RUSSIA WILLS IT. [From the Spectator, August 6.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 871, 7 December 1853, Page 4

RUSSIA WILLS IT. [From the Spectator, August 6.]

If the slowness of our Government has given military advantages $o that of Russia — if it has. subjected Ministers to be severely criticised and perhaps unworthily suspected — it has at least seiured to us the moral advantage of placing the objects of Russia far beyond suspicion — has left no room for a lurking doubt that possibly Nicholas was not so bad as he was painted. It is now not matter of inference or argument, but of history and fact, that the first grounds put forward by Russia for her aggression on Turkey were pretences — ihe Holy Places, the Greek Christians, ihe key in Bethlehem, all pretexts. The object is conquest and territorial aggrandisement. At the begiuning of the year that was suspected ; now it is revealed in glaring colours. Russia has confirmed the gravest charges against her, and has confessed by her acts that she intends to take more than Moldavia and Wallachia, more than Turkey, for a famiiy gift — that she intends to take what suits her and to assume the right of unsettling and redistributing Europe at her will and pleasure. This also was the iofereuce of " Russophobia :" it is now the plain act of Russia, in part accomplished. She forces upon the reluctaDt " Powers" a revision of Europe. Undoubtedly the last adjustment was not of the test. States were wedded that have not been blessed in the union,; Governments were created that have not justified their trust, but have used unmeasured earthly power to establish horrid tyrannies and perpetuate intolerable wrong, We knew something of this before — even before Mr. Gladstone eloquently denounced a fraction of the wrong ; but there was a reluctance to disturb existing rights, or to risk a painful convulsion in attaining redress. Some powerful States dread revision as they dread destruction ; and if revision now be forced upon them, it clearly is not the fault of England, or of any constitutional party in Europe.: it is due alone to Russia. The fact, however, being so, slowly and reluctantly compelled to move, it is not to be supposed that England could any longer content herself with the " status ante." No ; Russia cannot, if she would, restore the Principalities unharmed, or the Ottoman empire as it was — cannot restore faith in treaties that have failed to restrain her — cannot make us again believe in the virtue of alliances, or in the virtue of any right for a state but that which is supported by its own intelligence and power. It is well that we know so much. Some of us doubted ; but the illusion is wholesomely, if painfully, removed. We stand no longer on the old treaties, simply because they will not "bear." Therevision, the disturbance, unsought by us, is forcd upon us. We must provide our own guard ; we must take our own securities as we best may for checking the disturber hereafter ; and above all, we must do what in us lies, as the work is before us, to profit by the mistakes of 1815 and of -subsequent junctures, and if possible to s c that the next settlement is better than the la it.