572 England, Russia, and Turkey. [ June, 
ened by a powerful and practised force. We are no panegyrists of 
Alexander ; but he had merits that ought to distinguish his memory. 
His early life was that of a Russian noble, and was deeply stained by 
the excesses of a court, over which reigned the most profligate sovereign 
of the age. But time, the vicissitudes of a life of great public anxiety, 
and perhaps feelings, born of a higher source, gradually purified and 
elevated his character. To the proposals for renewed hostilities with 
the Porte he turned an unwilling ear ; he resisted the popular outcry 
with a fortitude which had often been found fatal to Russian princes; 
he cultivated peace with Europe; he made no aggression on his 
neighbours, and his death displayed the calmness and the hope of more 
than the feeble and failing philosophy of this world. 
The new reign began ominously ; for it was signalized by the most 
extended and extraordinary conspiracy that had ever been formed even’ 
in Russia, the country of conspiracy. A sudden zeal of revolution had 
seized the army, and Nicholas found that his first step to the throne 
must be over the bodies of his soldiers. <A list of wpwards of a thousand 
officers, of every rank, showed at once the peril of the monarch, and the 
strange and desperate spirit that rises from despotism, like the pestilence 
from the swamp. Scaffolds and military massacres tamed the insurrec- 
tion for the time: but the despot’s fate is to sleep on an uneasy pillow, 
and with the form of conspiracy haunting his dreams. While Europe 
looked with surprise and repugnance on this frightful scene of fierce 
enthusiasm crushed by savage justice, it was startled by the sound of 
war on the devoted frontier of Wallachia. 
A new pretext had been easily found in the shape of the old, exaggerated 
by the proverbial artifice of Russia. The removal of the Hospodars, _ 
who had been again found in close connexion with Russia, the pacifica- 
tion of Greece, and the navigation of the Dardanelles, furnished grounds -_ 
sufficient for the flourish of a manifesto; and the young Czar plunged 
into hostilities, with the lofty determination of planting his standard on — 
the walls of Constantinople before the close of the campaign. ¢ 
Nothing in this whole tissue of rashness and perfidy was more sing 
than the part which England suffered herself to play. Her policy i 
principle peaceful ; for every shot fired in Europe either kills a puré 
‘ of her manufactures, or wastes the money that was to purchase 
Burke, in his pithy style, describes an English war, even for lish 
objects, aS one in which we buy ten thousand Wee ies a : 
at ten thousand times their value. But the hostilities of Europe 
break up the highways of British commerce, crush it by emb 
goes and blockades, exhaust the means of the population, and dispirit — 
the whole frame of commercial intercourse. War is fatal to trade, and 
trade is the sinew of the strength of England. But her old alliances were 
sworn with Turkey ; her recognized policy for centuries was the protec- 
tion of Turkey; her commercial prosperity was incompatible with the — 
possession of the Turkish capital by the same power which already — 
domineered over the Baltic ; and yet, in the face of all those important 
considerations, England struck the most formidable blow against the 
Porte that it has received since the days of Sobieski. For the misfor- 
tune of her ally, and the disgrace of her own wisdom, Mr. Canning had 
suddenly been placed at the head of her councils. His elevation onl 
shewed the infinite difference between the distinctions of a pop 
assembly, and of a cabinet.. He was a wit, a man of' taste, and a flu 
orator: He captivated the House of Commons; and he forgo 
