v.]

RUSSIA AND TURKEY.

IO

In the second pamphlet the same principles are applied
‘0 the special case which the prejudice of the time made Ar. 31-2.
rgent. David Urquhart, a remarkable man, of prodigious
tivity, and with a singular genius for impressing his
Opinions upon all sorts of men from aristocratic dandies
down to the grinders of Sheffield and the cobblers of
Stafford, had recently published an appeal to England in
favour of Turkey. He had furnished the ministers with
Arguments for a policy to which they leaned by the instinct
of old prejudice, and he had secured all the editors of the
dewspapers. Mr. Urquhart’s book was the immediate provocation
 for Cobden’s pamphlets. In the second of them the
author dealt with Russia. With Russia we were then, as
twenty years later and forty years later, and, as perhaps
Some reader of the next generation may write on the margin
of this page, possibly sixty years later, urged with passionate
imprecations to go to war in defence of European law, the
valance of power, and the security of British interests.
Disclaiming a spirit of partiality for any principle of
the foreign or the domestic policy of the Government of St.
Petersburg, Cobden proceeded to examine each of the arguments
 by which it was then, as now, the fashion to defend
80 armed interference by England between Russia and
Turkey. A free and pointed description, first of Turkey,
and next of Russia, and a contrast between the creation of
St. Petersburg and the decline et Constantinople, lead up
bo the propositions i—first, that the advance of Russia to the
countries which the Turk once wasted by fire and sword, and
still wastes by the more desi~ “recesses of misgovernment,
would be a great step in th aress of improvement ;
second, that no step in the [ress of improvement and
the advance of civilization can be inimical to the interests
or the welfare of Great Britain, What advantage can
it be to us, a commercial and manufacturing people, that