Russia--charged especially with a jealous
guardianship of Turkish rights. And indeed had the house of Austria
comprehended the conditions of her existence, attached Hungary to
herself by respecting her independence and her constitutional rights,
and developed the power of her hereditary dominions, and placed herself
upon a constitutional basis, she could have maintained her respectable
position of guardianship for centuries. Russia was aware of that fact.

It is the intrigue of Russia, which by money and emissaries for years
before infused the notion of Pansclavism among the Bohemians, Poles,
Croats, Serbs, under the crown of Austria, equally as among the Sclave
population of Turkey; which encouraged Austria to attack Hungary, by
promising her aid in case of need. If Austria succeeded, the
constitutional life of Hungary, in many ways so offensive to Russia, was
overthrown: if Austria failed, she became a dependency of Russia. And
by the unwarrantable carelessness of some powers, the complicity of
others, the latter alternative is achieved. Austria, who was to have
_balanced_ Russia, is thrown into her scale: instead of being a
barrier, she is her vanguard, and her tool--her high road to
Constantinople, her auxiliary army to flank it.

It would be not without interest to sketch the history of Russia step by
step, advancing towards that aim by war and by emissaries, and by
diplomatic corruption and corrupted diplomacy, from the time of Mahomet
Baltadji, of cursed memory, through all subsequent wars--at the treaties
of Kutsuk Kaynardje, Balta Liman, Jassy, Bucharest, Ackierman,
Adrianople, Unkhiar Iskelessi, down to the treaty as to the Dardanelles
and the Bosphorus, and to the treaty of commerce which made two-thirds
of Constantinople itself in their daily bread dependent upon Russian
wheat, to the amount of thirty-five millions of piastres a year, while
Turkish wheat was rotting in the stores of Asia Minor. By each of these
treaties Russia advanced its frontiers, and pressed Constantinople more
closely within its iron grasp; with such perseverant consistency
pursuing her aim, that even in other political transactions, apparently
unconnected with Turkey, it was constantly this which she kept in view.

As for instance, at the conference of Tilsit, when she surrendered
continental Europe to the momentary domains of Napoleon, provided Turkey
were consigned to her. And still she did not succeed--and still
Stamboul stands a