The Sun.
London, England, 1838-11-01 00:00:00

(From the Asiatic Journal.)
During the last few years, Russia has been a kind of po-
litical bugbear .to a certain party in this country ; her
power and resources, confessedly vast, had been magni-
fied ; her ambition, from which no despotic ruler of a
powerful state is exempt, has been exaggerated, and its
sole object is supposed to be England. The success of her
designs upon Turkey on the one hand, and upon Persia on
the other, would, it is assumed, but facilitate her conquest
of India, by the acquisition of which she would ultimately
accomplish the end of all her gigantic plans, the ruin of
Great Britain. Much local knowledge and a large dis-
play of military ✓skill have been expended on various oc-
.casions, in order to prove that India can be invaded by
Russia ; the practicability of the enterprize has prepared
the minds of many to believe that it will certainly be at-
tempted, and he present Ministers •have been tacitly ac-
cused, b rth ; out of Parliament, of apathy and pusil-
lanimity :not ►r 'taring open war wi.li the Autocrat, be-
fore els uoo,fight pro (Iris c 1
Inp 4 thesiiiisitions, and they ere many, which
we 114 &i
"ccad coting the supposed ,lesigns or Russia
upon judia and Ertland, I;a7e 1..3 perceived ,'any at-
tempt?fo make out satisfactorily an adequate motive
for such =designs on the part of its' ruler. Ambition,
rapacity, :sa. desire • of agrandizement, are undoubtedly
charied without stint against him ; but, in these days espe-
cially, a European monarch must have some specific and defi-
nite object besides a mere abstract love of aggrandizement,
before he voluntarily incurs the chances of war, which, as
the story of Napoleon, inscribed, as it were, on the very soil
of Russia herself, too truly shows, may break tip in a mo-
ment the most substantial frame of power, and leave but a
few minute fragments -of its wreck behind.
What motive, th6p,:can bzrassigned for the assumed hos-
tility of Russia towards England ; what' interest has she in
the destruction nr subjugation of this country, so obvious
and urgent, as.to make her Willing to forego the advan-
tages of our friendship, to reject our alliance, to court our
resentment, and to brave- our'-resources ? Unless we can
discover some reasonable and probable motive on the part
of the Govetnment of Russia, her •encroachments on her
neighbours, her supposed haughty. bearing towards this
country, and her stisliccied -appetite for Eastern territory,
afford 'very inconclusive' arguments to prove, that she
meditates hostility against us ; the syllogism is deficient in
its major and essential proi,osition. •
Wars between nations ever have been, and ever will
be, till human society is diffesently constituted, matters
of convenience ; the real 'motive is generally disguised
under ostensible reasons. - This was the case when
the balance of power in
.Europe ' afforded a specious
prete pretext
but tfo r Y
t
0- commonar
(as Hume has•reinarked) began with a show of justice,
anil perhaps from necessity, they were always pushed too
war, and
iiii6ter mes°ttsi. ves
Even referred
when
enot
n theseto indivi-
dual
wars
fai,from obstinacy and passion. In cases where free in-
stittations bring:the opinions of the Community to bear upon
th4machine of Government, and still more where the will
of the monarch is' uncontrolled, •the quarrels of States will
resemble in character those of individuals. Interest and
passion will alwayS bids the judgment where they do not
usurp its place: we are not, therefore, to exclude
from our calculations the possibility that an emperor of
Russia may be actuated in his feelings towards this country
by personal resentment, the effect of sonic supposed insult or
provocation, as well as impelled by a pure spirit of rape-
boef
esn uh ce
for ir e a
ja ormnegot6fir veew
p.
T :i
ods city. It may be proper, then, in the first place, to inquire
whether there can be any ground for inferring the existence
uropoean terms n Srtmats of eswithwhicli
uninterrupteda 'e
amity
than that of Russia since her admission within the pale of
civilized nations. Similarity of objects, and community of
interests have, indeed, generally strengthened the bond of
amity between the two 'countries ; but there has been at
bottom a mutual esteem, which has not been poisoned by
proximity and rivalry. In the great struggle for continen-
tal freedom, England, the only remaining bulwark against
the usurpations of republican France, may be said to have
remotely secured the existence of the Russian empire, as
certainly as the valour of the Russian army ani the devo-
tion of the people rescued it. frorkuemlt.org
In the arrarrgements which followed the pacification of
Europe, the interests of Russia were rather promoted than
thwarted by England ; and since that event, this country has
not interfered in the measures pursued by her (though some-
times of a rather questionable character), which had for
their object the strengthening of the distant boundaries of
her colossal empire by the reduction or chastisement of
predatory or of civilized nations. England was deaf to the
appeals of her old ally, the Porte, when threatened with
overthrow by Russian armies ; she was a passive spectator
of the terrible vengeance inflicted on the unhappy Poles,
and she is at this moment charged with something like par-
ticipation with Russia in the hostilities now carrying on in
Circassia. What provocation of a personal kind, there-
fore, can the Emperor have had for such an antipathy to-
wards this country as would hurry him into a war with it?
True, indeed, we have given an asylum to the Polish
refugees, as we should to fugitives from any other country
under similar circumstances. The rapid and sudden vicis-
situdes of nations, during the last half century, have ren-
dered England (and it is one of her proudest distinctions)
a place of refuge from political persecution to individuals
of almost every State ; bitter enemies, as well as friends,
have here experienced a shelter and a welcome. The same
cordial reception, which had been granted to the emigrants
of the old regime of France, was found by their enemies
and successors in misfortune, the imperial refugees, and by
their successors, the victims of the Hundred Days. The
Emperor of Russia cannot desire to extinguish in this coun-
try that inoffensive sympathy which is so impartial and uni-
versal, and to which it is not absolutely impossible that, in
the tide of events, he or some of his family may be forced
to appeal.

We may therefore conclude, that if the Russian Ruler
meditates hostility towards this country, the motive must
be one of mere ambition, a desire to aggrandize his empire
by the addition of more territory, or to secure it by the
weakening of a state which may prove an obstacle to the
extension of his power.

" The Russian empire," Count de Segur* stated some
years ago, " extends over three hundred and sixty-eight
thousan square miles ; a hundred thousand miles in
Europe, more than two hundred and forty-three thousand
in Asia, and the remainder in America. This empire
comprehends one-half of Europe, and one-third of Asia :
it forms a ninth part of the habitable globe. Its European
division is peopled by fifty-eight millions of inhabitants ;t
its Asiatic by two millions ; its American by fifty thou-
sand : the total number is sixty millions of souls, which,
however, does not give more than about a hundred and
sixty-one persons to each square mile. The Russian ter-
ritory is considered to be capable of supporting a hundred
and fifty millions of human beings." It is impossible to
contemplate an empire of such gigantic proportions, which
is contiguous to China, Persia, Turkey, Germany, and
the Polar Sea, without being struck with the utter absur-
dity or madness of an ambition that would enlarge its di-
mensions, at least, until the ratio of its population to its
extent had greatly increased. That such an empire, the
boundaries of which are at some points defined by no geogra-
phical
marks, at others, lost in the steppes of nomade tribes,
or faintly traced along the confines of uncivilized nations,
should he constantly engaged in petty hostilities with these
refractory and predatory neighbours, may well be expected ;
but these attempts to define and defend her frontier are not
to be ascribed to a desire of aggrandizement. We know
by
experience in our Indian empire, that one of the evils
of a largo territory and an extensive frontier, without geo-
graphical limits, is the constant tendency to augmentation.
A positive enactment of the Imperial Legislature against
increasing our dominions in India has not prevented their
unavoidable extension to the Indus on one side, and the
Bralimaputra on the other, whilst on the north they are
pushed up to the very glaciers of the Himalaya. If we
look to our own proceedings (and self-examination is an
office as beneficial to states and communities as to indivi-
duals), it would not be difficult to find parallel cases to
Russian encroachment in British India. Let us (passing
over ancient and obsolete examples) compare our treatment
of the Coorgs of Southern India, or of the wild tribes of
Assam, with that of the Circassians by Russia, and we
shall see that there is little essential difference between the
two cases. Russia may, with as good a tile of prima
facie right, chastise the mountaineers of the Kuban and of
Caucasus, and for their resistance reduce them to subjec-
tion, as we have punished and subdued many of the native
independent people of Hindustan. If tried by the strict
rules which we apply to other great Powers in Europe, our
empire in India is but an aggregate of usurpations, of spo-
liations by the stronger of the weaker. The grounds upon
which these acquisitions and appropriations of territory are justified, would be as available in one case as in the other,
The dispassionate reader, who may have imbibed a pre-
judice against the supposed ambition of the Autocrat, will
by this time perceive that his impressions have been hastily

* History of Russia and of Peter the Great.
_1829i
f Since stated at sixtl-one millions.