The Press.
London, England, 1855-02-24 00:00:00

RUSSIAN COMMERCE.

IT appears that the present Government is
resolved to adhere to the policy adopted by
their predecessors with reference to Russian
commerce. Mr. CARDWELL has been put for-
ward to eulogise our new code of maritime
warfare, drawn up under the auspices of the
now defunct Coalition, and ho has exhausted
the language of panegyric in dwelling upon
the unrivalled skill of its authors. It is simply,
according to the President of the Board of
Trade, a masterpiece of wisdom. It has been
framed according to the soundest principles

174

of political economy ; and it has been pre-
eminently successful in its operation, for it
inflicts the maximum of injury upon the
enemy and the minimum of injury upon our-
selves. If Mr. CARDWE.L believes that this
solemn trifling will satinf7 either the House of
Commons or the country nt the present time,
he is egregiously mistaken. The public mind
is fairly roused on the subject of the war, and
it is notorious that the naval policy which the
President cf the Board of Trade ao highly
lauds has been inconsistent, indecisive, and,
beyond all precedent, inglorious. It is not
with scraps of political economy that he will
convince his countrymen to the contrary. The
feeling is instinctive and universal that our
naval resources have not been wielded in the
present war with the energy of former times.
We blockade our enemy's coasts without in-
terrupting his trade, and we bombard his
towns without intending to destroy, or even
seriously to injure them. We have tried, in
short, the novel experiment of an amicable
war, and we have reaped humiliation and
disaster as the bitter fruits of our infatuation.
We must reverse Mr. CARDWELL'S proposition
if we would speak the truth. No serious blow
has yet been struck against the enemy, but
our reputation as a naval as well as a military
power has suffered deeply, perhaps irre-
trievably ; nor can any amount of sophistry
conceal from the public view this painful but
notorious fact. We feel humiliated in spite of
the soothing eloquence of the President of the
Board of Trade. We look for decisive action
and not for pretty sentiments at the present
crisis, but hitherto we have looked in vain.
In introiucing the subject of our commer-
cial relations with Russia, Mr. COLLIER made
a great mistake in not proposing some specific
change of policy. He pointed out the glaring
inconsistencies of our present plan of opera-
tions. He showed that if it had been devised
by Count NESSELRODE himself, it could not
have more effectually promoted the interests
of his master. He showed that we take in•
directly from Russia very nearly as much of
her produce as we ever did, while we pay
much more for it, not in kind, but in gold.
He showed that the Baltic blockade was a
farce so long as this traffic was permitted. As
for the blockade of the Black Sea, that is a
pure fiction, which has never had any exist-
ence except in the lively imagination of Mr.
BERNAL OSBORNE. The clearest possible case
was made out by Mr. COLLIER against the in-
fatuated policy of the Coalition, which, by per-
mitting indirectly the free export of Russian
produce, has deliberately furnished our enemies
with the sinews of war ; yet he proposed no
change of system. He had no specific plan to
offer to the House, and he wound up his
speech by simply moving for certain returns
relating to the trade of the White Sea. We
regret that he did not take a bolder and more
consistent course upon a matter of such vital
importance. We have all along thought that the
surest as well as the most expeditious mode
of bringing this war to a successful termina-
tion is by annihilating the foreign trade of
Russia. It appears from the most recent
returns that the value of her annual exports
to the United Kingdom amount to between
seven and eight millions sterling ; and we
must bear in mind that this is fully one-half
of the entire value of her exported produce.
We take from her as much, and we believe
even more, than all the other countries on the
globe put together. Probably, no country was
ever so dependent, in a commercial sense,
upon another, as Russia is upon England ; and
yet, with the means in our hands of utterly
destroying her foreign trade, we must be con-
tent to work out the new theory of maritime
war as propounded by Mr. CARDWELL. We
would recommend that ingenious gentleman
to look a little to the past instead of dwelling
on the uncertain future. We would remind
him that this is not the first war which we
have waged with Russia. Some of his col-
leagues will be able to inform him that they
remember the time when the Emperor PAUL,
at the instigation of a potentate still greater
than himself, declared war upon Great Britain.
We had no steamers in those days, but neither
had we any political economists ; and if our
naval commanders could not avail themselves
of Lthe one, they were not shackled by the