"The Russian government
anticipated us, not in the knowledge of the advantages of close commercial
and political relations with an empire so enormous in its resources, but
in the employment of those arguments that alone could render a vain and
effeminate State sensible of their value....
The map of all the Russias,
published at St. Petersburg, now includes that vast portion of Central
Asia heretofore constituting the outlying provinces of the Chinese empire
beyond the Great Wall. Having placed a mission in the Chinese capital and
organized an overwhelming army in Chinese Tartary, with magazines of
warlike resources, Russia easily secured a permanent footing in region
after region, till she had dominated over, and then obtained the cession
of, all the intervening space, leaving the conquest of the entire Chinese
empire to the time when it should please the reigning Czar to order his
Cossacks to take possession. It is impossible to state with any precision
the amount of moral or material support which the Chinese emperor received
from his imperial brother and formidable neighbor, and which encouraged
him to the obstinate resistance that he offered to the demands of England
and France [in 1860]; but a slight acquaintance with Russian policy must
satisfy any one that, having established itself as a favored nation,
Russia could not regard with complacency any attempt made by another
nation to share such advantages." Comprehending, therefore, the Chinese
character, perceiving clearly that the present Manchu dynasty is unable to
perform the elementary functions of an organized society, that Pekin is
another Teheran or Constantinople, that, while the people are sound, the
courts and the officials are corrupt, Russia has studied and gained over
certain influential persons and applied skillfully the maxim, _divide et
impera_. What China is taught night and day is that Russia is a land
power, and, therefore, alone can protect China; that she keeps her
promises and threats; that, with England, on the other hand, it is always
a case of _vox et praeterea nihil_. In short, Russia protects China in
a peculiar sense, that is to say, for a price, to be paid to Russia or
even to her friends.
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Page 697 of 704
Words from 189252 to 189613
of 191255
