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with many similar problems. With all our reliance on Parliamentary government, it has never occurred to anyone that it could with advantage be applied to India. Even the expedient, now contemplated, of an Indian Privy Council, is one of doubtful policy; and we are naturally surprised and distrustful when we see Midhat Pasha apply to the evils of Turkey a remedy which we should hardly recommend or adopt in the Queen's Asiatic dominions.

These views are confirmed, in a striking manner, by Sir George Campbell, who has just given us the results of a visit to Turkey, in a very convenient and instructive form. He has brought his experience as an Indian civil servant, well acquainted with Asiatic races, to bear on the Ottoman Empire. He gives his testimony to the extreme-he calls it excessive' -toleration of the Turkish Government towards the various sects of Christians and the Jews. His second chapter on the Mahommedan religion and laws is a masterly exposition of the subject; he takes, upon the whole, a favourable view of the Turkish character; he attributes the present deplorable state of the Government to the influence of a small bureaucracy at Constantinople; and he contends that far from having done too little in the way of change and reform, the Porte has in reality done too much; but what has been done he loudly condemns, because it has been done under the influence of French principles of administration. All this is highly instructive, and for the sake of these chapters we recommend this little volume to our readers. But when he comes to reason on these data, the writer is very wide of the mark indeed. He begins by stating that he has no knowledge of the complications of European politics-quite the contrary;' and accordingly, he leaves the principal factor in the whole calculation-the power and designs of Russia-almost entirely out of the question, and he adopts, without, apparently, the least suspicion of the treacherous ashes beneath his feet, every suggestion that can promote the objects of that Power.

The recent disturbances in the Turkish provinces of Europe were not caused by any aggressive or arbitrary act of provocation on the part of the Turkish Government. The system, bad as it is in many respects, is old; the two additional burdens thrown on the people of late years are importations from Europe the military conscription, and the increase of the public debt, and of these the former falls only on the Mussulmans. We showed in our last Number that the insurrection in Bosnia and the Herzegovina was rather agrarian

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than political, and directed against the land owners and the tax farmers rather than against the Sultan. Sir George Campbell is of the same opinion, and says that the mistake committed by the Turkish Government in Bosnia resembles that committed by the British Government in Oude. The grievances of the people were administrative grievances, precisely of the nature of those which occur in Native States, and which a dozen experienced Bengal civilians and a landsettlement of the country would remove. But these elements of disaffection were skilfully worked upon by influences from without, and turned to purposes in which the improvement of the condition of the people had but a small part. In short, Turkish misrule would not have led to revolt, massacres, and a crisis in affairs, without the active intervention of Russian policy; and Russia would not have found means to advance her political designs, if it had not been for the vast and neglected field of Turkish misrule.

The view we take cannot be better expressed than in the following passage from what we may term a prophetic despatch addressed by Count Beust, then Austro-Hungarian Chancellor, to the Internuncio at Constantinople, just ten years ago, on January 22, 1867 :

'It cannot be concealed that the Ottoman Empire is on the brink of a crisis which may shake it to its foundations. [The Cretan insurrection was then going on.] It is possible, though that may be questioned, that the forces of Turkey will suffice to master the general impulse which seems about to seize upon her Christian population; but even if she had the power, her material resources are deficient; she could only succeed by appealing to the religious fervour of her Mussulmen subjects. Thenceforward, the contest would assume a character which would render it impossible for the Powers not to interfere. Europe conld not remain passive in presence of massacres between fanatical Moslems and Christians fighting for their faith and their existence. No great Power could stand aloof from a conflict waged under those conditions. The Christian world would resound with the cry of war against the Crescent to protect the Rayah from the extermination that would threaten him, and the days of the Crusaders would return. It is therefore indisputable that an understanding between the Powers, with a view to prevent the danger of a general conflagration by diplomatic intervention, is highly necessary. All the Governments of Europe must be equally desirous to maintain the general peace; they are all interested in finding a pacific solution for the Eastern Question, without disturbing their mutual good relations. There is only one Power which may be supposed to take different views, and that is Russia. She may be suspected of pursuing another object than the common interest of Europe, by turning to her own purpose the multifarious relations she has established in South-Eastern Europe.

The experience of the last ten years shows that her exertions are incessant to keep up the agitation of those countries.'*

Count Beust went on to argue that Russia could certainly not be excluded from the councils of the great Powers on that account, but that it was all the more urgent to take collective steps to urge on the Government of the Sultan proposals expressed in the most precise language and embracing the whole extent of the Eastern Question. It is greatly to be regretted that no such steps were taken at the time, and that Count Beust's recommendation did not prevail. But if the Conference he proposed in 1867 did not meet, a Conference for precisely these objects did meet at the close of 1876, and England and Russia are the leading Powers at it. As far as we are acquainted with the proceedings of the Conference, they have been decorous and conciliatory, and governed by a desire to save the Porte from great dangers, as well as by the desire to ameliorate the condition of the Christian populations. Russia, especially, has displayed an unexpected degree of moderation, by adopting the proposals of England as her base, and by surrendering many of the points she had previously insisted on. The Emperor Alexander has shown a strong desire to avoid a war for which he is ill-prepared, and his able representatives have made large concessions for the purpose of throwing the responsibility of the rupture (if it should occur) on the Porte, and of obtaining for Russia the moral support of Europe. But these diplomatic manœuvres do not alter, and will not arrest, the permanent and traditional policy of the Russian Empire.

What, then, really are the views and intentions of Russia? That is the nodus of the whole question. As Count Beust justly observed ten years ago, they alone are open to suspicion, and to an amount of suspicion, which no verbal assurances or declarations can remove, because what we know of the policy of Russia is based on a long series of political facts. It would be absurd to suppose that to Russia, or to any other State, an ardent desire to redress the wrongs of some oppressed nationality in another country can be, or ought to be, the paramount and guiding principle of her policy. We in England have often felt an ardent desire to redress the wrongs of the Poles, of the Circassians, of the Sicilians, of the Greeks: we have held sympathetic meet

From The Austro-Hungarian Empire,' by Baron Heine de Worms, a volume containing an interesting collection of Count Beust's despatches.

ings, raised subscriptions, and given them our moral support; but when it came to the question of making war for their defence, the interests of England and the duty of English statesmen to their own country forbade it, and we remained at peace. The conduct of Russian sovereigns and statesmen must be the same. They are looking to the interests of their own empire, and it is their duty to do so. To suppose that the interests and welfare of the Christian population of European Turkey is paramount in the eyes of Russian statesmen to those of Russia, or that it can be paramount in the eyes of English statesmen to the interests of England, is an absurdity with which we cannot argue. It remains to be seen whether the military occupation of the Turkish provinces, which is in other words the invasion of Turkey-a measure proposed by Russia under the well-known name of guarantee,' and which she alone could carry into effect-was proposed solely as the means to be employed in the last resort to secure the reforms recommended to the Porte by the Christian Powers, or whether these reforms have been advocated by Russia as a pretext for occupation. Either solution is possible. We must resort to past history to show which is the more probable of the two.

The policy of Prince Gortschakoff after the Crimean War and the Peace of Paris was described by himself in the forcible and not undignified terms, 'La Russie ne boude pas, elle se ' recueille.' Important internal reforms, and the necessity of repose after an exhausting war, sufficiently explain the comparative inactivity of Russia for some years; and in 1863 all her strength was employed to crush in the most merciless manner the last rising of the unhappy Poles. But from that year, or shortly afterwards, we begin to trace the steady resolution and persevering efforts of Prince Gortschakoff to shake off the restrictions placed on Russia by the Treaty of Paris, to paralyse or destroy the effects of that instrument, and to replace Russia in an attitude, towards Europe and towards Tukey, not less favourable to herself than that she occupied previous to the war. He was favoured by circumstances, and he has been partly successful; but amongst the causes which have favoured him he could hardly have anticipated that there would be a

The scheme for the occupation of the territory south of the Danube by a small body of neutral troops or mixed police appears to us so puerile as not to deserve notice. Such a force, in the event of serious disturbances, would be wholly inoperative, in a country bristling with fortresses and regular troops.

vehement party of Englishmen eager to renounce and repudiate the very object for which they once thought it worth while to contend to the death, to disavow the treaties they themselves negotiated and signed, both in 1856 and in 1871, and to devote themselves to forward interests which Russia regards as her

own.

The war of 1866 was the first turn of good fortune for Russia. By abandoning the whole policy hitherto followed by the Court of St. Petersburg in its German alliances, and by observing a strict and friendly neutrality in the war, Russia conferred an immense benefit on Prussia, which secured herself from opposition in that quarter. At the same time, the defeat of Austria prostrated that empire, and rendered her powerless to deal with the questions likely to arise on her eastern frontier. By this event the confirmatory treaty of April 16, 1856, between France, Austria, and Great Britian, also lost much of its strength.

From this moment, the political action of Russia in the East again became much more active. On February 17, 1867, the Moscow Gazette,' a journal of authority in that country, exclaimed

'The new era is at length begun, and for us Russians it has a peculiar call. This era is our own; it calls to life a new world hitherto waiting in obscurity the hour of destiny-the Greco-Sclavonian world. After ages of resignation and servitude, this world approaches at last the hour of renovation. The present generation will witness great changes, great events and great formations. Already in the Balkan peninsula and beneath the rotten covering of Ottoman tyranny, three groups of strong and energetic nationalities are awakening, the Hellenic, the Sclavonian, the Roumanian. Closely united to each other by a common faith and by historical traditions, those three groups are equally united to Russia by all the ties of religious and national life. When once these three national groups are reconstructed, Russia will stand forth in a new light. She will no longer be alone in the world: instead of a sombre Asiatic Power she will become a moral force indispensable to Europe. She must assume towards the Sclavonian races the attitude which France has assumed to the Latin races, and Prussia to the German races, and she must employ all her forces to realise it.'*

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In the spring of the following year a great Sclavonian congress was convoked at Moscow, under the strange title of an Ethnological Exhibition.' From Bohemia to the Bosphorus, the Sclaves of all countries were summoned to their metropolis.

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*The passage is quoted by M. Klacko, in his 'Deux Chanceliers,' p. 333.

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