The Sun.
London, England, 1855-07-16 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, JULY 16 1855

ENCOURAGEMENT TO THE ENEMY.

It is a wise maxim not to despise an enemy; but there
is a fault on the opposite side, that of enormously exag-
gerating the power of an enemy. To what purpose do
men in high position in Parliament dilate on the might
of Russia, and the difficulty of coping with her ? What
is the effect of this but to encourage the enemy, who
knows how to make use of admissi ms serving to show
that we have entered into a contest to which we are un-
equal, while Russia has taken the part which her supe-
rior strength assigns her and enables her to perform with
success. Most acceptable must these assurances be at
St. Petersburg. Amongst other passages we grieved to
see in Lord John Russell's speech of the 7th was one
holding forth on the difficulties of the present contest, and
describincs Russia as enormously powerful, her popula-
tion animated and strengthened by repeated successes,
continually adding something to her power, appetite for
rapine growing with what it has fed on. Now, if this be
really Lord John Russell's opinion of the effect of the en;
croachments of Russia during the last century, it must
be utterly inconsistent with a hope he has repeatedly ex-
pressed, that a peace may be made with that country on
the oniysure basis, "her interest in peace." For his lord-
ship has represented her elements of strength, material and
moral, as derived from the robberies achieved either by
her arms, or extorted by the terror of her arms. Mr. Cob-
den, who followed, pursued the same strain, and talked of
the impossibility of our humbling Russia, with her
80,000,000 of inhabitants, and inexhaustible raw mate-
rial for troops. Well said Custine, that Russia is a huge
puff placarded on the face of Europe, and the imposture
passes, as those whose patriotic interest should be to
expose it to lend themselves to the support of it. What
is a population of sixty millions to a country like Russia,
spreading over a seventh part of the earth ? We do not
make use of the phrase a seventh of the habitable globe,
because Russia is a seventh of the globe habitable and
uninhabitable. Now the strength of a population consists
in the closeness of its texture, and the proportion of men
to the soil. A thin population is a weak population, and
Russia averages about eight souls to a square mile, while
France averages more than 170, and England more also
than 230. In the province of St. Petersburg, not includll
ing the capital, the average is 1 soul to 25 acres, in
Archangel there is only 1 soul to 50 acres, and in Tomsk
the proportion is one to 180 acres. Whenever the po-
pulation of the British isles was rather less than a mil-
lion it was, relatively to the territorial scale, as strong
or as weak as Russia is now. And if our Queen counted
her people as does the Czar, including Europe, Asia, and
America, she would include all her subjects in every part
of the world without regard to geographical distinctions,
or the separation of distances, and would boast not sixty
millions, but more than double, nay, nearly treble, that
number, British, colonial, and Indian. And the separa-
tions of the parts of the British empire are as nothing
compared with the frightful distances of the Russian em-
pire, as Nicholas used to call them. We communicate
with our fellow-subjects at the Antipodes in far less time
than the Czar takes to communicate with his slaves or
prisoners in Siberia. So when the bugaboo of the Rus-
sian sixty millions is raised to frighten us, let it be mea-
sured with territory to divest it of its awe, and let the
question be asked what are sixty millions scattered over
so many as seven millions of square miles and upwards.
And men, so scanty in Russia compared with the
ground they are spread over, are the wealth of Russia ;
where the fortune of a man is counted in serfs as it is
here in pounds, and out of the sum total of sixty millions
forty-four are serfs, twenty-three belonging to the nobles,
twenty-one to the Crown. Every man enlisted in the
army is a man taken from the meagre producing power
of the country, and every man killed is so much of its
wealth diminished, for he belonged to somebody who is
the poorer for losing him. Russia is a country poor
in everything but deceit and military organisation. She
wants men at this moment far more than we do ; but
the difference is that the Czar helps himself arbitrarily to
what he wants, robs and impoverishes his nobles to re-
cruit his ranks. But this resource has its limits, and if
endurance be strained too far, the remedy in usage in
Russia is like ours in analogous circumstances, a disso-
lution—but a dissolution of a very different sort of body.
Russia no doubt brings all her available strength to
the front of the Crimea, and the question yet to be solved
is, what depth there is in this resistance. Certain it is
that it is not of a force to repel invasion, and that we
have held our ground against it when weak in numbers,
exhausted by fatigue, sickness, and want of every kind
but one—indomitable resolution.
Having compared the alleged strength and weakness
of Russia and Turkey, Lord John Russell stated that
when hostilities commenced the military force of the for-
mer was to the latter as ten to one ; but at those odds
the Turk did not shrink from taking the field, and
nothing daunted by numbers and difficulties so much
dwelt on here, he made head against great odds. Courage
with justice are good against great odds. But Russia
is most successful in shamming, and can put on imposing
appearances when she can do nothing else. At the end
of the last war between Russia and Turkey, the Musco-
vite army was in the last stage of exhaustion, reduced
to some 5,000 effective men, when the oonceasiona so -

disastrous to the Ottoman Porte were made, in ntter
ignorance of the real weakness of the power extorting
them.

Russia is the bully of Europe, and they play the bully's
game who are perpetually magnifying his potency. The
time for dwelling on the enemy's strength and Turkey's
weakness is past. There was, indeed, a season for these
considerations, and it was before we determined on
drawing the sword. Then was the time for scanning
difficulties, and measuring, or even over-estimating, the
strength with which we might have to cope.
To harp on these things now is neither consistent with
spirit nor with policy, it either depresses oz. revolts the
public mind here, and it animates and assures the
enemy, reading to him the lesson Lord Lyndhurst ad-
dressed to his country, " Persevere." And has it had
no effect on the powers which it has been so much de-
sired to move to a part in this war I May not Austria
and Prussia refer to the statements of English states-
men as sufficient reasons why they should hesitate to
take the field against so gigantic a power as Russia ?
Her prestige is the spell which binds Germany, and
some of our leaders do all they can to strengthen that
prestige by never mentioning Russia without some pre-
posterous exaggeration of her power. We do not allude
to the Submissionists; it is all consistent with their quail-
ing policy. As they would have us yield, they endea-
vour to make out a case of irresistible power on the part
of the enemy ; but for men who have advised the war, to
labour to produce an impression that we have engaged
ourselves in a contest beyond our strength, is an incon-
sistency, and impolicy, strange, foul, and unnatural in-
deed. If there has been weakness in the conduct of the
war, it is not to be carried to the account of the strength
of the enemy, in order to cover the faults of the mis-
managers of affairs.—Examiner.