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or circumstances would produce a profound impression on the vast population of British subjects of India, especially upon the educated classes, and also upon the native States. It has been shown how the spread of superior education is awakening the natives to an understanding of political affairs, and how important and numerous the native States really are. The effect not only of the proximity, but actually the contact, of such a power as Russia would be felt throughout the Indian Empire. Whether it would sap or undermine the loyalty of so many divers nationalities need not be discussed, but it would be indefinitely great beyond doubt. The imperial relations of England with India would then be very different from what they now are. One of the momentous consequences must be this: that England would have to maintain a much larger force of European troops in India than at present. If a considerable augmentation of the European garrison were to become necessary, then inevitably a large portion of the English army would be locked up in India. It is not necessary to dwell on the military difficulties that would arise, nor upon the financial embarrassments that would ensue."

With reference to the other idea, namely, the eventuality of a peaceful division of the spoils, an idea particularly cherished by those Continental

Powers in whose interest it lies to avert any complications which might possibly interfere with their politics, and who care but very little for the welfare of Great Britain, I need scarcely say that such an idea is as foolish and egotistical as it is preposterous, and scarcely worthy of consideration. To imagine that ambitious Russia will pursue a policy, for centuries, through the dreary steppes of Central Asia, without any palpable results other than the possession of the three khanates and of the Turkoman country-a possession which will never pay the heavy sacrifices of blood and money—is really more than political short-sightedness, for it is suggested by intentional malice and black envy. Do people really fancy, after Russia has spent over one hundred millions of pounds during only the present century, upon the the carrying out of her old and favourite scheme, that now she will stop, at the very gate of India, and will resist all temptation coming from the sunny land on the Ganges and on the Indus? No, I cannot believe in the sincerity of such an idea; its adoption would simply lull England into the sleep of false security, and encourage Russia in her approach to the Achilles heel of her rival. For whether Russia intends to solve the riddle of the Eastern question by using the key to India in order to open the gates of the Bosphorus, or whether

she covets the possession of rich India as an outlet to the southern seas, she, at all events, means mischief to England, mischief to the holy cause of our civilisation in the East, and mischief to the still more sacred interest of humanity at large.

CHAPTER XI.

COMPARISON BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN CIVILISATIONS IN THE EAST.

HAVING spoken, hitherto, pre-eminently and exclusively to the English public, of the political rivalry between England and Russia in Central Asia, I shall now address myself to the European and American readers interested in this question, trying to prove to them that my sympathies with the cause of the English do not rest simply on some unaccountable freak; that I am not in love with one and hating the other; but that the sympathies exhibited by me are the outflowings of a long study, practical and theoretical, of a careful and impartial balancing of the results these two representatives of our western civilisation have been able to show hitherto in their respective fields of activity. This comparative study of English and Russian civilisations in the East, could justly fill up a book by itself, and will cut a rather sad figure in the narrow precincts of a single chapter; but it is unavoidably necessary for me to hint at the

salient points of their divergency, flattering myself, as

do, with the hope that this Central Asian question, slighted for so long a period by our diplomatists— nay, even ridiculed by a certain class of politicians— will not only interest England and Russia, but every civilised community in the world. It is not a Central Asiatic, but a strictly European question, of farreaching political and cultural importance.

Russia-so we read in the argumentations of French and German political writers-being of Asiatic origin, and conspicuous for many features of Asiatic society, is far superior to England in propagating the doctrines and principles of our western culture, and in introducing a settled rule and order into the semi-barbarous countries of Asia, and more fitted for that task than the stiff, rigidly cold, unpliable English.

In my controversies, covering nearly twenty years, concerning this question, I have been often told, that by overlooking the wide gulf which separated the thoroughly Europeanised Englishmen from the Asiatic, imbued with the spirit of the eastern culture, thousands and thousands of years old, I generally forget that a less refined agency, occupying the middle position between the two opposed cultures, will and can naturally serve as a more efficient intermediary, and that, therefore, Russian society, standing as it were

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