ARTICLE IX.

Nécessité d'une Alliance entre la FRANCE et la RUSSIE, pour fixer les destinées de l'ORIENT après la dissolution prochaine de l'EMPIRE TURC, et dominer les conséquences que cet évènement peut amener en Europe. Par un FrancComtois. Paris: Denaix et Dentu. 1836.

THE pleasures of the imagination so rarely enliven the strategies of political controversy, that we are tempted by the title of the pamphlet, which we have just transcribed, to lay before our readers an account of the amusing speculations contained in its pages. If we could suppose that the peaceful inhabitants of Franche-Comté were really engaged in remaking the political map of the world, after the manner of those astronomers who composed charts of the moon in entire ignorance of the physical history of that satellite, they would deserve more pity than derision. But such simplicity is not to be found in the remotest arrondissement of France; and we are inclined to treat the performance before us as the serious sport of some more designing partisan of that power, whose emissaries are to be met with under a thousand disguises in every circle of European society, and in a thousand organs of the European press. We must doubtless ascribe to the disinterested admiration of this author for the enlightened policy of Russia the circumstance, of his having chosen as his publisher an individual better known for his connection with the Russian embassy in Paris than for the services he has rendered to French literature. To the same cause must be attributed the omission of all mention of the positive and immediate interests of France, in a performance which professes to treat of the united interests of France and Russia; though the interests of the latter power are discussed and defended with a self-denying zeal, more creditable to the attainments than to the Gallic patriotism of a Franc-Comtois. It is true that the wildest visions of political changes are scattered over these pages, with a profusion which nothing but the extravagance of a French scribbler or the ambition of a Russian diplomatist could attempt; but the knowledge of facts which some of the

writer's positions imply, the adroit turn which is given to his arguments in favour of the Northern power, and, above all, the strong Slavonian tone of feeling which pervades his project, sufficiently betray the real origin of this singular production, and completely justify us in stripping off the French mask so carelessly worn by this audacious adept in Russian casuistry: he may be a lamb; but if he be, like Coriolanus,

He's a lamb that baes like a bear!

Brought home to a Russian, these proposals assume an importance which otherwise they would not possess. As the speculations of a Frenchman, they would only be worth attention in proportion to the accuracy with which the chances had been calculated: but when the hand of the Muscovite is discovered, in a plan whose object is to reduce England to a second-rate power, to give Russia an overwhelming preponderance in Europe and Asia, and to bribe France and Prussia to consent to this by the offered partition of Turkey, Spain, Italy and Germany, then we say the animus and the country of the author become matters for serious reflection.

Our readers are aware that in certain territorial discussions of great interest, which are now said to be ended to the mutual satisfaction of the cabinets of St. James and St. Petersburg, though very little to the satisfaction of the people of England, certain maps have been alluded to in which the fact of the possession of Circassia by the Russians has been incontrovertibly demonstrated by a streak of colour, implying that those coasts have long formed a part of the empire, though likely to be occupied for some time still by the gallant mountaineers whom our Russian Frenchman calls "the revolted "tribes of Abasia." (P.41.) We shall now have an opportunity of showing in what manner this Russian tint may extend itself, or has already extended itself, in the imaginary geography adopted by our author, over vast regions less independent than the mountains of the Caucasus: and if we follow the views put forward in this pamphlet, we shall find that, in process of time, all the manifold shades and differences which still variegate the map of Europe must infallibly be reduced to the simple arrangement of the three primitive colours.

When the wolf in the fable condescended to state the prin

ciples of retributive justice upon which he was about to devour the lamb, drinking at a lower part of the brook, he resorted to the unanswerable argument of hereditary responsi bility, and gratified his appetite whilst he concealed the atrocity of his taste for tender meat. This is precisely the policy of Russian manifestos. An unoffending people is accused of entertaining some monstrous design of attacking the wolf in his lair; and before it can reply to the allegation, the wolf is at its throat. A foreign merchant is detected in the very act of troubling the waters of the Black Sea, which are henceforward to be kept exclusively for the use of the Northern Megalotherion, and before his unprotected brig has had time to get a cask of fresh water, a sloop of war carries it off to Sebastopol. But when all these reasons fail to justify a more overt aggression on the independence of nations, the Russian appeals to the unanswerable argument of RACE, and cuts short all further discussion by seizing a fresh morsel to stay the huge cravings of the Slavonian Autocrat;

Atque ita correptum lacerat injustâ nece.

We have more than once had occasion to point out the use made of this argument to turn the sympathies of the Slavonian populations and the Christians of the Greek communion, now subject to Austria, Turkey and other countries, in the direction of that throne which unites the sovereignty of so large a portion of Eastern Europe with the supremacy of the Eastern Church. These doctrines are gradually instilled into the Slavonian subjects of Austria from the Danube to the Elbe; and it is well known that a secret society calling itself the society of young Slavonians, which became obnoxious to the cabinet of Vienna, was partly supported by Russian agents, no unworthy successors of the Russian Hetarists in Greece.

In Hungary more particularly these arts are industriously employed and whilst no opportunity is lost of flattering the chivalrous Magyar nobility of that country, the Slowak population is frequently reminded of the affinity which it bears to the nations under the Russian sceptre, and of the German character of its present rulers*.

* During the visit of the Emperor Nicholas to Teplitz in 1835, he was complimented by the offer of a Hungarian regiment in the Austrian service; and he ap

Such are the views which our author adopts as the basis of his projects; and, with a bold contempt of the Treaty of Vienna and the balance of power, he rushes at once from the Treaty of Westphalia, where Russia was not represented at all, (for the excellent reason that she had not begun to exist as Russia,) to a state of things which would secure to her a tremendous preponderance in Europe. With the theory of the three great races of Europeans in his mouth, he attempts to veil the ambition of despots under the sympathy of nations, and to overturn the provisions of diplomacy by an appeal to popular affinities.

"I see that nations, like a strong child just disengaged from leadingstrings, are very ill-pleased with existing treaties, and that, in spite of the efforts of diplomatists, they will realise an idea which was entertained even in the times of Charlemagne, attempted by Louis XIV., and which Napoleon would have executed but for the disastrous campaign of Moscow; namely, to divide themselves into three great families, according to their language, their peculiar genius and their origin. The first comprises France, Spain and Italy, or the Gauls. The second would consist of the Germanic States and the Scandinavian Peninsula; and, lastly, the third would be composed of all the Slavonian tribes which extend from the Vistula to the Volga. I believe that the existing order of things must be broken up by the edge of the sword, for the human race has never purchased peace and prosperity but at the cost of bloody sacrifices. The true balance of Europe is to be found in the recomposition of these great families, and not in the preservation of a multitude of small intermediate states, whose conflicting interests can only check the progress of civilization."Page 4.

It will be seen that our author, at the outset, reserves to

peared on many occasions in the Hungarian uniform at the head of this fine body of troops. In the following year a scarf or pennon worked by the Empress was sent to the regiment, with the following marked letter of presentation, addressed by Her Imperial Majesty to the acting Colonel.

"I have chosen the Emperor's birthday, Sir Colonel, to offer to the Hungarian "regiment which bears his name that token which, with the consent of your il"lustrious master, the standard of the regiment is to bear.

"I shall always remember with peculiar pleasure, that it was on the plains of "Culm that I saw the standard unfurled; and my heartiest good wishes will ever "accompany the same and the brave soldiers who are called to fight beneath it.

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I beg you therefore, Sir Colonel, to assure the gallant Hungarian regiment of "these my feelings towards them, and to remain assured of my especial esteem "and good-will towards yourself.

“Alexandria near Peterhof, 25th June, 1836.

A true copy.

M

"ALEXANDRA

P

France, his supposed country, a large share of those southern regions of Europe to which the Russian Autocrat cannot pretend; and that he ingeniously appeals to the sympathies of his French readers, by a project for reconstructing the magnificent Empire of their greatest leader. But after this brilliant commencement he abandons France and Europe to their fate, and devotes the rest of his pages to the mighty growth of Russia and the regeneration of Asia.

The great starting-point of all the pseudo-friends of civilization of the Russian school, who have cotton-twist to sell at St. Petersburg, or who receive the filthy wages of their sophistry from the cashier of a Russian embassy, is the downfall of the Turkish empire. To hear them enlarge on the hor rors of the slave-market, the licentiousness of the harem, the sacrilegious lives of Mahometan princes, and the fanaticism of a Mahometan people, one would imagine that the days of the Crusades were returned, and that Europe was to rise, like an armed man, at the eloquence of some new Peter the Hermit, to drive the Ottoman from the shores of the Bosphorus. To listen to them when they depict the decrepitude of the Porte, the perilous position of Mahmoud, and the effete condition of Turkish institutions, one would suppose that the martial people whose war-cry has so often been heard on the Danube's banks had already ceased to exist; and that Russia was drawn towards the Golden Horn by some irresistible force like that of a vacuum, which compels the nearest particles to rush into an empty space and to fill up an abandoned throne. The answer to these extravagant declamations comes most appropriately from the mouth of England. Our commercial returns afford incontrovertible proof that each succeeding year increases the importance of our importations from, and our exportations to, this decaying people. We have evidence of an authentic kind to show that no small progress has been made by the Turks in the cultivation of their wonderful possessions, in the arts of civilized life, and in the uses of modern inventions. We are well aware that the possession of Constantinople, by whatever power-whether Mussulman or Christian, whether the subjects of the bow-string or the knout-must exercise an important influence over the destinies of Europe and Asia. But, above all, in defending the existing state of things against