ploy a constable, and has no other justices of peace than the nearest colonel or captain,-has ample employment for its troops in the interior of its provinces; and this, Sir Robert Wilson must doubtless be aware, is, except in a few great towns, the condition of all Asiatic and no inconsiderable part of European Russia. It is true that an army thus dispersed through a country may be collected to any conceivable amount, and act, as has been proved, with gigantic power against an invading or domestic enemy, but the Russian army, however great, however invincible at home, is not so constituted as to give any serious disturbance to the liberty of her neighbours. Nor is it to be forgotten that the enormous extent of her empire operates in another way against her foreign expeditions. Her capital (at least the residence of her sovereign) is two or three hundred miles from the provinces where her ancient and central strength is found, and whence her recruits are levied in the greatest numbers; her principal fabrics of arms are removed to a still greater distance; and from all these to her western frontier is a march but little shorter than the march between that frontier and Paris, while to her southern boundary, on the Danube and the Araxes, the distance is half as great again. We do not deny that a very perfect and admirable system of communication is kept up between these several points; but it is evident that with all these aids, (which in themselves are very costly to the government and the people,) to collect any very great army for the subjugation of Turkey or Germany, would be a laborious, an expensive, and a tedious operation.

And this brings us to the last obstacle which we mentioned,the smallness of the Russian revenue. We do not mean that it is small when compared with that of its immediate neighbours; nor do we deny that an army may be levied and fed in Russia for less money than in any other country of Europe. We only assert that, taking all this into consideration, the income of the state is notoriously so small as to have been productive of the greatest inconvenience during every war in which Russia has been engaged. We further assert that this revenue is not to be increased without great discontent and difficulty; and that, though to maintain a great army at home is not beyond her means, yet that such great foreign expeditions as Sir Robert Wilson speaks of, are not to be fitted out unless at an expense which the exchequer has hitherto been very ill able to encounter.

In proof of this proposition, we recal the recollection of our readers to certain facts stated by Sir Robert Wilson, which we requested them to bear in mind, and which we now oppose to his gigantic computation. The armies which Russia has sent beyond her frontier, have been smaller, in proportion to her population and the total of her army list, than those of any other power in Europe;

of the many victories which she has gained in Poland, in Turkey, in Italy, and the North, we do not call to mind a single one in which she has had a superiority of numbers on her side; and we have Sir Robert Wilson's testimony that Suvorof reaped all his laurels with no more than 40,000 men, and that, more recently, when at peace with all the world but France, and assisted, to a considerable extent, by the gold of England, at a time too when every feeling of pride and patriotism and hope and revenge conspired to stimulate her to efforts beyond herself, the greatest number of troops which she could supply to the allied armies before Dresden was (including Cossacks and Baschkirs) 140,000. That her means are now somewhat greater than they were then we allow; but it would be a waste of time to shew that, though increased, they are certainly not doubled by the accession of the duchy of Warsaw, and that we must wait some time before she is likely to send out half a million of regulars to subdue the remnant of Europe. To those, on the other hand, who know the burden of the conscription in Russia, not only on the individuals levied, but on the great body of landed proprietors, who are deprived, in their serfs, of their most valuable possession; it must seem more probable that the wise measures of retrenchment and economy which the Emperor has introduced into his navy will extend (as the circumstances of Europe shall permit) to his land-forces also, and that the number of these last will be gradually suffered to decline to the old and, certainly, sufficiently ample establishment of 400,000 men. At all events, it may be easily shewn that, with the drawbacks already mentioned, even the war, establishment of Russia affords no reasonable ground to despair of the liberties of Europe.

We begin with Scandinavia, which Sir Robert Wilson has represented already prostrate at the feet of her colossal neighbour; and from whose Norwegian harbours, fleets are to sail to dictate the will of the Muscovite autocrat at the mouth of the Humber or the Thames. Now here it is certainly true that, by the possession of Aland, the Russian frontier is only separated from the Swedish coast by a strait twenty-four miles wide, (being one mile more than the distance between Dover and Calais,) and that at certain periods of the year this strait is ordinarily frozen over. It is also true that a more certain though circuitous communication between the two countries may be found through the woods and wilds of Torneo. But Sir Robert Wilson, we apprehend, will not maintain that either of these routes affords any great facilities to an invading enemy, since, as he truly states, it was in a great measure the difficulty of communication which lost Finland to the Swedes, though they were then in possession of the whole coast on both sides of the Gulph; and, through the co-operation of the British navy, in full command

of

of its waters. Nor, even if this frontier were past, and except our own a stronger does not exist, would an invading army be greatly at its ease in the Gothic peninsula, whose poverty of soil would render numbers an incumbrance, and whose ample territory, and rivers, woods, lakes, and mountains, afford the most advantageous field in the world for that guerrilla warfare, for which her hardy and valiant peasantry are so peculiarly calculated. We know that the Swedes are poor; we know that their army does not exceed 60,000 men, of which, indeed, the greater part are nothing else than a well-organized militia. We know too that Stockholm, though easily defensible, might yield to a vigorous attack, and that for such an attack the possession of Aland is an important preliminary. But we know that, in a popular cause, the Scandinavian levy en masse might be calculated at 200,000 excellent marksmen: we are sure that the possession of Stockholm would be a very trifling step indeed towards the subjugation of the country; and we are tempted tó suspect that, in the event of Sweden being supported against Russia by the naval power of Great Britain, it would be Aland not Stockholm which would be most likely to change masters. After all, however, we will not deny the abstract possibility of Russia subduing Sweden, but it is evident that the obstacles which have been mentioned to such an event will always be felt by both nations so as to give confidence to the one, and repress the unreasonable pretensions of the other; and we speak the opinion of the best informed persons in both countries, when we assert that, on this side at least, the Russian terminus will probably be stationary; and that Sweden, by the exchange of Finland, which she held at the mercy of her neighbour, for Norway which is absolutely invulnerable, has done more towards establishing her future independence than any of her kings have accomplished since the days of the great Gustavus.

On the western and southern frontier of Russia, we confess the case is different. She has there very strong inducements to covet the remainder of Moldavia, the Prussian provinces within the Vistula, and the re-union of Gallicia to the restored kingdom of Poland; and we do not apprehend that Sir Robert Wilson has greatly exaggerated the probability that these objects will, sooner or later, be attained by her. This danger, such as it is, was foreseen in the conferences at Vienna, and it was certainly not the English ministry who are chargeable with having prevented its being obviated-for ourselves, however, we confess that it is on account of Prussia only that we deprecate the fulfilment of this prophecy. We have been taught by a writer, for whom it would be well if the author of the present work entertained more respect,—that

'England, least of all nations, has cause to be jealous of Russian ac

L 4

quisitions

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.

6

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 Thermopyla 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