liberality and free trade, we get once more upon the border ground between the diplomatic and the non-diplomatic factors. Thus we get the three notions of Russia sapping up to the walls of our fortress, of Russia sowing disaffection in the minds of the inhabitants, and of Russia closing all the markets against us, as the notions which were chiefly accountable for the disfavour with which men regarded the Russian advance in Central Asia. Corresponding with the idea of Russia's disintegrating influence, we get the suggestion as a factor of philo-Turkism that Turkey should be supported for the sake of conciliating the Mahometan population of India. [It is suggested that the Government might incline to condone Turkish oppression] because we may fear, if we in any way give offence to the Mahometans in Turkey on account of their misgovernment of their Christian subjects, we may produce a feeling amongst our own Mahometans in India which must be very injurious to us. I must say I never heard a more extraordinary doctrine than that, nor one I will more completely repudiate ... We rest the claims of Great Britain to the government of India upon the divine right of good government . . . To think that England or Great Britain could contentedly look upon misgovernment in any part of the world upon such a plea as that, is entirely to misjudge, entirely to misrepresent, our sentiments.Sir Stafford Northcote.1 Grave and sensible men say to one another, "Ah, yes, have lately been full of it. . . . . There is no solidarité among the 1 At Edinburgh, Sept. 16, 1876, chap. xii. §. 6. There is another bugbear much talked of and which may possibly have some influence with our Government, the idea of a union of all the Mahometans to assist the Turks, and of our Indian Mahometans taking part in such a Crescentade. . . . [He refers to a few recent agitators who pretend to represent the forty million Mahometans, and say that these forty millions look to the Sultan as their Caliph.] Those Mahometan petitions from India are most ridiculous affairs. You have seen the principal one in the Times. I will venture to say that not a word of it is written by any Mahometan. It is palpably and notoriously written by an English partisan of our present Ministry. . . . As to any general sympathy and union of Mahometans, that is a matter of opinion, and every one has a right to his own. My own opinion is very decided that there is nothing in it. I believe that the mass of the Turks themselves are not really fanatical, though it is the fashion to say so.—Sir G. Campbell.1 There was a class of specialists who were always watching, and occasionally writing about the proceedings of Russia in Asia; 2 and from time to time the subject came up and caused a flutter of excitement among the more general public. Even if it be the case that the brute facts are all against the notion of Russia meddling with India, it is beginning to be perceived that morally a great change may be made by the proximity of that Power. There may be no real cause to dread the event, but if all India thinks so, if nations remember that former invasions had their origin in those very regions that Russia has been annexing, if they begin to whisper that a greater Power than the English is bidding for their favour-is not this a state of mind that may well create a danger where none would otherwise exist ?—Robert Giffen, Fort. Rev. July, 1868. One is struck at the outset with surprise that the two great propagators of European civilisation in Asia should be looked upon as natural enemies rather than the sources of immense moral support to each other.3-Fraser, Feb. 1871. At present the ambition of Russia is chiefly directed to get the Central Asian trade entirely into her hands. She believes, in her economical ignorance, that she is thereby doing a great stroke of business for herself, and injuring her commercial rivals. . . . . If she were thinking of India, and were at ease about Europe she would diminish her army, save her money, perfect her communications, make the three Khanates as Russian as Bengal is English, and prepare for a great struggle in 1900. . . . For myself, although mischievous people (amongst whom I am very far indeed from 1 At Kirkcaldy, Jan. 26, 1877. 2 See post, in Part iii., as to the controversy between two schools of Indian specialists which ensued on the publication of Sir Henry Rawlinson's England and Russia in the East, in 1875. Compare Argyll, ii. 384. 3 "The Eastern Question" (attributed to Froude). counting Sir Henry Rawlinson) will do their utmost to embroil the two countries, I do not believe they will ever cross swords in Asia. Grant Duff, Fort. Rev. Nov. 1875. I do not think that mere English interests would be so much affected even by Constantinople passing into Russian hands as many do. I am not-I need hardly say-one of those who attach great importance to the Russian conquests in Central Asia. If the Russians keep away from Afghanistan it seems to me to concern us very little what they do or don't do in that part of the world; but the people who disquiet themselves about Russian advances in Central Asia ought rather to wish to see the Russians come down into the Eastern Peninsula. It is quite certain that neither the population nor the resources of Russia are anything like sufficient to enable her to extend herself in both directions at once. If she turns her attention definitely to what a Russian statesman well described to me as l'Orient sérieux, she must perforce for some generations give up making fidgety little conquests in what he equally happily described as l'Orient de fantaisie.-Grant Duff, Contemp. Rev. July, 1876.1 The point on which the [Anglo-Indian] mind is fixed with special anxiety is Merv, and the affection which the very mention of that word produces is so peculiar that it almost deserves a special name, and may be called "Mervousness."-Argyll, ii. p. 370. It is true that the Russian policy in Asia is guided by the same spirit of monopoly as we see generally throughout the world. . . . But to find a ground of quarrel in the fact that a great and friendly Government, while pursuing an immense work of civilisation, prefers a line of policy not yet believed to be unwise or obsolete by the vast majority of mankind, and acts according to her opportunities, is surely a proposition almost revolting to common sense. Yet such is the proposition presented to us by the antagonists of Russian influence and Russian trade in Central Asia.-Ed. Rev. July, 1875. There are two things which Russia desires, and we of necessity must oppose, as contrary to our security and interests in Asia. The first is to advance her frontier to the slopes of the Himalayas on the north, and to Merv and Herat on the west, in close proximity to our own. The second is, to monopolise all the trade of Central Asia, to the exclusion of our manufactures, and of all competition. To draw the cordon of prohibitive States further south and closer to our frontier would answer both ends-that of a menace to our Indian Empire, if, unfortunately, a war in Europe 1 "Pulse of Europe." Compare his two articles on Russia, 19th Cent. March and April, 1877. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe writes on the other hand :-[If Russia is self-interested probably] the intended passage of the Danube is a demonstration and the incursion from Circassia the reality. [The map, however, will show we have nothing to fear from this].-19th Cent. July, 1877. should array the two countries in opposite camps, and of more effectually shutting out our merchants, and preventing the circulation of merchants goods or other profitable traffic with Central Asia. To prevent both these injurious results must be our policy; but is it so certainly imperative on Russia to follow out the two designs attributed to its Ruler -Fort. Rev. Jan. 1876. Russia aspires to become, not only the greatest of military Powers, but also a great industrialand commercial nation, and she firmly believes that by means of her great natural resources and the enterprising character of her people she will succeed in realising this aspiration. Herein lies a permanent source of enmity towards England. . . . By means of her ruthless politique d'exploitation, it is said, she has become the great bloodsucker of all less advanced nations. . . . The Russians habitually assail with impassioned rhetoric our commercial and industrial supremacy, and at the same time habitually seek to emulate it. The means they employ, however, are different from ours. Knowing that free competition and "the ridiculous principles of free trade" would inevitably lead to defeat in the struggle, they raise, wherever their dominion extends, a strong barrier of protective tariffs. In this way they protect their newly adopted subjects from the heartless "exploitation" of England, and consign them to the tender mercies of the manufacturers of Moscow and St. Petersburg. . . . Wherever the Russian frontier advances the possible area of British commerce will be diminished, and the advance of the frontier in the direction of India depends, as I have already explained, on ourselves. Sooner or later the Russian custom-houses, with their protective tariffs, will be within gunshot of our sentries.-Wallace, Fort. Rev. Aug. 1876.1 If we need not admit the immediate probability, we must at any rate allow the eventual possibility of the Russian advance southwards into those regions which touch our own borders. [The thing we ought to do is to secure the command of the glacis of our fortress.]-Blackwcod, Aug. 1877. Apart from the two ideas that Russian attacks on Turkey would threaten the English road, and that English support of Turkey would conciliate the Mahometans of India, the connection between philo-Turkism and Asiatic Russophobia was indirect. But though indirect, the effect of Asiatic Russophobia in promoting an anti-Russian and pro-Turkish policy on the part of England in respect to the Turkish Eastern Question was very great. To those who looked forward to a struggle between England and Russia for the hegemony of Asia as the next great war in which this country would be called upon to engage, the temptation to be the friend of their foe's foe was very strong. 1 Territorial Expansion of Russia." Asiatic Russophobia, as the controlling motive of a policy, is perhaps a corollary from that conception of England's role which found expression in Mr. Disraeli's aphorism-" England is a great Asiatic power." With respect to those who looked at the question between Turkey and the subject. Christians solely from the European point of view, the doctrine that the Turk is non-European, as we have remarked, went to the root of the controversy; but when the character of England as a world-power is brought into the question, we come upon a much more startling and important difference. For Asiatic Russophobia, if made the guiding principle of English policy would involve nothing less than the subordination of England's European character to the exigencies of her Asiatic character. Carried out, this would mean that instead of India's being a dependency of England, England, with its parliamentary government, its free institutions, and its European religion and civilisation, would become a dependency of a great non-European military empire. We get a glimpse here of the connection between anti-Russism, philo-Turkism, and the tendency which people came to recognise in the policy of the Government, and to which they gave the name "Imperialism." SH. Non diplomatic Anti-Russism and Philo-Turkism. The vehemence of the feelings of hostility to Russia and of partisanship for the Turks exhibited by large numbers of people can hardly be altogether accounted for by the notions which have already been enumerated. The least intelligible and perhaps the most dangerous feature about the existing irritation against Russia is its astonishing vagueness. . . . She is described as our natural enemy," and persons otherwise sensible are proud of a feeling exactly akin to the ancient one which produced such endless wars with France, and at which these very people now smile almost with contempt. -Spec. March 23rd, 1878. The tendency against which Pitt protested1-to think that some country or other must be filling the role of England's "natural enemy"-seems to be inveterate. Though in all probability such widespread feelings have never grown up without some basis, yet in their development and growth they pass so far beyond the limits within which mere reason would confine them 1 J. R. Green, History of the English People, vol. iv. p. 291. M |