The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-10-26 00:00:00

te teiartirittge &seam
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1878,

GREAT BRITAIN AND RUSSIA.

The jealous hostility which for centuries
existed between England and France has
passed away. For at least 500 years the two
nations, separated by the streak of silver sea, '
were in a chronic state of enmity; age after
age there were gigantic and sanguinary wars;
tens of thousands oflvaltiable lives were sacri-
ficed; and money was expended on slaughter
and bloodshed, which if devoted to the peaceful
development of the resources of both countries
would have renderad myriad happy. Certainly
from the battle of Agincourt, in 1415 to the
battle of Waterloo, exactly 400 years, later,
the strife was fierce and oft-repeated; but with
the overthrow of Napoleon a better day dawned
for each of two great peoples. No one now,
on either side of the Channel would speak of
the land upon the other side as that of an
hereditary foe. Even the periodical panic of a
French invasion has departed, and left merely
its ghost, dim and shadowy in the shape of an
indistinct rememberance, to remind us that it
had ever been, It has disappeared as a
phantom of the night is chased away at the
coming of the dawn. The cordial feeling be-
tween the two nations has never been more
thoroughly exemplified than during the present
year, in the holding of the Paris Exhibition
and the enthusiastic reception of the heir to
the British Crown by all classes of the popula-
tion in the French capital.
One traditional enemy passeth away and
another cometh, It is no longer France of
which we are bidden to be on our guard, but
the great colossus of the North, bestridiog two
Continents, and ever, according to its enemies,
seeking to seize India by steadily and stealthily ,
advancing through Central Asia, and endeavour-
ing to undermine our influence in Europe by
moving southwards towards Constantinople,
there to bicorne possessed of the entrance to
the Mediterranean, from which her ships of war
are now excluded. Three and twenty years ago
the feeling against Russia in this country be-
came so strong that, in cempany with France,
we went, to war to clip her wings. As to
France, people were ill-natured enough to say
that the French as a nation cared nothing about
the war, and that it was undertaken solely for !
the dynastic cause of the Emperor. But with-
out controverting or admitting the truth of this
assertion, of one thing there can be no ques-
tion, that the English, as a nation, were at that ,
time thorougly aroused against Russia. Granted
that a grdat deal of this feeling might have been
due to misrepresenta,ton, undoubtedly we were
at that time determined that the Muscovite
suouol be no competitor of ours either in
Europe or in Asia, and the Treaty of Peace,
Signed at Paris in 1850, laid down some very ,
stringent conditions, binding Russia by laud
and sea. One of these, after having been
earlured by _Russia sixteen years, was repudia-
te.d, by he in 1870 when France, one of the
Inge contracting parties, was prostrate at the
!eet, Of Gernia.ny, and had not the power, even
if sa.e poisessed the will, to -enforce the
provision of the infracted Treaty. Great
Brit;lin unquestionably had the power, but the
ent-ircoment of a rreaty is a collective and not
an iadjvidul duty ; and besides this the strong
feeling against itassia had subsided. A nation,
no more than a man,. cannot be always thinking
of one subject, or indulging in one aversion.
The absorbing top:e of one decade het:owes a '
matter of history the next ; and its the wus
verse inoveS On, subject of importance con-
tinually rise. Each has its day and gives place
to another. Like thu shifting scenes. in
kaleidoscope, there is a constant suc.ccas.ion of
change. The topics before the nation m 1870
wero not those of 1856; it had other affairs to
think about and to talk over. There MIS a fey/
who contended that the repudiation of Russia
of the Black Stnt clauses of the Treaty
rendered the Crimean war of non-effect, that
we had thus sacriti..;ed everything for which we
had gone to war, and had therefore much better
have saved our men and our money. But we
were so engaged in contemplating the troubles
of our neighbours that these objections were un-
heeded, and a new Convention was signed in
London agreeing to what Russia had done.
Indeed, the feeling against the Muscovite died
away to such an extent that in January, 1874, a
sons of the Queen was united in marriage to
the only daughter of the Czar, amid
many prophecies of the friendship which was
in future to east between England 'lnd Auld%

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