MR. THOMAS CARLYLE ON THE TURKISH QUESTION.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4964, 19 February 1877, Page 3

MR. THOMAS CARLYLE ON THE TURKISH QUESTION.

Mr. Carlyle has come forth from his retirement (observes the Examiner) to add his mite, if anything from the Chelsea sage can be so called, to the establishment of a better understanding with Russia. The grounds on which he confides in Russia are not exactly those which commend themselves to English Liberals ; his approval is of too long a standing. “For fifty years back,” he says, “my clear belief about the Russians has been that they are a good and even noble element in Europe. Conspicuously they possess the talent of obedience, of silently following orders given, which in the universal celebration of ballot-box, divine freedom, &0., will be found an invaluable and peculiar gift.” This is a curious contrast to the statement in Mr. Forster’s speech which was published the same day. “I do not wish you to suppose for a moment that I have any love of Russian modes of government. I look forward to the time when there will be freedom in Russia as there is in Western Europe.” Mr. Carlyle’s willingness to see Turkey fairly partitioned between Russia and Austria would be more generally acquiesced in if the institutions in Russia that he admires were superseded by others in which divine freedom, if not the ballot-box, should have a place. In admitting that part of Turkey belongs “in the nature of things ” to Russia, to the Russian Empire as at present constituted, Mr. Carlylp goes farther than the majority of us are prepared to go with him. His solution of the question apparently is, that part of Turkey should be assigned to Russia and part to Austria, which should then become a Slavonic Power, and cede her 9,000,000 of Germans to the great German Empire. Civilisation would not suffer by such an arrangement, and would immensely gain by “the immediate and summary expulsion” of “ the unspeakable Turk/’ but Mr. Carlyle does not attempt to show by what considerations he would recommend his plan to the different Powers concerned. Perhaps if Europe agreed to place the matter in the hands of Prince Bismarck, and bound itself to accept his decision, Mr. Carlyle’s plan, which is not mentioned now for the first time, might be realised, but how otherwise? Concerning the essential part of his programme, the expulsion of the Turk from Europe, we should not be surprised if before ten years are over Mr. Carlyle’s conclusion, that “it were better to set about it now than to temporise and haggle in the vain hope of doing it cheaper some other time,” becomes the practical conviction of all European statesmen.