OBSERVATIONS

ON

AN INTERCEPTED CARICATURE.

Ir may puzzle the uninitiated to understand how Caricatures can insinuate themselves among solemn State Papers. We confess we ourselves are at a loss to account for the existence among Russian documents of a Caricature of such a character as that which accompanies this number.

There are several able caricaturists, (we mean using the pencil), in the diplomatic service of Russia, but we doubt that their talents would be employed precisely in the representation of such features as these of Russian power: we, therefore, suspect that this Caricature has been bought up, dreading its effect on the public feeling of England. Certainly, never in fewer lines has the state

of Europe been epitomized.

liating representation!

VOL. III.NO. XXII.

Hideous and humi

R

There is but one point on which we feel inclined to criticise it. Louis Philippe dances with energy and zeal, but he deserves promotion. He ought not to be placed in the Russian dance below the old Emperor of Austria; but, on the other hand, his position is well chosen, as enabling him to win into graceful motion the reluctant attitude of his English ally.

Prince Metternich once, to his cost, indulged in satire of this kind against the Emperor of Russia and his Court when, at Paris in 1825, he was so unguarded as to allow to be seen there graphic sketches of his pen. They were communicated to the Russian Court, and produced the greatest indignation against the Chancellor of the Court and State. Who was guilty, it will be asked, of this violation of private confidence, of this sin against the political faith of this country, if not of France? Of course it will be said that it was the subservient cabinet of France. It was not. It was our gifted Canning! It was conceived by him to be a splendid hit at the system of the Holy Alliance. Such has been the lamentable policy of this country at all times, whether directed by a genius or an humbler mortal.

ARMENIAN CHURCH.

AT the moment when the British Parliament and the public journals were exulting over the triumph of British influence at St. Petersburg, and the satisfactory result of our Policy in the arrangement for the evacuation of Silistria, we observed, in the very same letter announcing this intelligence, that the Porte had consented that the ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Armenian population should be transferred from the Patriarch of Constantinople to the Patriarch of Utchmiadzin, the religious capital of Armenia, and extorted from Persia during the last war. This statement excited no attention, did not elicit a single remark its object, character, and consequences were as completely incomprehensible as if Russia had never interfered in Greece, because commanded to do so par toute sa religion.

The following extract, from the January number of the Foreign Quarterly Review, strikingly illustrates our argument.

The most powerful lever which had been placed in the hands of Russia, and which was perhaps one of the original determining

causes of her gigantic designs, was the identity of her religious creed with so large a portion of the population of Turkey. The first political agents that penetrated into the southern provinces of Turkey were apostles of a faith, not partisans of a government. The political influence of Russia spread from the altar, and the present degradation and future anarchy and subjection of Greece may be traced back, through heroic devotion and patriotic aspirations, to religious sympathies at the disposal of the wily cabinet in the far North, in whose hand the symbol of self-denial and of faith, the cross, has been converted into a dagger. The labarum of that faith had been erected in the city of Constantine; it was now to be transferred to the marshes of Peter. The patriarch of Constantinople, weltering in his pontificals on the threshold of the sanctuary, a splendid triumph of her diplomacy, had desecrated the ancient shrine; and, while this awoke an implacable hatred between the Crescent and the Cross, it led the adherents of the Eastern church to regard with a new feeling of respect that Northern, that inviolable, sanctuary of their faith. In Greece a new blow was struck at their ancient predilections by Capodistrias, who, severing the religious and hitherto inviolate dependence of Greece on the œcumenic patriarch, became himself the lay vicar of the national Greek establishment, as representative of a master, whose predecessor had equally replaced the pontiff of Russia in his supreme functions.*

Up to the present time, the religious propagande of Russia has been confined to the Greek Church and to the professors of that creed, subject to Tur

* In Montenegrin, on the death of the celebrated priest and governor of that singular country, his nephew, a lad of twenty, was called to St. Petersburg; and the civil authority in his native land was there, as it were, conferred upon him through his consecration as archbishop by the Russian Patriarch! Russia has attempted, but not yet succeeded, in rendering the Armenian Church of Constantinople dependent on the Armenian Patriarch within her territories at Erivan. The late removal of the Greek Patriarch at Constantinople is another illustration.

key and to Austria. Now she has commenced a new rôle. The principal Christian churches throughout the East are-Firstly, the Greek, professed by the great proportion of the Greek race, by one-third of the Albanian race, by the whole of the Montenegrins and Illyrians, and by two-thirds of the Sclavonic populations of Roumelia, or by a population of between six and seven millions of souls, the head of whom was the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople. Secondly, the Armenian Church, embracing almost the whole of the Armenian population, which may amount to nearly three millions, scattered throughout the towns of the empire and the capital, but principally inhabiting the mountains of Armenia. This population is at present, next to the Turkish, the most influential in the empire; influential by their industry, their great wealth, and the control they have as bankers and agents of the finances of the state, and the whole administration of the empire. This population forms one vast corporation, subject to its spiritual chiefs, and their Patriarch is the bond which unites them to the Porte. There are four Patriarchs; the Patriarch of Armenia proper, formerly under Persia, now under Russia, still preserves a nominal