11 NOVEMBER 1854, Page 11

TOPICS OF THE DAY

RUSSIA'S MISSION.

IT is a great advantage, when man meets man, or nation nation, r in mortal hostility, that neither party should mistake the powers or the purposes of the other. Too many of the Struggles of na- tions and of individuals have been directed against the inevitable ; too many have been on points which a frank explanation would have cleared up. Whether, in determining to resist the aggres- sive tendencies of Russia, the Western Powers have taken up arms against destiny, and will only succeed in bringing a barbarous domination domination upon Europe somewhat earlier than it would otherwise have come, remains yet to be seen. That no shadow of misconception can any longer rest upon the design of Russia to impose such domination, and consequently no shadow of a doubt on the justification of the preventive action of the Western Powers, we owe to the recent exposition of Russian policy with which the Court journal of St. Petersburg has favoured the Eu- ropean world. In casting to the winds the flimsy pretexts which diplomacy so long busied itself with—in avowing boldly that no petty question of treaties for securing protection to Christians of the Russian Church in Turkey lies at the bottom of the present war—in sending "the Vienna note" to the limbo of political chimeras as food for political Laputans—the St. Petersburg journal has done more than could have been anticipated in removing from the quarrel between Europe and Russia all legal fictions, all forms of special pleas, and in placing the whole question on an intelligible issue, to which_ England at least can scarcely fail to make rejoinder as one man. The Emperor Nicholas at last tells us that his .fixed determination is, not to cease from war till the Russian religion is supreme on the Bosphorus, and till England has been deprived of the power of diffusing material comforts over the world by her commerce, and social happiness by the example of her free institutions. For us at least, the struggle thus formulized becomes internecine ; and we are proud to accept the position thus assigned us by our enemy, who should know, of embodying in our political and social habits, in our moral and intellectual temper' the type par excellence of that which Russia is not, of that which Russia's despot hates and fears.

We are glad to have done once for all with the sickening hy-

pocrisy of the Imperial crocodile shedding tears over the victim he was hungry to devour ; glad to see the open gullet and the carnivorous teeth, rather than the sleek grin and the pious twinkle of the eye with which the approaching end of the "sick man" was unctuously discussed ; glad to hear that Turkey is an anomaly to. be swept away, not a nation to be supported in its strenuous ef- forts at improvement. Rascality and rapine are never so odious as when most pious and unselfish. When we remember the weary waste of words that have been spent by statesmen of all our parties in bedaubing this Emperor, who now avows his fixed purpose of revolutionizing the European system and removing England from the catalogue of great powers, with epithets of respect, homage, and admiration,—when we realize the amount of conscious dis- honesty and meanness there is in such phrases so applied, ought we not to be obliged to the piratical candour which throws back these praises in the teeth of those who uttered them, and reveals in his own naked deformity the fanatic Tartar leader, the foe of liberty, of civilization, of religion according to the ideas of the whole Western world ?

For there can be no mistake about the meaning of the Russian manifesto. "Conservatism" and " Christianity " are fine words; but the Czar furnishes interpretation as well as text. His " con- servatism " is that political system of which English institutions are the exact contrary. Seeking to define precisely what he con- ceives it his mission to check—what he puts forward as the pur- pose and innermost meaning of the war between himself and the Western Powers—he Scan find nothing so expressive of the ideas to. be exterminated as those principles which rule our English civili- zation. France, which has been at times dangerously infected with wild social theories and exposed to rash political experiments, he passes by with a scorn which, if it arise from any motive but a contemptible wish to annoy a sensitive nation, only indicates pro- found ignorance of the main springs of European thought and action. His hatred, his animosity, he concentrates on the country where order has reigned undisturbed for a century ; where property is more sacred, where progress has been more rapid and more equable, than in any other old-established land. What a strange conservatism, which finds its natural antagonist in a country thus

circumstanced I—til), we remember that, if the English system has produced such fruits, the Russian system, and all systems which retain any taint of its principles, stand condemned by our expe- rience. That, in fact, is our crime. Providence has blessed our struggles for self-government and free thought and speech; Pro- vidence has frowned upon the vain attempts of a line of despots to force a nation into humanity, to flog them into manhood, decency, and 'honour. It is the world-old story over again; Abel's sacrifice is accepted ; Cain's is rejected, and Cain is wroth with his brother and would slay him.

Nor is it less easy to affix the exact meaning to the Czar's pro- claimed purpose of reestablishing the supremacy of Christianity on the Bosphorus ; though " Christianity " is a vague phrase, and the unassisted reader might fairly hesitate as to the particular period when Christianity was supreme on the Bosphorus. But we are saved any speculation on the subject, as the Emperor's scribe again supplies interpretation as well as text. He complains that the t1,4,70 'bl aim ea^ Menselilkoff not for asking too much, but Ade' ii the Ariel:ma note": ,Iliat,nestse lequeserere,e

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J1111 • l'ilf 'JO l ' , , Illa h'• 4 ,:"..'' ' ee inon bOdy of Christians, far bueyo e what his inns= itdeeensideratromelfr. Brightpritpiagcle,,eieT 1. . , ter s;i.`..iiady-trepared in the sulots of the Sultan, whoeTiiiltAle iteelf,Teceb7 the .1OPPiteftr 7.13 Ale ilsanoe .., se alienated, and ussian intrigue riming 4i1 ‘ifillig cetieetioae ui dieputeeellke pi:last PfttiCtl n_fri 1441ete , npeliikoff," tle: This, hoWever is not the supremacy of Chrif fousatiwera weie telicee e More tools for the enslavement of :Europe: and he intexfered, saYSease...Pirightel" the , Q1_11K:world were centered in him who sat enthroned, between many, of. us ;are aeleepe But wherever , the co Uwe ,and Asia, en the Golden Horn. Herein lies the in- has risen above groundearkhave seen Prussia:, sierent ;defiance Which this Would-be conqueror has hulled at in: the.teit,of important:intrumenter piewisione ,the _ e. And can Europe—can Austria—can even PruSsia-- for:Ressiaa parpeses. The,fetineus zeicierva4 f, 414441 silent before an outrage so audacious if it were'..zibt Aprili,20,evae manifestly of Prussian. origin. 144.,;Iddierous ? England and France are replying before SchO beteyeen,Ausdrieeand Prussia oontained freguent a flie'liere replying at home.* every pulse of their hearts—in "'dig, ; deference which the former had paidAiktheedes sympathy and admiration for their brave fellow countryineft ' audit is something more than inferengeefjarge with the moatfamous siege of,iniodern times. Will he be content hoodwinked ; the Turkish Goreinnient 'was 'the, *1st to per tee`afte'n borne it in a triumph that no rival has been allowed the promised. at that stage ; it wieein, fact, vsenei fere olianee of disputing?