quisitions on the shores of the Baltic'-' that it is not from the Baltic or the Euxine that the British trident can ever be disputed—and that indeed it is the real interest of England to encourage those establishments which must render maritime objects and intercourse of more essential importance to the prosperity of Russia.'-Sir R. Wilson's Remarks on the Russian Army, p. xix.

As to the mysterious fears which this author expresses of danger to Austria should Russia approach the Carpathian mountains, we confess we do not understand them. We cannot perceive that a nation's means of defence are weakened by having a natural and, except in the neighbourhood of Bartpha, an almost impenetrable frontier. That the Slavonic descent and language of Russia would favour her aggressions on Hungary can only have been asserted in the profoundest ignorance of this latter country, or, which is the same thing, in that spirit of sinister prophecy, which, like the pigs of Hudibras, can see the wind;' inasmuch as, first, it is absurd to suppose that the Slavonian language has a charm sufficient to overpower the natural feelings of ancient independence; and, secondly, whoever has been in Hungary knows that four-fifths of its inhabitants are not Slavonians but Magyars, with language, and manners, and prejudices as completely opposed to those of Russia as the language, and manners, and prejudices of England are to those of Spain and Portugal. Equally unfounded is the assertion that the government of the house of Austria is generally unpopular in the countries under her sway. It is true that her 28,000,000 of subjects have not the advantage of speaking one single language, and being linked together by one loved and sacred name, like that which sinks all the differences of Gascon, Picard, and Norman into the common feeling of attachment to France. Such an advantage is indeed possessed by France alone, and they who have heard the Cossacks, Poles, and Malo-Russians speak of the Moscofsky,' will confess that Russia herself, united as in many respects she certainly is, can lay but little claim to it. But that the house of Austria is unpopular in the subject territories is disproved by the well-known regret which both in Belgium and Silesia is still expressed for their separation from her sceptre. It is disproved by the splendid and hopeless devotion of the Tyrolese, by the warm and unfailing attachment of Bohemia, and last, not least, by the voluntary and most effectual assistance which, while Buonaparte was in Vienna, the Hungarian nation furnished.

6

In the case of Turkey-though Russia has, by the reduction of the greater part of those wild nations who inhabit Caucasus, obtained, beyond doubt, a more easy access to her eastern provinces --we are very far from thinking that the conquest of those provinces will be an easy or even a desirable task for her. The example of

Spain is a pretty strong admonition to sovereigns how they rashly meddle with warlike, and populous, and fanatical countries; and, in Anatolia, the Muscovite arms would find, instead of a peasantry friendly to their cause, as in the Christian countries of Moldavia and Wallachia, a land where every cottager would be animated with religious fury against them, and where every city, every village, every mountain, pass, or ravine would be a fortress defended to extremity. Nor is the enormous waste of blood and treasure, which the invasion of such a country insures, the only reason why Russia should be contented with the frontier of the Danube and the Terek. The same author, whom we have already quoted, has observed that

'those who are acquainted with the Turkish nation well know that there are embers which the genius of one man might kindle, and powers to support the enthusiastic excitement. Turkey is an impoverished not an exhausted country, and the Mussulman banner may yet wave in a career of victory and ambition beyond the Ottoman boundaries and the calculations of many European politicians.'-Wilson's Remarks on the Russian Army, p. 62.

As to the European provinces of Turkey, (we may, perhaps, be singular in our opinion, but it is not lightly taken up,) it is not, as we conceive, from the arms of Russia that the Sultan is in the greatest danger. The Greeks have, in a great measure, been cured by repeated disappointments of the folly of relying on the interested assistance and worthless promises of the European powers. If there is any power to whose help they would gladly cling it is France, not Russia.-But they will free themselves. They already know their strength, and the wisest and most certain means of increasing and directing it; they already are becoming a commercial, a wealthy, and, by degrees, an enlightened people, and but little more is necessary for them to cast off, by a single effort, the clumsy yoke which weighs them to the dust, and establish a Panhellenic confederacy of all the tribes between Thermopylaæ and Maina. But from this event it is not Russia which would be the greatest gainer.

But, though we have thought it right to shew how greatly Sir Robert Wilson has exaggerated the expectations of Russia, even in those quarters where her force is supposed most pre-eminent, it is not necessary for our argument to deny that, over any one of her immediate neighbours, the concentrated force of so great an empire would, in time, be triumphant. It has not been the practice of Europe to suffer, without interference, any one of her states to be oppressed by the ambition of an overbearing neighbour; and, if a counterpoise be found to that power which fills him with alarm, it is plain that Russia, so far from being dangerous, may be necessary to the liberties of the world. And it is remarkable that, in all Sir Robert

Robert Wilson's calculations, he leaves out of the account (that power from whose chains the continent has only just escaped, and to repress whom, within something like her ancient limits, the united strength of Europe was no more than barely necessary. He even affects to speak of her as existing no longer in the quality of an independent and powerful state; he whines out his wishes that France might be restored to Europe;' and deplores her as a departed friend whose worth was never known till it was missed. Yet it might perplex the author to point out in what circumstance of population, or wealth, or valour, or ambition, that kingdom is now worse off than at the commencement of her late career of conquest and usurpation-a career which the powers of Europe, as then constituted, were so utterly unable to arrest or balance. Had France more than her present means of offence when her armies. first entered Italy and Flanders? or at what moment of her history (except the short and calamitous period of her empire) had she, as she now has, a population of 29,000,000, an exchequer unencumbered with debt, and a conscription-law which places at the disposal of her government any conceivable number of excellent soldiers? Restore France to Europe!' Where is France now? Is she not in the midst of us, in possession of her ancient commerce, her ancient colonies, and more than her ancient territory? Restore France to Europe!' Has not Europe more reason to apprehend that she may be once more made painfully sensible of the existence, and that (so soon as those forces are withdrawn which are the guardians of feeble Belgium and equally feeble Germany) the demon of ambition will again run amuck to Naples, Cadiz, and Berlin?

There are those, we know, for whose patriotism and talent we entertam the highest respect, though we differ from them in many of their opinions, who were so far impressed by the greatness of this danger, and those melancholy lessons which the experience of the last hundred years has taught the world, that they objected in the first instance, and have never ceased to object to the line of policy pursued by the allies, as rather calculated to irritate the pride than to curb the power of France, as compressing, for a short time, by an external force, that spring which would, therefore, at length, react with greater violence. Such counsellors as these, instead of ' scotching the snake,' exhorted us to deprive it, once for all, of its fangs, by the restitution of Alsace and Lorrain to their ancient proprietors, or by a still further reduction of those means which had been found injurious to the peace of mankind. But, besides the danger and impolicy of driving a valiant and high-minded enemy to despair, if there had been any intention (as Sir Robert Wilson insinuates, but, as we believe, without the least ground for his calumny) among the allied powers to dismember France; a sufficient argument to the

contrary

contrary may be found in that gigantic power of Russia which, however exaggerated by the author now before us, is doubtless such as to make it desirable that the greatness of France should be eclipsed, but not extinguished. We will not assert, indeed, nor is it necessary to the safety of Europe, that France, with her present territory, is exactly equal in strength to her colossal rival. That, in the essential circumstances of power, there is a less difference between them than is generally imagined; that the superior wealth, and more concentrated population of France, must, in some measure, compensate for the smaller numbers in her census; and that the possession of numerous harbours on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, with prodigious facilities of forming and supporting a naval force, must more than counterbalance an alliance with Holland, or the command, however absolute, of seas either covered with ice one third of the year, or removed from the ordinary politics of Europe, are facts so plain that they are hardly worth discussion. Sir Robert Wilson himself, indeed, appears to be aware of their truth, since he has incidentally let slip a fact which is of itself almost fatal to his theory. If France takes up arms, he tells us, against Russia, England will be alarmed for the safety of-what? those very Netherlands which he had before stated to be entirely dependent on Russia, and which, in the hands of Russia, are, he tells us, to be dangerous to our maritime supremacy! But is it not plain that, if the power of Russia were so terrible as he supposes to ourselves and to the world, our jealousy of France must abate in proportion as our danger augmented from an opposite quarter? Is it not plain that if Russia had become the common enemy, it would be the interest of Britain and Austria to support themselves on France against Russia, in the same way as that (according to Sir Robert Wilson himself, before he was transformed from the advocate of Russian aggrandizement into a counsel for the jacobins) it was once the interest of the states of Europe to seek a support in Russia against France? or is not that balance pretty equally suspended whose equilibrium would be destroyed by a transfer of the Netherlands? But it is by no means necessary, in real life and practical politics, to employ, like John Bull in Swift's satire, the steel-yard to regulate the comparative bulk of nations; to vomit Peter Bear whenever he is overfed;' or to administer (even if the remedy were at hand)' gold-cordial' to all whom a long course of steel-diet had rendered consumptive.' It is not necessary for Europe that the two great combatants should be precisely equal in weight and size, provided the difference be not so enormous between them, but that the independent states, by throwing themselves into the balance, can make which scale they please preponderate; and, so far as England herself

herself is concerned, it is obviously her interest that the superiority should be on the side of that power which is most remote from her : from whom she has, therefore, a less immediate danger to apprehend, and with whom her good understanding is less likely to be interrupted. It is even desirable for her that this more distant strength should be so great and alarming as to draw the whole jealousy and fear of Europe into one direction, and to confer on England the inestimable advantage not only of having a most powerful ally against the envy of her immediate neighbour, but of having her friendship courted by that neighbour. It is far better for her that, instead of being called on to succour and subsidize the German states against France, she may leave it to the interest and fears of France herself to support, with all her power, the independence of those states against the encroachments of the Russian Eagle. It would be even desirable for England (so far as her private interests are concerned) that this necessity should become still more urgent and apparent; that the Vistula, or even the Oder, should, with the Carpathian Mountains, be the boundary of the new Polish kingdom, in order that the impossibility of reciprocal advantage should shut up the avenue to that too good understanding between Russia and France, which would infallibly end in a partition of the continent. And the advantage to us is still more evident of that policy and those connexions which unite the former monarchy to the Netherlands, and not only bring her in contact with our ancient enemy, but assign to her, and not to us, the defence and patronage of Belgium.

On the whole, we look forward with a pleasing hope, founded, in some degree, on the personal characters of the sovereigns of Russia and France, and still more on the obvious advantages which both their kingdoms must derive from a continuance of tranquillity,

to a far longer respite from bloodshed and aggression than Sir Robert Wilson seems to augur.- -But let the storm come when it will,—it is obvious, we think, that the present position of Great Britain is singularly favourable either to a happy neutrality or an efficient interposition. There never was a time when this country enjoyed a greater share of peace and glory, and political estimation, than when the House of Austria, in possession of one third of Europe and of all the treasures of America, occupied a situation in many respects resembling that of modern Russia; when Naples, the Milanese and Genoa, were the Poland, the Netherlands and the Switzerland of our present politics, and the larger states of Italy played a similar part to that which is now assigned to Prussia, Austria and Bavaria.-The only difference is that the naval power of Spain and the pretensions of Philip to the English throne, conspired, with the prejudices of religion, to give us a greater jealousy

of