nic temptation of pride, by which Russia advanced in that ambitious
scheme. I will not now speak of the mischief she has succeeded to do in
that respect: I will only mark the fact that the ambition of Russia aims
at the direct dominion of Europe, so far as it is inhabited by the
Sclave race. The slightest knowledge of geography is sufficient to make
it understood that this would be such an accession to the power of
Russia, that, were they united under one man's despotic will, the
independence of the rest of Europe, should even Russia prudently decline
a direct conquest of it, would be but a mockery. The Czar would be
omnipotent over it, as indeed he is near to be already, at least on the
Continent.

Yet, without the conquest of Constantinople, Russia could never carry
the idea of Pansclavism: for in European Turkey a vast stock of the
Sclavonic race dwells, from Bulgaria over Servia and Bosnia down to
Montenegro, and across through Rumelia. Moreover, the conquest of
Constantinople is the hereditary leading idea of Russian policy. Peter,
called the Great, the founder of the Russian Empire, in making it from a
half-Asiatic a European State, bequeathed this policy as a sacred legacy
to all his posterity, in his political testament, which is the Magna
Charta of Russian power and despotism. All his successors have
energetically followed that inherited direction. Alexander movingly
avowed that Constantinople _is the key to his own house_, and his
brother did and does more than all his predecessors to get that key.

When the Empress Catharine visited the recently conquered Krimea,
Potemkin raised to her honour a triumphal arch, with the motto--"Hereby
is the road to Constantinople." Czar Nicholas has since learned that it
is by Vienna, rather. Russia therefore decided to get rid of this
obstacle, and to convert it out of an obstacle into a TOOL. A direct
conquest would have been dangerous, because it would have met the
opposition of all Europe. Russia therefore tried it first by monetary
influence, and had pretty well advanced in it. Metternich himself was a
pensioner to Russia. But the watchful, independent spirit of
constitutional Hungary still hindered the practical result of that
bribery.

And, mark well, gentlemen, in consequence of the geographical situation
of her dominions, and being also sovereigns of Hungary, it was chiefly
the house of Austria which was considered to be and cherished as the
great bulwark against