THE EFFECTS OF THE CONTINUANCE OF THE WAR ON RUSSIA.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XIV, Issue 68, 21 November 1855, Page 2

THE EFFECTS OF THE CONTINUANCE OF THE WAR ON RUSSIA.

[From the Times, August 4.]

Sated with battles and sieges, and finding nothing very remarkable in the manner in which the war affects our own resources, we naturally become the more anxious to lift the hitherto impenetrable veil which separates us from the interior of Russia, and to inquire how the enemy bears the privations and evil 3 of a long blockade and all the miseries that ever follow protracted war. We have presented ourselves to Russia and to Europe in our working suit, and been careful to put everything in a point of view rigorously fair, while Russia is always dressed out in her best, and keeps sedulously in the back-ground whatever does not tend to raise the opinion of her invincibility. That provinces and governments vie with each other in what the Invalide Russe is pleased to call voluntary contributions, — that the whole country is animated by a spirit of the most exalted patriotism — these, and such accounts a3 these, are all that we can expect to reach us from a country where the blacking-brush of the censor ranks among the most approved means of government. We have therefore great reason (o be grateful to the conductors of Blaekwood's Magazine for having admitted into its pages the narrative of an English subject for many years resident in Russia, who left that country only at the beginning of the present sumxer, and who details with much apparent good faith the results of his own personal observation. These revelations ought to make us feel how much we owe to our insular position, and how much to our enlightened system of taxation, which enables us to raise whatever sums we need in money, instead of having recourse, like Russia, to the ruinous expedient of taxes in kind. Whatever the Englishman has to pay, leaves him still a perfectly free agent, whereas the system of forced labour prevailing in Russia, strikes the sickle out of the hand of the reaper on the very day of harvest, robs the plough of its oxen, and dissipates in a few hours the winter supply of food for the whole of a village community. The estate of which the writer speaks contains about 40,000 acres, is cultivated by 1,300 serfs, produces linseed, corn, and wool, and yields its proprietor about 366,000 a-year. Last year this estate produced 1,500 quarters of linseed, worth in ordinary times about .£1,200, but now unsold and unsaleable; about the same quantity of wheiit, upon which a lo»s of 56500 was sustained ; a considerable quantity of wool, upon which there had been a loss of a 620 0; and a large amount of tallow, upon which there has been lost about 56200 more; so that in this way alone, the proprietor has lost, through the single agency of our blockade, more than £2,000 out of £6,000. This was only au indirect effect of the war. We next come to the conscriptions. Of these there were two in 1854, and there has already been one in 1855, each of twelve in a thousand males ; so that the owner of the estate has already lust the labour of forty-seven able-bodied men, and spent £370 in fitting iheni out for service, at the rate of £8 ahead. In the spring of 1854, this same e"tr. f z was required to make a volun-f-r" <" -tr'lv.Lon of forty oxen to Lzi the | Li*' ,r,, r , '\. « .".',e ...L^onr, Viita a j>;ii<' d L^ih-j;- 1

end of the war. The estate had also to furnish 1,000 poods of biscuit, the pood being equal to 18 lbs. avoirdupois. The next demand was for ten waggons, with a driver and a pair of horses to each. Twenty pair of oxen were required to transport the biscuit, and again a larger number late in the year ; but for this last service the proprietor compounded by a payment of £90. In April of the present year, twice the quantity of biscuit was demanded, and the unfortunate peasants, who have to carry it a thousand miles, must bs absent during the whole of the brief Russian summer, and only return home to starve during the long winter for want of -the harvest which a paternal government will not permit them to gather. For these services there is no payment, and the issue of a species of government paper, which was taken in payment for taxes has been stopped. The villa«w»s which lie on or near the line of 'inarch, are plundered by the soldiers who pass through them, and ihe stock of food laid up by these unfortunate people for the supply of the winter, is devoured by these unbiddeu and hungry guests. The tailors and boot-maker 3 are called upon to clothe the soldiers, Lr which they receive mere nominal prices, curtailed by the peculation of those through whose hands they pass. Money is disappearing from the- south of Russia, and ths paper circulation is taking its place. Everything seems to show that the resources of the country are overtasked by the struggle whirb. she ha 3 provoked, and that even without any very brilliant success in the field, a- mere dogged continuance of the measures we have already adi-pted must bring this mighty empire to terms. It is impossible to read without a sigh the narrative of the cruel and grinding oppression to which a nation universally described as naturally gentle and inoffensive is reduced by the pressure of the war, but our regret may be moderated by the reflection that this sharp discipline is absolutely needed, if we are to cure the Russian people of the lust of conquest and the dream of universal dominion. Wild and criminal as were the plans of Nicholas, we believe that in planning and executing them he was only too faithful a representative of the opinion of his f-eopl<\ who are just in that state of semi-barbarism in which the instinct of patriotism' takes the form of a desire for foreign dominion. The Russian nation will not again, we apprehend, be so eager to seize the territories of their unoffending neighbour, or inflict upon him those calamities which have recoiled so signally on themselves.

Melancholy also must be the condition of the landed proprietors, exposed as they are to the bur Jena we have enumerated in addition to the ordinary contributions to the revenue and vast deductions from their income occasioned by the blockade. The tax-paying povrers of the country must already be seriously impaired, and will in a short finie be destroyed by a system of exaction, which seems peculiarly levelled at the most productive industry, and destroys all hopes of the future in order to satisfy ths craving emergencies of the present. When we compare with these things the singular buoyancy or* resources which France has just exhibited by offering to her government a loan four times the amount of that income which Russia claims to possess even in time of peace, — when we consider that the war has neither crippled our commerce, embarrassed our trade, depressed our industry, disordered our finances, nor, in fact, done any of those things which the peaceful seers of Manchester and ths infallible prophet of the West Riding predicted ; we are amazed at the cowardice which under such circumstances can council a dishonourable compromise, and the short-sighted folly which can lead men, calling themselves statesmen, to forego a position so advantageous, and results apparently so certain, ia order to give a triumph to an enemy vainly struggling against the toils in which he is taken, aud to enact over agaia, to the disgrace of England and France, the same miserable self-deception which saved Russia and ruined Turkey at Adrianople in 1829, by a peare obtained by the defeated party under falsa pretences. - -

The Commands in the Crimea. — In addition to the selection of General Simpson for commander-in-chief of the army in the' Crimea, a few other appointments have been made. General Knollys leaves the camp at Aldershott for the administration of the staff in the Crimea. Colonel Markham, now on his way from India, will proceed to the East to assume the command of a drvidiou, and Colonel Pakenham succeeds General Estcoiu't as Adjutan l- General of the Forces before Sebastopol. GENBIiAiIdSIMO OP XH£ FoKKIGN LiIGION. The Duke of Cambridge has "been appointed by Lord Panmure to the-comma^d-in-clnef . of the Foreign Legion. Tiie appointment has been approved of by her Alajesty. H'n royal highness having resided for several years in Hanover, where his father, the late duke, was the representative of William the Fourth; the Germans consider him as one of themselves, and being w^ll acquainted with their habits aud dispositions, speaking German fluently, his nomination to the high post will be hailed with satisfaction by the whota Legion. His royal highness will accompany the Legion to the Crimer>.

A Retoht. — The lute J usties Taunton was remarked for spiking sometimes rather sharply to bamstfrs who occupied unnecessarily the time of the court, or who fell into em>r9.in point of law. On one occasion a reque«t was made to him to enlarge a rule. Ho expressed his intention to do so. Up started a learned sergeant, and exclaimed, "My Lord, in .the whole course of my experience I have never known such a rule under such circumstances to be enlarged." " Then, my learned brother (replied Taunton), I shall have the pleasure of enlarging the rule and your experience at the same time."

"Alma" and "BELBsr-." -I k-vo fc~*n rtruck with the apparent Scandinavian character of some of the names, now. become immorlal in the Crimea. In the river Alma we have the ordinary Scandinavian termination a, "water, a river," -snd the exict name is that of one of the rivers of Nn-wry, IV Alma. In Belbee we have the Scandin ivi *n hi>c or bed; " a brook," universal in this district, mr 1 -vhprpver Northmen have left tlieir trace ; while H*! \* the name of a god common, -as Sir ifi. B. Lytton !n<« observ-fl, among other nations, both to the Anglo-Snxon3 and the Northmen, bid any wandermsj Vamnpiaus ever settle upon the iViniea, or is thi«* mw >lv a coincidence V If ths littter, have we not at any rate a trare of the great deity Baal or bel, and may -not the Belbec be identified with Baibec, his beautiful temple in Syria? Tliat temple stands beside a brook, from which it may have derived iv. uaine, tracing the word beck up to iis Eastern origin. —Notes and Q,um Us.