lottfro tu to attn . .
THE NEW EASTERN WAR.
London, 3c1 February 1857. Sin—After discussing various lines of policy connected with "The New Eastern War," your paper of 24th January concluded with observing" The chapter of accidents, those contingencies that lie in the unforeseen, may compel us in order to preserve our dominion in India, to adopt some quite new and 'more daring plan." Your remark has received a most striking confirmation in the revolt of Candahar, the report of which has this day reached us. This event, by shortening the distance between our antagonists and ourselves, will in all probability not only determine our immediate plan of action, but (if the Government is daring enough to meet the occasion) will render that action more easy. Two battles, if only conducted on a scale of sufficient magnitude, and in a way to deserve success by making it certain, will now lay both Alfghaniatan and Persia at our feet. But another contingency requires also to be provided for.
Russian aid, given to Persia in the conflict of Persia with England will be a declaratiou of war against England by Russia. In such event, what measures ought England to adopt? With much diffidence, I venture to suggest two as likely to be most effective, and therefore in the end least costly. '1st. Not to bombard Cronstadt, but to swamp St. Petersburg, by sinking a breakwater across the mouth of the Neva.
2d. To take Georgia, keep it, and so open up the Caspian. [Or is this most powerful means of self-defence rendered unavailable to us by an (unforeseen ?) operation of the recent treaty of Paris?] The natural and proper place, in which (to use the words of your correspondent J. J. M.) "we must at some future time see the Russian frontier conterminous 'with ours" in Central Asia, is assuredly the central division of the watershed,—i. e. on the great spinal plateau, extending from the Black Sea to Kamtchatka, separating the rivers which fall into the Northern Ocean from those that flow towards the Southern, and enclosing in the cavities of its vertebrai the Caspian, Aral, Balkask, laikal, and other great central lakes. Your obedient servant, II*.
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