576 England, Russia, and Turkey. [June, 
which Asia and the East of Europe might be awed ; but it would be 
an immediate and tremendous instrument of European disturbance by 
its perpetual transmission of the whole naval strength of Russia into 
the centre of Europe. The Russian fleet is unimportant, while it is 
liable to be locked up for half the year in the ice of the North; or 
while, to reach the Mediterranean, it must make the circuit of Europe. 
But if the passage of the Dardanelles were once her own, there is no 
limit to the force which she might form in the Black Sea, and pour 
down direct into the Levant. There can be no doubt, that with this 
occasion for the employment of a naval force, Russia would throw a 
vast portion of her strength into a naval shape ; and that while the Cir- 
cassian forests furnished a tree, or the plains, from the Ukraine to 
Archangel, supplied hemp and tar, fleet upon fleet would be created in 
the dock-yards of the Crimea, and be poured down in overwhelming 
numbers into the Mediterranean. 
Thus it is impossible that the Czar shall attack Constantinople with- 
out involving the world in war, and in that war England must be a 
principal. The premier’s opinion has been distinctly stated on this 
subject, and so far as we can rely on the fluctuating wisdom of cabinets, 
it coincides with that of France and Prussia. To arrange more syste- 
matically the resistance to the ruin of Turkey, the Duke of Wellington 
is said to be on the eve of an extensive European tour, in which he will 
ascertain the dependence to be placed upon the courts, and discover 
how far the Czar may have learned moderation from his last campaign. 
But the world is in a feverish state: ambition is reviving ; conspiracy 
is gathering on the Continent, and the first hour that sees the Russian 
superiority in the field decisive, will see the great sovereignties remon- __ 
strating, arming, and finally rushing, as to a new crusade, but with the 
sword unsheathed, not for the fall, but for the defence of the turban! 
That this will be the ultimate consequence we have no doubt. But 
the time may not be immediate. We are inclined to think that the 
French war has not yet been sufliciently forgotten by the states of cen- 
tral Europe to suffer them to run the hazards of collision without the 
most anxious efforts for its avoidance. There is a general deficiency 
money. All the great powers are actually, at this hour, living on loans. 
There is no power in Europe whose revenue is enough for its expendi- 
ture. Even here we are borrowing. Our three millions of exchequer 
bills, issued in the fifteenth year of peace, shows us how little the finance ~ f 
system has sustained our expectations. A war, even for a year, would | Fs 
double our expenditure. On the continent, Rothschild is the true 
monarch. Every state is in his books, and what must be the confusion, 
the beggary, and the ultimate bankruptcy of hostilities. The fall of every 
throne must follow the bankruptcy of every exchequer, and the whole 
social system be broken up amid revolutionary havee and individual 
misery. We believe that the four great powers are so fully convinced 
of the evil of this tremendous hazard, that they are struggling in every 
shape of diplomacy to avert the continuance of a war between Turkey 
and Russia. If they succeed, peace will, in all probability, continue for 
a few years more ; if they fail, Europe must instantly arm, and a scene 
of warfare be roused, to which there has been no equal since the fall of 
the Roman Empire. But no skill of diplomacy, no terror of thrones, 
and no poverty of nations, can avert the evil beyond a certain time. 
War will come. We are now treading on the fuel that will be kindled 
into an irresistible blaze ; empires will be consumed, and the old and 
accumulated guilt of mankind will be at length revenged ! 
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