RUSSIAN DESPOTISM AS OPPOSED TO EUROPEAN CIVILISATION.

(From the News of the World.)

The advance of the Russian hordes towards the heart of Europe is one of those important, and, we may add, awful circumstances, that completely change the condition of parties, and the circumstances of nations. In the face of such a fact all minor differences must be forgotten, and we may well lay aside, as idle, impertinent, inopportune, the inquiry whether or not, in the war that it now desolating Hungary, the Austrians or the Hungarians are to be regarded as the more blameable. When that question was the main one to be determined we expressed our convictions respecting it with perfect candour. Now, however, that which we have to reflect upon, is a fact on which may be said to turn the future fate of the civilized world for of this no man in his senses can, we suppose, presume to doubt, that if Russia can now establish herself as the dominant and sovereign power ; not only in Hungary, but in Austria, Proper, two years cannot pass away until her advanced guards are in Berlin, nor five years until the Cossacks are again encamped at Paris.
 We must bear in mind that wherever Russia establishes herself, there even the name of liberty is not permitted to be spoken ; that no matter what may be the creed of the country, it must submit to the domination of the Greek Church — of that form, too, of the Greek Church of which the Emperor is the Pope — that to refuse obedience to that Church would be in France that is nominally Catholic, and Prussia that is nominally Protestant, to subject the recusant to imprisonment for life, to perpetual exile, to the punishment of the knout, or, in the case of woman, to the torture of the lash. Wherever the two-headed eagle is borne, and as a standard erected, there the newspapers are suppressed, or placed under a rigid censorship; there, too, a regular system of espionage is established, and a hasty, an indiscreet, or a candid, honest expression of opinion, may subject the man who utters it to private assassination, or to his sudden removal to a solitary dungeon from which he is never again permitted to escape. The power of locomotion is forbidden ; and no man who is subjected to the Russians can travel ten miles from home without an official permission from one of the paid myrmidons of the Emperor, nor can leave the country in which he was born, and travel to a foreign land, without the direct sanction of the Emperor himself !
 We describe a gigantic system of despotism, and one so elaborately formed, and so skilfully contrived, that it touches every individual, from the highest man of the Russian nobility to the poorest serf in the field ; and who, when he becomes a soldier, is not more a slave than when his hand grasped the plough. This gigantic system of despotism has been moved out of Russia into Hungary. The soldiers of Russia, it is well observed in the last number of Frazer's Magazine, "Were counted as they passed the silent frontiers of Poland into Gallicia, and from Gallicia into the devoted country which they were to crush. The reports of Russian artillery have been heard on the walls of Vienna; columns of Russian soldiers were carried on the Austrian and Prussian railways. We have had descriptions of the Russian artillery, with their light green gun-carriages ; of the Russian foot, their clumsy imitation of the Prussian helmet, and their long coats of dirty grey. Russia is acting in broad day-light ; and if people will misunderstand her, even her greatest enemies must allow that the fault does not lie at her door."
 The object in which the able writer in Frazer's Magazine has in view is that which we also avow — it is to excite alarm as to the aggressive policy and the ambitious designs of Russia. Let her but attain that which she desires, and as she progresses every nation on the Continent is in turn enslaved, and ultimately the commerce and trade of England are destroyed; and the last battle which England would then have to make would be, with all the chances of success against her, for her liberty, and her very existence as an independent kingdom.
 That which makes Russia an object of terror and of fear to us is not her vast territory, her millions of subjects her enormous armies; but it is the fact that the Russians, as a people have all the hardihood bravery and energy of an European, with all that reverence for despotism, and readiness to submit to it, and willingly to obey its worst commands that characterise the soft and luxurious Asiatics. This is a point on which the information contained in FRAZER'S MAGAZINE is invaluable; for it gives us an abstract of the opinion of the Prussian Privy-Councillor, Baron Flaxthausen, who has lately published a work in German upon " the Condition and Circumstances of the Russian People." According to Baron Flaxthausen " Russia is a non European power. The Russians are decidedly Asiatic. The Russian territories in Europe (even without its latest conquests) extend over an immense tract of land, situate between four seas, and inhabited by a thoroughly heterogenous people sound in all their faculties clever, and possessed with an all-pervading and consequently dangerous nationality. There are no jealousies among them, no strife of factions; and even their religious sects, few and far between, yield to that one leading thought — the unity of Russia and the supremacy of the Sclavonic race. Of the fifty-four millions of Russians that actually inhabited Europe, we may safely assert that fifty millions are as far removed from European civilization and ideas as the aborigines of America before the first landing of Colombo and his associates. The Government which we call despotic is to them a source of pride."
 This, then, is the fact which makes the advance of such a body of men amongst those who prize civilization, and who are struggling to gain for themselves liberty of the press, freedom of speech and of action, or, in other words, a constitutional Government, and a limited monarchy— objects of terror and alarm. The manner in which the slavish Russians hug their chains, and defy their despot is thus described by a correspondent in the "Allgemeine Zeitung :" —
 " In the conversation of the officers, I was greatly struck with the frequent use of the words, 'the Czar wills it !' They pronounce these words as if they could move mountains with them ; their tone is full of pride and akin to worship. The soldier obeys his officer because the Emperor wills it ; he marches to battle, be bleeds, he dies, because it is the Emperor's will. Obedience in the Russian army is far more voluntary than is generally believed. The people look up to their Czar not as slave to a master, but as children do to a severe and just father. From what I saw and heard, and learned from conversation with Russian officers, I am led to believe that the system of Government in Russia is quite adapted to the majority of the Russian people. They have no wish for a more liberal form of Government."
 The liberty and nationality or every kingdom on the Continent are threatened by the move which Russia has now made outside or her own frontier. But how is England, it may be asked, affected by this movement ? Nothing is more easily explained. " Where ever Russia reigns, she imports her tariff to the exclusion of all foreign industry. Wherever Russia conquers a country, there we must lose a market." Let Russia but gain possession of Constantinople, (and she is now rapidly advancing towards Constantinople), and the moment the flag of Russia is hoisted on St. Sophia's, that instant England lose a market which is to her of the annual value of two millions and a half.
 Other countries have to fight against Russia for their existence now, and we are not sure that we may not, without allies, and with a crippled trade, and diminished pecuniary resources, have to fight a desperate battle against her hereafter.
 If the rulers on the Continent were wise, we ought at once to see a Congress assembled, in which the Sovereigns of every state, if possible, should be present ; or, if not, persons entrusted with the kingly and supreme power of those states they represented. There were such Congresses when the ambition of Bonaparte was to be checked, controlled, and finally defeated ; but in the autocrat of Russia, a worse, a more dangerous, and a more loathsome foe is to be encountered ; for Bonaparte, if he had been triumphant, would have civilized Russia, whereas, if victory should finally declare in favour of Nicholas, the result will be to barbarise Europe ; and the march of his armies will be as fatal to science, to art, to humanity, and to the ties of family, as the invasion of the Huns and the Vandals.
 Why, we ask, is there not an European Congress? Is it that a miserable ambition in some, or a petty spite in others, is preventing those Kings and Princes from coalescing with each other ? If it be, then are they, by their infatuation, paving the way to their destruction. This we happen to know, from personal observation in various parts of Germany, that no one circumstance could be so well calculated to excite enthusiasm in favour of the Sovereigns, and to make them most popular, than a declaration of war on the part of the Sovereigns against Russia. In such a war France could with justice calculate upon victory ; and in such a war Great Britain ought to be an active participator, because she might crush, and for ever, the Russian power now ; and to postpone hostilities for ten years more would be to compel the country to fight when she could not hope for a full and complete victory over her awful and dreadful antagonist.

Port Phillip Gazette and Settler's Journal (Vic. : 1845 - 1850), Thursday 24 January 1850, page 4