THE "PARAMOUNT DESTINY."

Lyttelton Times, Volume VI, Issue 373, 31 May 1856, Page 5

THE "PARAMOUNT DESTINY."

From the "Spectator."

A hundred years ago it was though " probable that, as formerly, we should look upon Russia as the ufficina gentium. " Nearer our own time we have heard that civilization was threatened by barbarism, which it undoubtedly was ; and there have not been wanting those who have more than hinted comparisons between the relations of the Russians to Kurope and that of the Goths to the Roman Empire. Nay, we have among us a certain class of literary politicians who believe that Europe is " used up " ; a.id who, finding that the ascendancy of the Sclaves is needed to complete the historic series/forthwith believe in the certainty of Sclave ascendancy. Mr. Gladstone himself let fall the significant phrase " the paramount destinies of Russia. " We suppose the entry of the Russian troops into Paris, in 1814, "was the initiation of the grand Sclavonian epos !

Seriously, this idea nf the paramount destinies of Russia, is worth a little consideration. How are they to I>e accomplished ? Not, certainly, after the old fashion of the Goths and the children of Attila ; not by the migration of vast hordes, like the Mangels and Tartars under Zinghis ov Timour. In these days, undisciplined multitudes, without communications and a commissariat, would iueviiahly "come to grief." Thenomade Tartars wlio swept from Central Asia alike to the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, the Frozen Sea, and the frontiers of Germany, carried everything with them everywhere. Their camp was the state; they made the war pay for the war; they passed like desolation incarnate over the land, and left little but desert behind. Such achievements are no longer practicable by similar means; and if they were, Russia is not the country that could furnish the men to perform them. In faci, Russia, although one-seventh of the globe, is by no means so much an officina gentium as England and Germany. Site does not send forth hordes of men to colonize new countries, like the Anglo-Saxon race. The Russian empire does not possess that limitlessness of population as well as territory which was

the terror-inspiring characteiislic of the count-

ries beyond the p»le of civilization in the old Jtinie. Her territories have been mapped, her -tribes named, her people numbered. Far from being an inexhaustible hotbed of men, yon shall read in live pages of the Tengoborski, her distinguished economist, lamentations that her people are too few; that inexorable limits nre pl..ei>d to their growth in the laws of production ; that, except in specially favoured districts, the relative density of her population to her productive soil "can never attain the same figure which it reaches in the most populous countries of Europe. " Other stales may augment population beyond the scope of the natural productive forces" of their territory; "but in so vast an empire as that of Russia, and with such a geographical position, the progress of population must esseniiiilly depend on the abundance of the products of the soil." The sixty millions of ine:i in European Russia and the five millions in A.muUo ltussia are barely enough for the

purposes of vigorous national life. Take ihc«e facts : in sixteen jjovennneuts there is not one town to a, hundred square miles of surface, and in two of the sixteen there is not one town in a thousand square miles o( surface.

" In the government of Astrakan, there isbut one town in 715 square miles; in that of Wuloff da, one t6 53(>; in that of Olonetz, one to 398; in that of Stavropol, one to 373 ; in ihut of Perm, one to 370. The <fnveniinents in which die relative number of towns is greatest, that is, where we reckon one town to less than 50 square miles, are seven in number, namely, the kingdom of Pojand, the governments of Moscow, Grodno, Koursk, Toula, Kalou»;a, and Conrland. "

Russia is -inhabited by an average population of (547 to the square mile; in England and France, whose united population is a little above •that of Russia, there is an average of upwards of 4500 to the square mile. In Russia there are 10,000 .square miles of impenetrated forests, and out of 95,710 square miles of territory, only 29,757 are under cultivation. It is estimated that there are only 2082 nersons to a square mile of productive soil.—That is, three rimes as much productive soil for each inhabitant as in Fiance. * These facts sliow what room there is fur the expansion of Russia in Russia ; so that if she doubled her population in sixty-six yeavs, as AT. Tensrnborski calculates, there would still be one-third more of productive land to each inhabitant than there is now in France. But this increase, as M. Tenjroborski never fails to repeat, " must always depend more or less on the progress of cultivation, and on the successive develnpement of the productive forces of the country.!: Tf allowed, there seems no reason to doubt that the Russians would incrpase. " If," says Mr. Dauby Seymour, " the military organization of Russia could be once broken up, the people would turn to their natural pursuits, which are decidedly commercial and asrricultural The most

singular thin tr is, that the people among; whom this military organization of the whole nation prevails [one man in fifteen a soldier] is, without exception, the most pacific people on the face of the earth. " We may add to this the fact, ihat the Russians are not a migratory out a home-keeping people. There are, therefore, two tendencies in iteration, —one directed to the cultivation of the soil and the developement of the resources of the country ; the other stretching1 away towards the realization of those vast designs which ar« to constitute, we suppose, the " paramount destiny." The former is the popular, the latter the political tendency. There is ever going on an inarticulate struggle hetween the two ; and it. is because the latter has got the upper hand that there is war between Russia and the West. Hence, production is checked, and population is diminished, nearly a half per cent of the animal estimated increase. These are some of the causes that are likely to adjourn the " paramount destinies. "

Russia is far more dangerous, under her present rule, in pence than in war. She never fiirhts with, a stron<r power, unnl she is forced to fight; hut she is ever ready to light with a weak power, if her ends cannot be compassed less expensively and ostentatious'}'. If she subjugate Europe, it will be by plots and wiles. Her aim, while assiduously cnitivatinir her resources, has been, partly by force, but chiefly by guile, to obtain controlling: positions—such as Sebastopol was, us Poland and Transcaucasia are, as Constantinople and Finmnvk would be. She could not afford, even if she desired, to send out undisciplined multitudes «o conquer and regenerate Europe. G"th and Tartar fashion ; nor would she willingly have risked disciplined multitudes; but she could semi out legions of spies, yards of riband, scores of orders, and other bribes, and, hovering on the selvage of civilization, crib a bit here, and a bit there, and now and then, when nobody seemed to be looking,snatch at some larger piece either of influence or territory. Thus the "paramount destinies" were promoted every day until they were far on the road to fulfilment ; when degenerate Europe showed a little public spirit, and thretv herself between Russia and the destined prey.