favourable circumstance to the success of these undertakings, that the Count is so closely connected with Prince Metternich, over whom it would appear he has considerable influence. A great minister, possessed of such intelligence and ability as all the world ascribes to Metternich, cannot be blind to the discontent and disaffection of the Hungarians, among whom a strong spirit of freedom is rapidly gaining ground; nor can he shut his eyes to the incalculable advantage of conciliating the good will and affection of eight (some say ten) millions of people occupying the advanced and most vulnerable post of the empire.

The circumstances we have mentioned, the connexion of Count Szecheny with Metternich, and the time, are all propitious to the regeneration of Hungary. The soil and climate are highly favourable for agriculture and pasture, but the hand of the labourer wants the fostering and protecting care which is but partially bestowed by his lord; and until freedom is given to the serfs, exemption from forced labour to the peasantry, and taxation levied equally on the noble and the peasant,-until roads and canals shall afford the means of transporting produce to a ready market, and the government removes the heavy duties now exacted from all commodities passing the frontiers, even into the other Austrian provinces, it would be in vain to look for any great improvement in the prosperity of the country. The direction of the rivers, and the general surface, a great portion of which is free from mountains and hills, are highly favourable for opening internal navigation at a small expense: yet we believe there are as yet but three canals in all Hungary ;-one called the Franz canal, uniting the Danube and Theiss from Pesth to Szolnok; that of Begal, which connects that river with the Temes, in the government of Temeswar; and a short one connected with the river Sarviz. The products, cramped as they are in the present state of the country, are various and valuable; wheat, Indian corn, and other kinds of grain,-pulse, tobacco, and wine,-wool, skins, tallow,-hemp, flax, and timber-the latter not abundant; but sufficient for architectural and domestic purposes,-gold, silver, copper, and iron,coals, saltpetre, salt, and alum,-all, or most of them, marketable commodities. Poland takes off large quantities of their wines, and the surplus of wheat is mostly sent to North Italy, towards which and the port of Fiume are their only tolerably good roads. From this port a few cargoes of the excellent hemp of Hungary have recently been imported into England,-a commerce which it would be good policy in our government to encourage.

This progress, and the public spirit and unity called forth-not only by the results of such enterprises, but by their very existence-are elements of political power of the utmost moment at

the

the present crisis. Hungary, Transylvania, and the provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia, lie now unsheltered before Russia. Treaties will only be binding on her as these countries afford practical means of resistance. Whatever, therefore, improves the state and resources of these countries, augments their spirit of nationality, or connects their interests with the interests or the sympathy of the remainder of Europe, renders the progress of Russia more difficult and hazardous. Happily, Mr. Quin's information on this subject coincides with the light which has lately broken upon us from many other quarters; and all this we trust most fervently will at length arouse us from that state of negligence of our foreign interests, which has always been the harbinger of national decay.

Austria has long, and unfortunately alone, felt the necessity of arresting Russia. She may now have resigned herself to a feeling of hopeless resignation to an inevitable destiny; but if anything can arouse her, it is the fact stated from Constantinople, that Russia is fortifying the Delta of the Danube, and throwing at bridge of boats across the Sulina mouth of that river; the object being, no doubt, to search all passengers, or to raise a toll on the trade of Austria and the Turkish provinces. When we consider this, and look at Silistria, who can doubt of her having the complete command of the navigation of the river from that point?

Mr. Quin tells us that the state of the provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia is little known in England; and he thus proceeds to enlighten us:—

They are occupied chiefly by a Sclavonian population, to which the Greeks also belong [!!!] professing the Greek Catholic religion, actuated by an indelible hatred to the Turks, and intimately connected with Russia by religious as well as national sympathies. Though compelled by conquest to acknowledge the sovereignty of the Porte, the provinces which are separated from the Russian empire by the Pruth, and mere geographical lines, were governed for many years by two hospodars, native princes, selected by the Porte, and continued in authority during the sultan's pleasure. Vexatious imposts, and great irregularities in the administration of justice, produced incessant discontent among the people, who demanded the protection of the [Russian] emperor against the exactions and abuses of Turkish authority. The emperor listened willingly to their complaints, and under the pretext of securing them the free exercise of their religion, which was in truth never disturbed, interposed in their favour. The treaty of Bucharest, which was concluded in 1912, gave a direct sanction to that interposition so far as the interests of religion were concerned. The treaty of 1829, concluded at Adrianople, at the end of the late war, may be considered as handing over the provinces to Russia altogether.'-vol. i. pp. 186, 187.

We

Mere

The

We do not think that such a passage as this is likely to diminish the ignorance of the people of England. In fact, the easiest mode of, correcting it would be by inserting a 'not' before each assertion. The population is not Sclavonic. The Wallachians have no national sympathies connecting them with the Russians; their church has always been supreme and unmolested; the Pruth' is only the last frontier, and has been so only since Russia took to herself a large portion of Moldavia proper. geographical lines' have never separated the two empires. Dniester, the Dnieper, the Ingul, the Bog, the Pruth, the Danube, have been at various times the very practical lines of demarcation. The treaty of Bucharest, we believe, will be little suspected of having to do with the interests of religion; and the treaty of Adrianople, so far from handing over the provinces in question to Russia, would now, if the execution of it were insisted upon by England, put an end to the quarantine, and would prevent Russia from interfering in the internal administration of the provinces. In fact, it is to the treaty of Adrianople that these people appeal against the regulations subsequently introduced, and to which a surreptitious sanction was obtained in the last diplomatic act that took place between Russia and the Porte.

If there is one fallacy more advantageous to Russia than another, it is that which leads travellers from a superficial glance to assert that such or such a country is already under her dominion. Russia makes it believed wherever she can throughout the East, that the nations of Europe are subject to her-she has it trumpeted throughout Europe by every traveller in the East, that Turkey and its dependencies, if not yet nominally, are already in reality hers. Mr. Quin has fallen into something of this delusion. The case is bad enough; but it is not yet, as his language would lead one to suspect, a hopeless one.

The political chapters of Mr. Quin's work are, however, enriched with one feature of the most important and interesting nature. He has somehow obtained, and printed, for our benefit, a full copy-of the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi-which, by the bye, means the King's Stairs,' and not (as he says) the Giant's Mountain. By this treaty of defensive alliance, the two high contracting parties engage to afford to each other 'mutual materiel succours.' But the separate article now exhibited states, that the Emperor of all the Russias, wishing to spare the Sublime Porte the charges and embarrassments which would result on its part from the grant of such materiel succours,' is willing to waive such succours, and, in conformity with the principle of reciprocity, is contented that, in lieu thereof, the Sublime Porte shall limit its action in favour of the Imperial Court of Russia to shutting the

strait of the Dardanelles; that is to say, not to permit any foreign ship of war to enter it under any pretext whatsoever.' The treaty, in fact, had been neither more nor less than a plausible pretext for the secret article. One party,' says Mr. Quin, agrees at first, and in open market, to lend the other a pound of powder; but for the pound of powder both parties subsequently agree in secret to substitute the key of the Dardanelles.' It gives the autocrat the power, whenever he may choose to quarrel with any nation, of saying to the Porte, I do not want your powder, but, in lieu of it, you must shut the Dardanelles against my enemies.' We entirely concur with Mr. Quin, that every hour this separate secret article is allowed to exist, it inflicts an outrage on the law, and, on what is higher than the law-the honour of all other nations.

England, in 1809, consented not to lead her men-of-war up the Dardanelles; but this was only that she might furnish no pretext for those of Russia coming down. England never admitted the principle of exclusion, While the whole of the coasts of the Black Sea were Turkish, then indeed the Porte might do what she chose with her own; but from the moment that another power gained a footing in that sea, and moreover erected arsenals and constructed navies there, it became imperative on England to acquire the right of passage, if she had it not before. In the midst of European struggles for a temporary object, she allowed the right, but the recognised right, to lie dormant. But the time for talking of rights has passed away. The Turkish nation, by all the means that men possess for rendering their thoughts intelligible, invoke the protecting and invigorating presence of the squadron of Great Britain; but Russia holds up before us the parchment of a deed done in darkness: a parchment powerful as a talisman-but, like that, only powerful through the ignorance and credulity of men.

Thus, however, does the Muscovite step by step go on steadily, quietly but surely; and if Prussia and Austria be weak enough to look on in the expectation of a share in the spoil, while our own once-glorious name continues to be degraded among the nations by the necessary consequences of internal feud and faction, why should Russia cease to go on in the same style-until the cross has supplanted the crescent on the dome of Saint Sophia-the favourite object never for a moment lost sight of since the days of Catharine II.?

We can well believe that the crafty ministers of the Czar contemplate with the highest delight all that fills us with such deep alarm in the late and present condition of this country-and of France too. But if the recent proceedings of the Autocrat will not awaken Europe at large from her slumbers, ere the incorporation of Turkey is completed, Europe may as well continue to slumber

on;

on; for we may be well assured that the possession of Turkey would speedily lead to the sacrifice of another and another victim at the shrine of inordinate ambition. England and France, however, at all events will not, we trust, be found to have lost all sense of honour and wisdom as respects a question to which a myriad of internal intrigues are but as dust in the balance. It behoves them, we think, to take immediate and effective measures to compel the Muscovite to nullify this surreptitious and offensive treaty. We are told, indeed, that Lord Ponsonby was instructed to remonstrate against this proceeding at the Porte; that Lord Palmerston also addressed a note to Count Nesselrode, disapproving of that transaction, and notifying that his government would act as if it had never taken place; and finally, that a similar note was addressed to the same quarter by the French minister, to which the following epigrammatic reply was returned-' Russia will act as if these notes had never been written.' We believe all this is true; but the affair cannot end thus. The phrase,' says Mr. Quin, that escaped Alexander, when he called the Dardanelles the key of my house, is pregnant with a truth that becomes every day more apparent.'

6

Let us for a moment bring under view what this gigantic power -gigantic as to the physical force of numbers, but still more fearful by its intellectual superiority-not the intellect of its people, as compared with those of Europe, but the intellect of its diplomatists, as compared with those of other countries-is preparing. Let us, in the first place, turn our attention to the Baltic. In military occupation of both shores of the Gulf of Finland, the eastern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, and the eastern coast of the Baltic as far as Tilsit, Russia has nothing to disturb her along the whole of these shores. Prussia, on whom her territory joins, has no navy, except a little toy frigate at Potsdam, a present from our King William; and she is moreover her ally. The harmless state of Denmark has a few ships of the line, one of which is occasionally put into commission. Those of Sweden-impoverished Sweden--have long been rotting in harbour. But that is nothing: it is well understood that some great change is at hand in Sweden: a very powerful party in that once lofty nation are desirous of uniting their country to the great neighbouring empire; and it is boldly affirmed that old Bernadotte (mirabile dictu!) is not averse from the plan. Perhaps, he may be well aware that the amiable and accomplished Prince Gustavus Vasa, the legitimate heir of the ancient monarchs of Sweden, has many secret friends who only wait for a fit opportumity to hoist his standard on the soil ennobled by the valour and virtues of his ancestors and the shrewd old Frenchman may