The Sun.
London, England, 1857-01-02 00:00:00

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(Front the Bombay Telegraph.)
Since the departure of the military and naval expedi-
tion to the Persian Gu'f, under the command of General -2.!
Stalker and Rear-SV mire' Sir Henry Leeke, we have
bad no tidings irom Bassadore, the point of rendezvous.
We are, however, in hourly expectation of the arrival ?f
a steamer with despatches from the commanders, and it
is 'pest possible that they may arrive before the mat
closes. The latest news received from the Gulf is not at
all of a pacific character. The Shah is resolved to fight
to the last, should the soil of Persia be profaned by Co)
footsteps of an invading foe. The Resident at Bushireo
when the lea vessels left, had been ordered to haul dow n
his flag, and leave the town ; together with all the Chris-
tian and American residents who were supposed to be
favourably inclined towards the British. A proclama-
tion had been issued by the governor of the province,
directing its subjects to remove into the interior, as
the Shah was determined to maintain the integrity
of the empire, and to do battle with the British.'
Most of the inhabitants have accordingly moved out of
the vicinity of the expected battle-fieid. Troops were
being rapidly collected in the vicinity of %shire; about
40,000 soldiers of all arms having been moved towards
that point. Russian officers and even Russian troops
are said to form a portion of the Persian force at Busbire,
and they consequently hold high hopes of preventing the
British from effecting a lauding on their shores. An
island about two miles from Bashire has been fortified
with 80 guns. "Works to strengthen the position are
being rapidly. and vigorously executed. Much reliance
is seemingly placed on this fortification for keeping off
our ships from approaching the shore. It is evident,
from what is transpiring around us, that the war in which
we have just engaged will be something more than a
mere hostile demonstration. Orders have been received
by the Bombay government from Calcutta, to prepare a
reserve field force with the utmost despatch ; and the mi-
litary departments are all now busily engaged in carrying
out these instructions. It is expected that the reserve will
be ready to sail by the time that the transports return
from the Golf ; and it is evident that the authorities are
waiting for them, as no extra freight has been taken up.
The Reserve Brigade is to consist of the Ist or Leslie's
troop of Horse Artillery, her Majesty's 14th Light Dra-
goons, and the 78th Highlanders, at present stationed at
Poona ; the Ist Company 2d Battalion European Foot
Artillery, from Sholapore ; the 26th Regiment N. 1.,
from Sattara, directed to march to Poona immediately ;
and three Native Infantry Regiments from the Madras
Presidency. Should this demonstration fail in obtaining
the object desired by her Majesty's Government, an
army will march across Affghanistan into Persia, the
Ameer Dost Mahorsed taking the same part in the cam-
paign that the Nizam took against Tippoo Sultan. The
object of her Majesty's Government is to obtain the
cession in perpetuity of the island of Grand Kishma,
which is immediately on .occupation to be made a free
port, and transformed into the head-quarters of her Ma-
jesty's arsenal and dockyard in the Persian Gulf. The ob-
ject appears to be to control not only Persia, but all the
trade down the Euphrates, which empties itself into the
Persian Gulf, and will soon be the highway for the trade
of the East to the West. The island commands not only
Persia and Turkey, but Arabia, especially the trade of
Muscat and the country of the Jossamines, so long famed
for their piracies. From the island a flotilla of steamers
would sweep away all the trade of a refractory chief in
less than a week, and shut up all Persia, especially the
rice and fish trade, which would starve both Ganeroon
and Bussorah into compliance in less than six months.
The island of Grand Kishma completely covers Ormuz,
and is capable of supporting a population of 200,000
without any foreign aid whatever.
On the western and north-western frontiers of India,
preparations for a campaign are being silently but surely
made. Our ae-ents are quietly accomplishing their ends
in Affghanistan, Candahar, and Kelat : and when the
storm does burst it will descend upon Persia like an
avalanche.

TIE FUTURE OF ASIA.

\

(From the Friend of India.)
Of all revolutions perhaps the strangest and the least
marked is the one now transacting itself in Asia. There
is little perceptible alteration. There are fewer wars than
of yore. There is no violent uprising of whole races.
There is nothing worth insertion in a telegraph bulletin.
Yet at one and the same time all the dominant races of
Asia are passing from the scene. To use an expression
we have employed before, the air is filled with the noise
of the crumbling of rotten thrones. One by one the races
which rose up to power in the wild confusion of the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, are drop.
ping their sceptres into stranger hands.
Of the north, Europe as yet knows unfortunately too
little. Its political position is the true Asian Mystery
Disraeli's followers Lave so long sought in vain. But the
little we do know is sufficient to indicate the result. The
Tartar empire is gone. The Russian has step by step from
Moscow to the Sea of Okhotsk swallowed the ancestral
possessions of the tribes. The Tartars who fled from
Ivan 111. in 1462 cannot fly further' for Russia has
reached the sea and looks face to face withthe Anglo-Saxons
in their march along the Pacific. From the North Pole
to Herat, from the Caspian to the mouth of the Amour,
the land is Russian. The Tartar can but obey the ukase
from St. Petersburg, and whatever his future destiny
must for the present be erased from the roll of the domi•
east races of the earth.
The offshoots of his power fare even worse. He has
been conquered. They are dying of inanition, and the
vices luxury is said to introduce. The authority of the
Turks but nominally subsists. Their military prestige,
decaying for a hundred years, expired with Sultan Ma.
homed. Their wealth has been drained from them by
the supple slaves, the Bengalees of Europe, who hope
because they are parsimonious and pliant to wriggle back • • -
the Empire of Byzantium. The last bond which bound

the Turks together, their fanaticism, or the love of per-
secution which survive fanaticism, is crumbling under
hatti-scheriffs. Their numbers are known to be de-
clining. The race is not recruited from the desert,
and is like its own great cities rushing down. The
English press occasionally talks of the improve-
ment of Turkey. It is becoming tolerant. Is not'
a church rising at Scutari ? Is not a rayah admitted into
the army ? Is not Layard establishing a bank, O'Shaugh-
nessy a telegraph, and Andrews a railway ? Did not the
Sultan go to a masquerade ? Are not all these things the
visible signs of civilisation patent to the eyes, consola-
tory to the breeches pocket ? Possibly they may be.
They are what the nineteenth century accepts for its
mission at any rate, but as Turks and civilisation are in-
compatible, they do not greatly affect the argument.
The Greeks may prosper and grow greater, though no
effete race has ever yet revived. Turkey may be filled
with new colonies., or new races. She may be divid-
ed between France and England. She may even suc-
cumb to Russia, and under any of these changes may
advance. Turkey may improve, but the Turks receive
orders from quiet attaches in round hats. They, like the
race from whom they sprung, are losing their place on
the grand muster roll of dominion.
The Mogul, the second offshoot, vanished away a cen-
tury ago, but far to the eastward the third of the great
Tartar dynasties is perishing beneath our eyes. The
Chinese insurgents, their creeds, their leaders, and their
motives, may remain inexplicable till they have won.
We may remain even ignorant of the geographical di-
rection of their conquests. But two facts'are none the
less certain. They are winning. They are Chinese. The
Tartar rulers are perishing out, and whatever the fate of
China, its dynasty will not be Manchow. Already the
oentral provinces are lost. The south is kept in order
only by atrocities which seem to Europeans almost de-
served by the cowards who can endure their perpetra-
tion. The Tartars of China are forcibly cleansed out of
the Red Book of the world.

Three countries thus ruled apparently remain. The an-
cestry of the Indo-Chinese rases may be a puzzle, but if
there be truth in physiognomy, they are Calmueks. They
have the same form, the same head, the same peculiari-
ties of face which local circumstances do not appear to
cause. The Burman is already paralysed, and the Siamese
and Cambodian only wait in their marshes till the inevit-
able tide of progress brings them also within the red line.
Forbidden to judge foreigners without the intervention of
the consul, their claim to dominion seems but slight.
The late remaining state is Persia. That kingdom alone
in Asia was filled as well as occupied by the conquerers.
Whatever be the nature of the indigenous population. it
has become inseparably intermixed with its rulers. The
sovereign race is scarcely a dominant race, in the sense
in which we have employed the phrase. In any sense,
however, it is decaying. Russia has its fairest provinces.
The Shah ventures to trust cities only to his sons. The
army is too disorganisod to keep the Knords within
of England and now at the appointed time, against the will
and and of India, we are advancing to effect a
bounds;
lodgment which will terminate when the gulf is dry. Ten
years more at the present rate of advance and the Tar-
tar dynasties, the race who under one form and another
have held Asia for five centuries, will have passed from
too, almost unrecorded. The indi-
genouse much, the Tartar nothing. The
ed a civilisation on which their
cthhei
ns
ec
se enreah.
caeTvsehheapyyr
oepdadusoscn,
sovereigns are but an excrescet:ce. Turkey is not so rich
or so cultivated, has fewer cities, fewer buildings, fewer
traces of wise government than she had in the days of
her Greek emperors. The trade of India was conducted
by Hindoos, not Tartars. It is the industry of the indi-
genous race, not the government of her conquerors,
which made her rich and fertile. In the North, where
they had absolute possession, what have they done
There is not one road, one bridge, one city, better than
a camp, between the Ural and Saghalien north of the
Jaxartes. Not one idea has emanated from the Steppe,
not one law, and, with the exception of a dozen soldiers,
not ene great man. Earth can spare the Tartar rulers of
Asia.

It is impossible, watching these things, to refrain from
speculation on what the end may be. We have some
facts to guide us.l All history shows that indigenous
Asiatic races require the direction of a dominant class.
Industrious, hardy, and with many of the qualities essen-
tial in the development of civilisation,, they seem to lack
social force. India was in the days of Aurungzebe what
she was in the days of Ram. China is now what she
was a thousand years ago. The Greek rayahs of Turkey
are what the Greek peasant was in the days of Canta-
cuzene. Their numbers even do not materially change.
They do not advance, and need the directing force of a
progressive race. It remains but to speculate on the
races to whom this high function must be assigned.
They must be Europeans, for Europeans alone have so.
quired the necessary superiority in arms. Of Europeans
the English and Russians alone display capacity for the
permanent administration of subject peoples. It is to
their hands that we believe Asia to be entrusted. The
advance of Russia will be checked by no humanity and
few scruples. That of England may, but he obeys the
irresistible impulse the more thoroughly
for her
o
sional recoil. Year by year the two powersiclose in to-
be redicted
wards each other ; and, if the future mayp
cea-
from the experience of the past, another century will see
ington, and St. Petersburg.
this quarter of the globe governed from London, Wash.

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