The Express.
London, England, 1853-12-05 00:00:00

eht el:VrelSA.

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LONDON, MONDAY, DECEMBER J.

" MANY who go out in search of wool come home
shorn." This to all appearance may be the cue
with no lesa a man than the Emperor of ALL Tian
ltussitss. Already In is obliged to pause in his ca-
reer of spoliation in the south, to put himself on his
guard against being spoiled in the north. He can-
not move the whole of his disposable army to the
Danube; a considerable portion of it must be de-
tached to the shores of the Baltic. He can keep
only one eye on the pockets of his neighbour Turkey
—the other must be fixed on his own pockets, Fin-
land and his German provinces. According to the
latest news hem Stockholm, 12,000 picked grena-
dier, have been sent to occupy Revel and
Riga, siliiie on the other side of the Gulf of Fin-
land no Ica than 16,000 soldiers and 10,000 seamen
have been sent to reinforce the permanent garrison
of 12,000 men maintained in the grand•duchy to
keep the Fins quiet. The seamen are to be moved
to HeLiingfors, where ten sailorless men-of-war are
laid up, and 6,000 of the soldiers are to be stationed
at Bomarsund, in the island of Aland, the most ad-
vanced point of Russian Finland towards Sweden.
Both sides of the Finnish gulf have to be lined with
troops, and still stronger bodies will doubtless be
concentrated in and around Crenated! and St. Pe-
tersburg at i:s inmost recess. This is a serious drain
upon the armies which Russia and its agents hove
endeavoured to persuade Europe were available for
the occupation of Wallachia and Moldavia. And it
is indispensable. This being the case, it seems pro-
bible that a home blow at St. Petersburg--a capital
more exposed than London—may, some of these days,
be considered the best way in which the allies of Tur-
key can make a diversion is its favour. Nor is this
all. The Russian forces are wanted on the Baltic quite
as much to ensure the submission of subjects, as to
repel foreign amanita. Months ago attention was
directed to Finland as a vulnerable point of the
Cr sit's dominions. Its inhabitants are not yet re-
conciled to the change of masters, effected partly by
force, partly by fraud, during the revolutionary wars.
They habitually give utterance to their sentiments
on this head with a bold frankness astounding to
the tame Muscovites from the south of the Baltic.
An amusing example will be found in the " Letters
from the Baltic." This is the reason why a perma-
nent force of 12,000 men is kept on foot to overawe
a straggling population of less than a million and a
half, thinly scattered among rocks, lakes, morasses,
and pine forests. To this standing garrison, 16,000
laud and 10,000 sea forces are now to be added; and
these are to be stationed, not where an invading
force would be most likely to attempt a landing, but
where they can be most easily made available to
check any insurrectionary movements among the
inhabitants. The same distrust which has prompted
the CZAR to garrison the isle of Aland, and the har-
bour of Helsingfors, will suggest the necessity
of retaining strong garrisons in Poland. If that
country should be entirely denuded of Russian troops.
even the chained serfs who remain there might grow
turbulent, and then there is the permanently orga-
nised emigration ready to be smuggled across the
frontier as soon as an opportunity offers. It is now
clear that the old Russian system of braggadocio
mystification has been put in practice to create an
exaggerated impression of the number of Russian
soldiers employed to occupy the Danubian provinces.
Situ Oaten PACHA has felt and examined them,
these numbers have shrunk to less than a third of
what wu reported. So it will be with the
armies upon paper which are said to have
been put in requisition to augment the troops
in the Principalities. Ia number they will be found
deficient, and Mr. OLIPUANT has explained how
while the regiments immediately under the eye of
the CZAR are in cap-cipied order, those stationed at
a distance from his surreillance are more beggarly
and ragged than the recruits of Falstaff. At the
utmost one-half of the estimated disposable force of
Russia, and that utterly destitute of a properly
organised commissariat, could be slowly moved
through marshes and across steppes in the direction
of the Danube ; and of these fully one-half must be
reserved to guard against a hostile landing on the
shores of the Baltic, and give security against insur-
rections in Finland and Poland.

Nor are an only wanting: money is also mane,
And there is also reason to believe that the opera-
tions of the CZAR may be hampered by a still graver
impediment than either. It is not easy to get
authentic information regarding the state of
public feeling from Russia. In this respect Rosalie,
when compared with other European countries, is
like an old-fashioned straw bee-hive beside so many
glass hives. The workings of other European popu-
lations are seen through a transparent medium ;
from Russia, even in periods of excitement, only
dull inarticulate noises are heard. But at this
moment noises are faintly heard, such as, in hives,
accompany the annual slaughter of the drones—only
it must be kept in mind that in Russia it is the
drones that are furnished with stings. In plain
English, recent advice& from St. Petersburg and
Moscow lead us to believe that a dangerous
amount of al-humour has begun to display
itself among the land-owning nobility. They
are a numerous and a powerful body. They
are accustomed to receive their rents in kind,
and dispose of them by the instrumentality of
agents to foreign merchants, from whom they re-
ceive in return many of the necessaries and all
the luxuries of life. They prefer dealing with the
English merchants, because from England they can
receive everything they need, and of the best, while
other countries supply at the most only one or two
articles. The mere rumour, therefore, of a war with
England is enough to excite Carm in these volup.
new's, self-indulgent nobles. The mere apprehension
of impending hostilities, by dictating to English
merchants a prudential narrowing of their trans- II
actions, stops to a considerable extent the supplies
o: the Russian n•Messe. Lastly, it has been
the traditional feeling of Russian Governments to
encourage excessive expenditure upon the nobles,
with a view to lead them to incur debts, and thus be-
come subservient to the powers that be. But this
policy is a two-edged sword, cutting both ways, inas-
much as it makes the nobility feel, sooner than they
otherwise would do, the inconvenienees of an inter-
rupted foreign commerce, and become irritable and
disaffected. !ileum. ts has before his eyes the warn-
ing examples of his father and grandfather, to teach
him what it is to quarrel with the sensual and vin-
dictive onblss of Russia ; arid unless we are much
misinformed this consideration is giving him much
food for thought.
What is the inference to be drawn from all these
facts? That the true way of dealing with Russia is
to press it hard. Russia is like the image of Nein:-
CItAD:4E72%IO dream : the feet are indeed of clay,
but other parts are of hard metaL Russia, if dallied