602 Politics and Prospects of Russia. [^Di^c. 



But to bring the matter to a close • will the British minister dare to say, 

 that English influence on the Continent is at this day in the same posi- 

 tion in which it stood this day two years, nay, this day twelve months? 

 Even he will not dare to say any such thing ; he wiU come down to the 

 House with a reluctant whine about the force of circumstances, and the 

 necessity of existing things ; and conclude with a flourish about internal 

 prosperity, and a fiction about " our having received from all the powers 

 of Europe, the fullest assurances of peace." The comedy will soon dege- 

 nerate into farce ; and the parties on both sides will amuse themselves 

 ■with calculating which will draw the profits of the piece. But there will 

 be another game abroad. A tremendous game, in which those miserable 

 jugglers will be forgotten, and kingdoms be the stake, and the wild pas- 

 sions and furious energies of barbarian power will sweep the board. 



If we shall be asked, what was to be done ? we answer, that a British 

 cabinet, deserving of the name, would have two years ago declared to 

 Russia, that the first shot fired against the Porte was a declaration of war 

 against England. And the words should have been followed, not by a 

 course of pitiful applications to foreign courts, to ask whether they would 

 suffer England to speak her mind, but by the sailing of a fleet of twenty 

 sail of the line for the Black Sea, with orders to burn every Russian esta- 

 blishment on its shore to the ground, and by the sailing of another fleet 

 for the blockade of the Baltic, and the burning of Cronstadt. 



The Czar would have instantly returned his sword into the sheath, 

 and the healing and protecting sovereignty of England would have been 

 acknowledged, and felt as a blessing to the world. 



If we are asked, what should be done now, our answer is equally 

 mihcsitating. Turn out the Wellington cabinet ; get rid of a tribe who 

 have shown themselves incapable of governing the empire. Send them 

 to their gallantries or their gamblings ; — send them any where, but into 

 the King's Council chamber. They have already lost the confidence of 

 the friends of the Constitution, by their avowed " breaking in upon the 

 Constitution." They have lost the respect of religious men by their 

 introducing the great corruption of Christianity in the person of 

 Romanists and idolaters into the Protestant legislature. They have now 

 lost even the coarser confidence of those, who expected in the daring 

 breakers down of the constitution, at least the courage that would defend 

 the political rights and honour of England from strangers and bar- 

 barians. 



They have made themselves contemptible in the eyes of politicians, at 

 home and abroad ; and receiving the empire into their hands, floin-ishing, 

 free, and at the highest rank of national supremacy, they will have to 

 give it up, failing in its resources, curtailed of its influence, and degraded 

 in its fame. 



Worse still may be behind. The sensitiveness of free minds may be 

 tried before long. The " breaker in upon the Constitution of 1680" is 

 still — such is the fortune of the land — among the living, ay, and in power. 

 But on this point we shall now say no more. Born in a free country, and 

 calling ourselves free men, we are not unaware of the signs of the times ; 

 we respect the wisdom of the dungeon, and do homage to the dignity of 

 the chain. 



