10 MARCH 1855, Page 12

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE CHANGE OF CZARS.

ALEXANDER the Second is reputed to be a " mild" man, and it is assumed by some people that he will be inclined for peace. And what then P The past has taught us little if we rest the question of peace upon the character of any one Russian Emperor. It is true that when a Czar has died in the midst of war, the new Czar declared for peace, as Alexander the First did on the death of Paul. But that Alexander did not prove an angel of peace for Europe ; and Nicholas, with peace in his mouth, with disclaimers of ambition equally in 1828, 1844, and 1853, has been the scourge of independent Circassia throughout his reign, and the great crowned breaker of a peace, which the revolution- ists of 1848 could not effectually disturb. If Alexander is a mild man, and has not been displaced to make way for his fiery brother Constantine, it is not unlikely that Constantine waives pretensions assigned to him by public opinion, if not by his father, because the policy of his party will be carried out, so that while declining the crown he may virtually wield the sceptre. The whole construction of public offices in Russia, the very foundation of society, imparts to the empire an aggressive consti- tution. Its peaceful institutions are provisional. St. Petersburg itself has a population which is as it were only in lodgings ; a small proportion of females residing there, and the whole town being kept up by the Imperial sanction, not by a rooted population independent of the master will. Trade is driven hither and thither, according to the exigencies or caprices of the Czar and his designs, political or military; and thus the great guarantet. of peace which every nation gives to the world—the development of ita own com- merce and civilization—is in Russia kept subservient to the military efficiency of its Government. Its colonies, when not penal, are mili- tary colonies; its acquisitions of territory are the means of advanc- ing upon further territory; and it is confessed that Turkey herself would be safe to this day if the military settlements in Southern Russia did not supply at once the outposts, the recruits, and the re- serves for the armies on the Danube, the Pruth, and the Teller- naya. The Russians have only become identified in Europe as a community with a national name and an imperial government since their aggressive character: has been completely established. Pure Sclavonians, or the bastards of the Tartars who taught them the policy of conquest, they are unknown upon the territorial map, until they begin their marches upon the ter- ritory of others. They are insignificant until the reign of Peter, who elevated the cruel and insane dynasty of international spoliators. The boundaries of other countries have fluctuated : Holland has possessed more or less of territory, France has changed her frontiers, England possesses immense dependencies; but the heart of each of these states has always been the same. If you were to strip England of all she owns in America, Africa, and Asia, she would be England still. It is not so with Russia ; she is what she has despoiled. It is since the house of Romanoff was established on the throne that this encroachment upon her neigh- bours commenced. It was in the middle of the seventeenth cen- tury—just two hundred years ago—that Poland began to give off its provinces to Russia; and since that time, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Turkey, Persia, Tartary, and even the desert to the East, have been surrendering the acquisitions that have made Russia what she is—have brought her next door to the civilization of Europe, and have given her the standing-ground for her last threatening stride upon Constantinople. Throughout the reigns of Peter, Catherine, Paul, and Alexander, this centrifugal march has been going on. It might almost be said that the progress of Russia was sus- pended during the reign of Nicholas. It was not that the spirit of spoliation was dead : Georgia and the Caucasus know what Nicholas would do with the sword ; and in 1829, Lord Aberdeen pointed to the purpose with which the Czar, pretending only to vindicate justice, advanced towards Constantinople. But the Cir- cassians are not conquered; and the fear of England and Austria arrested Nicholas in 1829,—besides some little infelicity in his own military proceedings. The settlement of 1815 was an obstacle to Nicholas; and, whatever his ambition, his diplomatic cunning, and his power of flattery and lying, he had not the men or the genius to conquer the empires that he coveted. His campaigns were not brilliant, and the great course of Russia was checked during his reign. But does not that thirty-years fact tell us, that even while the aggressive progress of Russia appears to be sus- pended, it is in spirit going on, and the force to renew the progress is only accumulating? The case would, probably, not be very dif- ferent if a " mild Czar were placed in front to make with a greater show of sincerity the same professions that Nicholas has made, while Constantine should work behind with the same ma- ; terials,—the same officials, the same families, the same Mensohi- koffs, the same Gortchakoffs, who have officered the armies of aggression throughout the Romanoff dynasty. The mistake of Nicholas, if he deviated from the councils of his predecessors, was to confess, a day too soon, that Russia did nourish those designs upon Constantinople and upon Europe of which he was accused. His recent campaign on the Danube was a confes- sion that it had become a practical question whether Europe should be Russian or should continue European. "Nulls vestigia retror- sum." We have already had an example of what the nations would become in the event of the fate destined for them by Russia. There are some of the territories devoured by that power which had histories until they were submerged. Livonia had her knights ; Finland shared the independent history of Sweden; Lithuania bade fair to -vie with any of the European states that have since

established a power and a fame in Europe; Poland was at one time the bulwark of the Continent against Infidel invasions, and

with all her faults she had some worthiness to share the life of the states that have survived her. All now sunk ; their history ended. Their volumes close in the great dull -vo- lume of semi-barbarous Russia. We learn what states become when they are lost in that waste. Tell us that the Czar may be civilized, and we appeal to the falseness, the low cunning, the im- perial ambition, which stamped Nicholas, with all his show of court civilization, to be a barbarian even less intelligently appre- ciating facts and things than Peter the First of the Imperial tribe of Barrabas. Gipsies, Red men, and Czars, appear to be incapable of acquiring the divilization whose dress they may wear. Tell us that the history of Russia is recent—that she may develop to civi- lization, and an intellect to rival Germany, France, and England ; and we point to the wilds of the West, or to the extreme South of Asia, where American settlers and Australian colonists have caused great communities to burst upon the desert, instinct with all the life and development of the oldest states in Eu- rope. They have a history, a great history, with a more than geometrical progression of vitality. Russia also, we are told, has her colonies instinct with life : but where are the evidences ? where are the books from Tobolsk ? where is "the democracy of Siberia"? It is no answer to say that Russia is not the Czar—that there is a distinction between the country and the sovereign : Russia, at least passively, sanctions the Czar in acting for her, and states outside the boundary can only recognize her by the voice in which she permits herself to speak. More than one promising nation has been submerged never to reappear; and Europe, it would seem, has nothing instead of these lost nations. The same cannot be said of any other government whatsoever 'since civilization was supposed to be a permanent fact in the world.

The choice for Europe, then, appears to lie between continued advancement in civilization, or submersion under the encroach- ments of Russia. We may comfort ourselves with the idea that such a submersion is impossible—can never be. With such as- surances, probably, clever and wealthy men of Greece comforted themselves ; with such the Romans under the Empire disdained the threats of Gothic invasion ; the Saracens looked down upon the Franks,—assurances which we on this side of the middle ages and of the Pyrenees can now estimate. The choice is quite dis- tinct enough to be a motive of decided and steadfast action. If we do not establish an effective resistance now, we cannot hope to do it so easily at a later day. No wall of Trajan, no colony of Romans on the Danube, no buying off of barbarian tribes, will save us from the final invasion. We must not only stop the invaders, but deprive them of the power of pro- gress, of the desire to advance. Russia will keep within her own bounds, if at every advance she is made to lose more than she en- deavours to snatch. She tried to lay her left hand upon Constan- tinople, and the loss of Sebastopol, if not of the Crimea, will teach her the lesson that should be taught to robbers. If she cannot become civilized and merge herself in Europe, possibly she may be made to disgorge hereafter the nations that she has devoured, and restore them to civilization and history. It is possible to enforce that lesson upon her,—unless, indeed, sunk in the effe- minate pride of ultra-civilization, we are prepared to be fatalists like the Romans of the Lower Empire, and to consent that Europe shall be Russian.