CHAPTER XIX.

RIVALRY BETWEEN RUSSIA AND ENGLAND IN CENTRAL ASIA.

It is three years ago since, in the closing chapter of my Travels

in Central Asia, I expressed my surprise and dissatisfaction at

the indifference of Englishmen towards Russian progress in those

regions. I then indicated not only the exact course of Russian

procedure on the Yaxartes, but also its steadily approaching

influence on British India. Abstaining purposely from all

far-reaching political reflections, I was as brief and concise

as possible, and could hardly have believed that the unassuming

remarks of a European, just returned home from Asia, would be found

worthy of closer consideration. Nevertheless, these few lines were

discussed and dwelt upon by almost every organ of the English and

Indian press, from the _Times_ to the _Bengal Hirkáru_. Only a very

small proportion of those various journals attached itself in any

measure to my ideas; the most of them, on the contrary, rejected my

good counsel; and without directly ridiculing my judgment, raised

from all sides a loud-sounding Hosannah over the happy change in

English politicians, who, being less short-sighted now than they

were thirty years back, discovered in the advance of the Russians

only a disagreeable event; nay, would even regard it with pleasure,

and cry success to their march southward over the snow-capped peaks

of the Hindu-Kush and the Himalayas.

In these three years, however, a great change has taken place.

Far though I be from wishing as an ex-dervish to exult over the

fulfilment of my prophecies, still I cannot help referring to the

lines in which I happened to proclaim the progress of the Russian

arms. While I was in Central Asia the furthest out-posts of the

Cossacks lay at Kale-Rehim, thirty-two miles from Tashkend. Forts

1, 2, and 3, on the Yaxartes, if actually conquered, were not yet

wholly in safe keeping. On the north of Khokand, too,--on the

west of the Issikköl and the Narin, the Court of St. Petersburg

could show but few tokens of success. The Kirghis were embittered

and hostile to the strange intruders, and the Œzbeg tribes on

the northern frontier of Khokand would then have deemed a Russian

occupation equivalent to the destruction of the world; so much did

they hate and scout the Unbelievers. Three years have passed, and

what has happened in that time? Not only has Khodja-Ahmed-Yesevi,

that holiest patron of the Kirghis, become a Russian subject in

Hazreti-Turkestan; not only has Tashkend, the most important trading

town, the great mart of Central-Asiatic and Chinese trade with

Russia, been absorbed into the northern Colossus; not only does the

Russian flag wave from the citadel of Khodjend, the second town of

importance in Khokand; it may now be also seen on the small fortress

of Zamin, Oratepa, and Djissag. The dreaded Russ has set himself up

as lord-protector in the eastern Khanat of Turkestan: the Hazret,

the Khan, as also the Hazret or High Priest of Namengan, strive

for the favour of one who, but a year before, would have filled

their very dreams with mortal terror. Nay, not Khokand only, but

the Tadjik population also throughout Bokhara and Khiva, the great

number of freedmen and slaves in service, and even the wealthier

merchants from Mooltan and other parts of India, who once trembled

before the Œzbeg power, now whisper delightedly into each other's

ears that the Russians are slowly drawing nearer, and that Œzbeg

lordship and Œzbeg absolutism are coming to an end.

For three years have these metamorphoses in the oasis-countries of

Turkestan been carried on with sure and steady hand from the banks

of the Neva. As an erewhile traveller, for whom those spots had been

full of interest from my youth up, I had already kept, albeit from

a distance, a watchful eye on all that went on amidst the plains

of the Yaxartes. I devoured alike the newspaper reports and the

scanty notices which my fellow pilgrims from Turkestan communicated

to me through their westward journeying brethren. That I took a

hearty interest in everything will surprise no one, little as the

utterances of the English press and the writings of British Indian

diplomatists during these occurrences claimed my full attention. To

the prophecies of the Dervish neither the one party nor the other

gave a thought. The note of satisfaction struck three years before

was kept up without a break. People were no longer content with the

bare assertion, that Russian progress in Central Asia was a thing to

welcome, but tried their utmost to show convincing grounds for that

assertion, in order to represent the success of the Muscovite arms

as tending more and more profitably for English interests.

To solve this problem the more happily, to convince all thoughtful

Englishmen the more unanswerably of the profit to be gained from

Russian successes, the question was debated by a light which was

sure to be equally welcome to all the different classes. The

scientific world was informed by the learned President of the

Royal Geographical Society touching the excellent service rendered

to science at large by the trigonometrical, geographical, and

geological societies of Russia. Russian voyages of discovery were

exalted above everything; Russian scholars were deified; nay, it

was only lately that even Vice-Admiral Butakoff was presented

with the large gold medal for his discoveries on the Sea of Aral.

Social Reformers, on the contrary, were taught to compare Tartar

savagery with Russian civilisation. The picture which I myself drew

of Central Asia was contrasted with the young Russia of to-day:

the emancipation of slaves, the Russian endeavours after national

enlightenment, the great change in manners, the mighty strides by

which Russia was approaching England in civilised ideas, were all

brought into the foreground; and in every thread of this tissue was

expression given to the great usefulness of Russian supremacy in

Asia. The trading world was shown the advantage which must accrue

from safe means of communication, now that Russian arms are on

the point of smoothing a way through the inhospitable steppes of

Turkestan towards India. Some journals, indeed, were carried so

far away by their zeal as to point out to the honest workmen of

Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, &c., that only English wares

and English capital would travel to and fro along the new Russian

commercial road to Central Asia. Even the military class had a

friendly word whispered into its ear. To the sons of Mars it was

needful to represent a Russian invasion of India as a ridiculous

bugbear. From every stand-point, moral, physical, strategical, was

such an attempt proved to be an impossibility. How, indeed, could

Russia overcome the enormous difficulties of those parched steppes

that stretched week after week before her; how master the warlike

Afghans, or win through the dreaded Khyber Pass? And even if she

succeeded in that also, how roughly would she not be handled by

the British Lion, who would lie waiting leisurely for her in his

luxurious palankeen? Nay, even to the Church, that mightiest of

English levers, should a lullaby be chanted forth. People hinted

at a happy union between the Orthodox Church of Russia and that of

England. Dr. Norman Macleod is an authority; and his cry, "The Greek

Church is not yet lost," has aroused the hopes of many; and very

learned church dignitaries have looked forward with blissful smiles

to the moment when the three-fold Greek Cross shall rise from the

Neva up to the proud dome of St. Paul's in London, for the kiss of

brotherhood, and the two united churches shall become a powerful

weapon against Papal ideas.

Independent pamphlets and thundering newspaper articles alternated

on the field of this question with the expositions above-named.

The warning voice of a small minority could not succeed in making

head against the Optimists, against those apostles of the new

political doctrine. Sir Henry Rawlinson, whose perfect conversance

with the circumstances of that region no one can dispute, a man

whose practical experience is at one with his theoretic insight,

has here and there in the _Quarterly Review_ pointed out the errors

of such speculations in solidly written essays; and though, as

doubting any ultimate design of Russia upon India, he protested

against all actual interference, merely blaming the indifference

above-mentioned; still his words passed unheeded of the multitude.

I might well say to myself that where such an authority carries no

weight, my present words could but travel a very short way. I was

therefore slow to speak; and yet, as I had studied this momentous

question in all its aspects, and examined it from many sides with

impartial eyes, I deemed it possible to show, not only to the

statesmen of England, but to those of all Europe, how fatally the

Cabinet of St. James errs in its way of looking at the matter; and

how this cherished indifference is not only hurtful to English

interests, but becomes a deadly weapon wherewith Great Britain

commits a suicide unheard of in history.

How it happens that I, who by race am neither English nor Russian,

have taken so warm an interest in this matter, is mainly accounted

for by the fact of my regarding the collision of these two Colossi

in Asia less from the stand-point of their mutual rivalry, than

from that of the interests of Europe at large. Whether England or

Russia get the advantage, which of the two will become chief arbiter

of the old world's destinies, can never be to us an indifferent

matter; for widely as these two powers differ from each other in

their character as channels of Western civilisation, not less widely

do they diverge from one another in any future reckoning up of the

issues of their struggle. A passing glance, on the one hand, at the

Tartars, who have lived for two hundred years under Russian rule; on

the other, at the millions of British subjects in India, might teach

us a useful lesson from the past on this point. This, however,

may be reserved for later investigation. For the present we will

only affirm that the question of a rivalry between these two North

European powers in Central Asia concerns not only Englishmen and

Russians, but every European as well; nay, more, it deserves to be

studied with interest by every thoughtful person of our century.[59]

[59] Up to this moment the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, alone of all

the Continental press, has brought out two special articles on

Central Asia. The first, without any acknowledged leaning, points

out the critical conditions of the approaching conflict; the second,

imbued with a Russian spirit, keeps time to the song of the English

optimists; for doing which I would not blame the writer, had he not

cited several passages from my book as his own property.

1. RUSSIAN CONQUESTS IN CENTRAL ASIA DURING THE LAST THREE YEARS.

First of all we will recount the historical facts of the Russian

war of conquest during the last three years. Instead of going into

those details about the campaigns of Perovski, Tchernaieff, and

Romanovski, which were recorded partly in Mitchell's book, "The

Russians in Central Asia," partly in several solid treatises in

the _Quarterly_ and the _Edinburgh Review_, or into the slender

notices which have trickled out into publicity from the Russian

State-Cabinets, or those yet scantier notices which were revealed

by highly-paid English spies in Central Asia, we would cast only a

hurried glance at events, in order to acquaint the reader with the

latest posture of Russian arms in Central Asia.

So successfully had the Russian operations been started in Central

Asia, that after a brilliant overthrow of the Kirghis, they

entered first on the conquest of Khokand, in order to gain firm

foothold in the three Khanats. In those eastern parts of the three

oasis-countries of Turkestan the social order has always been

relatively least, the religious culture weakest, and the antipathy

to warlike enterprises most strong. These were accompanied by

internal disorders, for while the Khodjas through their inroads

into Chinese territory on the east of the Khanat were always

encountering the risk of a collision with China, which in bygone

centuries did sometimes ensue, the greedy Ameers of Bokhara from

the west have continually laid the country waste with their wanton

lust of conquest. Before the capture of Ak-Meshdjid the nearing

columns of the mighty Russ on the north had but little place in the

bazaar-talk of Namengan and Khokand. At the time of the miscarriage

of Perovski's expedition Mehemed Ali Khan was seated on the throne.

He was beloved and honoured, and the dazzled masses were much too

wanting in ideas of conquest, to think seriously of self-defence

against the threatening foe on the north, or of Conolly's projected

alliance with Khiva. Not till after the death of Mehemed Ali ensued

the fall of Ak-Meshdjid, the first serious wound in the Khanat's

existence; and the Russian success was all the easier, because at

that time their fighting powers were crippled, on one side by

the fierce conflict between Kirghis and Kiptchaks in the interior

of the Khanat, and by the first attempt of Veli-Khan-Töre against

Kashgar on the other. The storming columns of the Russians against

the Khokandian fastnesses on either shore of the Yaxartes leave no

cause to complain of cowardice, although the thousands of Khokandian

warriors mentioned in the Russian accounts seem to rest on an

over-keen eyesight.

After the capture of the last-named place, or, to speak more

correctly, after a systematic restoration of the chain of fortresses

along the Yaxartes, on whose waters the steamers of the Aral

flotilla could now move freely about, the Russian power advanced

with strides as gigantic as those with which Khokand, through the

continuous working of the causes above-mentioned, continually fell

away. The line of forts offered not only security against Turkestan,

but was also a powerful bulwark against the Kirghis, who, being

at length surrounded on all sides, could not so easily raise into

the saddle an _Ished_,[60] as the last anti-Russian chief styled

himself during the Crimean War. Thenceforth the work of occupation

was pursued by the court of St. Petersburg with its wonted energy;

and not till both the army corps, which were operating from the

Chinese frontier to the Issik-köl, from the Sea of Aral along the

Yaxartes, had drawn together southwards from the north-east and

the north-west at Aulia Ata, (_Holy Father_, an ancient place of

pilgrimage,) did Russian diplomacy deem it necessary to announce,

in a despatch signed by Prince Gortshakoff on the 21st November,

1864, that the government of the Tzar had at length obtained its

long-cherished desire to remove the boundary line of its possessions

from the ill-defined region of the Sandy Desert to the inhabited

portion of Turkestan; that the policy of aggression was now at

an end, and that its one single aim in the future would be to

demonstrate to the neighbouring Tartar states, with regard to their

independence, that Russia was far from being their foe, or indulging

in ideas of conquest, &c. &c.

[60] _Ished_, which the Russians wrongly pronounce _Iset_, is a

usual contraction of "Eish Mehemmed," which signifies "Mohammed's

delight."

That no Cabinet save the English placed any more faith in such

assurances than the Russian Minister himself, it is easy enough to

imagine. The tale of ever-recurring conquests from vanquished states

has long been notorious. We have instances thereof in every page

of the world's history, in every age in which some power has set

about enlarging itself. Just as the English are vainly apologising

for Lord Dalhousie's thirst for annexation, or absorption in India,

so are all Russian notes composed in a strain of overflowing

politeness. It is only the natural course of things; and the court

of St. Petersburg was right, could not indeed do otherwise, after

setting up a government in Turkestan, than follow the southern

course of the Yaxartes; and as the waste steppe formed at the

first no defensible frontier, neither could the thinly-peopled

neighbourhood of Tchemkend and Hazret furnish a better one. There

was need of a well-inhabited region, to provide against being

dependent merely on the means of communication from Orenburg and

Semipalatinsk. Therefore was Tashkend, rich and fertile Tashkend,

doomed to incorporation in Russian territory.

It would be a profitless waste of time to quote as the main cause

of the Russian occupation of the last-named town, on the 25th June,

1865, the moving history of the petition of the Tashkend merchants,

of the numerous deputation that came beseechingly to the Russian

camp, to obtain the shelter of the two-headed Eagle, whom the

Central Asiatics call the _ajder_-kite, a bird not greatly beloved

of yore. Tashkend, which from time immemorial, lived at feud with

the masters of Khokand, was latterly very much enraged, because its

darling Khudayar was twice driven from his throne. To endamage the

dominant influence of the Khirgis by means of Russian supremacy,

was for it a welcome idea; but it is not at all likely that the

supremacy itself should have been generally desired.

Russia has absorbed Tashkend, because she deemed it indispensable

as a firm base for further operations; not, however, with a view to

erecting therewith a bulwark against possessions already secured.

Still it was through Tashkend that the court of St. Petersburg had

embroiled itself in hostilities with the Khanat of Bokhara. The

Ameer, as we know, had earned for himself, through his campaign

of 1863, the nominal right of suzerainty over the western part of

Turkestan; and though after his departure everything fell back into

the old rut of Kiptchak lawlessness and party warfare, he still

thought to make good his right over all Khokand. He therefore wrote

the commandant of the newly-conquered town a threatening letter,

in which he summoned him to vacate the fortress. This, however,

gave small concern to the Russian general; and, hearing that

Colonel Struve, the famous astronomer, whom he had sent to Bokhara

for a friendly settlement of the affair, had been forthwith taken

prisoner, he burst forth on the 30th January, crossed the Yaxartes

at Tashkend with fourteen companies of foot, six squadrons of

Cossacks, and sixteen guns, with the purpose of going straight into

Bokhara and punishing the Ameer for the violation of his envoy.

This design, however, miscarried. The Russians had to retire,

but did so in perfect order; and though countless hosts of

Bokharians swarmed round them on every side, yet their loss was

too insignificant to accord with the bombastic tales of triumph

which the Bokharians thereon trumpeted through all Islam, and which

even found their way to us through the Levantine press. General

Tchernaieff had excused himself on the plea that his hasty advance

was intended merely to baffle the movements of secret English

emissaries, who were striving with all possible zeal after an

Anglo-Bokharian alliance, and were also the main cause of his envoy,

Colonel Struve's imprisonment. In Petersburg, however, they could

not pardon his military failure: he was displaced from his high

command, and General Romanofski went out in his stead. The latter

moved forward with slow but all the more cautious steps. On the 12th

April a flock of fifteen thousand sheep, escorted by four thousand

Bokharian horsemen, was made prize of; and a month afterwards there

ensued, in the neighbourhood of Tchinaz, a fierce fight, called the

battle of Irdshar, in which the Tartars were utterly beaten. On the

25th May fell the small fort of Nau; and afterwards Khodshend, the

third town in the Khanat of Khokand, was taken by storm; but not

without a hard fight, in which the Russians left on the field a

hundred and thirty-three killed and wounded, the Tartars certainly

ten times that number. The battle, however, was well worth the

cost, for the fortifications of this place were better than those

of Tashkend or of any other town in the Khanat. This was the second

resting-point for the Russian arms on their march southward; and

though the "Russian Invalid," in an official report concerning

further projects, affirms that the conquest of that part of Bokhara

which is severed from the rest of their possessions by the steppes

could never become the goal of Russian operations, while for the

present it would be entirely profitless, yet progress has already

been made over Oratepe, through the small districts of Djam and

Yamin, as far as Djissag; whilst everywhere important garrisons have

been left behind.

What has happened in the Khanat of Khokand itself during this

triumphal march of the Russians, is a point no less worthy of our

attention. The inhabitants, consisting of nomads,--Œzbeg, and

Tadjik or Sart,--were as much divided in their Russian likings and

dislikes, as they were different from each other in race, condition,

and pursuits. The warlike, powerful, and widely-courted Kiptchaks,

being ancient foes of the oft-encroaching Bokharians, who wanted

to force upon them the hated Khudayar Khan, immediately sided with

the Russians. Their friendship was for these latter an important

acquisition; and the friendly movement must have already begun,

when the north-eastern army-corps came in contact with them in its

forward struggle from Issikköl; for if this had not been the case,

the Russian advance on that line would certainly have been purchased

at heavier cost.

The Œzbegs, as being _de jure_ the dominant race, had defended

themselves as well as they could; yet with their well-known lack of

courage, firmness, and endurance, they had but small success; and

when they began to reflect that Russian rule would probably be no

worse a misfortune than the incessant war with Bokhara, or their

internal disorders, they prepared to accommodate themselves to

inevitable fate. Only a few angry Ishans and Mollahs maintained an

unfounded dread of Bokhara; the descendants, for example, of Khodja

Ahmed Yesevi in Hazreti-Turkestan, who, however, in all likelihood

will soon go back to the bones of their sacred forefathers, as

the Russians assuredly will not hinder them from collecting pious

alms among their pilgrims. Moreover, to the wealthier merchants of

Tashkend, to the Sarts and Tadjiks, and a small number of Persian

slaves, the Russian occupation seemed welcome and advantageous; for

whilst the former expected considerable profit from the admission of

their native town into the Russian customs-circle, the latter hope

to be rescued from their oppressed condition through the downfall of

Œzbeg ascendancy. As we may see from the correspondence addressed

by General Krishanofski to a Moscow journal, it was these very

Sarts who gave the Russians most help. Their Aksakals, not those of

the Œzbegs, were the first to accept office under the Russians.

In public places they always appear by the side of the Russian

officers, harangue the people, and while Russian churches were

getting built, spread about a report that His Majesty, having been

converted by a vision in the night to Islam, was on the point of

making a pilgrimage to Hazreti-Turkestan. From the length of their

commercial intercourse with Russia, many of the Tadjiks, especially

the Tashkenders, are skilled in writing and speaking Russian; they

serve as interpreters and middle-men, and as many of them reach the

highest places in the _mehkeme_ (courts of justice) and other posts,

the main motive of their adherence is easy to apprehend.

So far has it fared with the main line of operations in the Khanat

of Khokand. On adjacent points likewise, both eastern and western,

has the work of transformation stealthily begun. From Chinese

Tartary we learn, that ever since 1864 the Chinese garrisons have

been expelled, and replaced by a national government. First came

disorders among the Tunganis, presently followed by the deliverance

of Khoten, Yarkand, Aksoo, and Kashgar; and although these disorders

may have been caused at bottom by the traditional delight of

the Khokandie Khodjas in free plundering, still many of us are

positively assured that the court of St. Petersburg countenanced

all those revolutionary movements; aye, and that the Kiptchaks,

who are now masters of Kashgar, were helped to win it by Russian

arms. Such is the usual prelude to Russian interference. For a

time these independent towns are permitted to carry on feuds and

warfare against each other; but it is easy to foresee that their

enmity will come to appear dangerous to the peace of the yet distant

Russian frontier; and if haply the court of Pekin be in no hurry to

restore order, the Russians are very certain to forestal it on that

point ere long. The English press comforts itself with remarking,

that the insuperable barrier of the Kuen-Lun mountains renders

further progress towards Kashmir impossible; and that this Russian

diversion is only for the good of Central-Asiatic trade. For the

moment, however, we will put aside the discussion of this question,

preferring to glance at that part of Central Asia which inclines

westward from Khokand. Albeit engaged in war with Bokhara, Russia

has hitherto made no attack on the real territory of that State,

for Djissag is the lawful boundary between the former and Khokand.

About this well-known seat of the struggle with Bokhara, there is

only a diplomatic skirmish, which still goes on, under whose cover

the revolution of Shehr-i-Sebz holds its ground. For, even if the

Russian press denies for the thousandth time all interference, yet

the appearance of the Aksakal of Shehr-i-Sebz in Tashkend cannot

be regarded as unimportant. It is, at any rate, noticeable with

reference to the Russian plans in Khiva. The settled portion of

the Khanat proper has not yet been touched by Russian influence,

and only in the north, since the destruction of the fortress of

Khodja-Niyaz, on the Yaxartes, have some Cossack and Karakalpak

hordes, skirting the eastern shore of the Sea of Aral, been

converted into Russian subjects.

2. RUSSIA'S FUTURE POLICY.

Our sketch of Russian progress in Central Asia furnishes its

own evidence of the way in which the policy of the court of St.

Petersburg will follow out its purpose in the immediate future.

The most southern, therefore the most advanced, outposts rest on

Djissag. This word, in Central Asiatic, means a hot, burning spot,

and its position in the deep, cauldron-like valley of the Ak-Tau

hills entirely justifies the name. Owing to its utterly unwholesome

climate, and the great want of water, the population of this station

on the way to Khokand is but very small; and that the Russians have

selected it for a more abiding resting-place, I cannot believe, in

spite of the aforenamed asseverations of the "Russian Invalid,"

and in spite of the contrary opinion of the learned writer of the

article, Central Asia, in the "Quarterly Review." Not only is it an

unhealthy and barely tenable post; but a lengthened stay here must

also be acknowledged as most impolitic. The gentlemen on the banks

of the Neva know well what Bokhara is in the eyes of all Central

Asia, I might even say of all Mohamedans. They know that on the

Zerefshan may be sought the special fount of religious ideas and

modes of thought, not only for the mass of Central Asiatics, but

for Indians, Afghans, Nogay Tartars, and other fanatics. In order

to achieve a grand stroke, the Ameer, who styles himself Prince

of all true believers, must be made to recognise the supremacy

of the white Tzar; the holy and honoured Bokhara, where the air

exhales the aromatic fragrance of the Fatiha and readings from the

Koran, must learn to reverence the might of the black unbelievers;

and the crowd of crazy fanatics, of religious enthusiasts, must

acknowledge that the influence of the saints who rest in her soil

is not strong enough to blunt the point of the Russian bayonet. The

fall of Bokhara will be a fearful example for the whole Islamite

world; the dust of her ruins will penetrate the farthest distance,

like a mighty warning-cry. For this must the court of St. Petersburg

assuredly be striving, and ready to strive.

From this stand-point it is therefore most probable that the

greatest attention will henceforth be paid to the line of operations

from Tashkend, Khodjend, and Samarkand. The conquest of the whole

Khanat of Khokand may also follow in time, for that offers no

special difficulties; but the chief interest lies in the maintenance

and security of the roads of communication, on which the advancing

army, in concert with the strong garrisons in the now well-fortified

Tashkend and the northern forts, as also with the governments of

Orenburg and Semipalatinsk, will move along a road furnished with

an unbroken line of wells. The Ameer may have recourse to all

possible means of gaining the friendship of the Russians, in which

he has hitherto failed; he may send to Constantinople as many

Job's messengers as he will; he may despatch ever so many friendly

invitations to the Durbar of the Indian Viceroy: but all that will

do him no good. The town of Bokhara shall, with or without his

leave, be governed by an Ispravnik; for the Russians dare not and

cannot rest, until ancient Samarkand and Nakhsheb (Karshi), or the

whole right bank of the Oxus has been absorbed into the gigantic

possessions of the House of Romanoff. That this catastrophe, this

last hour of Transoxanian independence, will not be brought about

so easily as the heretofore successes in Central Asia, is manifest

enough. Already in my mind's eye do I behold a frantic troop of

Mollahs and Ishans, with thousands of students, roaming the Khanats

with holy rage, in order to preach the Djihad (religious war) among

the Afghans, Turkomans, Karakalpaks; and going through scenes of the

deepest, the devoutest anguish, in order to draw down the curse of

God on the foreign intruder. The death-struggle will be fierce but

profitless. So far as I know the Khivans and the Afghans, I deem the

notion of a general alliance with Bokhara to be quite impracticable;

for, if such was their inclination, they should have formed one long

ago. No egotism, no political combinations, but the greatest want

of principle alone, an utter recklessness of the future, will keep

them quiet until Hannibal stands before their gates. In vain shall

we look for any effort after a general league, either in Central

Asia, or even among any of the other Eastern nations. As the very

warlike Afghans could play their part with a force of disciplined

auxiliaries, so also might the Khan of Khiva join the Ameer's army

with twenty to thirty thousand horse. Yet this is what neither the

one nor the other will do. To unite them under one command might

be possible for a Timur or a Djinghiz; and even then the smallest

booty might stir up rancour and dissensions in their ranks. So, too,

the hundred thousand well-mounted Turkomans, who inhabit the broad

steppes from this side the Oxus to the Persian frontier, are utterly

useless for the rescuing of the Holy City. Their Ishans, indeed, if

summoned by their fellow-priests in noble Bokhara and by the Ameer,

might do their very best to stir up the wild sons of the desert to

a holy warfare: but I know the Turkomans too well not to be sure

that they will take part in the _Djihad_ only so long as the Ameer

can offer them good pay and the prospect of yet richer booty; and as

they sometimes owned in Afghan-Persian offices, it is most likely

that the Russian imperialists will soon turn them into excellent

brothers-in-arms of the Cossacks. Enthusiasm for the creed of the

Prophet existed, if I remember rightly, only for the first hundred,

indeed I might say only for the first fifty years. What Islam

afterwards accomplished in Anatolia, in the empire of Constantine,

in the islands of the Mediterranean, in Hungary, and in Germany, was

due to the impulse of a wild daring in quest of booty and treasures,

and a hankering after adventures. Where these leading incentives

failed, there was a failure in zeal; and I repeat that, although the

struggle will be a stern one, the speedy triumph of Russian arms in

Bokhara is open to not the slightest doubt.

With the fall of the mightiest and most influential part of

Turkestan, will Khokand, of her own accord, exchange a protection

for the manifest sovereignty of the white Tzar. Khiva however,

undaunted by the example, will, to all seeming, take up the struggle

nevertheless. The conquest of Kharezm, moreover, though easier than

that of Khokand, is connected with remarkable difficulties. With the

exception of two towns, whose inhabitants are better known through

their commercial relations with Russia, the Œsbeg population

of this Khanat abhor the name of Russian. In courage, they stand

much higher than the men of Khokand and Bokhara, and, protected by

the formation of their native land, will cause much trouble to the

Russian troops from the way of fighting peculiar to the Turkoman

race. As for the view upheld by many geographers and travellers,

that the Oxus will form the main road of the expedition, I am bound

to meet it with the same denial as before. That river, on account of

its great irregularity and the fluid sea of sand borne down upon its

waves, is hard of passage for small vessels, not to speak of ships

of war. Not a year passes without its changing its bed several miles

in the shifting ground of the steppes; and if the Russians were not

quite convinced of this circumstance, the small steamers of the

Aral-Sea flotilla, built as they were for river navigation, would

have begun forcing their way inland by the Oxus, instead of the

Yaxartes. For although the smaller forts, such as Kungrad, Kiptchak,

and Maugit, which were built on the fortified heights by the left

bank of the river, might do harm to a flotilla passing near; yet,

owing to the sad state of the Khivan artillery, they are hardly

worth considering. Attempts to pass up the river, from its mouths to

Kungrad, where the stream is deepest and most regular, have already

been tried; still, the fact of their remaining merely attempts,

clearly shows that the navigation of the Deryai Amus (Oxus), if not

altogether impossible, is a hard problem nevertheless.

These, however, are but secondary drawbacks, and in Khiva, as in

Bokhara, the white Tzar will be raised aloft upon the white carpet

of the Kharezmian princes, if not through the grey-beards of the

Tshagatay race, at any rate by his own bayonets and rifled guns.

The conquest of the whole right bank of the Ganges once assured

to them, the strip of land from Issikköl to the Sea of Aral once

come into full possession of the Russians, and well provided with

excellent victualling-stores, then will the game of diplomacy

have begun in Afghanistan also. Among the Afghans the court of

St. Petersburg will not intervene so suddenly with arms in hand;

not because England's miscarriage in 1839 has made it cautious,

but because such a procedure is by no means customary with the

Russians. That, moreover, would be partly superfluous, partly beyond

the mark, amidst the now proverbial disunion of Dost Mohammed's

successors. Where brother rages against brother in deadliest feud,

where intrigues caused by greed and vanity are ever in full swing;

there the secret agent, the kind word, a few friendly lines of

writing, are much more profitable than a sudden assault with the

armed hand. Hitherto, in his brother-strife against Shere-Ali-Khan,

Abdurrahman-Khan has in no way entangled himself with Russian

agents, although he sought to frighten the English moonshee (agent),

by bringing some such conception to his notice. That he was greatly

inclined to such a step I have not the slightest doubt; but as yet

the Russians have given him no encouragement to take it. For if the

Afghan opponents of Shere-Ali-Khan, the Ameer accredited by England,

had received but the faintest wink from the Neva, they would never

have coquetted with Sir John Lawrence in Calcutta. Not only chiefs

and princes, but every Afghan warrior, nay, every shepherd on

the Hilmund, puts his trust in the idea of Russian trade; and I

have a hundred times over convinced myself how easily, indeed how

gladly, these people would embrace a Russian alliance against the

masters of Peshawar. Whether the fruits of such a friendship would

be wholesome, and conduce to the interests of Afghanistan, no one

takes into question. The Afghans, like all Asiatics, look only to

the interests of the moment, see only the harm which Afghans have

suffered in Kashmere and Sindh through English ascendancy, have a

lively remembrance of the last sojourn of the red-jackets in Kabul

and Kandahar; and though every one knows that the Kaffirs of Moscow

are very little better than the Feringhies, still, from an impulse

of revenge, they all desire and will prefer an alliance with the

North to a good understanding with England.

Hence it is but a friendly regard, it is only a compact upheld not

by treaties, but by a strong force on the Oxus, which the Russians

can aim at for some time to come.

The same kind of relation must be their object in Persia. Here

too, for the last ten years, has the court of St. Petersburg been

playing a lucky game. Since the appearance of Russian envoys at the

splendid court of the Sofies, in the time of Khardin, until now,

Russian influence has gone through many phases. At first scorned and

disregarded, the Russians have risen into the strongest and most

dangerous opponent of Iran. Whilst, in the days of Napoleon I.,

England and France, to the profit and partial aggrandisement of the

Shah, vied with each other in turning to account their influence

at the court of Teheran, Russia, as "inter duos certantes tertius

gaudens," quietly smoothed her way to the conquest of the countries

beyond the Caucasus, to the profitable treaties of Gulistan and

Turkmanshay. And while the same Western Powers persevered in that

policy, the Colossus of the North took up such a position on the

Caucasus as well as the Caspian Sea, that its shadow stretched not

only over the northern rim of Iran, but far also into the country.

At the time of Sir Henry Rawlinson's embassy, English influence was

near being in the ascendant; but since then it has been continually

sinking; for however lavish of gold and greetings the English policy

might be in Malcolm's days, it showed itself just as cold and

indifferent from the time of Mac Neil downwards. Both the Shah and

his ministers seem urged on by necessity to accept the Russians as

their Mentor. It is not from any conviction of a happier future that

they have flung away from the fatherly embraces of the British Lion

into the arms of the Northern Bear; and the Shah must dance for good

or ill to the song which the latter growls out before him.

If now, in accordance with the aforeshown position of the Russian

power and policy in Central Asia, we cast a glance on the frontier,

stretching for 13,000 versts wide, from the Japanese Sea to the

Circassian shore of the Black Sea, where Russia is always in contact

with so many peoples of different origin and different religion,

over whose future her aggressive policy hangs like the doomful sword

of a Damocles; we shall soon be driven to observe that, although

the southern outposts in Asia are on the Araxes, yet the only point

where, in their further advance, they impinge on a European power is

to be found in Central Asia. Separated twenty years ago from British

India's northern frontier by the great horde of the Khirgis and the

Khanats, the space at this moment left between Djissag and Peshawar,

although the difficult road over the Hindu-Kush lies midway, amounts

to no more than fifteen days' journey, and in reckoning by miles

to hardly a hundred and twenty geographical miles. For an army

the road, though difficult, is not insuperable, while it should be

tolerably easy for the development of political influence; and for

all England's readiness to see a mighty bulwark for her frontier in

the snow-crowned peaks of the Hindu-Kush, she forgets the ease with

which a Russian propaganda from the banks of the Oxus can smooth a

way hence towards the north of Sindh. From the moment, indeed, when

the Russian flag waves in Karshi, Kerki, and Tchardshuy, may England

regard this power as her nearest neighbour.

3. RUSSIA'S VIEWS ON INDIA; AND ENGLISH OPTIMISTS.

Has Russia any serious views, then, on British India? Will she

attack the British Lion in his rich possessions? Does her ambition

really reach so far, that she would wield her mighty sceptre over

the whole continent of Asia, from the icy shores of the Arctic Sea

to Cape Comorin? These are questions of needful interest, not to

Englishmen only, but to all Europeans. On the bank of the Thames

as well as in Calcutta, statesmen have latterly answered them in

the negative; for their organs, official and unofficial, regard the

utmost danger of the meeting as a neighbourhood of frontiers, and

not an aggression; a neighbourhood which, so far from imperilling

English interests, will be altogether to their advantage. These

gentlemen are sadly at fault, for the spirit of Russia's traditional

policy,--her steadfast clinging to the schemes before indicated,

the unbounded ambition of the House of Romanoff, the immense

accumulation of means at their disposal for the accomplishment of

their designs,--place in surer prospect the fulfilment of any aim on

which they have once bent their gaze. Russia wants India first of

all in order to set so rich a pearl in the splendid diamond of her

Asiatic possessions; a pearl, for whose attainment she has so long,

at so heavy a cost, been levelling the way through the most barren

steppes in the world; next, in order to lend the greatest possible

force to her influence over the whole world of Islam (whose greatest

and most dangerous foe she has now become), because the masters of

India have reached, in Mohamedan eyes, the non-plus-ultra of might

and greatness; and lastly, by taming the British Lion on the other

side the Hindu-Kush, to work out with greater ease her designs on

the Bosphorus, in the Mediterranean, indeed all over Europe; since

no one can now doubt that the Eastern question may be solved more

easily beyond the Hindu-Kush than on the Bosphorus: for if, at the

time of the Crimean war, when Nana Sahib's brother was fêted at

Sevastopol, Russia had held her present position on the Yaxartes,

the plans of Tzar Nicholas on Constantinople would not have been so

easily buried under the ruins of the Malakhoff.

These far-reaching designs may not, perhaps, be the work of the next

years, nor even of the Government of the peaceful and well-disposed

Alexander; yet who can assure us that after him no Nicholas, or

no yet sterner nature than his, may succeed to the throne, who

will thwart the desire of a Taimur or a Nadir to come forth as a

thoroughly Asiatic conqueror of the world? What a Russian autocrat

can do in the present condition of Russia, in the present social

position of his subjects, who, moreover, will long continue such,

every one knows, and the statesmen of England best of all. It is,

therefore, the more remarkable, that these gentlemen should think

to put the said eventualities so easily aside, and to contest the

question of a Russian invasion of India with arguments so very

shallow. They usually bring forward the unpassable glaciers of

Hindu-Kush and the Himalayas, and the swarms of hostile nomads which

would hem in a force advancing from the north on its way southward.

They console themselves with the great distance, which would bring

an invading army to the Indian frontier tired and exhausted, while

the English troops lying by, ready to strike at their ease, and

strong in military zeal and training, awaited the shock of war with

greediness. But do these gentlemen believe that Russia, in the

event of her really cherishing these sort of views, would dispatch

her invading armies thitherwards direct from Petersburg, Moscow,

or Archangel? What end is served by the South-Siberian forts? What

by Tashkend, Khodshend, and still more afterwards, by Bokhara and

Samarkand? What, too, by the Persian-Afghan alliance? What did the

Cossacks and the Russian troops of the line do in Gunib, and in the

rugged hills of Circassia? Were they exhausted when they reached

their journey's end? And the latter station is not so much farther

from the capital on the Neva, than Peshawar is from the cities

just named! And why are we to assume that Russia would choose only

the difficult road through Balkh to Kabul, and thence through the

Khyber Pass, and none other? Without mentioning that this could have

been so fatal to the English army of 1839, which fled in affright

and disorder, for the march thither cost no especial sacrifices;

the road through Herat and Kandahar, the proper caravan-course to

India through the Bolan Pass, is far more convenient. The latter,

fifty-four or five English miles in length, did indeed cost the

Bengal corps of the army of the Indus many days' toil; and yet we

read in a trustworthy English author that the passage of 24-pounder

howitzers and 18-pounder guns caused no particular trouble. Or

why should the Russians not force the Gomul or the Gulari Pass,

called also the middle road from Hindostan to Khorassan, which,

according to Burnes, serves the Lohani Afghans as their main road of

communication, and offers no especial difficulties?

It is too hard, indeed, to scatter the sanguine views of the English

optimists with regard to the strength of their fancied bulwarks.

The way through Kabul would have to be taken only in case of

necessity; for the chief points by which Russia could quite easily

approach the Indian frontiers are Djhissag and Astrabad; from the

former in a southerly, from the latter in an easterly direction.

Both roads have often led armies, time out of mind, to the goal of

their desires; for both, though bordered by large deserts, pass

through well-peopled, even fertile districts, which can support many

thousands of marching men with ease.

Indeed, even the chances of an eventual war are greatly

over-estimated by the English. True, that their present army in

India, numbering 70,000 picked British troops besides the strong

contingent of sepoys, is not to be compared with any of their former

fighting forces in those regions. To throw as strong a muster across

Afghanistan into the Punjaub, would certainly cost Russia some

trouble. Still we must not forget how stout a support an invading

army would find in a Persian-Afghan alliance, and in the great

discontent which prevails in the Punjaub, in Kashmir, in Bhotan,

and among the fanatic Mohamedans of India. The ever-broadening

network of Indian railways may do much to hasten and promote a

concentration; but the fountain-head of military support for India

being on the Thames or the islands of the Mediterranean, is not

much nearer than that of the Russians, especially if we consider

that more than three hundred vessels sailing down the Volga make

the transport to the southern shore of the Caspian Sea considerably

easier. By this road may a large army be brought in a short time to

Herat and Kandahar through the populous part of northern Persia; on

the one hand through Astrabad, Bujnurd, and Kabushan; on the other,

by the railway as yet only projected to Eneshed. This railroad the

Tzar wants to build for the relief of the pilgrimage to the tomb

of Imam Rizah; yet through all the Russian promises of subsidies

there gleam forth other and non-religious plans. Or would people in

England, besides the no longer doubtful possibility of a Russian

design upon India, measure the political constellations which the

said power has called into being on her behalf, in the field of

European diplomacy? The Russian-French alliance of a Napoleon I.

and an Alexander I., which left noticeable traces in Teheran, would

now be much easier to enter on than before, owing to the dominant

influence of France in Egypt and Syria, through the commencement of

the Suez Canal. And these things apart, will not the ever-increasing

_entente cordiale_ between Washington and St. Petersburg prove of

signal advantage for Russia's purposes? People scoff at the way in

which the Yankee cap entwines itself with the Russian knout; and

yet the banquets on the Neva, at which American brotherhood was

vigorously toasted, the journey of the Tzarovitch to New York, the

mighty show made by America in China and Japan, where she threatens

to turn the calm face of ocean into an American lake;--do not these

things furnish ample reason for discerning in the alliance between

Russia and America symptoms of the greatest danger for English

interests? Indeed, when the decisive moment comes for acting,

Russia will be able to avail herself of many ways and many means,

which, however little worthy of notice they may seem to English

statesmen, will be carefully pre-arranged without any noise.

Nevertheless, we are willing to allow that the actual shock will

follow only in some very distant future. Gladly, too, will we bear

to be pointed at as a false prophet. But how is it that English

statesmen will proclaim as harmless the more and more manifest

advance of their northern rival; how disguise and palliate the

mischievous menace of that rival's aims?

The body of English politicians friendly to Russia is wont,

whenever this question comes up for discussion, to reply that the

neighbourhood of a well-ordered State is more acceptable to them,

than several wild nomad tribes living in anarchy and plunder.

An Englishman once asked me, whether I would not prefer to sit

beside an elegantly-dressed fine gentleman, instead of a dirty and

uncouth boor. People may wish success with all their might to a

Muscovite neighbour; yet to me it is not at all clear, why those

gentlemen should wish for the neighbourhood of a sly and powerful

adversary in the room of an unpolished but essentially-powerless

foe. What happened once in America, in the north of Africa, and

even on Indian ground, between rising England on the one hand,

and waning Holland and Portugal on the other, has often been and

will yet often be repeated in the pages of history. As in ordinary

life two strong, selfish individuals, will but rarely thrive in

one same path; so does the same impossibility exist in the case

of two States;--a fact, of which the long war between France and

England for the superiority in India furnishes the best proof.

Even if she followed the best aims, how could Russia, backed as

she is by the gigantic power of the whole Asiatic continent;--she,

whose policy for the last hundred years, has led her through desert

regions with a perseverance so great, at a cost so lavish,--refuse

a hearing at once to her own designs and to the insinuations of her

abettors? Will she have sufficient self-control to forbear from

profiting by the happy occasion which plays into her hands the

Mohamedan population of India, more than thirty millions strong? The

last-named, being the most fanatical of all who profess Islam, are

filled with unspeakable hatred of the British rule. Their religious

zeal, fostered on one side by Bokhara, on the other by the Wahabies,

goes so far, that, in order to drain the cup of martyrdom, they

often murder a British officer walking harmlessly about the bazaar,

and even give themselves up to the headsman's axe.[61] In India,

where religious enthusiasm has ever found a most fruitful soil,

Islam has revealed itself in the oddest forms. The brotherhoods

introduced in the days of the Taimurides, are there more powerful

and important than elsewhere; and not Scoat alone, but every place

has an Akhond of its own to show, whose summons to a crusade would

be followed by thousands. In spite of the manifold blessings which

English rule has secured to the Mohamedans, it is they alone who

form the nest of revolutions; they alone who gave most support to

the rebellion in its last disorders; they alone who take chief

delight in conspiring for a Russian occupation, and proclaim in all

directions the advantages of Muscovite rule.

[61] Query--Hangman's halter? (Trans.)

Should we not also take this occasion to think of the Armenians,

who, scattered through Persia and India, form single links of the

chain wherewith the court of St. Petersburg conducts the electric

stream of its influence from the Neva to the Ganges; aye, even to

the shores of Java and Sumatra? The hard-working, wealthy Armenians,

who in their religious sentiments are inclined to be more catholic

than the Papist, more Russian, more orthodox than the Tzar himself,

will assuredly not recommend the Protestant church and Protestant

power to the natives of India, to the injury of supremely Christian

Russia. How many zealous subjects of British rule in Calcutta,

Bombay, and Madras, are not enrolled at Petersburg as yet more

zealous promoters of Russian interests! Every member of this church

in Asia is to be regarded as a secret agent of Muscovite policy; and

if the moment came for a decision, the English would be amazed to

see what kind of chrysalis emerged from this religious, moral, free

and industrious people.

How, then, can England look on with indifference, to say nothing of

her desire to have as neighbour a great and certainly unfriendly

power, in a land where such inflammable elements are to be found?

Trade will spring up, I hear from all sides; yet, to all seeming,

the prospect of the commercial advantages, which British statesmen

behold in Russia's oncoming, and in the removal of anarchical

conditions in Central Asia, rests rather on a pretended hope than on

true conviction. Is it not strange, that a people, so practical in

its ways of thinking as the English, should for one moment entertain

the hope that some profit would arise for England out of the plans

which Russia has followed up for years with toil, and expense, and

self-sacrifice; that English goods will get the upper hand in the

markets of Central Asia, as soon as they have passed under the

Russian rule? Henry Davies, in his commercial report, may point to

the considerable figures which the export trade through Peshawar,

Karachie, and Ladak, to Central Asia, has to show; and yet he must

allow that this would be ten times larger, were it supported by

English influence beyond the frontier of northern India. And in

the same proportion will it diminish, in which the Russian eagle

spreads out his wings over those regions. To Lord William Hay's plan

for laying down a commercial road through Ladak, Yarkend, Issiköl,

and Semipalatinsk, the Petersburg cabinet has given its seeming

assent; yet, in fact, nobody wanted to support the plan, nor will

it occur to any Russian statesman to carry it out. The Chinese are

far superior not only to the Russians, but even to the English,

in mercantile zeal; and yet they trade along the great commercial

road from Pekin through South Siberia only to Maimatshin, while

from Kiachta the Chinese exports are forwarded, mainly through

Russian hands, to Petersburg and Europe. And how fared the Italian

silk merchants, who, under Russian protection, found their way to

Bokhara, but were there arrested and robbed of their goods and

possessions? One of them, Gavazzi, lets us feel very forcibly

in his report, that he could never place full faith in Russian

letters commendatory, in spite of all after applications from St.

Petersburg. The products of English manufacturing towns are wont

to drive Russian manufactures out of every market. The merchants

of Khiva and Bokhara still carry with them Russian articles from

Nijni-Novgorod and Orenburg, which they sell to Central Asiatics

under the name of _Ingilis mali_, or English wares; such being

always in most demand among the latter. People in England forget

that plain dealing will for some time yet be wanting to Russian

policy, and that, on the commercial roads which its arms have

opened out, it will throw, of a certainty, in the way of foreign

interests, obstacles of a like nature, if not indeed the same, as

one now meets with from Afghan rapacity, from Œzbeg lawlessness,

on the commercial roads to the Oxus. In the year 1864-5 America

alone disposed of more than fifteen million pounds' worth of linen

and cotton goods, which was naturally possible only under the free

institutions of England. Do the gentlemen in Calcutta expect any

similar dealings with the Russians?

Ephemeral, alas! are the calculations formed by people in England on

behalf of Russia's future policy with reference to India. Just as

the fabric of security which the statesmen of Downing Street are now

building within their brains, can soon be shattered to the ground;

so the arguments for a future _entente cordiale_ are but slight

indeed. Instead of a bootless refutation, we would rather point out

former mistakes, would rather touch on the means by which the danger

of a direct collision,--that most perilous of all games for English

interests,--may yet be avoided.

4. RUSSIAN GAINS AND THE DISADVANTAGES OF ENGLISH POLICY.

In order thoroughly to understand the misconceptions of English

politicians concerning their Russian rivals, it is necessary for us

to consider all the advantages which the latter always enjoyed, and

still enjoy, on the field of action. In Europe, we are wont to look

with amazement on Russia's gigantic empire in Asia; and yet nobody

thinks of the means which have rendered essential service towards

the acquisition of it. The Russians are Asiatics, not so much in

consequence of their descent as of their geographical position and

their social relations; and it is only because with the Asiatic

_laisser-aller_ they combine the steadfastness and resolution of

Europeans, that they have mostly been a match for the Asiatic

races. In their contact with Chinese, Tartars, Persians, Circassians

and Turks, they have always shown themselves as Chinese, Tartar,

Persian, and so forth, according to circumstances. An English

historian says, pretty correctly, if not without ill-will, that the

Russians moved forward like a tiger. "At first, creeping cautiously

and gliding stealthily through the dust, until the favourable

moment admits of its taking the fatal spring. With smiles of peace

and friendship, with soft smooth words on their emissaries' part,

have they often averted every fear, every precaution, until the

certain success of their schemes made all fears profitless, and

baffled every precaution. Blind, therefore, and ill-advised must

every government be, which can go to sleep over Russian advances

towards its frontiers, be those never so slow, or the interval

between the conqueror and the goal of his endeavours be never so

great!" As Asiatics, they are wont to hold out less rudely against

their neighbours in manners, customs, and modes of thought, than

the English, for whom, on account of their higher culture, such a

renunciation would be a great sacrifice, incompatible with their

efforts after civilisation. They seldom offend against the national

ways of thinking, and easily conform to them when their interests

require it. In England the Government has hitherto disdained to

place itself in direct correspondence with the Ameer of Bokhara, for

what the chief city in Zarif-Khan obtained up to this date from the

British cabinet was always enjoyed through the Governor-General

of India. In Russia they think differently; and even the haughty

Nicholas, that stern autocrat, who long shrank from calling the

French emperor "mon frère," behaves, in presence of the Tartar

princes of Central Asia, not as Emperor of all the Russias, but as a

Khan on the Neva. As a result of such procedure, we find the nations

all along the Russian frontier of Asia, whether nomad or settled,

Boodhist or Mohamedan, in such a state of intimacy at this moment,

if not of actual friendship, with the Russians, as happens nowhere

else in the foreign possessions of a European power.

These advantages, however, of Asiatic modes of thought, which might

properly be specified as excessive slyness and craftiness, are,

even in political intercourse, far more profitable than the open

and upright language employed on principle by Englishmen from of

old. It is only Great Britain's foes in Europe, only the enviers of

her power, who can find fault with the English in India; and yet

whoever is sufficiently informed as to their political dealings with

native princes and neighbours on the border, whoever is thoroughly

conversant with Asiatic character, will, in the utter absence of

this very defect, discover the one great fault of English statesmen.

From the largest province on the Amoor, to the smallest of the

possessions latest won by Russia on Asiatic ground, may we always

find one same procedure of intrigues and wiles,--a scattering of

the seeds of discord, bribery and corruption, through the vilest

means,--all serving as forerunners of invasion. Men come first

through commercial relations in contact with foreign elements; then

the slightest differences come to be readily employed as _casus

belli_; failing these, the ground will be undermined by emissaries,

the chiefs bribed by presents, or bemuddled with lavish draughts

of vodki (Russian brandy), and drawn on into the dangerous magic

circle. A well-founded cause of war and of invasion would nowhere be

easy to discover; and certainly the gigantic empire of the House of

Romanoff has been builded up more through the wiles of its Asiatic

statesmen than by the might of its arms. Moreover, in consequence

of the qualities lately named, Russia is more conversant with the

relations of Asiatic peoples, far better informed of all that is

passing in the border-states, than the English and other Europeans.

To the great watchfulness of her emissaries, to the unwearied zeal

of her diplomatists, is she indebted for the fact that her cabinet

is often more quickly and fully informed of the most private

doings of her neighbours, than the particular native government

itself. Passing over the fact that, in Petersburg, a company of

the cleverest men can make money out of their experiences through

the different parts of Asia, there is here and there a Kirghis,

a Buryat, a Circassian, or a Mongol, who, after being trained in

Russian learning and modes of thought, becomes a most serviceable

tool against the wholly or half-subjected land of his birth.

In England we meet everywhere with the sharpest contrasts.

Whoever is aware of the great ignorance of public opinion in England

about events in India, about the relations between those great

possessions and the neighbouring States; whoever in the course

of a year has noted down those absurd and ridiculous news, those

telegraphic despatches in the English papers, which reach Europe and

England through Bombay and Calcutta; whoever is aware of the very

small number of English statesmen who are so carefully informed on

Asiatic relations, that they can pass a sound judgement on questions

of Eastern policy;--such a one must surely be amazed at the way in

which Great Britain founded her foreign possessions, to say nothing

of her being able to hold them until now.

And just as even those among the English public who have lived any

time in India have kept aloof from the natives, in accordance with

their national character, and are but seldom conversant with their

language and manners,--so, too, can the English Government entrust

to naturalized Levantines, and not to Englishmen, the Dragomanate,

that necessary organ of mutual intercourse, in such important

embassies as that, for instance, of Constantinople. While Russia,

France and Austria, have long had Oriental academies for diplomatic

beginners; in England, with her rich dower of colleges, schools, and

universities, no one has ever thought of such an institution. And so

again in the legislative body as well as in the ministry, where the

smallest questions often have a special advocate, there are but very

few men competent to discuss the important relations in Asia; and

even these, on account of the prevailing nepotism, are but seldom

allowed to turn their experiences to account.

This indifference must surprise all foreigners. Still more amazed

will they be to hear men of the liberal party say: "What does

Asia concern us; what the swarm of barbarous races that cause us

more trouble than profit; what the wealth of India, whose income

has long ceased to cover her expenditure, to say nothing about

the costs of the conquest?" I have often heard remarks of this

kind from the most famous leaders of this party. The sincerity of

their confession defies questioning; and yet they have always left

me without an answer, when I have asked them how they would make

up for the loss of that political influence which springs from a

great colonial empire. People seem wholly to forget that a large

number of young Englishmen, of all ranks, are pursuing military

and political careers in India; they seem to be unaware how many

sons of clergymen and officers, to whom no sphere of action offers

itself within their island home, earn wealth in lucrative offices

on the Ganges and the Indus, with the view of spending at home

in a calm old age the outcome of their earlier years. They seem

to leave entirely out of their reckoning the enormous number of

merchants dwelling in their great Asiatic dominions amidst the most

extensive commercial interests, through whose hands English capital

multiplies by millions. Those liberals are very short-sighted, who

deem the possession of such a colony as India an indifferent or

superfluous matter. That they should wish to see the greatness of

their fatherland founded on the flourishing condition of inland

manufactures, and not on their dominion over foreign peoples, can no

longer be regarded as a view generally valid in England, now that

more than sixty millions pounds sterling are laid out in Indian

railway undertakings alone; for that neither manufacturing industry

nor the enterprising spirit of English merchants can succeed, to any

great extent, without the supporting hand of English rule, is amply

shown by the circumstances of British trade in Algiers, Central

Asia, and other non-British territories.

It is faulty views like these which neutralise all the advantages

of English individualism in the presence of Russian policy, which

always acts with steadfast consistency. To these errors may be

ascribed the fact that Russia, having grown up into a powerful

rival in a space of time incredibly short, is treading so close on

the Achilles-heel of Great Britain. With the position she holds on

the Aral and the Caspian Seas, after conquering the whole of the

Caucasus, after her enormous successes in Central Asia, it would now

be useless to try and force back that giant power. What might with

no great trouble have been attained twenty years ago, it is now far

too late to attempt; but if England would avoid the usual lot of

commercial states,--the doom of Carthage, Venice, Genoa, Holland,

and Portugal,--there is but one way left to her: a policy of stern

watchfulness, a swift grasp of the measures still at her command.

5. ADVICE TO ENGLAND FOR THE PURPOSE OF AVERTING THE DANGER.

To think of moving out in open hostility to the growing power of

Russia, were now, on England's part, just as great an error as the

strange inaction she has displayed for the last twenty-five years

amidst all the occurrences beyond the Hindu-Kush. Russia will

establish herself on the right bank of the Oxus, will absorb the

three Khanats, and perhaps Chinese Tartary, will make everything

Œzbeg to acknowledge her supremacy. That can no longer be

prevented; but thus far and no farther should Englishmen allow their

rivals to advance.

All that lies between the Oxus and the Indus should remain neutral

territory. Through her physical conformation, through the warlike

character of her inhabitants, and specially through their great

aptitude for diplomacy, Afghanistan would be altogether suited to

form a military and political barrier against any possible collision

between the two giants. That country would cost the conqueror,

coming whether from North or South, a tenfold harder struggle than

did the Caucasus. Besides, the possession would not for a long while

make good the material advantage of an expensive war; and although

the continual disorders that prevail in the mountain-home of the

Afghans may be of no advantage to either neighbour, still the danger

is not so great as to justify any schemes of conquest on one side or

the other.

How, then, in case Russia continues her policy of aggression, may

England secure the neutrality of Afghanistan? What must she do to

set up with her influence there a solid barrier, without coming

forward as a conqueror?

That is the work of a skilled diplomatic intercourse, the work of an

uninterrupted alliance, carried on by agents, who, acquainted with

the Afghan character, and eschewing English modes of thought, can

conduct themselves as Asiatics.

The same fault which Lord Auckland committed in 1839, by his active

interference in Afghan affairs, that fault and one far greater still

did his successors prove guilty of, through their utter withdrawal

from the scene, through their strange indifference in respect of the

concerns of the neighbouring State. The English resemble a child

which, after having once burnt itself at a fire, will not for a

long time venture to draw near its warmth. The catastrophe of the

Afghan campaign, the thirty millions sterling in costs, dwell even

now, after a quarter of a century, with such fearful vividness in

the eyes of every Briton, that he trembles at the very thought of

political influence beyond the Hindu-Kush. Have we not here two

sharply-opposed extremes? First, armed to the teeth in support of

the interests of a prince so little loved as Shah Sujah; and then,

after the annexation of the Punjab, scarce willing to give one more

thought to Kabul! And why should the frontier above Peshawar be so

dangerous a barrier for every Englishman and European? If several

thousands of Kakeries, Lohanies, Gilzies, and Yusufzies, yearly

pass over the northern frontier of Hindostan,--some for mercantile

purposes, others to graze their flocks,--why should British

travellers not be allowed to venture over the Hindu-Kush, let alone

a few hours' journey beyond Peshawar? Afghan merchants drive a

flourishing trade with Mooltan, Delhi, Lahore: why, from the English

side, may not one mercantile firm or another betake itself for the

same end to Kabul?

In truth, this state of things has always astonished me; the more

so, when I heard that the officer whom Sir John Lawrence sent to

Kabul to offer welcome to Shere Ali Khan had to be always escorted

there by a strong detachment of troops, to guard himself from the

rage of a fanatic population. This is surely a mode of proceeding

at once wrong and ridiculous, for giving Asiatics a lesson in

European magnanimity and European love of justice. England, who

has long dealt with the Asiatics after this fashion, resembles a

person trying with all his might to make a blind man comprehend

the beauty of one of Raphael's cartoons. In this respect Russia is

far more practical. She knows that such proofs of magnanimity and

humanity are only ridiculed by the Orientals; that, so far from

taking the example to themselves, they misuse those proofs for their

own special ends; and, instead of wasting moral preachings on them,

England would act shrewdly by helping herself to the same weapons,

and treating Orientals in Oriental fashion.

At the time when the martyrs Conolly and Stoddart were pining in

cruel imprisonment, out of which they were afterwards delivered

only by the headsman's axe, there happened to be in British

territory a number of Bokharians, Khokandies, and other Central

Asiatics, by whose arrest the lot of the English officers might

have been alleviated, and their deliverance from death assured.

In such cases Russia is wont to clear herself from the dilemma by

the law of retaliation. England acts differently. She would play

the high-minded part; and what has she gained by it? When I was in

Bokhara, I heard how this very act of British generosity had missed

its mark. England, said the Bokharians, dares not awaken the wrath

of the Ameer of Bokhara: her weakness commands this moderation.

Do the gentlemen in Calcutta imagine that the Afghans think

otherwise? No; and they likewise say: protected by the might

and greatness of Islam, our indigo and spice merchants, our

camel-hirers, can venture unharmed on British ground; whilst not one

infidel soul dares show himself among us.

The same unpardonable weakness did the Viceroy of India show in

1857, when he was sent by Lord Canning to Peshawar to conclude,

in conjunction with Edwardes, an offensive and defensive alliance

against Persia with the then reigning Dost Mohamed Khan. At that

time the Afghans were hard pressed; they wanted arms and money: the

grey-haired Barukzie chief, attended by his sons, betrayed this

fact in every word; and yet his demands were fulfilled in every

point, without his yielding in the least to any of England's leading

claims. Four thousand stand of arms, with bayonets, sabres, pouches,

and twelve lakhs of rupees a year, were promised him, so long as

England was at war with Persia. Of this large sum they received,

even after the conclusion of peace at Paris, a considerable

instalment; and yet the chief end of the negotiations at Kabul and

Kandahar--the appointment of a permanent English representative--was

not attained. Dost Mohamed Khan avowed, as Kaye tells us in his

"History of the Sepoy War," that he would not take on himself the

responsibility of such a step; that he could not protect English

agents against Afghan fanaticism; that every step of theirs might

compromise, &c., &c. I cannot comprehend how John Lawrence, one of

the few men acquainted with Eastern character, could yield to the

endearments of the grey Afghan wolf,--how he could believe those

false apprehensions. If even Dost Mahomed could say that an English

mission might tarry in peace at Kandahar, why could it not fare as

well in Kabul? The British commissioners were greatly in the wrong

if they doubted even for a moment the supreme power of the Afghan

ruler. With a very little more persistency, the English, who then

appeared as helpers in need, might have obtained not two but several

posts of embassy. The Afghans would soon have grown used to their

presence, and the diplomatic alliance, once made easy, would have

been maintained unbroken.

In a semi-official article, which appeared in the _Edinburgh Review_

for January, 1867, Sir John Lawrence now strives to show how hard

and vain it is to enter into diplomatic intercourse with neighbours

so wild and turbulent as those who surround India on all sides.

Still, I cannot understand why the Viceroy should not take example

from Russia, who, with the same elements on her frontier, sends

envoy after envoy, knows how to obtain for them respect and safety,

and so keeps moving forward to her wished-for goal. Why does not

England pursue, in this case, the same policy which she once began

in China, Japan, and other Asiatic countries? It seems to me that

people are less convinced of the difficulty of carrying out such a

purpose, than of the extreme remoteness of the consequent gain. Or

are these gentlemen really unaware of the permanent support thus

rearable, not only for English interests in Afghanistan, but even

for the special welfare of the Afghans themselves?

Sir Henry Rawlinson's diplomatic bearing in Kandahar, which enabled

him so long to maintain himself there with his suite in the most

difficult position, at a period the most critical, is a splendid

proof that even the rudest Asiatics are not unmanageable. And if the

said officer could accomplish so much in the threatening attitude

of a conqueror, what might not first have been attained through

political tact and friendly persuasion?

The tangible results of uninterrupted diplomatic intercourse would,

if we mistake not, be:--

1st. A greater impulse given to trade; for, as English goods have

long enjoyed a good name in Central Asia, English products, imported

direct from England, could certainly drive similar but less-prized

Russian products out of the market. At present this is naturally

not the case: at this moment, in the bazaars of Kabul, Kandahar,

Herat, and other places, there is much more sold of many Russian

articles,--such as ironware and working tools, coarse cotton and

handkerchiefs,--than of English ones; solely because the former,

owing to the lower price at which they were first saleable, are

not raised by the additional payments to so high a figure as the

English goods, whose value, originally dear, is raised twofold in

the transit. Moreover, in Bokhara, here and there in Khiva and in

Karshi, Russian traders may be found who, secure in the energy of

their government, can of course advance their own interests better

than foreign mercantile agents. In vain should we seek for a better

apostle, a better pioneer for civilisation, than trade; in vain,

for a better teacher to turn men to our own ways of thinking, than

the silent bales of goods which are carried over from Europe; and

England, apart from her commercial interests, is bound, for the ends

of humanity also, to help forward trade in Central Asia.

2. The Afghans, who, under the name of Ingilis or Feringhi,

have hitherto been acquainted with but one armed power, one

conquest-seeking neighbour, will easily, in the peaceful garb

of diplomatic intercourse, in well-meaning counsels, accept the

teaching of a better one. In the year 1808, when the Afghans had

little fear of an English invasion, the ambassador, Mountstuart

Elphinstone, with a numerous following, whose escort amounted

to only four hundred Anglo-Indian soldiers, was well received

throughout Afghanistan, for fear and mistrust had as yet taken no

root. Down to the beginning of this century the same state of things

might be found in all parts of the Ottoman Empire. European and

enemy were deemed identical things; but now, after our embassies and

consulates have pushed themselves, spite of the Porte's reluctance,

into many places, will Osmanlis and Arabs no longer cherish the

same sort of views? They have clearer notions about the generic

term, "Feringhi," and know for certain that Russia, for instance,

feels just as friendly to the Porte as England feels inimical; that

this government has one set of plans, the other another; and so

on. Without consulates such a result could not have been attained.

And so the Afghans, until they have been brought into nearer and

peaceful intercourse with the English, will never understand what

England or Russia may do for their weal or woes; whose friendship

will render them the more or the less service.

3. The Afghans, most warlike of all Central Asiatics, might,

with the powerful support of English counsels, easily be raised

into a military power of some importance. What the _Instructeurs

Militaires_ of their day accomplished in the army of Sultan Mahmood

and Mehemed Ali Pasha; what English officers accomplished with the

troops of Abbas Mirza,--would be as nothing in comparison with

the consequences of a similar undertaking among the Afghans; out

of whom, so far as one may judge from the military bearing and

manœuvring of a Kabul regiment drilled by Sepoy deserters, a

regular army will very easily be formed. Such a result may also

be attained with the fortresses of Herat and Kandahar, whose

fortifications, in the event of their coming under the charge of

a second Pottinger, would certainly prove a far harder prize for

Russian besiegers than if they were given over to the warlike skill

of Afghans alone.

4. The prime gain, however, which we look for from a permanent

agency is, that England, being accurately informed of proceedings

in Central Asia, of the military and political movements of Russia,

will no longer be exposed to the danger of finding herself suddenly

surprised on one point or another, and, through the continual

uncertainty in which she wavers touching the true state of things,

of being disabled from taking the right precautions. At this moment,

the Viceroy maintains a few Moonshies without any official character

in Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat; Moonshies, that is, scribes, and

Mohamedans, who, being among other things well paid, are engaged to

furnish occasional news. Besides these, there are also spies, or

secret emissaries, despatched in this or that direction on special

conjunctures, who roam in the disguise of a merchant or a pilgrim

through Turkestan, and furnish tidings of political events. Letting

alone the fact that I regard both the former and the latter class as

alike unfit for such an office, because they never enter in their

memorandum-books anything but bazaar-reports and the politics of the

caravan, I may, as one who has lived whole years among Orientals,

be allowed to place the very smallest faith in those people. Do

persons in Calcutta consider what Mohamedan fanaticism is; are they

aware that no amount of gold will succeed in turning one Mussulman

to the account of the Feringhie against another Mussulman? To all

appearance these emissaries and spies will display the greatest

diligence, the most reckless loyalty, the most forward zeal; and

yet in the interior of Central Asia they will fulfil the commands

of their order by squatting on the self same carpet with those

religious comrades, with whom they repair to one common mosque.

On this point British statesmen will certainly not agree with me,

though that is the very reason why they are so little acquainted

with what goes on in Central Asia,--why the absurdest stories spread

through India into Europe,--and why they can regard the affairs of

the Khanats in the light which Russian diplomacy has kindled for

them.

Far as I am from wanting to set up as a political advice-giver,

I find that these unpretending counsels point out the only means

whereby Afghanistan's neutrality can be secured, and herself erected

into a powerful barrier against Russia's further progress in Central

Asia. In view of so weighty a question as the possession of the

East Indies is for the greatness and continuance of English power,

it were too dangerous to seek a false protection in palliative

measures. Political errors, however trifling, form in time so many

links in one unbroken chain of disasters,--a chain which, presently,

the greatest struggles, the most clear-eyed statesmanship, may

trouble themselves to break in vain.

6. THE GENERAL INTERESTS OF THE QUESTION.

It still remains to answer the one further question, why we cannot

look with indifference on the danger for English interests from

Russian ascendancy, and for what special reason it is that the

decline of England's power seems to us so detrimental, that we see

in Russia's undue influence a bar to the advance of the spirit of

our age.

The answer is very simple: Russia was, is, and long will be

Asiatic. The cheering prospect that the overgrown body of Russian

power will, according to the laws of nature, necessarily break up

hereafter into two or more sections, and the danger that threatens

us be thereby lessened, is one which we cannot for a moment

entertain. We need only fix our eyes on the character of political

life in Russia, its social circumstances, the relation of the people

towards the upper castes of the governing circle, the general

state of popular culture, and the modes of popular thought, to see

how everything there is Asiatic, aye, wildly Asiatic in tendency;

and how little, in spite of the long struggle after European

civilisation, has yet been taken in, to speak comparatively, from

what we call European or Western life. Without repeating the

well-worn adage, "Scrape a Russian and you will lay bare a Tartar,"

it is none the less impossible, whether from personal experience,

or the reports of later, and to Russia most friendly travellers, to

help acknowledging how much may yet be found, on the Neva and in

other large Russian towns, of that surface civilisation which many

Asiatic governments bring successfully to bear on short-sighted

Europe. No doubt this pretence of civilisation succeeds better in

Petersburg, wielded by a government containing a strong admixture

of Christian and European elements, than in Cairo, Constantinople,

and Teheran. The Russian noble, in appearance a finished European,

thoroughly versed in our language, manners and modes of thought,

will certainly cut a better figure than the semi-European Effendi

on the Bosphorus, or the Persian Mirza. A government which draws

towards itself, at a cost so heavy, so many scientific and artistic

forces, which has lately advanced with so much zeal in founding

schools, universities, scientific associations, which hires persons

in Europe to blazon forth the progress of Russian civilisation,--can

assuredly reap for itself greater credit than the Porte or the

Persian ministry, which, engaged in upholding their weakly

existence, cannot bestow so much attention on the needful pageantry.

No wonder, then, if to a superficial glance Russia seems more

European, more imbued with the spirit of our civilisation, and can

easily win the sympathy of those who would love her with all their

might. But if once we try impartially to lift up the outer covering

and peep into the inside of the great Russian community, what shall

we behold?

Great, indeed, is the disenchantment that awaits us at every step,

when we seek to discover in the majority of the Russian people those

traces of progress, which ought to exist according to the statements

of Russian hirelings in the European press. The Englishman who,

in 1865, in a pamphlet called "Russia, Central Asia, and British

India," sought to indoctrinate the English public with the same

idea, and, inferring the commencement of many reforms from the

bearing of such innovations as slave emancipation, placed such a

conversion in the foreground, though even Russian writers like

Herzen and Dolgorukoff are doubtful of it, would in all likelihood

have thought very differently, if he had drawn the parallel, not

between persons of intelligence, but between the Russian people and

the Asiatics.

On that immense frontier where Russia touches Asia, we shall

everywhere find the Russians standing on a markedly lower level of

development, and in freedom of manners far behind those Asiatic

peoples to whom we would impart the advantages of our younger

European as compared with their old Asiatic civilisation. Alexander

Michie, a traveller from Pekin to Petersburg, and so great a friend

of Russia that he calls Siberia a second Paradise, and deems the

exiled Poles enviably fortunate, cannot, however, help proclaiming

aloud the superiority of the Chinese to the Russians, wherever

he finds the two holding intercourse with each other. And this

is the case not only in Maimadshin and Kiachta, but even among

the Mussulmans. The Russian, as a northerner, will display more

energy than the Asiatic _de pur sang_; but his remarkably dirty

exterior, his drunkenness, his religion bordering on fetishism, his

servility, his crass ignorance, his coarse, unpolished manners,--are

characteristics which make him show very poorly against the supple,

courtly, keen-sighted Eastern. Just as I have heard a cultivated

Moslem Tadjik in Bokhara speak with contempt of the uncivilised

Russians, whom he set above the Kirghis only, so in all likelihood

will every Chinaman, every Persian in Transcaucasia, and every

well-educated Tartar in Kazan, say the same. What can these nations,

then, learn from Russia?

Can her forms of government awaken any envy in Asiatic races? The

corruptibility of the placemen, their tyrannical and arbitrary

conduct under Nicholas, the mass of more than fifty million peasants

who occupied the lowest of all positions beside the caste of

placemen and nobles,--all this really is not particularly alluring

for those among whom the wildest autocratic institutions are yet

combined with patriarchal mildness.

Yes, it is hard, not only at present, but even in the distant

future, to discover in Russia's craving for conquests the prospect

of a profitable change in the social life of the Asiatic peoples, a

change in the direction of European ideas. If we ask ourselves what

has become of the Tartars, who for more than two hundred years have

dwelt under Russian protection; what of the great number of Siberian

tribes,--such as Bashkirs, Voguls, Tzeremisses, Votjaks,--which have

been or are on the point of being absorbed into the Russian nation,

must we not everywhere regard the Russianising as the chief result?

Russianising is naturally a step from Asia towards Europe, as the

government of an Alexander II., so far as it has gone, may even

be called a turning-point: and yet who will blame us, if to this

wearisome process, whose results seem always doubtful, we prefer

the English scheme of civilisation, which has at this moment such

splendid and surprising results to show in India, and wherever else

it deals with Asiatics?

That the peoples of broad India, of the land which has been the

cradle and the fountain-head of that Asiatic civilisation which we

show up and fight against as unfit to live, hold very persistently

to their old usages, to their own ways of thinking, no one will

dispute; and yet how great a change has come over India, even since

the beginning of the last century! Methinks, even the worst enemies

of Great Britain will be unable to deny that the caste-system of the

Hindoos and their many inhuman customs have suffered a mighty blow

from English influence. No one can deny that these wild Asiatics,

in spite of all their stiff-necked bearing, are advancing with

wonderful strides on the path of our civilisation. We find at this

moment in India a great number of people thoroughly convinced of

the blessed influence of their conqueror: numerous schools and

institutions spread the light of the new world abroad through all

classes of the population. Not only are there many well versed in

the English tongue; they also take an active part in our scientific

discussions, are enrolled as members of learned European societies,

and sometimes even take up the pen to emulate the writers of the

West. Rajah Radakant Deb Bahádur, Maharajah Kali Krishna Bahadur,

Baboo Rayendra Lala Mitra, a good many pundits (priests), and other

learned gentlemen, may be found on the list of French, German, and

Anglo-Asiatic societies, and are known in distinguished circles

by their works. Strong in their own sense of nationality, the

Hindoos are now better acquainted with their language, history and

philosophy, than ever they were in the days of their inland princes.

Societies are formed, as in England, for the extirpation of certain

prejudices, for doing away with so many shameful habits and customs,

for the advancement of social intercourse; and if we consider how

much the reading world increases day by day, how large a circle has

been procured from among the natives for such Hindustani papers as

the _Hirkara Bengála_ ("Bengal Messenger"), the _Suheili Panjábi_

("Punjaub Star"), the _Audh Akbar_ ("Oudh News"), _Khairkah Panjábi_

("Punjaub Wellwisher"), and how greatly the press is rising day by

day into a powerful factor of Europeanism, we shall be obliged to

own that England's subject races stand, in respect of culture, not

only above their yoke-fellows in Russia, but even above many of the

Russians themselves.

If to the above-named unfitness of Russia for civilising India we

superadd the important circumstance that Russia, in thus absorbing

half the world, and blending many millions of Asiatics into her

own body, presents herself in an attitude of powerful menace, not

to Great Britain only, but to all Europe as well, we shall find

this immense predominance more hurtful to our own existence than

advantageous to the leading Tartar races of Asia. Russophobia,

we are told, is a foolish crotchet; and I am willing to think so

myself. Still, if we contemplate the mighty influence of the Russian

two-headed eagle in all parts of Asia; if we reflect, that through

its position on the Hindu Kush the court of St. Petersburg will

solve, in its own favour, the Eastern question on the Bosphorus,

it is hard to feel perfect peace of mind with regard to the future

destiny of our own hemisphere. The diplomacy of to-day, which pays

more homage to fashion than to good sense, makes merry enough with

Napoleon's prophecy regarding Cossack rule in Europe. But people

forget how much may be accomplished with our present means of

communication by a power which will extend from Kamshatka to the

Danube, or perhaps to the shore of the Adriatic,--from the icy zones

of the North Sea to the burning banks of the Irawaddy. Visionary as

it may seem to many, it is in nowise impossible that some hundred

thousands of Asia's wildest horsemen may readily follow the summons

of such a power into the midmost heart of Europe. In the beginning

of this century the possibility of such an inroad, à la Djinghis

Khan and Taimur, was shown by the Don Cossacks on the banks of

the Seine. And why might this not be repeated now-a-days, with

railroads and steamers at their disposal? Our European war-science

may overcome this savage power: no member of the House of Romanoff

could long play among us the part of a Djinghis or a Taimur. Yet

a struggle of that sort, however momentary, would evolve mournful

issues; and it is now a matter of pressing need to keep off the

approach of such an event, while measures of precaution are still

within our reach.

Apart, however, from these far-reaching calculations, can any one

doubt that England's power and greatness are of more advantage than

Russian supremacy to the general interests of Europe? England has

many foes, or perhaps we should rather call them, enviers. Certain

voices in the continental press will always, under the sway of

passion, discover in her conduct selfishness, greed, and pride.

Enthusiasts will see the blindest materialism in every move; and

yet people must be blind and carried away by prejudice, not to see

the triumphs won by English greatness, English capital, and English

endurance, for our civilisation and our scientific researches.

Is it not England alone, whose powerful flag has opened Eastern

Asia to our trade? Who else but English travellers have been

driven by a daring spirit of inquiry into the farthest regions,

in order to enrich our geographical and ethnographical knowledge;

and what happens on the Thames, what in every other town of that

ever-stirring and busy island-realm? Do those haughty spirits

who are continually finding fault with English materialism, ever

consider that these brokers, in spite of their lively interest in

trade and money-making, still render the greatest service in the

advancement of science, in the enlightenment of the world? What

country is there, in which Government gives its millions so readily

for an institution like the British Museum; where a hundred thousand

pounds is laid out with so free a hand on the mere catalogue of a

library, as lately happened in London; where Government fits out

ships and expeditions in quest of an imperilled traveller, as they

have lately done in behalf of Livingstone?

Yes; in spite of all her faults, from which no country is free, we

must allow that England, whether in consequence of the materialism

thus strongly censured, or of the thirst for power so often laid to

her charge, anyhow stands at the top of European civilisation. For

if France and Germany furnish indispensable aid in diffusing the

light of our higher civilisation, still, the chief agent is England

alone. With her flag emerges the day-dawn of a fairer era in every

zone, in every part of the world. What the enviers of Great Britain

tell us of her tyrannical behaviour, is mainly an untruth. It is not

at the writing-table and in easy arm-chairs, but in the countries

of the Asiatic world, that these sentimental fault-finders should

inform themselves about England's influence; and if they saw how

the march of our western civilisation drives out the vices of the

old Asiatic, how it seeks to upraise the downtrodden rights of man,

and freeing millions from the absolute sway of a single tyrant,

leads them on towards a better future, then assuredly they could not

remain indifferent to England's influence in foreign lands.

And would it not be grievous, if Muscovite ascendancy should do harm

to such a State? The strong will of a free people governs on the

Thames; on the Neva the ambition of an Asiatic dynasty, a system of

government so framed that its capacity for reform in the future

remains doubtful, while its great perniciousness in the present is

all the more assured.

Yes; only in Russia's approach towards India, that Achilles-heel

of British interests, may we discover the infallible sign of

serious danger for England. A greater struggle than that which the

British Lion had to encounter in the south with France, for the

establishment of its power on the Ganges, it has still to look for

in the north. The first-named foe, weaker in numbers and endurance,

had but a small fleet, and a sea at that time unnavigable behind

her back, and could easily be overcome. The last-named, on the

contrary, will be supported by an unbroken chain of fortresses,

garrisons, guarded roads; her weapons are a boundless ambition, the

blind devotion of millions of subjects, and the sympathy of rude

neighbour-states. Victory over such a power will be far less easy,

and the consequences of defeat far greater.

Be on thy guard, therefore, Britannia! For if the star of thine

ancient fortune should now begin to wane, then will that verse--

"The nations not so blest as thee

Must in their turn to tyrants fall,

While thou shalt flourish great and free,

The dread and envy of them all,"

--have to remain unread in the different zones.

LEWIS & SON, Printers, Swan Buildings, Moorgate Street, London.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.

Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as

printed.

Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where

the missing quote should be placed.

The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the

transcriber and is placed in the public domain.