The Express.
London, England, 1853-12-09 00:00:00

the winding drive round Arthur's best—tho finest
promenade perhaps in the world—except to say that
the p*k has been " wasted:"

Fourthly, whether there should be a Secretary of
State for Scotland or not, is a point which was freely
discussed before the voice of the Association creating
itself Vindicators of Scottish Rights was heard, and
will again be discussed when that puny voice is silenced.
et is not denied that the HOME SECRETARY has too
much to do (that, indeed, every Minister of State has
too much to do), and it would be well, perhaps, to
relieve him of his Scottish business; although even
now he turns over most of it to the Lout) Auvoc VIE
of Scotland, who has also too much to do. But a
National Association for the Vindication of Scottish
Rights is by no means required to help on the ques-
tion, however much tii,y require a sound practical
question to help them on.

Fifthly, the number of Scottish representatives in
Parliament belongs to the general question of Par-
liamentary Reform, and the Association have also
adopted that question to add weight and consequence
to their struggles for notoriety.
Sixthly, the Scottish lion : Well, we concede that
at once without stint or hesitation. Let the heraldic

Pgrievance-mongers quarter their lion in dexter chief,
or in sinister chief, or in honour point, or in
fees point, or let their lion be still rampant in bass
point. In the name of a vast constituency of British
common sense we aro quite willing to allow the
Nationai Association fur the Vindication of Scottish
Rights to vindicate the rights of their heraldic lion
in any manner that may please them best.
Although all sensible Scotchmen must smile at
the small section of their countrymen who are bring-
ing down so much ridicule on themselves, yet they
cannot but deplore the actual mischief such persons
are capable of creating. The weak-minded and
ignorant are ever more ready to foment than to heal
a quarrel, if a quarrel be once set up ; and this pit-
ting two socially as well as politically united coun-
tries against each other; this wretched cry of
English injustice to Scotland, may help to undo
some of the good that the past century has done.
The o:d separate and mischievous nationalities
are now nearly absorbed. Scotland and England are
fart becoming one nation in interests, in habits, and
in social brotherhood. The superior national educa-
tion, the harder training, the greater steadiness in
the pursuit of specific objects, which belong to the
Scotch, have, by constant intercourse, not been lost
upon Englishmen, and the various other nations
to which Scotchmen have largely emigrated
while they have profited by the excellencies of
the other peoples with whom they are in contact.
So thoroughly has amalgamation gone on that
even migration has not been all on one side. It
came out from the census of 1841, that there were
more English residents in Scotland in proportion to
its small population, than there were Scotch residents
here in proportion to the very much greater popu-
lation of England. This may well be, and yet the
numbers of Scottish residents in this country be very
large. Indeed, the perseverance, general probity, and

intcl:igence of the Scotch, gain them so mach public
cor,Sdence, that if the " National Association" were
to d;vert their calculations from the quantity of
pubic money received by Scotland to the amount of
pub.ic money received by Scotch•nien, their ory of
",justice " would be summarily silenced. Assuredly
in that view, justice is rigidly meted out ; for what-
ever is paid to Scotchmen out of the British taxes
is paid cheerfully, and whatever is received by them
is—as a rule—honestly and manfully earned.

JEIN PAUL RICHTER has the credit of having said
that tbe French were masters of the land, the English
of abases., and his own countrymen, the Germans, of the
a. Whatever changes may have taken place since
the days of JEAN PACE in the distribution of the
other two realms, the Germans still continue in-
disputable masters in the aerial or windy re-
gions of groundless speculation. A sublime
il-
lustration of this has just been supplied
by the lucubrations of the Nationak Zeitung (Berlin)
• the relative position and prospects of Russia and
Turkey. The writer starts from a position which
will scarcely be denied, that the future of Russia has
at present a rather dark and lowering aspect. Ordi-
nary mortals—French or English—would have attri-
buted this to the innate vices in the civil and social
organisation of Russia, to the reviving energies of
Turkey, to the determined opposition of France and
England, to the nefarious aims of the CZAR, and to
the smothered discontent which pervades Poland,
Finland, and even the country of the Don Cossacks
and some other provinces. But such commonplace
causes for Russian decline are beneath the notice of
German transcendentalism. The writer in the
Nationale &assay sneers at the idea that the reverses
experienced by the Russians in Wallachia and on the
frontiers of Turkish Armenia can be either causes, or
symptoms of the causes, of Russian weakness. He
seeks for these in the remote, visionary, and indis-
tiuct ; not in the nigh-at-hand, the actual, and tan-
gible. The dangers that threaten Russia, according
N Dim, arise out of the Chinese revolution, the de-
ti•etsations of reviving Islamitic zeal in Affgha-
dim, and the late movements at Bokhara. This
writer is evidently one of the class who hold every-
thing ignotunt pro magnifica ; and how utterly un-
known to him the regions and populations he prates
about so familiarly are, maybe gathered from the fact
of his speaking of Bokhara—and the Afghans—as the
immediate neighbours of Russia; of the politics of
these countries and China being susceptible of being
combined into an united aggressive movement against
Russia; and of Mantchooria as extending along the
whole hoe of the boundary which divides the Russian
from the Chinese dominions!
The writer in the Nati/mak Zeitung has, however,
although in ignorance, broached a subject which
cannot be left out of account in any attempt to con-
jecture the future of Russia. Siberia—measuring
from the Ural river to the southern cape of Kam-
chatka, has a length of nearly 4,000 miles, and an
average breadth little short of 2.000. The extent
of dry land in this region is variously estimated at
from 3,600,000 to 3,400,000 miles. It is only a com-
paratively narrow strip of the southern part of
Siberia that is available for the purposes of
civilised life. The northern regions are resigned
to a few straggling r.omade tribes, who
decline rapidly in intelligence and physical
power as they approach the Arctic Ocean. Even
throughout the southern strip of territory where
settlement has to some extent taken place, and where
one or two great high-roads (or tracks) are traversed
by traders, the greater part is still in the undisputed
possession of nomade tribes. Around Orenburg, at
the southern extremity of the Ural chain of moun-
tains, and near the great bend of the Ural river,
there is a considerable settled population, mostly of a
military character ; its chief employment being to
watch over and control the somade populations
between the Volga and the wes•err. termination of
the Altai mountains on both sides of the frontier.
Oa the eastern declivity of the oral chain, at least
towards its southern terminus, there are nume-
row at raggling settlements of miners, some
of them remarkable for intehigerce, industry, and
prosperity. Around Tobokk is a considerable settled
populuticn, composed chit exiles and the de-
scendants of exiles, who hay., Lec•nnc permanent
denizens of the country. From the Upper lntisch to
the Sea of Okhotzk there are at intervals military