ENGLAND AND RUSSIA.
[To THE EDITOR OF TITE "SPECTATOR."' &R,—In the midst of the exasperated criticisms levelled against the Government by friend and foe alike in the present juncture of affairs in China, it is not uninteresting to recall some opinions once expressed by a distinguished member of the present Opposition. In his "Life of Cobden" (1881) Mr. John Morley, referring to the pamphlet entitled "Russia," which Cobden published in 1836, wrote as follows :—
" With Russia we were then, as twenty years later and forty /ears later, and, as perhaps some reader of the next generation raay write on the margin of this page, possibly sixty years later, urged with passionate imprecations to go to war in defence of European law, the balance of power, and the security of British interests. (Cobden argued) that no step in the progress of improvement, and the advance of civilisation, can be inimical to the interests or the welfare of Great Britain. What advantage can it be to us, a commercial and manufacturing people, that
countries should be retained in a condition which
hinders their inhabitants from extracting a wealth from the soil which would enable them to purchase the products of Western lands, and so from changing their poverty-stricken squalor for the manifold enjoyment of their share of all the products of natural resource and human ingenuity? The Russo-maniac ideas of Russian power are demonstrably absurd. With certain slight modifications, Cobden's demonstration of their absurdity remains as valid now as it was forty years ago."— (Vol. I., pp. 101-3.) This was written of the affairs of the Near East, not, it is true, of the Far East ; but nomine mutate de illis fabula .ruirratur.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Heat herwood, Ascot, August 22nd. REGINALD LUCAS.
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