any ultimate design of Russia upon India, he protested against all actual interference, merely blaming the indifference above-mentioned; still his words passed unheeded of the multitude. I might well say to myself that where such an authority carries no weight, my present words could but travel a very short way. I was therefore slow to speak; and yet, as I had studied this momentous question in all its aspects, and examined it from many sides with impartial eyes, I deemed it possible to show, not only to the statesmen of England, but to those of all Europe, how fatally the Cabinet of St. James errs in its way of looking at the matter; and how this cherished indifference is not only hurtful to English interests, but becomes a deadly weapon wherewith Great Britain commits a suicide unheard of in history.

How it happens that I, who by race am neither English nor Russian, have taken so warm an interest in this matter, is mainly accounted for by the fact of my regarding the collision of these two Colossi in Asia less from the stand-point of their mutual rivalry, than from that of the interests of Europe at large. Whether England or Russia get the advantage, which of the two will become chief arbiter of the old world's destinies, can never be to us an indifferent matter; for widely as these two powers differ from each other in their character as channels of Western civilisation, not less widely do they diverge from one another in any future reckoning up of the issues of their struggle. A passing glance, on the one hand, at the Tartars, who have lived for two hundred years under Russian rule; on the other, at the millions of British subjects in India, might teach us a useful lesson from the past on this point. This, however, may be reserved for later investigation. For the present we will only affirm that the question of a rivalry between these two North European powers in Central Asia concerns not only Englishmen and Russians, but every European as well; nay, more, it deserves to be studied with interest by every thoughtful person of our century.[59]

[59] Up to this moment the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, alone of all the Continental press, has brought out two special articles on Central Asia. The first, without any acknowledged leaning, points out the critical conditions of the approaching conflict; the second, imbued with a Russian spirit, keeps time to the song of the English optimists; for doing which I would not blame the writer, had he not cited several passages from my book as his own property.

1. RUSSIAN CONQUESTS IN CENTRAL ASIA DURING THE LAST THREE YEARS.

First of all we will recount the historical facts of the Russian war of conquest during the last three years. Instead of going into those details about the campaigns of Perovski, Tchernaieff, and Romanovski, which were recorded partly in Mitchell's book, "The Russians in Central Asia," partly in several solid treatises in the _Quarterly_ and the _Edinburgh Review_, or into the slender notices which have trickled out into publicity from the Russian State-Cabinets, or those yet scantier notices which were revealed by highly-paid English spies in Central Asia, we would cast only a hurried glance at events, in order to acquaint the reader with the latest posture of Russian arms in Central Asia.

So successfully had the Russian operations been started in Central Asia, that after a brilliant overthrow of the Kirghis, they entered first on the conquest of Khokand, in order to gain firm foothold in the three Khanats. In those eastern parts of the three oasis-countries of Turkestan the social order has always been relatively least, the religious culture weakest, and the antipathy to warlike enterprises most strong. These were accompanied by internal disorders, for while the Khodjas through their inroads into Chinese territory on the east of the Khanat were always encountering the risk of a collision with China, which in bygone centuries did sometimes ensue, the greedy Ameers of Bokhara from the west have continually laid the country waste with their wanton lust of conquest. Before the capture of Ak-Meshdjid the nearing columns of the mighty Russ on the north had but little place in the bazaar-talk of Namengan and Khokand. At the time of the miscarriage of Perovski's expedition Mehemed Ali Khan was seated on the throne. He was beloved and honoured, and the dazzled masses were much too wanting in ideas of conquest, to think seriously of self-defence against the threatening foe on the north, or of Conolly's projected alliance with Khiva. Not till after the death of Mehemed Ali ensued the fall of Ak-Meshdjid, the first serious wound in the Khanat's existence; and the Russian success was all the easier, because at that time their fighting powers were crippled, on one side by the fierce conflict between Kirghis and Kiptchaks in the interior of the Khanat, and by the first attempt of Veli-Khan-Töre against Kashgar on the other. The storming columns of the Russians against the Khokandian fastnesses on either shore of the Yaxartes leave no cause to complain of cowardice, although the thousands of Khokandian warriors mentioned in the Russian accounts seem to rest on an over-keen eyesight.

After the capture of the last-named place, or, to speak more correctly, after a systematic restoration of the chain of fortresses along the Yaxartes, on whose waters the steamers of the Aral flotilla could now move freely about, the Russian power advanced with strides as gigantic as those with which Khokand, through the continuous working of the causes above-mentioned, continually fell away. The line of forts offered not only security against Turkestan, but was also a powerful bulwark against the Kirghis, who, being at length surrounded on all sides, could not so easily raise into the saddle an _Ished_,[60] as the last anti-Russian chief styled himself during the Crimean War. Thenceforth the work of occupation was pursued by the court of St. Petersburg with its wonted energy; and not till both the army corps, which were operating from the Chinese frontier to the Issik-köl, from the Sea of Aral along the Yaxartes, had drawn together southwards from the north-east and the north-west at Aulia Ata, (_Holy Father_, an ancient place of pilgrimage,) did Russian diplomacy deem it necessary to announce, in a despatch signed by Prince Gortshakoff on the 21st November, 1864, that the government of the Tzar had at length obtained its long-cherished desire to remove the boundary line of its possessions from the ill-defined region of the Sandy Desert to the inhabited portion of Turkestan; that the policy of aggression was now at an end, and that its one single aim in the future would be to demonstrate to the neighbouring Tartar states, with regard to their independence, that Russia was far from being their foe, or indulging in ideas of conquest, &c. &c.

[60] _Ished_, which the Russians wrongly pronounce _Iset_, is a usual contraction of "Eish Mehemmed," which signifies "Mohammed's delight."

That no Cabinet save the English placed any more faith in such assurances than the Russian Minister himself, it is easy enough to imagine. The tale of ever-recurring conquests from vanquished states has long been notorious. We have instances thereof in every page of the world's history, in every age in which some power has set about enlarging itself. Just as the English are vainly apologising for Lord Dalhousie's thirst for annexation, or absorption in India, so are all Russian notes composed in a strain of overflowing politeness. It is only the natural course of things; and the court of St. Petersburg was right, could not indeed do otherwise, after setting up a government in Turkestan, than follow the southern course of the Yaxartes; and as the waste steppe formed at the first no defensible frontier, neither could the thinly-peopled neighbourhood of Tchemkend and Hazret furnish a better one. There was need of a well-inhabited region, to provide against being dependent merely on the means of communication from Orenburg and Semipalatinsk. Therefore was Tashkend, rich and fertile Tashkend, doomed to incorporation in Russian territory.

It would be a profitless waste of time to quote as the main cause of the Russian occupation of the last-named town, on the 25th June, 1865, the moving history of the petition of the Tashkend merchants, of the numerous deputation that came beseechingly to the Russian camp, to obtain the shelter of the two-headed Eagle, whom the Central Asiatics call the _ajder_-kite, a bird not greatly beloved of yore. Tashkend, which from time immemorial, lived at feud with the masters of Khokand, was latterly very much enraged, because its darling Khudayar was twice driven from his throne. To endamage the dominant influence of the Khirgis by means of Russian supremacy, was for it a welcome idea; but it is not at all likely that the supremacy itself should have been generally desired.

Russia has absorbed Tashkend, because she deemed it indispensable as a firm base for further operations; not, however, with a view to erecting therewith a bulwark against possessions already secured. Still it was through Tashkend that the court of St. Petersburg had embroiled itself in hostilities with the Khanat of Bokhara. The Ameer, as we know, had earned for himself, through his campaign of 1863, the nominal right of suzerainty over the western part of Turkestan; and though after his departure everything fell back into the old rut of Kiptchak lawlessness and party warfare, he still thought to make good his right over all Khokand. He therefore wrote the commandant of the newly-conquered town a threatening letter, in which he summoned him to vacate the fortress. This, however, gave small concern to the Russian general; and, hearing that Colonel Struve, the famous astronomer, whom he had sent to Bokhara for a friendly settlement of the affair, had been forthwith taken prisoner, he burst forth on the 30th January, crossed the Yaxartes at Tashkend with fourteen companies of foot, six squadrons of Cossacks, and sixteen guns, with the purpose of going straight into Bokhara and punishing the Ameer for the violation of his envoy.

This design, however, miscarried. The Russians had to retire, but did so in perfect order; and though countless hosts of Bokharians swarmed round them on every side, yet their loss was too insignificant to accord with the bombastic tales of triumph which the Bokharians thereon trumpeted through all Islam, and which even found their way to us through the Levantine press. General Tchernaieff had excused himself on the plea that his hasty advance was intended merely to baffle the movements of secret English emissaries, who were striving with all possible zeal after an Anglo-Bokharian alliance, and were also the main cause of his envoy, Colonel Struve's imprisonment. In Petersburg, however, they could not pardon his military failure: he was displaced from his high command, and General Romanofski went out in his stead. The latter moved forward with slow but all the more cautious steps. On the 12th April a flock of fifteen thousand sheep, escorted by four thousand Bokharian horsemen, was made prize of; and a month afterwards there ensued, in the neighbourhood of Tchinaz, a fierce fight, called the battle of Irdshar, in which the Tartars were utterly beaten. On the 25th May fell the small fort of Nau; and afterwards Khodshend, the third town in the Khanat of Khokand, was taken by storm; but not without a hard fight, in which the Russians left on the field a hundred and thirty-three killed and wounded, the Tartars certainly ten times that number. The battle, however, was well worth the cost, for the fortifications of this place were better than those of Tashkend or of any other town in the Khanat. This was the second resting-point for the Russian arms on their march southward; and though the "Russian Invalid," in an official report concerning further projects, affirms that the conquest of that part of Bokhara which is severed from the rest of their possessions by the steppes could never become the goal of Russian operations, while for the present it would be entirely profitless, yet progress has already been made over Oratepe, through the small districts of Djam and Yamin, as far as Djissag; whilst everywhere important garrisons have been left behind.

What has happened in the Khanat of Khokand itself during this triumphal march of the Russians, is a point no less worthy of our attention. The inhabitants, consisting of nomads,--Œzbeg, and Tadjik or Sart,--were as much divided in their Russian likings and dislikes, as they were different from each other in race, condition, and pursuits. The warlike, powerful, and widely-courted Kiptchaks, being ancient foes of the oft-encroaching Bokharians, who wanted to force upon them the hated Khudayar Khan, immediately sided with the Russians. Their friendship was for these latter an important acquisition; and the friendly movement must have already begun, when the north-eastern army-corps came in contact with them in its forward struggle from Issikköl; for if this had not been the case, the Russian advance on that line would certainly have been purchased at heavier cost.

The Œzbegs, as being _de jure_ the dominant race, had defended themselves as well as they could; yet with their well-known lack of courage, firmness, and endurance, they had but small success; and when they began to reflect that Russian rule would probably be no worse a misfortune than the incessant war with Bokhara, or their internal disorders, they prepared to accommodate themselves to inevitable fate. Only a few angry Ishans and Mollahs maintained an unfounded dread of Bokhara; the descendants, for example, of Khodja Ahmed Yesevi in Hazreti-Turkestan, who, however, in all likelihood will soon go back to the bones of their sacred forefathers, as the Russians assuredly will not hinder them from collecting pious alms among their pilgrims. Moreover, to the wealthier merchants of Tashkend, to the Sarts and Tadjiks, and a small number of Persian slaves, the Russian occupation seemed welcome and advantageous; for whilst the former expected considerable profit from the admission of their native town into the Russian customs-circle, the latter hope to be rescued from their oppressed condition through the downfall of Œzbeg ascendancy. As we may see from the correspondence addressed by General Krishanofski to a Moscow journal, it was these very Sarts who gave the Russians most help. Their Aksakals, not those of the Œzbegs, were the first to accept office under the Russians. In public places they always appear by the side of the Russian officers, harangue the people, and while Russian churches were getting built, spread about a report that His Majesty, having been converted by a vision in the night to Islam, was on the point of making a pilgrimage to Hazreti-Turkestan. From the length of their commercial intercourse with Russia, many of the Tadjiks, especially the Tashkenders, are skilled in writing and speaking Russian; they serve as interpreters and middle-men, and as many of them reach the highest places in the _mehkeme_ (courts of justice) and other posts, the main motive of their adherence is easy to apprehend.

So far has it fared with the main line of operations in the Khanat of Khokand. On adjacent points likewise, both eastern and western, has the work of transformation stealthily begun. From Chinese Tartary we learn, that ever since 1864 the Chinese garrisons have been expelled, and replaced by a national government. First came disorders among the Tunganis, presently followed by the deliverance of Khoten, Yarkand, Aksoo, and Kashgar; and although these disorders may have been caused at bottom by the traditional delight of the Khokandie Khodjas in free plundering, still many of us are positively assured that the court of St. Petersburg countenanced all those revolutionary movements; aye, and that the Kiptchaks, who are now masters of Kashgar, were helped to win it by Russian arms. Such is the usual prelude to Russian interference. For a time these independent towns are permitted to carry on feuds and warfare against each other; but it is easy to foresee that their enmity will come to appear dangerous to the peace of the yet distant Russian frontier; and if haply the court of Pekin be in no hurry to restore order, the Russians are very certain to forestal it on that point ere long. The English press comforts itself with remarking, that the insuperable barrier of the Kuen-Lun mountains renders further progress towards Kashmir impossible; and that this Russian diversion is only for the good of Central-Asiatic trade. For the moment, however, we will put aside the discussion of this question, preferring to glance at that part of Central Asia which inclines westward from Khokand. Albeit engaged in war with Bokhara, Russia has hitherto made no attack on the real territory of that State, for Djissag is the lawful boundary between the former and Khokand. About this well-known seat of the struggle with Bokhara, there is only a diplomatic skirmish, which still goes on, under whose cover the revolution of Shehr-i-Sebz holds its ground. For, even if the Russian press denies for the thousandth time all interference, yet the appearance of the Aksakal of Shehr-i-Sebz in Tashkend cannot be regarded as unimportant. It is, at any rate, noticeable with reference to the Russian plans in Khiva. The settled portion of the Khanat proper has not yet been touched by Russian influence, and only in the north, since the destruction of the fortress of Khodja-Niyaz, on the Yaxartes, have some Cossack and Karakalpak hordes, skirting the eastern shore of the Sea of Aral, been converted into Russian subjects.

2. RUSSIA'S FUTURE POLICY.

Our sketch of Russian progress in Central Asia furnishes its own evidence of the way in which the policy of the court of St. Petersburg will follow out its purpose in the immediate future.

The most southern, therefore the most advanced, outposts rest on Djissag. This word, in Central Asiatic, means a hot, burning spot, and its position in the deep, cauldron-like valley of the Ak-Tau hills entirely justifies the name. Owing to its utterly unwholesome climate, and the great want of water, the population of this station on the way to Khokand is but very small; and that the Russians have selected it for a more abiding resting-place, I cannot believe, in spite of the aforenamed asseverations of the "Russian Invalid," and in spite of the contrary opinion of the learned writer of the article, Central Asia, in the "Quarterly Review." Not only is it an unhealthy and barely tenable post; but a lengthened stay here must also be acknowledged as most impolitic. The gentlemen on the banks of the Neva know well what Bokhara is in the eyes of all Central Asia, I might even say of all Mohamedans. They know that on the Zerefshan may be sought the special fount of religious ideas and modes of thought, not only for the mass of Central Asiatics, but for Indians, Afghans, Nogay Tartars, and other fanatics. In order to achieve a grand stroke, the Ameer, who styles himself Prince of all true believers, must be made to recognise the supremacy of the white Tzar; the holy and honoured Bokhara, where the air exhales the aromatic fragrance of the Fatiha and readings from the Koran, must learn to reverence the might of the black unbelievers; and the crowd of crazy fanatics, of religious enthusiasts, must acknowledge that the influence of the saints who rest in her soil is not strong enough to blunt the point of the Russian bayonet. The fall of Bokhara will be a fearful example for the whole Islamite world; the dust of her ruins will penetrate the farthest distance, like a mighty warning-cry. For this must the court of St. Petersburg assuredly be striving, and ready to strive.

From this stand-point it is therefore most probable that the greatest attention will henceforth be paid to the line of operations from Tashkend, Khodjend, and Samarkand. The conquest of the whole Khanat of Khokand may also follow in time, for that offers no special difficulties; but the chief interest lies in the maintenance and security of the roads of communication, on which the advancing army, in concert with the strong garrisons in the now well-fortified Tashkend and the northern forts, as also with the governments of Orenburg and Semipalatinsk, will move along a road furnished with an unbroken line of wells. The Ameer may have recourse to all possible means of gaining the friendship of the Russians, in which he has hitherto failed; he may send to Constantinople as many Job's messengers as he will; he may despatch ever so many friendly invitations to the Durbar of the Indian Viceroy: but all that will do him no good. The town of Bokhara shall, with or without his leave, be governed by an Ispravnik; for the Russians dare not and cannot rest, until ancient Samarkand and Nakhsheb (Karshi), or the whole right bank of the Oxus has been absorbed into the gigantic possessions of the House of Romanoff. That this catastrophe, this last hour of Transoxanian independence, will not be brought about so easily as the heretofore successes in Central Asia, is manifest enough. Already in my mind's eye do I behold a frantic troop of Mollahs and Ishans, with thousands of students, roaming the Khanats with holy rage, in order to preach the Djihad (religious war) among the Afghans, Turkomans, Karakalpaks; and going through scenes of the deepest, the devoutest anguish, in order to draw down the curse of God on the foreign intruder. The death-struggle will be fierce but profitless. So far as I know the Khivans and the Afghans, I deem the notion of a general alliance with Bokhara to be quite impracticable; for, if such was their inclination, they should have formed one long ago. No egotism, no political combinations, but the greatest want of principle alone, an utter recklessness of the future, will keep them quiet until Hannibal stands before their gates. In vain shall we look for any effort after a general league, either in Central Asia, or even among any of the other Eastern nations. As the very warlike Afghans could play their part with a force of disciplined auxiliaries, so also might the Khan of Khiva join the Ameer's army with twenty to thirty thousand horse. Yet this is what neither the one nor the other will do. To unite them under one command might be possible for a Timur or a Djinghiz; and even then the smallest booty might stir up rancour and dissensions in their ranks. So, too, the hundred thousand well-mounted Turkomans, who inhabit the broad steppes from this side the Oxus to the Persian frontier, are utterly useless for the rescuing of the Holy City. Their Ishans, indeed, if summoned by their fellow-priests in noble Bokhara and by the Ameer, might do their very best to stir up the wild sons of the desert to a holy warfare: but I know the Turkomans too well not to be sure that they will take part in the _Djihad_ only so long as the Ameer can offer them good pay and the prospect of yet richer booty; and as they sometimes owned in Afghan-Persian offices, it is most likely that the Russian imperialists will soon turn them into excellent brothers-in-arms of the Cossacks. Enthusiasm for the creed of the Prophet existed, if I remember rightly, only for the first hundred, indeed I might say only for the first fifty years. What Islam afterwards accomplished in Anatolia, in the empire of Constantine, in the islands of the Mediterranean, in Hungary, and in Germany, was due to the impulse of a wild daring in quest of booty and treasures, and a hankering after adventures. Where these leading incentives failed, there was a failure in zeal; and I repeat that, although the struggle will be a stern one, the speedy triumph of Russian arms in Bokhara is open to not the slightest doubt.

With the fall of the mightiest and most influential part of Turkestan, will Khokand, of her own accord, exchange a protection for the manifest sovereignty of the white Tzar. Khiva however, undaunted by the example, will, to all seeming, take up the struggle nevertheless. The conquest of Kharezm, moreover, though easier than that of Khokand, is connected with remarkable difficulties. With the exception of two towns, whose inhabitants are better known through their commercial relations with Russia, the Œsbeg population of this Khanat abhor the name of Russian. In courage, they stand much higher than the men of Khokand and Bokhara, and, protected by the formation of their native land, will cause much trouble to the Russian troops from the way of fighting peculiar to the Turkoman race. As for the view upheld by many geographers and travellers, that the Oxus will form the main road of the expedition, I am bound to meet it with the same denial as before. That river, on account of its great irregularity and the fluid sea of sand borne down upon its waves, is hard of passage for small vessels, not to speak of ships of war. Not a year passes without its changing its bed several miles in the shifting ground of the steppes; and if the Russians were not quite convinced of this circumstance, the small steamers of the Aral-Sea flotilla, built as they were for river navigation, would have begun forcing their way inland by the Oxus, instead of the Yaxartes. For although the smaller forts, such as Kungrad, Kiptchak, and Maugit, which were built on the fortified heights by the left bank of the river, might do harm to a flotilla passing near; yet, owing to the sad state of the Khivan artillery, they are hardly worth considering. Attempts to pass up the river, from its mouths to Kungrad, where the stream is deepest and most regular, have already been tried; still, the fact of their remaining merely attempts, clearly shows that the navigation of the Deryai Amus (Oxus), if not altogether impossible, is a hard problem nevertheless.

These, however, are but secondary drawbacks, and in Khiva, as in Bokhara, the white Tzar will be raised aloft upon the white carpet of the Kharezmian princes, if not through the grey-beards of the Tshagatay race, at any rate by his own bayonets and rifled guns.

The conquest of the whole right bank of the Ganges once assured to them, the strip of land from Issikköl to the Sea of Aral once come into full possession of the Russians, and well provided with excellent victualling-stores, then will the game of diplomacy have begun in Afghanistan also. Among the Afghans the court of St. Petersburg will not intervene so suddenly with arms in hand; not because England's miscarriage in 1839 has made it cautious, but because such a procedure is by no means customary with the Russians. That, moreover, would be partly superfluous, partly beyond the mark, amidst the now proverbial disunion of Dost Mohammed's successors. Where brother rages against brother in deadliest feud, where intrigues caused by greed and vanity are ever in full swing; there the secret agent, the kind word, a few friendly lines of writing, are much more profitable than a sudden assault with the armed hand. Hitherto, in his brother-strife against Shere-Ali-Khan, Abdurrahman-Khan has in no way entangled himself with Russian agents, although he sought to frighten the English moonshee (agent), by bringing some such conception to his notice. That he was greatly inclined to such a step I have not the slightest doubt; but as yet the Russians have given him no encouragement to take it. For if the Afghan opponents of Shere-Ali-Khan, the Ameer accredited by England, had received but the faintest wink from the Neva, they would never have coquetted with Sir John Lawrence in Calcutta. Not only chiefs and princes, but every Afghan warrior, nay, every shepherd on the Hilmund, puts his trust in the idea of Russian trade; and I have a hundred times over convinced myself how easily, indeed how gladly, these people would embrace a Russian alliance against the masters of Peshawar. Whether the fruits of such a friendship would be wholesome, and conduce to the interests of Afghanistan, no one takes into question. The Afghans, like all Asiatics, look only to the interests of the moment, see only the harm which Afghans have suffered in Kashmere and Sindh through English ascendancy, have a lively remembrance of the last sojourn of the red-jackets in Kabul and Kandahar; and though every one knows that the Kaffirs of Moscow are very little better than the Feringhies, still, from an impulse of revenge, they all desire and will prefer an alliance with the North to a good understanding with England.

Hence it is but a friendly regard, it is only a compact upheld not by treaties, but by a strong force on the Oxus, which the Russians can aim at for some time to come.

The same kind of relation must be their object in Persia. Here too, for the last ten years, has the court of St. Petersburg been playing a lucky game. Since the appearance of Russian envoys at the splendid court of the Sofies, in the time of Khardin, until now, Russian influence has gone through many phases. At first scorned and disregarded, the Russians have risen into the strongest and most dangerous opponent of Iran. Whilst, in the days of Napoleon I., England and France, to the profit and partial aggrandisement of the Shah, vied with each other in turning to account their influence at the court of Teheran, Russia, as "inter duos certantes tertius gaudens," quietly smoothed her way to the conquest of the countries beyond the Caucasus, to the profitable treaties of Gulistan and Turkmanshay. And while the same Western Powers persevered in that policy, the Colossus of the North took up such a position on the Caucasus as well as the Caspian Sea, that its shadow stretched not only over the northern rim of Iran, but far also into the country. At the time of Sir Henry Rawlinson's embassy, English influence was near being in the ascendant; but since then it has been continually sinking; for however lavish of gold and greetings the English policy might be in Malcolm's days, it showed itself just as cold and indifferent from the time of Mac Neil downwards. Both the Shah and his ministers seem urged on by necessity to accept the Russians as their Mentor. It is not from any conviction of a happier future that they have flung away from the fatherly embraces of the British Lion into the arms of the Northern Bear; and the Shah must dance for good or ill to the song which the latter growls out before him.

If now, in accordance with the aforeshown position of the Russian power and policy in Central Asia, we cast a glance on the frontier, stretching for 13,000 versts wide, from the Japanese Sea to the Circassian shore of the Black Sea, where Russia is always in contact with so many peoples of different origin and different religion, over whose future her aggressive policy hangs like the doomful sword of a Damocles; we shall soon be driven to observe that, although the southern outposts in Asia are on the Araxes, yet the only point where, in their further advance, they impinge on a European power is to be found in Central Asia. Separated twenty years ago from British India's northern frontier by the great horde of the Khirgis and the Khanats, the space at this moment left between Djissag and Peshawar, although the difficult road over the Hindu-Kush lies midway, amounts to no more than fifteen days' journey, and in reckoning by miles to hardly a hundred and twenty geographical miles. For an army the road, though difficult, is not insuperable, while it should be tolerably easy for the development of political influence; and for all England's readiness to see a mighty bulwark for her frontier in the snow-crowned peaks of the Hindu-Kush, she forgets the ease with which a Russian propaganda from the banks of the Oxus can smooth a way hence towards the north of Sindh. From the moment, indeed, when the Russian flag waves in Karshi, Kerki, and Tchardshuy, may England regard this power as her nearest neighbour.

3. RUSSIA'S VIEWS ON INDIA; AND ENGLISH OPTIMISTS.

Has Russia any serious views, then, on British India? Will she attack the British Lion in his rich possessions? Does her ambition really reach so far, that she would wield her mighty sceptre over the whole continent of Asia, from the icy shores of the Arctic Sea to Cape Comorin? These are questions of needful interest, not to Englishmen only, but to all Europeans. On the bank of the Thames as well as in Calcutta, statesmen have latterly answered them in the negative; for their organs, official and unofficial, regard the utmost danger of the meeting as a neighbourhood of frontiers, and not an aggression; a neighbourhood which, so far from imperilling English interests, will be altogether to their advantage. These gentlemen are sadly at fault, for the spirit of Russia's traditional policy,--her steadfast clinging to the schemes before indicated, the unbounded ambition of the House of Romanoff, the immense accumulation of means at their disposal for the accomplishment of their designs,--place in surer prospect the fulfilment of any aim on which they have once bent their gaze. Russia wants India first of all in order to set so rich a pearl in the splendid diamond of her Asiatic possessions; a pearl, for whose attainment she has so long, at so heavy a cost, been levelling the way through the most barren steppes in the world; next, in order to lend the greatest possible force to her influence over the whole world of Islam (whose greatest and most dangerous foe she has now become), because the masters of India have reached, in Mohamedan eyes, the non-plus-ultra of might and greatness; and lastly, by taming the British Lion on the other side the Hindu-Kush, to work out with greater ease her designs on the Bosphorus, in the Mediterranean, indeed all over Europe; since no one can now doubt that the Eastern question may be solved more easily beyond the Hindu-Kush than on the Bosphorus: for if, at the time of the Crimean war, when Nana Sahib's brother was fêted at Sevastopol, Russia had held her present position on the Yaxartes, the plans of Tzar Nicholas on Constantinople would not have been so easily buried under the ruins of the Malakhoff.

These far-reaching designs may not, perhaps, be the work of the next years, nor even of the Government of the peaceful and well-disposed Alexander; yet who can assure us that after him no Nicholas, or no yet sterner nature than his, may succeed to the throne, who will thwart the desire of a Taimur or a Nadir to come forth as a thoroughly Asiatic conqueror of the world? What a Russian autocrat can do in the present condition of Russia, in the present social position of his subjects, who, moreover, will long continue such, every one knows, and the statesmen of England best of all. It is, therefore, the more remarkable, that these gentlemen should think to put the said eventualities so easily aside, and to contest the question of a Russian invasion of India with arguments so very shallow. They usually bring forward the unpassable glaciers of Hindu-Kush and the Himalayas, and the swarms of hostile nomads which would hem in a force advancing from the north on its way southward. They console themselves with the great distance, which would bring an invading army to the Indian frontier tired and exhausted, while the English troops lying by, ready to strike at their ease, and strong in military zeal and training, awaited the shock of war with greediness. But do these gentlemen believe that Russia, in the event of her really cherishing these sort of views, would dispatch her invading armies thitherwards direct from Petersburg, Moscow, or Archangel? What end is served by the South-Siberian forts? What by Tashkend, Khodshend, and still more afterwards, by Bokhara and Samarkand? What, too, by the Persian-Afghan alliance? What did the Cossacks and the Russian troops of the line do in Gunib, and in the rugged hills of Circassia? Were they exhausted when they reached their journey's end? And the latter station is not so much farther from the capital on the Neva, than Peshawar is from the cities just named! And why are we to assume that Russia would choose only the difficult road through Balkh to Kabul, and thence through the Khyber Pass, and none other? Without mentioning that this could have been so fatal to the English army of 1839, which fled in affright and disorder, for the march thither cost no especial sacrifices; the road through Herat and Kandahar, the proper caravan-course to India through the Bolan Pass, is far more convenient. The latter, fifty-four or five English miles in length, did indeed cost the Bengal corps of the army of the Indus many days' toil; and yet we read in a trustworthy English author that the passage of 24-pounder howitzers and 18-pounder guns caused no particular trouble. Or why should the Russians not force the Gomul or the Gulari Pass, called also the middle road from Hindostan to Khorassan, which, according to Burnes, serves the Lohani Afghans as their main road of communication, and offers no especial difficulties?

It is too hard, indeed, to scatter the sanguine views of the English optimists with regard to the strength of their fancied bulwarks. The way through Kabul would have to be taken only in case of necessity; for the chief points by which Russia could quite easily approach the Indian frontiers are Djhissag and Astrabad; from the former in a southerly, from the latter in an easterly direction. Both roads have often led armies, time out of mind, to the goal of their desires; for both, though bordered by large deserts, pass through well-peopled, even fertile districts, which can support many thousands of marching men with ease.

Indeed, even the chances of an eventual war are greatly over-estimated by the English. True, that their present army in India, numbering 70,000 picked British troops besides the strong contingent of sepoys, is not to be compared with any of their former fighting forces in those regions. To throw as strong a muster across Afghanistan into the Punjaub, would certainly cost Russia some trouble. Still we must not forget how stout a support an invading army would find in a Persian-Afghan alliance, and in the great discontent which prevails in the Punjaub, in Kashmir, in Bhotan, and among the fanatic Mohamedans of India. The ever-broadening network of Indian railways may do much to hasten and promote a concentration; but the fountain-head of military support for India being on the Thames or the islands of the Mediterranean, is not much nearer than that of the Russians, especially if we consider that more than three hundred vessels sailing down the Volga make the transport to the southern shore of the Caspian Sea considerably easier. By this road may a large army be brought in a short time to Herat and Kandahar through the populous part of northern Persia; on the one hand through Astrabad, Bujnurd, and Kabushan; on the other, by the railway as yet only projected to Eneshed. This railroad the Tzar wants to build for the relief of the pilgrimage to the tomb of Imam Rizah; yet through all the Russian promises of subsidies there gleam forth other and non-religious plans. Or would people in England, besides the no longer doubtful possibility of a Russian design upon India, measure the political constellations which the said power has called into being on her behalf, in the field of European diplomacy? The Russian-French alliance of a Napoleon I. and an Alexander I., which left noticeable traces in Teheran, would now be much easier to enter on than before, owing to the dominant influence of France in Egypt and Syria, through the commencement of the Suez Canal. And these things apart, will not the ever-increasing _entente cordiale_ between Washington and St. Petersburg prove of signal advantage for Russia's purposes? People scoff at the way in which the Yankee cap entwines itself with the Russian knout; and yet the banquets on the Neva, at which American brotherhood was vigorously toasted, the journey of the Tzarovitch to New York, the mighty show made by America in China and Japan, where she threatens to turn the calm face of ocean into an American lake;--do not these things furnish ample reason for discerning in the alliance between Russia and America symptoms of the greatest danger for English interests? Indeed, when the decisive moment comes for acting, Russia will be able to avail herself of many ways and many means, which, however little worthy of notice they may seem to English statesmen, will be carefully pre-arranged without any noise.

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.

[61] Query--Hangman's halter? (Trans.)

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.

In England we meet everywhere with the sharpest contrasts.

Whoever is aware of the great ignorance of public opinion in England about events in India, about the relations between those great possessions and the neighbouring States; whoever in the course of a year has noted down those absurd and ridiculous news, those telegraphic despatches in the English papers, which reach Europe and England through Bombay and Calcutta; whoever is aware of the very small number of English statesmen who are so carefully informed on Asiatic relations, that they can pass a sound judgement on questions of Eastern policy;--such a one must surely be amazed at the way in which Great Britain founded her foreign possessions, to say nothing of her being able to hold them until now.

And just as even those among the English public who have lived any time in India have kept aloof from the natives, in accordance with their national character, and are but seldom conversant with their language and manners,--so, too, can the English Government entrust to naturalized Levantines, and not to Englishmen, the Dragomanate, that necessary organ of mutual intercourse, in such important embassies as that, for instance, of Constantinople. While Russia, France and Austria, have long had Oriental academies for diplomatic beginners; in England, with her rich dower of colleges, schools, and universities, no one has ever thought of such an institution. And so again in the legislative body as well as in the ministry, where the smallest questions often have a special advocate, there are but very few men competent to discuss the important relations in Asia; and even these, on account of the prevailing nepotism, are but seldom allowed to turn their experiences to account.

This indifference must surprise all foreigners. Still more amazed will they be to hear men of the liberal party say: "What does Asia concern us; what the swarm of barbarous races that cause us more trouble than profit; what the wealth of India, whose income has long ceased to cover her expenditure, to say nothing about the costs of the conquest?" I have often heard remarks of this kind from the most famous leaders of this party. The sincerity of their confession defies questioning; and yet they have always left me without an answer, when I have asked them how they would make up for the loss of that political influence which springs from a great colonial empire. People seem wholly to forget that a large number of young Englishmen, of all ranks, are pursuing military and political careers in India; they seem to be unaware how many sons of clergymen and officers, to whom no sphere of action offers itself within their island home, earn wealth in lucrative offices on the Ganges and the Indus, with the view of spending at home in a calm old age the outcome of their earlier years. They seem to leave entirely out of their reckoning the enormous number of merchants dwelling in their great Asiatic dominions amidst the most extensive commercial interests, through whose hands English capital multiplies by millions. Those liberals are very short-sighted, who deem the possession of such a colony as India an indifferent or superfluous matter. That they should wish to see the greatness of their fatherland founded on the flourishing condition of inland manufactures, and not on their dominion over foreign peoples, can no longer be regarded as a view generally valid in England, now that more than sixty millions pounds sterling are laid out in Indian railway undertakings alone; for that neither manufacturing industry nor the enterprising spirit of English merchants can succeed, to any great extent, without the supporting hand of English rule, is amply shown by the circumstances of British trade in Algiers, Central Asia, and other non-British territories.

It is faulty views like these which neutralise all the advantages of English individualism in the presence of Russian policy, which always acts with steadfast consistency. To these errors may be ascribed the fact that Russia, having grown up into a powerful rival in a space of time incredibly short, is treading so close on the Achilles-heel of Great Britain. With the position she holds on the Aral and the Caspian Seas, after conquering the whole of the Caucasus, after her enormous successes in Central Asia, it would now be useless to try and force back that giant power. What might with no great trouble have been attained twenty years ago, it is now far too late to attempt; but if England would avoid the usual lot of commercial states,--the doom of Carthage, Venice, Genoa, Holland, and Portugal,--there is but one way left to her: a policy of stern watchfulness, a swift grasp of the measures still at her command.

5. ADVICE TO ENGLAND FOR THE PURPOSE OF AVERTING THE DANGER.

To think of moving out in open hostility to the growing power of Russia, were now, on England's part, just as great an error as the strange inaction she has displayed for the last twenty-five years amidst all the occurrences beyond the Hindu-Kush. Russia will establish herself on the right bank of the Oxus, will absorb the three Khanats, and perhaps Chinese Tartary, will make everything Œzbeg to acknowledge her supremacy. That can no longer be prevented; but thus far and no farther should Englishmen allow their rivals to advance.

All that lies between the Oxus and the Indus should remain neutral territory. Through her physical conformation, through the warlike character of her inhabitants, and specially through their great aptitude for diplomacy, Afghanistan would be altogether suited to form a military and political barrier against any possible collision between the two giants. That country would cost the conqueror, coming whether from North or South, a tenfold harder struggle than did the Caucasus. Besides, the possession would not for a long while make good the material advantage of an expensive war; and although the continual disorders that prevail in the mountain-home of the Afghans may be of no advantage to either neighbour, still the danger is not so great as to justify any schemes of conquest on one side or the other.

How, then, in case Russia continues her policy of aggression, may England secure the neutrality of Afghanistan? What must she do to set up with her influence there a solid barrier, without coming forward as a conqueror?

That is the work of a skilled diplomatic intercourse, the work of an uninterrupted alliance, carried on by agents, who, acquainted with the Afghan character, and eschewing English modes of thought, can conduct themselves as Asiatics.

The same fault which Lord Auckland committed in 1839, by his active interference in Afghan affairs, that fault and one far greater still did his successors prove guilty of, through their utter withdrawal from the scene, through their strange indifference in respect of the concerns of the neighbouring State. The English resemble a child which, after having once burnt itself at a fire, will not for a long time venture to draw near its warmth. The catastrophe of the Afghan campaign, the thirty millions sterling in costs, dwell even now, after a quarter of a century, with such fearful vividness in the eyes of every Briton, that he trembles at the very thought of political influence beyond the Hindu-Kush. Have we not here two sharply-opposed extremes? First, armed to the teeth in support of the interests of a prince so little loved as Shah Sujah; and then, after the annexation of the Punjab, scarce willing to give one more thought to Kabul! And why should the frontier above Peshawar be so dangerous a barrier for every Englishman and European? If several thousands of Kakeries, Lohanies, Gilzies, and Yusufzies, yearly pass over the northern frontier of Hindostan,--some for mercantile purposes, others to graze their flocks,--why should British travellers not be allowed to venture over the Hindu-Kush, let alone a few hours' journey beyond Peshawar? Afghan merchants drive a flourishing trade with Mooltan, Delhi, Lahore: why, from the English side, may not one mercantile firm or another betake itself for the same end to Kabul?

In truth, this state of things has always astonished me; the more so, when I heard that the officer whom Sir John Lawrence sent to Kabul to offer welcome to Shere Ali Khan had to be always escorted there by a strong detachment of troops, to guard himself from the rage of a fanatic population. This is surely a mode of proceeding at once wrong and ridiculous, for giving Asiatics a lesson in European magnanimity and European love of justice. England, who has long dealt with the Asiatics after this fashion, resembles a person trying with all his might to make a blind man comprehend the beauty of one of Raphael's cartoons. In this respect Russia is far more practical. She knows that such proofs of magnanimity and humanity are only ridiculed by the Orientals; that, so far from taking the example to themselves, they misuse those proofs for their own special ends; and, instead of wasting moral preachings on them, England would act shrewdly by helping herself to the same weapons, and treating Orientals in Oriental fashion.

At the time when the martyrs Conolly and Stoddart were pining in cruel imprisonment, out of which they were afterwards delivered only by the headsman's axe, there happened to be in British territory a number of Bokharians, Khokandies, and other Central Asiatics, by whose arrest the lot of the English officers might have been alleviated, and their deliverance from death assured. In such cases Russia is wont to clear herself from the dilemma by the law of retaliation. England acts differently. She would play the high-minded part; and what has she gained by it? When I was in Bokhara, I heard how this very act of British generosity had missed its mark. England, said the Bokharians, dares not awaken the wrath of the Ameer of Bokhara: her weakness commands this moderation.

Do the gentlemen in Calcutta imagine that the Afghans think otherwise? No; and they likewise say: protected by the might and greatness of Islam, our indigo and spice merchants, our camel-hirers, can venture unharmed on British ground; whilst not one infidel soul dares show himself among us.

The same unpardonable weakness did the Viceroy of India show in 1857, when he was sent by Lord Canning to Peshawar to conclude, in conjunction with Edwardes, an offensive and defensive alliance against Persia with the then reigning Dost Mohamed Khan. At that time the Afghans were hard pressed; they wanted arms and money: the grey-haired Barukzie chief, attended by his sons, betrayed this fact in every word; and yet his demands were fulfilled in every point, without his yielding in the least to any of England's leading claims. Four thousand stand of arms, with bayonets, sabres, pouches, and twelve lakhs of rupees a year, were promised him, so long as England was at war with Persia. Of this large sum they received, even after the conclusion of peace at Paris, a considerable instalment; and yet the chief end of the negotiations at Kabul and Kandahar--the appointment of a permanent English representative--was not attained. Dost Mohamed Khan avowed, as Kaye tells us in his "History of the Sepoy War," that he would not take on himself the responsibility of such a step; that he could not protect English agents against Afghan fanaticism; that every step of theirs might compromise, &c., &c. I cannot comprehend how John Lawrence, one of the few men acquainted with Eastern character, could yield to the endearments of the grey Afghan wolf,--how he could believe those false apprehensions. If even Dost Mahomed could say that an English mission might tarry in peace at Kandahar, why could it not fare as well in Kabul? The British commissioners were greatly in the wrong if they doubted even for a moment the supreme power of the Afghan ruler. With a very little more persistency, the English, who then appeared as helpers in need, might have obtained not two but several posts of embassy. The Afghans would soon have grown used to their presence, and the diplomatic alliance, once made easy, would have been maintained unbroken.

In a semi-official article, which appeared in the _Edinburgh Review_ for January, 1867, Sir John Lawrence now strives to show how hard and vain it is to enter into diplomatic intercourse with neighbours so wild and turbulent as those who surround India on all sides. Still, I cannot understand why the Viceroy should not take example from Russia, who, with the same elements on her frontier, sends envoy after envoy, knows how to obtain for them respect and safety, and so keeps moving forward to her wished-for goal. Why does not England pursue, in this case, the same policy which she once began in China, Japan, and other Asiatic countries? It seems to me that people are less convinced of the difficulty of carrying out such a purpose, than of the extreme remoteness of the consequent gain. Or are these gentlemen really unaware of the permanent support thus rearable, not only for English interests in Afghanistan, but even for the special welfare of the Afghans themselves?

Sir Henry Rawlinson's diplomatic bearing in Kandahar, which enabled him so long to maintain himself there with his suite in the most difficult position, at a period the most critical, is a splendid proof that even the rudest Asiatics are not unmanageable. And if the said officer could accomplish so much in the threatening attitude of a conqueror, what might not first have been attained through political tact and friendly persuasion?

The tangible results of uninterrupted diplomatic intercourse would, if we mistake not, be:--

1st. A greater impulse given to trade; for, as English goods have long enjoyed a good name in Central Asia, English products, imported direct from England, could certainly drive similar but less-prized Russian products out of the market. At present this is naturally not the case: at this moment, in the bazaars of Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, and other places, there is much more sold of many Russian articles,--such as ironware and working tools, coarse cotton and handkerchiefs,--than of English ones; solely because the former, owing to the lower price at which they were first saleable, are not raised by the additional payments to so high a figure as the English goods, whose value, originally dear, is raised twofold in the transit. Moreover, in Bokhara, here and there in Khiva and in Karshi, Russian traders may be found who, secure in the energy of their government, can of course advance their own interests better than foreign mercantile agents. In vain should we seek for a better apostle, a better pioneer for civilisation, than trade; in vain, for a better teacher to turn men to our own ways of thinking, than the silent bales of goods which are carried over from Europe; and England, apart from her commercial interests, is bound, for the ends of humanity also, to help forward trade in Central Asia.

2. The Afghans, who, under the name of Ingilis or Feringhi, have hitherto been acquainted with but one armed power, one conquest-seeking neighbour, will easily, in the peaceful garb of diplomatic intercourse, in well-meaning counsels, accept the teaching of a better one. In the year 1808, when the Afghans had little fear of an English invasion, the ambassador, Mountstuart Elphinstone, with a numerous following, whose escort amounted to only four hundred Anglo-Indian soldiers, was well received throughout Afghanistan, for fear and mistrust had as yet taken no root. Down to the beginning of this century the same state of things might be found in all parts of the Ottoman Empire. European and enemy were deemed identical things; but now, after our embassies and consulates have pushed themselves, spite of the Porte's reluctance, into many places, will Osmanlis and Arabs no longer cherish the same sort of views? They have clearer notions about the generic term, "Feringhi," and know for certain that Russia, for instance, feels just as friendly to the Porte as England feels inimical; that this government has one set of plans, the other another; and so on. Without consulates such a result could not have been attained. And so the Afghans, until they have been brought into nearer and peaceful intercourse with the English, will never understand what England or Russia may do for their weal or woes; whose friendship will render them the more or the less service.

3. The Afghans, most warlike of all Central Asiatics, might, with the powerful support of English counsels, easily be raised into a military power of some importance. What the _Instructeurs Militaires_ of their day accomplished in the army of Sultan Mahmood and Mehemed Ali Pasha; what English officers accomplished with the troops of Abbas Mirza,--would be as nothing in comparison with the consequences of a similar undertaking among the Afghans; out of whom, so far as one may judge from the military bearing and manœuvring of a Kabul regiment drilled by Sepoy deserters, a regular army will very easily be formed. Such a result may also be attained with the fortresses of Herat and Kandahar, whose fortifications, in the event of their coming under the charge of a second Pottinger, would certainly prove a far harder prize for Russian besiegers than if they were given over to the warlike skill of Afghans alone.

4. The prime gain, however, which we look for from a permanent agency is, that England, being accurately informed of proceedings in Central Asia, of the military and political movements of Russia, will no longer be exposed to the danger of finding herself suddenly surprised on one point or another, and, through the continual uncertainty in which she wavers touching the true state of things, of being disabled from taking the right precautions. At this moment, the Viceroy maintains a few Moonshies without any official character in Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat; Moonshies, that is, scribes, and Mohamedans, who, being among other things well paid, are engaged to furnish occasional news. Besides these, there are also spies, or secret emissaries, despatched in this or that direction on special conjunctures, who roam in the disguise of a merchant or a pilgrim through Turkestan, and furnish tidings of political events. Letting alone the fact that I regard both the former and the latter class as alike unfit for such an office, because they never enter in their memorandum-books anything but bazaar-reports and the politics of the caravan, I may, as one who has lived whole years among Orientals, be allowed to place the very smallest faith in those people. Do persons in Calcutta consider what Mohamedan fanaticism is; are they aware that no amount of gold will succeed in turning one Mussulman to the account of the Feringhie against another Mussulman? To all appearance these emissaries and spies will display the greatest diligence, the most reckless loyalty, the most forward zeal; and yet in the interior of Central Asia they will fulfil the commands of their order by squatting on the self same carpet with those religious comrades, with whom they repair to one common mosque. On this point British statesmen will certainly not agree with me, though that is the very reason why they are so little acquainted with what goes on in Central Asia,--why the absurdest stories spread through India into Europe,--and why they can regard the affairs of the Khanats in the light which Russian diplomacy has kindled for them.

Far as I am from wanting to set up as a political advice-giver, I find that these unpretending counsels point out the only means whereby Afghanistan's neutrality can be secured, and herself erected into a powerful barrier against Russia's further progress in Central Asia. In view of so weighty a question as the possession of the East Indies is for the greatness and continuance of English power, it were too dangerous to seek a false protection in palliative measures. Political errors, however trifling, form in time so many links in one unbroken chain of disasters,--a chain which, presently, the greatest struggles, the most clear-eyed statesmanship, may trouble themselves to break in vain.

6. THE GENERAL INTERESTS OF THE QUESTION.

It still remains to answer the one further question, why we cannot look with indifference on the danger for English interests from Russian ascendancy, and for what special reason it is that the decline of England's power seems to us so detrimental, that we see in Russia's undue influence a bar to the advance of the spirit of our age.

The answer is very simple: Russia was, is, and long will be Asiatic. The cheering prospect that the overgrown body of Russian power will, according to the laws of nature, necessarily break up hereafter into two or more sections, and the danger that threatens us be thereby lessened, is one which we cannot for a moment entertain. We need only fix our eyes on the character of political life in Russia, its social circumstances, the relation of the people towards the upper castes of the governing circle, the general state of popular culture, and the modes of popular thought, to see how everything there is Asiatic, aye, wildly Asiatic in tendency; and how little, in spite of the long struggle after European civilisation, has yet been taken in, to speak comparatively, from what we call European or Western life. Without repeating the well-worn adage, "Scrape a Russian and you will lay bare a Tartar," it is none the less impossible, whether from personal experience, or the reports of later, and to Russia most friendly travellers, to help acknowledging how much may yet be found, on the Neva and in other large Russian towns, of that surface civilisation which many Asiatic governments bring successfully to bear on short-sighted Europe. No doubt this pretence of civilisation succeeds better in Petersburg, wielded by a government containing a strong admixture of Christian and European elements, than in Cairo, Constantinople, and Teheran. The Russian noble, in appearance a finished European, thoroughly versed in our language, manners and modes of thought, will certainly cut a better figure than the semi-European Effendi on the Bosphorus, or the Persian Mirza. A government which draws towards itself, at a cost so heavy, so many scientific and artistic forces, which has lately advanced with so much zeal in founding schools, universities, scientific associations, which hires persons in Europe to blazon forth the progress of Russian civilisation,--can assuredly reap for itself greater credit than the Porte or the Persian ministry, which, engaged in upholding their weakly existence, cannot bestow so much attention on the needful pageantry.

No wonder, then, if to a superficial glance Russia seems more European, more imbued with the spirit of our civilisation, and can easily win the sympathy of those who would love her with all their might. But if once we try impartially to lift up the outer covering and peep into the inside of the great Russian community, what shall we behold?

Great, indeed, is the disenchantment that awaits us at every step, when we seek to discover in the majority of the Russian people those traces of progress, which ought to exist according to the statements of Russian hirelings in the European press. The Englishman who, in 1865, in a pamphlet called "Russia, Central Asia, and British India," sought to indoctrinate the English public with the same idea, and, inferring the commencement of many reforms from the bearing of such innovations as slave emancipation, placed such a conversion in the foreground, though even Russian writers like Herzen and Dolgorukoff are doubtful of it, would in all likelihood have thought very differently, if he had drawn the parallel, not between persons of intelligence, but between the Russian people and the Asiatics.

On that immense frontier where Russia touches Asia, we shall everywhere find the Russians standing on a markedly lower level of development, and in freedom of manners far behind those Asiatic peoples to whom we would impart the advantages of our younger European as compared with their old Asiatic civilisation. Alexander Michie, a traveller from Pekin to Petersburg, and so great a friend of Russia that he calls Siberia a second Paradise, and deems the exiled Poles enviably fortunate, cannot, however, help proclaiming aloud the superiority of the Chinese to the Russians, wherever he finds the two holding intercourse with each other. And this is the case not only in Maimadshin and Kiachta, but even among the Mussulmans. The Russian, as a northerner, will display more energy than the Asiatic _de pur sang_; but his remarkably dirty exterior, his drunkenness, his religion bordering on fetishism, his servility, his crass ignorance, his coarse, unpolished manners,--are characteristics which make him show very poorly against the supple, courtly, keen-sighted Eastern. Just as I have heard a cultivated Moslem Tadjik in Bokhara speak with contempt of the uncivilised Russians, whom he set above the Kirghis only, so in all likelihood will every Chinaman, every Persian in Transcaucasia, and every well-educated Tartar in Kazan, say the same. What can these nations, then, learn from Russia?

Can her forms of government awaken any envy in Asiatic races? The corruptibility of the placemen, their tyrannical and arbitrary conduct under Nicholas, the mass of more than fifty million peasants who occupied the lowest of all positions beside the caste of placemen and nobles,--all this really is not particularly alluring for those among whom the wildest autocratic institutions are yet combined with patriarchal mildness.

Yes, it is hard, not only at present, but even in the distant future, to discover in Russia's craving for conquests the prospect of a profitable change in the social life of the Asiatic peoples, a change in the direction of European ideas. If we ask ourselves what has become of the Tartars, who for more than two hundred years have dwelt under Russian protection; what of the great number of Siberian tribes,--such as Bashkirs, Voguls, Tzeremisses, Votjaks,--which have been or are on the point of being absorbed into the Russian nation, must we not everywhere regard the Russianising as the chief result?

Russianising is naturally a step from Asia towards Europe, as the government of an Alexander II., so far as it has gone, may even be called a turning-point: and yet who will blame us, if to this wearisome process, whose results seem always doubtful, we prefer the English scheme of civilisation, which has at this moment such splendid and surprising results to show in India, and wherever else it deals with Asiatics?

That the peoples of broad India, of the land which has been the cradle and the fountain-head of that Asiatic civilisation which we show up and fight against as unfit to live, hold very persistently to their old usages, to their own ways of thinking, no one will dispute; and yet how great a change has come over India, even since the beginning of the last century! Methinks, even the worst enemies of Great Britain will be unable to deny that the caste-system of the Hindoos and their many inhuman customs have suffered a mighty blow from English influence. No one can deny that these wild Asiatics, in spite of all their stiff-necked bearing, are advancing with wonderful strides on the path of our civilisation. We find at this moment in India a great number of people thoroughly convinced of the blessed influence of their conqueror: numerous schools and institutions spread the light of the new world abroad through all classes of the population. Not only are there many well versed in the English tongue; they also take an active part in our scientific discussions, are enrolled as members of learned European societies, and sometimes even take up the pen to emulate the writers of the West. Rajah Radakant Deb Bahádur, Maharajah Kali Krishna Bahadur, Baboo Rayendra Lala Mitra, a good many pundits (priests), and other learned gentlemen, may be found on the list of French, German, and Anglo-Asiatic societies, and are known in distinguished circles by their works. Strong in their own sense of nationality, the Hindoos are now better acquainted with their language, history and philosophy, than ever they were in the days of their inland princes. Societies are formed, as in England, for the extirpation of certain prejudices, for doing away with so many shameful habits and customs, for the advancement of social intercourse; and if we consider how much the reading world increases day by day, how large a circle has been procured from among the natives for such Hindustani papers as the _Hirkara Bengála_ ("Bengal Messenger"), the _Suheili Panjábi_ ("Punjaub Star"), the _Audh Akbar_ ("Oudh News"), _Khairkah Panjábi_ ("Punjaub Wellwisher"), and how greatly the press is rising day by day into a powerful factor of Europeanism, we shall be obliged to own that England's subject races stand, in respect of culture, not only above their yoke-fellows in Russia, but even above many of the Russians themselves.

If to the above-named unfitness of Russia for civilising India we superadd the important circumstance that Russia, in thus absorbing half the world, and blending many millions of Asiatics into her own body, presents herself in an attitude of powerful menace, not to Great Britain only, but to all Europe as well, we shall find this immense predominance more hurtful to our own existence than advantageous to the leading Tartar races of Asia. Russophobia, we are told, is a foolish crotchet; and I am willing to think so myself. Still, if we contemplate the mighty influence of the Russian two-headed eagle in all parts of Asia; if we reflect, that through its position on the Hindu Kush the court of St. Petersburg will solve, in its own favour, the Eastern question on the Bosphorus, it is hard to feel perfect peace of mind with regard to the future destiny of our own hemisphere. The diplomacy of to-day, which pays more homage to fashion than to good sense, makes merry enough with Napoleon's prophecy regarding Cossack rule in Europe. But people forget how much may be accomplished with our present means of communication by a power which will extend from Kamshatka to the Danube, or perhaps to the shore of the Adriatic,--from the icy zones of the North Sea to the burning banks of the Irawaddy. Visionary as it may seem to many, it is in nowise impossible that some hundred thousands of Asia's wildest horsemen may readily follow the summons of such a power into the midmost heart of Europe. In the beginning of this century the possibility of such an inroad, à la Djinghis Khan and Taimur, was shown by the Don Cossacks on the banks of the Seine. And why might this not be repeated now-a-days, with railroads and steamers at their disposal? Our European war-science may overcome this savage power: no member of the House of Romanoff could long play among us the part of a Djinghis or a Taimur. Yet a struggle of that sort, however momentary, would evolve mournful issues; and it is now a matter of pressing need to keep off the approach of such an event, while measures of precaution are still within our reach.

Apart, however, from these far-reaching calculations, can any one doubt that England's power and greatness are of more advantage than Russian supremacy to the general interests of Europe? England has many foes, or perhaps we should rather call them, enviers. Certain voices in the continental press will always, under the sway of passion, discover in her conduct selfishness, greed, and pride. Enthusiasts will see the blindest materialism in every move; and yet people must be blind and carried away by prejudice, not to see the triumphs won by English greatness, English capital, and English endurance, for our civilisation and our scientific researches. Is it not England alone, whose powerful flag has opened Eastern Asia to our trade? Who else but English travellers have been driven by a daring spirit of inquiry into the farthest regions, in order to enrich our geographical and ethnographical knowledge; and what happens on the Thames, what in every other town of that ever-stirring and busy island-realm? Do those haughty spirits who are continually finding fault with English materialism, ever consider that these brokers, in spite of their lively interest in trade and money-making, still render the greatest service in the advancement of science, in the enlightenment of the world? What country is there, in which Government gives its millions so readily for an institution like the British Museum; where a hundred thousand pounds is laid out with so free a hand on the mere catalogue of a library, as lately happened in London; where Government fits out ships and expeditions in quest of an imperilled traveller, as they have lately done in behalf of Livingstone?

Yes; in spite of all her faults, from which no country is free, we must allow that England, whether in consequence of the materialism thus strongly censured, or of the thirst for power so often laid to her charge, anyhow stands at the top of European civilisation. For if France and Germany furnish indispensable aid in diffusing the light of our higher civilisation, still, the chief agent is England alone. With her flag emerges the day-dawn of a fairer era in every zone, in every part of the world. What the enviers of Great Britain tell us of her tyrannical behaviour, is mainly an untruth. It is not at the writing-table and in easy arm-chairs, but in the countries of the Asiatic world, that these sentimental fault-finders should inform themselves about England's influence; and if they saw how the march of our western civilisation drives out the vices of the old Asiatic, how it seeks to upraise the downtrodden rights of man, and freeing millions from the absolute sway of a single tyrant, leads them on towards a better future, then assuredly they could not remain indifferent to England's influence in foreign lands.

And would it not be grievous, if Muscovite ascendancy should do harm to such a State? The strong will of a free people governs on the Thames; on the Neva the ambition of an Asiatic dynasty, a system of government so framed that its capacity for reform in the future remains doubtful, while its great perniciousness in the present is all the more assured.

Yes; only in Russia's approach towards India, that Achilles-heel of British interests, may we discover the infallible sign of serious danger for England. A greater struggle than that which the British Lion had to encounter in the south with France, for the establishment of its power on the Ganges, it has still to look for in the north. The first-named foe, weaker in numbers and endurance, had but a small fleet, and a sea at that time unnavigable behind her back, and could easily be overcome. The last-named, on the contrary, will be supported by an unbroken chain of fortresses, garrisons, guarded roads; her weapons are a boundless ambition, the blind devotion of millions of subjects, and the sympathy of rude neighbour-states. Victory over such a power will be far less easy, and the consequences of defeat far greater.

Be on thy guard, therefore, Britannia! For if the star of thine ancient fortune should now begin to wane, then will that verse--

"The nations not so blest as thee Must in their turn to tyrants fall, While thou shalt flourish great and free, The dread and envy of them all,"

--have to remain unread in the different zones.

LEWIS & SON, Printers, Swan Buildings, Moorgate Street, London.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed.

Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where the missing quote should be placed.

The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.