About five-and-twenty years ago, I happened to be engaged in the
service of my country in a distant part of the world. The duties
which devolved upon me threw me into a daily contact with a Russian
officer similarly employed. Notwithstanding the conflicting interests
which we severally represented, and the somewhat delicate and often
strained relations resulting therefrom, we had not been long in each
other’s society without becoming sensible of a personal sympathy too
powerful to be resisted, and which soon ripened into an intimacy which
lasted for many years; indeed we were thrown so exclusively upon our
own resources, deprived as we were of all other society, that we must
probably soon either have become bitter enemies or fast friends. A
certain similarity of taste, I had almost said of aspiration, forced
upon us the latter alternative; and it was probably due to this that
we were enabled to bring the special duties upon which we were engaged
to a successful conclusion, whereby we earned the approval of our
respective Governments,—represented in his case by a decoration, and
in mine by a curt complimentary despatch; for in those days C.B.’s and
C.M.G.’s were not flung about with the lavish profusion which has since
so largely depreciated their value. It was a relief, when the labors
of the day were over—which had taxed all our powers of ingenuity and
forbearance, and we had fatigued our brains by inventing compromises
and devising solutions which should satisfy the susceptibilities of
our respective Governments—to jump on our horses and take a sharp
dash across country, just by way of clearing our brains of diplomatic
cobwebs. Generally we played at follow-my-leader, and we took it in
turns to be leader; for we were both young, and had, in fact, been
weighted with responsibilities beyond our years, which made us rush
into a reaction that consisted in an active endeavor to break our necks
every afternoon with all the keener zest,—to the intense astonishment
of the natives of the uncivilised region to which we had been
temporarily banished. Then, as we jogged slowly home, we would fall
into those discussions, on social, religious, psychological, and moral
problems, by which our souls were vexed, which lasted through dinner,
and often far into the night. I found in my companion an earnestness,
depth, and originality of sentiment which were most remarkable in one
so young, the more especially as I had not supposed that his training
and early associations had been of a character to develop that side
of his nature; possibly the very restraints to which he had been
subjected had stimulated his instincts for independent thought and
speculation. Knowing English, French, and German almost as well as
his mother-tongue, he had read extensively and greedily in all three
languages; and, owing to certain family circumstances, he had spent
the most part of his life away from his native land, applying himself,
with an acuteness and a faculty of observation extraordinary in one so
young, to a study of the political institutions, social conditions,
and national characteristics of the different European countries in
which he had lived. So precocious did his intelligence appear to me
in this respect, that I soon came to consider myself in some degree a
sort of disciple; and I have always been conscious that his influence
during the nine months that we were together affected my own subsequent
views of life, and indeed to some extent moulded my future. In the
course of these discussions he unburdened himself to me on all subjects
as fully as he would have done to a brother—indeed, considering who
his brother was, far more freely; and did not shrink from commenting
upon the social and political condition of his own country, and from
giving vent to opinions which would probably have consigned him to
the mines of Siberia for life had he been known to entertain them.
The confidence which he thus displayed towards me only served to bind
us more closely together, though I was ever haunted by the fear that
the day might come when he might misplace it, with consequences which
might be fatal to himself. As he was absolutely devoid of all personal
ambition, this would be of little moment, if it only resulted in the
abrupt termination of his career, which, from his natural independence
of character, I anticipated could not long be postponed. It occurred
even sooner than I expected. Within six months of my parting from him,
I received a letter in which he told me he had fallen into disgrace,
and was going to live in Italy. The exigencies of my own service
had taken me to a very different part of the world; but we kept up,
nevertheless, an active correspondence for some years, during which
he occasionally sent me notes of a book he was writing, in letters
which continued to exhibit more and more the results of his extensive
reading and profound faculty of observation, philosophic speculation
and generalisation. Suddenly, about fifteen years ago, and without a
word of warning, these ceased. All my letters remained unanswered; and
when, some time afterwards, I found myself in Rome, and inquired at the
address to which I had sent them, it was only to learn that the present
proprietors of the house were comparatively new people, and had never
heard of him. Meantime I had myself retired from the service, and being
of a wandering and unsettled disposition, had only returned to my own
country for a few months at a time. I had lived too long in summer
climes, and under less conventional restraints, to be happy in it; but
one of my constant regrets was that I had never thought of providing
my Russian friend with a permanent address, so that in case of his
ever being able or willing to communicate with me again, he might know
where to find me. Meanwhile I could only account for his silence by
the painful supposition that he had in some manner incurred the severe
displeasure of his Government, and was languishing in that distant
semi-arctic region which is hermetically sealed to all communication
with the outside world.
My delight may easily be imagined, therefore, when scarce two
months ago, chancing to be a passenger on board a steamer in the
Mediterranean, I found myself seated the first day at dinner next to
a man, the tones of whose voice I thought I recognised, though I was
for a moment puzzled by the alteration in his general appearance,
and who turned out to be my long-lost friend, upon whom, as I looked
at the furrows on his countenance, I saw that something more than
time—though it had extended over twenty-five years—had worked a change.
This same interval had, doubtless, done something for me; so we both
looked at each other for a moment in hesitation before permitting
the joy of mutual recognition to burst forth. We soon found, on
comparing notes, that we had been longing to find each other, and
that nothing now prevented our pitching our tent together on the
sunny Mediterranean shore, in the hope and belief that we should find
that the companionship which had suited us so well twenty-five years
previously, would only be rendered more full of interest and profit
by the experiences which we had undergone since that period; nor had
we conversed an hour before we became convinced that, however much we
might have changed in outward appearance, our affection for each other,
and our human sympathies generally, had undergone no alteration. It
is therefore in a villa surrounded by orange-groves, with terraces
overlooking the sea, built curiously into the fissures of impending
rock, that I am writing this; or, to be more strictly accurate, I
should say it is in a summer-house attached to the villa, fifty feet
beneath which the sea is rippling in ceaseless murmur, while my friend,
stretched on a Persian rug in the shade formed by the angle of the wall
with the overhanging rock, here covered with a creeping jasmine, heavy
with blossom, is watching the smoke of his cigarette, and listening
while I read to him passages here and there of the notes which I had
taken of our last night’s conversation. It had been suggested by the
arrival of letters and newspapers from England, and it occurred to me
that the remarks of my friend as a calm and unprejudiced observer upon
the present political, social, and moral condition of my own country,
possessed a value which justified me in asking his permission to be
allowed to publish them, the more so as he had just returned from
spending some months in London; and he was of far too liberal and
philosophical a temperament and cosmopolitan training and sympathy
to be influenced by national prejudice; while, had he ever been once
biassed by it, the treatment he had undergone at the hands of his own
Government would have long since effectually removed it.
“I will introduce you to the public by telling the story of our
previous acquaintance, just as it occurred,” I observed. This the
reader will remark that I have already done; but I did not read my
introduction to my friend, as I knew he would have raised strong
objections to the complimentary passages. “Now tell me what I am to
call you?”
“Ivan is safe, simple, and not far from the truth, unless you prefer
a pair of initials like my well-known countrywoman O. K. It has
amused me to observe,” he added, with a smile, “as I have watched the
performances, social, literary, and political, how much more easy it
is for a woman to understand the genius of a man than the genius of a
nation.”
“Perhaps that is because the nation is composed of women as well as of
men,”I replied.
“After all, it comes to pretty much the same thing,” said Ivan;
“for the genius that he understood well enough to beguile, seems to
apprehend equally well the genius of the nation he governs, or he could
not have beguiled it in the sense she desired. The whole incident
serves to illustrate the mystery of woman’s true sphere of influence,
so little understood by the women themselves who agitate for their
rights.”
“I am not disposed to admit,”I answered, “that the incident in
question proves your case; for I know none of your own countrymen, to
say nothing of the women, who understand the genius of the English
people, for to do so implies an apprehension of the genius of their
institutions, and it is the incapacity of foreigners generally to
appreciate these which causes them to regard our domestic policy in the
light of an unfathomable mystery which it is hopeless to attempt to
penetrate, and our foreign policy as a delusion and a snare.”
“When your Government gets into difficulties,”said Ivan, “it certainly
goes to work to get out of them in a way exactly the opposite to
that which other European Governments, and especially we in Russia,
are in the habit of pursuing. Foreign policy is with us the great
safety-valve by which the bubbling passions of the country find a
vent, and our central authority takes refuge from its troubles in
foreign wars and schemes of territorial aggrandisement; your Government
pursues a diametrically opposite system, and considers, apparently,
that its best chance of safety lies in stirring up domestic broils,
and exciting the people to fever-heat of political passion among
themselves. In other words, while our statesmen believe that they can
best secure their own positions and avert the perils arising from
mis-government by distracting public attention from internal affairs
and rushing into dangers abroad, yours hope to escape the consequences
of their blunders abroad by promoting revolutionary tendencies at
home. It would be curious to analyse the causes which have resulted
in such opposite political methods, the more especially as both, in
their different ways, are equally prejudicial to the highest national
interests, and, from a philosophical point of view, would furnish a
most interesting political and sociological study. As it is, my own
country produces upon me the effect of a dashing young woman, still
intoxicated with her youthful conquests and greedy for more, while she
refuses to admit that a gnawing disease is preying upon her vitals,
still less to apply any remedies to it; in yours, on the other hand, I
seem to see an old woman in her dotage, who makes blatant and canting
profession of that virtue which her age and feebleness have imposed
upon her as a necessity, while she paints, and rouges, and pampers
herself with luxury, and fritters away the little strength and energy
she still possesses in absorbing herself with domestic details and the
quarrels of her servants, and leaves her vast estates to take care
of themselves. Considering the dangers with which both countries are
menaced, the great difference which I observed between the Governments
of the two countries is, that in one, government takes the form of
active insanity—in the other, of drivelling imbecility. After all,
there is always more hope for a young lunatic than an old idiot. We may
pull through all right yet, but we shall have a very rough time to pass
through first.”
“And you think that we are too far gone ever to do so,”I remarked,
rather discouraged by the gloomy view he took of the present condition
and future prospects of my native country.”
“I don’t altogether say that. It is not with countries as with
individuals; the latter always pass from their second childhood into
their graves. But for nations, who can say that there is not reserved a
second youth? though history does not record an instance of any nation
having ever attained to it. The process is probably a slow one; but in
these days of rapid development, to say nothing of evolution, we cannot
be sure even of that.”
“Still,”I pursued, a little nettled at the severity of his judgment in
regard to my own country,—I did not care what he said about Russia,
of which I was in no position to judge,—“I should like to know upon
what grounds you base your opinion that England is an old idiot. The
expression, I think, is scarcely parliamentary.”
“In using the term to which you object,” said Ivan,—“which, after
reading the language recently used in debate in your House of Commons,
I maintain is strictly parliamentary,—I was not so much alluding
to England as to its Government; and I will endeavor to explain to
you the reasons which lead me to think that the expression is not
misapplied. There are at the present day, including the population
of the United States, between eighty and ninety millions of people
who owe their origin to the British Isles; who speak the English
language as their mother-tongue; who possess in a more or less degree
the national characteristics of the race from which they have sprung;
who exercise an influence over a greater area of the surface of the
earth than that of any other race upon it; who directly control over
250 millions of people not of their own race, and indirectly control
many millions more; whose commercial relations are more extensive than
those of all the other nations of the world put together; whose wealth
is unrivalled; whose political institutions have hitherto served as
a model, as they have been the envy of less favored peoples; and who
may be said, without fear of contradiction, to lead the van of the
world’s civilisation. It is difficult, when we spread a map out before
us, to realise that so small a dot as Great Britain appears upon it,
should have given birth to these stupendous forces; and one is led to
examine into the processes by which so marvellous a position has been
achieved in the world’s history as that which these small islands must
occupy, even though that position seems now about to be destroyed by
what appears to an outsider to be a combination of national decrepitude
and administrative impotence,—for it is only when a nation has itself
lost its vigor, that it tolerates imbecility on the part of its rulers.
The greatness of England has been built up, not on the conquests
of its neighbors, or of nations equally civilised with itself, as
we have seen occur in the cases of other great empires, but in the
comparatively easy subjugation of barbarous peoples; in the occupation
and colonisation of countries sparingly inhabited by savage races; in
the material development of vast tracts of the earth’s surface; in the
creation of new markets, of new sources alike of supply and of demand;
and in the energetic and profitable employment of capital in all the
regions of the earth. This was possible, and possible only because
her adventurous sons who went forth into wild and distant regions to
occupy, to develop, and to create, always felt that they had behind
them a motherland whose proud boast it was that she ruled the waves,
and a nation and Government so thoroughly animated by their own daring
and adventurous spirit, that they knew that none were too humble or
insignificant to be watched over and protected; nay, more, they were
encouraged in hardy enterprises, and often assisted to carry them out.
“During the last two or three years, the circumstances of my life,
into which it is not necessary for me now to enter, have forced me
not merely to circumnavigate the globe, but especially to visit those
British possessions, and those seaboards of lands still relative
if barbarous, upon which your countrymen are so thickly dotted as
merchants or settlers, and where British subjects of foreign race
abound, who carry on their avocations under that British protection
which used to be a reality, but is now only a name. Familiar as I
have been with Englishmen from my youth, I found a spirit of bitter
discontent rife, which, even among your grumbling race, was altogether
a new feature in their conversation, especially with a foreigner. Many
were making arrangements to close up their business and abandon the
commerce in which they were engaged; some, and this was especially the
case among the British subjects of foreign race, were taking steps
to change their nationality. In some of the colonies the language
held sounded to my Russian ears little short of high treason; while
I often heard Englishmen in the society of foreigners say that they
were ashamed to call themselves Englishmen—a sentiment which I do not
remember ever having heard one of your countrymen give vent to in my
youth.
“I only mention these as illustrations of the fact which was forcibly
impressed upon me during my travels, that the influence of England
was waning, not in Europe, where it _has_ waned, but where it might
be recovered by a vigorous stroke of policy,—but in Asia, Africa, and
America—in those continents from which she derives her position and her
wealth. The waning of British influence in Europe means, comparatively,
nothing, so far as British commerce is concerned. The waning of that
influence in the three other continents means national decay. It has
not been by her great wars, her European campaigns, that England has
achieved greatness, but by her little ones in those distant countries
which your Government seems ready to retire from, bag and baggage, at
the first word of a new-comer; and yet one would suppose that nothing
could be clearer to a people not in its dotage than this, that if they
do not protect their merchants, the latter will not be able to compete
with those who are protected. If you desire proof of this, look at the
increasing substitution of German for English houses of commerce all
over the world; and if commerce languishes, food becomes dearer for
those very classes who cry out against those little wars which, when
wisely turned to account have proved your best national investments,
and have been the indirect means of giving food and employment to your
starving millions. I see that there is some talk of a committee being
appointed to inquire into the causes of the depression of trade. Those
causes are not very far to seek; or rather, in another sense, they are
very far to seek. You must travel from China to Peru to find them, and
they will stare you in the face. I have been watching, while you are
squabbling over your Franchise and your Redistribution Bills, how your
trade is slipping from you. So you go on fiddling on the two strings of
your electoral fiddle, while Rome is burning. One would have supposed
that England was old enough by this time to have discovered that it
would not improve her voters to give them another shuffle; that she had
experience enough to know that electors were like playing cards, the
more you shuffle them the dirtier they get. With the interests of the
empire at stake, certainly in two if not in three continents, you play
the ostrich, and bury your heads in parish politics—parish politics of
the most pestilent and useless description.
“Do you want to know why trade languishes? It is summed up in a short
sentence: Want of confidence on the part of the trader; it cramps his
enterprise, damps his ardor, spoils his temper, and crushes all the
manliness out of him. The commercial stability of England was not built
up by a lot of unprotected females, which is the condition the British
merchant abroad is rapidly being reduced to by the neglect and apathy
and indifference to his interests of his Government. He is perfectly
well aware in every port there is a consul, that he is considered a
nuisance by that functionary, who knows that in the degree in which he
prevents his complaints from reaching the department which is supposed
to direct the foreign policy of England, he will be considered capable
and efficient. No longer does he feel himself to be the _Civis Romanus_
of old days. His sugar plantations may be destroyed in Madagascar,
his commercial interests may be imperilled in China, he may be robbed
and insulted in Turkey; but he is gradually being taught, by bitter
experience, that it is hopeless to look to diplomatic interference
for redress. Meanwhile the British taxpayer continues to pay for that
expensive luxury whose function it is supposed to be to protect those
commercial interests abroad upon which the prosperity and wealth of
Great Britain depends. In like manner the ties between the mother
country and her colonies are weakened by her persistent shrinking from
the responsibilities and obligations which the welfare and security of
those colonies involve. She sacrifices ruthlessly that prestige upon
the maintenance of which the safety, and in some cases the allegiance,
of her subjects depends. She deludes unhappy colonists into making
investments and settlements in half-civilised States upon the faith
of treaties, which she ignominiously shrinks from enforcing at the
first appearance of danger, and calmly leaves her savage allies to be
slaughtered and her colonists to be plundered, as in the case of South
Africa; or she makes transparent display of her timidity and weakness,
as has been conspicuously the case in her relations with her Australian
possessions; or retreats from the protection of her natural frontiers,
as she has lately done in India. And all this is in pursuance of a
theory of political economy incomprehensible to the unprejudiced
observer like myself, that it is cheaper and more advantageous to
the national prosperity to sacrifice the commercial interests of the
country than to incur the risks and expense of protecting them. The
only explanation one can give of an infatuation so incredible, of a
policy so short-sighted and so fraught with disaster, is, that it is
based on ignorance—ignorance of the present injury that it is working,
and ignorance of the dangers to which it is giving birth. There can be
no surer way of precipitating the crisis which England seeks to avoid,
and which, when it comes, must involve the utter ruin of her trade,
than the invitation which her craven attitude offers to her covetous
and unscrupulous neighbors, whether they be civilised or uncivilised,
to encroach to their own profit, until at last the veil which is now
before the eyes of the public in England will be torn away, and they
will find themselves suddenly called upon to abandon the parochial
details over which they have been wrangling, for sterner work. It will
be too late then to regret the penny-wise and pound-foolish policy
which plunged them into the mess: the only question they will have to
consider is, whether it is not too late to get out of it.”
“I am a good deal surprised,”I remarked, after having listened to
the unflattering utterances of my friend with some dissatisfaction,
“that you entirely ignore all other considerations than those of mere
policy and expediency. Granting, as you say, that the present policy of
England imperils its commercial ascendency, are no other considerations
to be allowed to guide the policy of a nation than those connected
with its pocket? Have we no moral duties to perform, no example to
set, no principles to maintain? Or are we ever to remain a nation
of shopkeepers, fighting unscrupulously for markets; grabbing the
territory of savages, under the pretext of civilising them, which is
usually accomplished by the process of extermination; and jostling all
other comers out of the markets of the world by fair means or foul?
Because these means served us some centuries ago, and because, if you
will, our national greatness is built upon them, does it follow that
we should cling to them in these more enlightened days? If the moral
instinct of the people of England begins to revolt against them, even
to the prejudice of the national purse, do our money-bags constitute
a sufficient reason why we should remain in the Cimmerian darkness
and brutality of the middle ages? Of all men you were the last whom I
expected to hear confound moral progress with political imbecility.”
“Nay,”returned Ivan, “I should be the first to congratulate you on a
policy of moral progress, if, in that pursued at present by England,
I could discover it. What moral progress is there in a policy which
has resulted in the slaughter of thousands of unhappy Arabs in Egypt
and the Eastern Soudan? Where does moral progress show itself in the
expedition which has worked its weary way into the heart of Africa, to
fight against the naked savages there? Where is the moral progress of
a policy which has necessitated another military expedition to South
Africa, and new annexations of territory there? What moral progress
have you achieved in Turkey, where you are bound by treaty to institute
reforms in that part of the empire over which you are supposed by the
same treaty to exercise a protectorate, the very existence of which,
under the policy of moral progress, it has been found convenient to
ignore, because it involves responsibilities towards an oppressed and
suffering people, whose oppression and whose sufferings it would now be
expensive and troublesome to recognise, though political capital enough
is made out of them when the exigencies of your local party warfare
demand it? The question is, in what does real moral progress consist?
Certainly not in the blatant profession of moral platitudes—the
abstract truth of which everybody recognizes—when they are accompanied
by a practice which gives them the lie direct. There can be nothing
more demoralising to the moral welfare of a nation than a policy which
is in flagrant contradiction to its lofty moral pretensions. Not only
does it degrade the national conscience, but it renders that conscience
an object of derision and contempt among foreign nations. To be logical
and consistent, the politician ‘who is in trouble about his soul’ must
follow one of two courses,—either he must recognise the fact that
national egotism, like individual egotism, is a vice which admits of no
compromise, and that the duty of his country is to love other countries
better than itself; that the love of money, and therefore the making
of it, is the root of all evil; that when the nation is metaphorically
asked for its cloak, it should give its coat also—and when smitten on
one cheek, should turn the other to the smiter;—when he is reluctantly
convinced that, however desirable this higher law might be, and however
indisputable its morality, it is, under the existing conditions of
humanity, impracticable, then he has no alternative but to base the
national policy upon the exactly opposite principle, which is that
which governs the policy of all other nations, and assume that his duty
consists in protecting the interests of his own country against those
of rival countries, which are all engaged in an incessant competitive
warfare against each other; and he will find, by experience, that any
attempt to compromise with the opposite or altruistic principle will
inevitably lead to disaster, for it will involve that hesitation and
weakness in the conduct of affairs which will encourage those rivals
to overt acts of offence and encroachment that must ultimately lead to
bloody wars in defence of those national interests which a policy of
vacillation and of moral inconsistency will have imperilled. Sooner or
later, it is certain that the force of events will rip off the thin
veneering of cant which had served to delude the ignorant masses, and
to conceal either the stupidity or the insincerity of its professors. I
say stupidity, for there can be little doubt that among those who guide
the destinies of the nation are many who honestly share the belief with
the public they help to mislead, that to shrink from responsibilities,
to temporise in the face of danger, to make sacrifices and concessions
in order to conciliate, will avert catastrophes instead of
precipitating them; while there are others to whose common-sense it
would be an insult to make any such assumption.”
“But these others,”I observed, “may, without any insult to their
common-sense, be supposed to entertain the opinion that the possessions
of the British empire are sufficiently extended and difficult to
protect, to render any further annexation of territory, or acquisition
of responsibility, undesirable.”
“Doubtless; and in this I agree with them. Indeed, the incapacity
they have shown to protect what they have got, is the best reason
they could assign for being unwilling to have more; but it does not
touch the question of the principle upon which England’s policy should
be based in her dealings with foreign nations, and with her own
colonial possessions; in other words, what are the most economical
and at the same time the most moral methods of self-preservation? I
put economy before morality, because, whatever may be the professions
of Governments in practice, as a consideration, it always precedes
it. If bloodguiltiness was not always attended with so much expense,
people’s consciences would be far less sensitive on the subject. Hence
it happens that highly moral financiers are apt to regard things as
wicked in the degree in which they are costly, while they are too
short-sighted as statesmen to perceive that a prompt expenditure is
often the best way of saving a far heavier amount, which must be
the result of the delay—or, in homely phraseology, that a stitch in
time saves nine. The most economical and the most moral method of
self-preservation, then, will be found in consolidating, protecting,
and extending the commercial position and moral influence of the great
English-speaking people in all quarters of the globe. At this moment,
though surrounded by enemies who envy and hate her, there is no country
more safe from attack than Germany, because she is governed by a
statesman who never shirks responsibility, cowers before danger, or,
in moments of difficulty, takes refuge in compromise or concession.
It is not England, with her horror of war, that has, during the last
decade, been the Power which has prevented a European war, otherwise
inevitable, from breaking forth; the statesman to whom the peace of
Europe has been due, upon whom that peace now depends, and who is
therefore doing the most for the moral progress of Europe, is exactly
that statesman who never indulges in moral platitudes, and whom his
worst enemy cannot accuse of hypocrisy. No one will pretend that peace
is not more conducive to economy and moral progress than war; but to
secure it, a great military position and a great national prestige
are alike indispensable. England has, or should have, the first naval
position in the world, and, until lately, her national prestige was
second to none. These advantages confer on her great responsibilities;
to part with them is to diminish her powers of usefulness in the
world, and her mission of civilising it. As the champion of civil and
religious liberty, she owes a duty to humanity, which it would be a
crime alike in the eyes of God and man for her to relinquish, even
though it may cost blood and treasure to maintain it,—for the amount
expended to maintain it would be as nothing compared to the sacrifices
of both life and money which the abandonment of this duty would entail
upon the world. I speak feelingly, for I cannot conceive a greater
disaster befall the human race, than to see the place of England
usurped by the nation of which I have the honor of being a humble
member,”here Ivan smiled bitterly. “So absorbed are you in your own
vestry quarrels, that you either forget or are ignorant of the place
you occupy in the regard of millions, who see in England the apostle
of free thought, free speech, free institutions. Your standard, which
we look up to as the flag of liberty, and which should be nailed to
the mast, we watch you with dismay lowering to every piratical craft,
while the crew are fighting about a distribution of provisions, and the
pilot seems to prefer running his ship on the rocks to boldly facing
the enemy’s cruisers. Nothing strikes us members of the oppressed and
suppressed races as more anomalous and incomprehensible, than the
fact that the party in England which are most ready to compromise the
honor of that flag, and to haul it down on the least provocation, are
precisely that party who are most loud-tongued in their profession
of sympathy for those races to whom it is the banner on which their
hopes are fixed—the symbol in their eyes of progress, civilisation,
and political freedom. Hence it is that all those among us who are
not absolute anarchists, find ourselves unconsciously withdrawing our
sympathies from that political party in your country, who, while they
style themselves the party of progress and of advanced thought, are in
reality compromising the cause which I feel sure they honestly cherish
and believe in, by destroying the prestige and lowering the influence
of the one European Power which is its great representative—and, to our
own great wonderment, are beginning rather to pin our hopes for the
future upon those whom we have hitherto considered reactionary, because
they called themselves Conservative and aristocratic, but who, in this
crisis of the fortunes of their country, resist a policy calculated to
impair its supremacy. Thus, on a higher principle than that appealed to
by the political moralists who direct the helm of State, may the best
interests of morality be reconciled with those of their own country;
for it is by maintaining the supremacy of England that the principle
which is identified with her institutions, her traditions, and the
aspirations of her people, can be best secured in the interests of
that universal society of which she forms part, and towards which she
undoubtedly has moral obligations and responsibilities. The party
which seeks to evade them, whether upon specious theories started by
_doctrinaires_ ignorant of international conditions, or upon penny-wise
and pound-foolish grounds of economy, are in reality the party of
reaction; for they are the best allies of reactionists, and are playing
into their hands, as no people have better reason for knowing than the
Russians, who have observed with dismay the sympathy of your Prime
Minister with ‘the divine figure of the North,’ as he has styled our
ruler, and his methods of government; while from our point of view, the
party of progress in England, let them call themselves Conservative
if they so please, are those who, true to the grand traditions of the
country, are determined to keep it in the van of freedom, not merely
because its wealth and prosperity are due to that absolute civil and
political liberty which imposed no check upon individual enterprise or
achievement, but because with the preservation of its greatness are
bound up the most cherished interests of the human race.”
“Come, Ivan,”I said, laughing, “you have wound up with a peroration as
much too flattering to my country as you were too uncomplimentary at
the start. For an ‘old idiot,’ you have ended by giving her a pretty
good character.”
“Not at all,”he rejoined; “I ended by describing her splendid position
and advantages. I called her an old idiot for either being unconscious
of them, or throwing them away consciously. And I ventured to add a
word of encouragement to those who are struggling to prevent these
being thrown away, and to assure them that, in their resistance to the
short-sighted and fatuous policy of their present rulers, they have
the cordial sympathy of philosophic Liberals like myself (I am not
now speaking of Socialists and Nihilists, whose lands are against all
parties) all over Europe. One of your own most eminent philosophers,
himself a Liberal, has recently written a book, in which he has shown
the danger by which the true principle of liberty is threatened from
the reactionary tendencies of the democratic autocracy. I merely wish
to assure you that we in Europe are fully alive to this danger, and
dread as much the despotism which springs from the divine right of
mobs, as from that of kings. There is to my mind as little of God in
the _vox populi_ as in an Imperial ukase; and our only safety between
these two extremes, which I should rather be disposed to call infernal
than divine, lies in the common-sense, patriotism, and virtue of those
statesmen, politicians, and lawyers who, holding a middle course
between them, as being both equally dangerous to the principles of
true liberty, endeavor not merely to preserve the institutions of
that country which is the home of liberty, but, by maintaining its
supremacy, enable it to resist attacks from whatever quarter.”
“I have lived too much out of England for the greater part of my
life,”I remarked, “to be much of a party man; still, from early
and family association, my sympathies rather incline towards that
party which now control its policy, though I admit they have shown
but indifferent foresight, skill, or judgment in grappling with the
difficulties which they had to confront. Still it is only fair to
them to remember that these were left them as a heritage by their
predecessors; and that if they have blundered somewhat in the effort to
set matters right—conspicuously in Egypt, for example—it was not they
who set matters wrong in the first instance in that country.”
“That I entirely deny,”responded Ivan, “as I think I can prove to
you in a very few words. But before doing so, allow me to express my
surprise at your admission that, because you were a Liberal in the
days of Lord Palmerston, who was pre-eminently the representative of
the policy which I have advocated as being that which should animate
a British statesman, your sympathies should extend to those who,
while they wear the old party livery, have entirely departed from
the old party lines. His mantle has indeed fallen upon them, but
they have so completely turned it inside out that it is no longer
recognisable. In the days when a party existed which called itself
‘Liberal-Conservative,’ there was no violent political issues at home
to check the current of a domestic legislation which was ever steadily
progressive; while in foreign affairs the Government of the day,
whether it was Conservative or Liberal, followed the well-established
traditions of British policy abroad, which, if it had incurred the
jealousy of European Powers, at all events commanded their admiration
and respect. The utterly inconsistent and perplexing attitude which
England has now assumed, so entirely at variance with the principles
by which her foreign policy was formerly governed, must of necessity
deprive her of all sympathy abroad, for she has proved herself totally
untrustworthy as an ally—while all true Liberals must deplore the
agitation which has resulted from a domestic legislation that has a
tendency unnecessarily to exacerbate party feeling, and drive people
into violently opposite extremes. Nothing is more fatal to all real
progress than a wild and unreasoning rush in the direction in which it
is supposed to lie, because the inevitable consequence is a reaction
most probably equally unreasoning. Moreover, these violent swings
of the political pendulum must always be attended with the greatest
possible danger. A Conservative triumph which is purchased at the
price of acts of folly, rashness, or weakness, perpetrated by their
opponents, is paid for by the country, and is but a sorry bargain.
It is not under such violently disturbing influences that sound and
healthy Liberal progress is made. And all history proves that the
liberty which is born in convulsions invariably degenerates into a
license which culminates in a tyranny.
“And now one word in reply to your allusion to the present position of
matters in Egypt, and more especially with regard to that legacy of
disasters which the present Government maintain they have inherited
from the policy of Lord Beaconsfield, and which, with characteristic
weakness, they constantly invoke as an excuse for their own
shortcomings. When the Anglo-French _condominium_ was established
in Egypt—which is regarded as the _fons et origo mali_—an _entente
cordiale_, which was rapidly ripening into an alliance, had been formed
between Germany, Austria, and England, in which, to a certain extent,
Italy was included, and upon which Turkey depended for her existence;
it formed, therefore, a combination of European Powers which controlled
Europe, and was in a position to dictate, especially to Prussia and
France, both weakened as those two Powers were by recent wars, and
by internal dangers and dissensions—both being, moreover, the only
Powers in Europe whose interests clashed with those of England in the
East, and whose policy, therefore, it was the interest of England
narrowly to watch, and, if need be, to control. The faculty for doing
this had been wisely secured to her by the European combination in
which she had entered, above alluded to. Under these circumstances
she had nothing to fear in Egypt from an association with France in
the dual control. Practically it became a single control; for, with
Germany and Austria at her back, England could dictate her own policy
in Egypt, and, in the event of its not suiting her French associate,
could even dare to enforce it without the slightest fear of the peace
of Europe being endangered thereby. Her political supremacy in Egypt
was, in fact, guaranteed to her by Germany and Austria, who had no
reason to regard it with jealousy, while they obtained in return
that commanding position which England’s adhesion to their alliance
secured them in Europe. So far, then, from having succeeded to a
heritage of difficulty, the present Government succeeded to one of
absolute security. But the whole aspect of the political chessboard was
changed when the new player, who took over the game in the middle of
it, removed the piece which gave check to king and queen, and which,
if it was not moved away, rendered final victory a certainty. Lord
Beaconsfield’s policy in Egypt turned upon the Anglo-Germanic-Austrian
Alliance. When, after his fall from office, this was rudely ruptured
by insulting expressions of antipathy to Austria on the part of his
successor, the effect of which, subsequent expressions of apology were
inadequate to efface—by a strongly marked coldness towards Germany,
and a no less marked _rapprochement_ towards France—the latter
Power, relieved from the dread of the European combination, which
had up to that moment held her quiescent in Egypt, jumped up like a
jack-in-the-box, and favored us with that series of intrigues which
gave us Arabi, and the evils that followed in his train. Meantime,
utterly isolated in Europe by that rupture with the most powerful
friends in it, with which the policy of Lord Beaconsfield had provided
you, you found yourselves betrayed and deserted by the ally you had
chosen instead of them; while every concession you made to that ally,
and every attempt at conciliation, only plunged you deeper in the mire,
in which you have since been left to flounder alone, a laughing-stock
and object of derision to all Europe, and more especially to those
Powers who might have proved your salvation, but who have since entered
into other European combinations from which England is excluded, and
which may prove in the highest degree dangerous to her. No assertion,
therefore, can be more utterly false in fact than the statement that
the heritage to which this Government succeeded was one of trouble.
So far from it, the policy of their predecessors had left them in a
position of commanding strength; and to lay the misfortunes which
have since arisen at the door of those who had taken such precautions
that they could never arise, is as though a general who should take
over the command of an army placed strategically in an impregnable
position, should abandon that position altogether, and after being
defeated in the open field, find fault with the nature of the defences
he had abandoned. But,” added Ivan, with a yawn, stretching himself,
looking at his watch, and going to the open window, “you will think
that I have degenerated from the philosophical spectator into the keen
party politician. This I was compelled to be during my recent visit
to London, where you are nothing if you are not partisan. The flavor
of Piccadilly clings to me still: how much more delicious are the
odorous night airs of these southern climes! Look up at those stars,
my old friend, before you go to bed, and thank them that you have been
spared the cares and the ambitions of the Treasury bench.”—_Blackwood’s
Magazine._