504 WAR IN THE FUTURE. 



jealousy with which true Britons regard the Russian 

 success in Central Asia is surely a very miserable feel- 

 ing. That a vast region of the earth should be 

 opened, that robbery and rapine and slave-making 

 raids should be suppressed, that waste-lands should be 

 cultivated, that new stores of wealth should be dis- 

 covered, that new markets should be established for 

 the products of European industry, our own among the 

 rest, that Russia should adjoin England in Asia as she 

 adjoins Germany in Europe, what a lamentable occur- 

 rence, what an ominous event ! In Central Africa it 

 often happens, that between two barbarous and distrust- 

 ful nations there is a wide neutral ground, inhabited 

 by wild beasts, which prey upon the flocks and herds 

 on either side. Such is the policy which maintains the 

 existence of barbarous kingdoms between two civilised 

 frontiers. The great Turkish and Chinese Empires, the 

 Lands of Morocco, Abyssinia, and Thibet, will be even- 

 tually filled with free, industrious, and educated popu- 

 lations. But those people will never begin to advance 

 until their property is rendered secure, until they en- 

 joy the rights of man ; and these they will never obtain 

 except by means of European conquest. In British India 

 the peasant reaps the rice which he has sown ; and the 

 merchant has no need to hide his gold beneath the 

 ground. The young men of the new generation are 

 looking forward to the time when the civil appoint- 

 ments of their country will be held by them. The 

 Indian Mutiny was a mutiny only, and not a rebellion; 

 the industrious and mercantile classes were on the 

 English side. There is a sickly school of politicians 

 who declare that all countries belong to their inhabi- 

 tants, and that to take them is a crime. If any 

 country in Asia did belong to its inhabitants, there 



