evil which has been committed, to stop that which threatens the rest of mankind! Turkey can be saved, and must be saved otherwise the fate which we suffer will be (with a slight difference) that of all Europe. Turkey has in her hands strength sufficient for her conservation, but she must not be weakened. We have no strength; but we are dispersed throughout the world to bear witness of the truth! to serve as a living example of the fate which attends those who for a single moment put faith in the promises, oaths, or treaties of Russia ;-the moment Catharine had sworn to guarantee our territory, we ceased to exist.

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS OF RUSSIA WITH

THE COURT OF PEKIN.

PART I.

WITHIN the last few years, the increasing interest attached to our relations with China has given rise in many of the commercial cities of the Empire to petitions to Parliament in favour of some decided step on the part of the executive, to protect our Chinese trade, and to place our interests and national dignity, in those remote regions, beyond the reach of injury and insult.

We are not aware that any English publication has hitherto touched upon the diplomatic relations of Russia with the Celestial Empire; yet, during more than a century, the most intimate relations have subsisted between the Chinese government and a Russian Mission in disguise at Pekin, to the influence of which, judging from the character of Russian diplomacy in every other country, may probably, in

a great measure, be ascribed the various annoyances to which our merchants at Canton have been so repeatedly exposed.

But the commercial projects which Russia is at this moment carrying into execution are of a character to deserve the immediate and most serious attention of this country. In reviewing, in a former number, the work of Dr. Nebenius, on the "Customs Union, we expressed our alarm at the connection between that extraordinary confederacy, and the policy of Russia. We were convinced that the Customs Union, however admirably contrived for the aggrandisement of Prussia on the ruins of the constitutional freedom of the German States, and of the independent Sovereignty of the German Princes, was in reality the western bulwark of a far grander design, of a League, the object of which is to annihilate the commercial and manufacturing prosperity of England, and to strike a death-blow at our maritime supremacy, by placing the markets of Europe and Asia under the supreme and exclusive command of Russia.

Our latest intelligence from Vienna comes to confirm our worst apprehensions. In the Frankfort Journal, several articles have lately ap

peared, announcing that Prussia is actively engaged in negotiations at St. Petersburgh and at Vienna; and that we may daily expect to hear of the ratification of a convention, having for its object the facilitation of the transit trade to China through the heart of Russia, by which means the manufactures of Germany may find their way to our Indian frontier, and supplant us along the whole line of markets through Central Asia.

Whatever course his Majesty's Government may think proper to pursue, in order to secure our interests, so directly endangered by these designs, it cannot but be matter of deep humiliation to every Englishman to perceive that these projects are not even kept a secret by the Cabinets of Europe, but that, owing to our supineness, our ignorance, and our apathy, even the petty States of Germany encourage their promulgation, for the purpose of exciting a National feeling in favour of designs, the very object of which they do not hesitate to own to be inimical to the interests of England, and favourable to those of Russia; two interests which are not termed opposed, as, for instance, those of France and England, or any other

interests which may be at variance, but which are opposed in the sense of distinct, positive, and implacable hostility.

If any thing could rouse the government of this country to a sense of the necessity of prompt action, it surely would be the progress of this system, which is of infinitely deeper importance than the continental system of Bonaparte. It has been preparing for some time, and Dr. Nebenius conceives it will be fully accomplished within eight years.

The vital importance of the Black Sea must now be manifest to every class of our readers. It is the high road to India, and, if we do not occupy it, Russia will occupy it, to our exclusion. We consider the present designs of Russia to be fraught with equal danger to us, as was to Venice the discovery by Vasco di Gama of the passage to the East Indies, round the Cape of Good Hope. When the news of that event reached the inhabitants of Malamocco, the consternation was universal. It required no peculiar commercial intelligence, no administrative sagacity, to point out its fatal consequences to the fortunes of the Republic,

VOL. III.-NO. XXV.

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