Le Chevalier de Jant. Relations de la France avec le Portugal au temps de Mazarin. Par JULES TESSIER. Sandoz and Fischbacher; Barthès and Lowell. Diplomatic documents, with an historical introduction. Six Semaines en Afrique. Par M. THIERRY-MIEG. Calmann Lévy ; Observations on the political and economical condition of Algeria, and of the reforms recently effected by General Chanzy. Mélanges et Lettres. Par XAVIER DOUDAN. Tom 3. Calmann Lévy; Barthès and Lowell. The correspondence of the preceptor of the present Prime Minister of France. Les Points Obscurs de la Vie de Molière. Par JULES LOISELEUR. Liseux; Barthes and Lowell. Principally relating to Molière's early years, and to his marriage. Grimod de la Reynière et son groupe. Par GUSTAVE DESNOIRESTERRES. Didier; Barthes and Lowell. A biography of the author of the Almanach des Gourmands. Les Souvenirs d'un Artiste. Par ANTOINE ÉTEX. Lowell. Dentu; Barthes and The autobiography of a sculptor and a politician, whose life has been one continuous struggle. Entwicklungsgeschichte der Vorstellungen vom Zustande nach dem Tode. EDMUND SPIESS. Costenoble; Kolckmann. A comprehensive account of the opinions entertained by various nations and religions respecting a future life. Abhandlungen zur Erd-und Völkerkunde. Von OSCAR PESCHEL. Herausgegeben von J. LÖWENBERG. Duncker and Humblot; Williams and Norgate. A collection of Peschel's miscellaneous essays on physical geography and cognate subjects. Die Handelstrassen der Griecher und Römer an die Gestade des Baltischen Meeres. Von J. N. VON SADOWSKI. Costenoble; Kolckmann. A learned endeavour to trace out the routes by which, throughout almost the whole of the classical period, an interchange was effected between the products of the Mediterranean and the Baltic regions. Brasilien. Land und Leute. Von OSCAR CANS TATT. Mittler; Williams and Norgate. A full account of the political administration and natural productions of Brazil, with a narrative of travels on the coast. Skizzen aus Russland. Von THEODOR VON LENGENFELDT. Wedekind and Schwieger; Williams and Norgate. A supplement to the writer's former work on Russia in the Nineteenth Century. THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW. No. CXXIX. NEW SERIES.-SEPTEMBER 1, 1877. THE POLICY OF AGGRANDIZEMENT. WHATEVER may be the result of the present campaign or of the present war, the Ottoman Empire is doomed. It was already doomed when England took up arms in its defence, and, in the supposed interest of her Eastern possessions, became its quasi-protectress, the sponsor for the engagements to its Christian subjects, which it has shamelessly violated, and the virtual surety for its now repudiated loans. The internal causes of its decay are more certain and deadly in their operation than the attacks of enemies from without, which, in fact, evoke and revive the only element of strength left in its composition-the native valour of the Ottoman. It is one of those military empires which have never become industrial, and which, the rush of conquest being over, and the conquerors having settled down as a dominant race, subsisting on the labour of the conquered, have been hurried by corruption and sensuality to the grave. It has never shown the slightest sign of civilisation-political, intellectual, or commercial. If there has been any trade in the empire, it has been among the subject races, especially those whose yoke has been loosened, not among the Turks. Political organization has never got beyond the coarse and barbarous form of military satrapies, whose rule is cruelty, and whose taxation is rapine. Even for military science the Turk has recourse to the foreigner. There being no security for the fruits of labour, production has failed, and the blight of barrenness has spread over some of the fairest regions of the earth. The provinces are heterogeneous, and under such a system of government no progress towards assimilation could be made. A fatalist religion has repressed effort, even the effort necessary to save life from the plague. The same religion, by its political intolerance, has precluded the fusion of the conqueror with the conquered, and kept hostile races facing each other in every part of the empire. The numbers of the dominant race have been always dwindling under the effects of vice and of the military conscription, which, as the slaves cannot be trusted with arms, falls on the masters alone. By the institution of the Janissaries, which constantly infused new blood into the military system, the period of conquest was artificially prolonged, and in measuring the rapidity of Turkish decay, it should be borne in mind that less than two centuries ago the Turks were still conquerors. But, in the absence of external intervention, a century would probably have sufficed to complete the process of dissolution; the ill cemented provinces of the empire would have fallen apart, and the satraps would have defied the bow-string and set up for themselves. The revolt of Egypt was an example which, had things been left to their natural course, other Pachas would have followed. Diplomacy intervened, and held together the crumbling mass. When the resources of fiscal robbery were exhausted, and the sheep of the Rayah had been sheared in winter to pay his taxes, English coffers, opened by the confident assurances of English ministers, supplied money, of which the greater part was squandered in barbarous and bestial luxury, while the rest provided a standing army, which, by rendering internal insurrection against the tyranny hopeless, compelled the oppressed to stretch their hands for aid to a foreign liberator, and thus embroiled Europe; just as our ancestors under James II., who had a standing army, were compelled to call in a foreign deliverer; whereas, under Charles I., who had no standing army, they were able to redress their wrongs with their own hands. The present Turkish army may be victorious, but it will be the last, unless, by a miracle, confidence can be planted again in the bosoms of capitalists who have been swindled. Russia would, perhaps, have acted more wisely had she paused awhile, and allowed bankruptcy and repudiation to do their work. The question is one not of sentiment or religion, but of political science; and it is a thing to be noted that a man so sagacious in a certain sphere as Palmerston, so adroit a manager of party, so clever a diplomatist, with all possible means of information at his command, should have persuaded himself that the Ottoman Empire was in course of rapid regeneration, only needing loans to complete the process, and should have induced his countrymen to lay down their money on the strength of that belief. It shows that in such questions the wisdom which styles itself practical, because it excludes general views and considerations, may lead to conclusions the reverse of wise. An ancient philosopher is said to have convinced his sneering countrymen of the utility of his science by a successful speculation in olives. We should be surprised to find that any one versed in the philosophy of history had been seduced into investing in Turkish bonds. Fall the Ottoman Empire will, by corruption, if not by the sword; and its fall will apparently bring on a crisis in the destinies of England, who will be called on to decide whether, out of the wreck, she will take Egypt. If she does, she will be committed far more deeply than ever to the policy of aggrandizement; foreign dominion sustained by arms will assume a greatly increased importance with her relatively to domestic objects; and the spirit of her people will undergo a corresponding change. Egypt obviously means Eastern Africa, probably, indeed almost certainly, Syria, from which the fatal Canal is commanded almost as much as from Egypt; possibly Crete, or some other convenient island. But it means a good deal more than this. It means that England is to undertake to secure against any possible attack the whole of the overland route to India; for of course there is no use in holding the gate when the avenue to it is in other hands, and if Port Said is the gate, the avenue to it is the Mediterranean. To India by the Cape we had, as it were, a private way, not leading by many hostile doors, nor obliging you to appear as dominant under the noses of rival nations; but the overland route runs by the coasts of a whole line of maritime powers, to which will be added Germany, if she ever acquires Trieste, and Russia (exasperated by our demonstrations of enmity), if she ever acquires Constantinople; it is liable to attack from every port between Cherbourg and Port Said; its wardership will oblige us to flaunt the flag of our domination in the faces of all the dwellers on the Mediterranean. The present helplessness of France, no doubt, is our opportunity, but we are credibly assured that her jealousy will be at once aroused, and that her hostility awaits us in the end. It is probable that in the present mood of the nation aggrandizement will carry the day. We say mood, and it does not seem that there has been any definite change of conviction such as new arguments produce since the time when more moderate views prevailed. But the nation is now flushed with wealth, and with the sense of power which wealth begets; it is infected with the military spirit which fills armed Europe; it has built a great fleet of ironclads, and feels inclined to show its power. The aristocratic party is in the ascendant, and British aristocracy, as well as Russian despotism, is willing to divert the mind of the people from progress at home to aggrandizement abroad. The knowledge that the Government is favourable to them stimulates to activity all enterprising spirits, and at the decisive moment they throw into the scale, by enthusiastic and combined effort, a weight out of proportion to their mere numbers. In such a state of excitement are spirits of this sort at present, and so great has been the development of their ambition, that we read projects for making England mistress of all the water communications of the globe. What she would do with that error committed by Venice in leaving the true path, the path of commercial enterprise, to indulge a territorial ambition which led to the corruption of her government and, by the umbrage it gave to other powers, brought on her the League of Cambray. Yet we may be sure that every Spaniard and every Venetian, in the days of Spanish and Venetian Empire, would have felt himself bound by loyalty and patriotism to uphold aggrandizement and to denounce counsels of moderation as a betrayal of the honour and greatness of the country. Palmerston's Civis Romanus is one of many indications that the image of the Roman Empire still vaguely hovers before our minds. The Roman Empire belonged to an age before Humanity, to an age in which morality was in the germ, to an age in which force was the only law and the only principle of organization. Coming when it did, it formed a sort of matrix for modern civilisation and thus served a purpose which conquest can never serve again. By uniting all the nations round the Mediterranean under a common yoke it repressed war, the great primæval obstacle to the progress of humanity, and rendered possible the diffusion of ideas, besides breaking down generally the barriers of tribal isolation. An attempt to reproduce it, or anything like it, in these days would be an anachronism of the most flagrant kind. Its stability depended upon the absence of any rival power, when once the conquest of the Mediterranean nations had been accomplished; and in this respect also an imitation of it in a world divided among a number of great powers would be not so much unseasonable as insane. It is worthy of remark too that the more advanced civilisation even of Rome herself was less prone, if not actually opposed, to conquest. In the golden age of the empire, which commenced with the accession of Nerva, though there were frontier wars, and some extensions of territory as a consequence of those wars, the spirit of improvement decidedly predominated over that of aggrandizement, and the Antonines, if they were alive now, would probably be "pseudo-philanthropists" and "patriots of every country but their own." The idea of Roman conquest in the nineteenth century is equal in irrationality as well as cognate to that extreme theory of hero worship which, totally ignoring historic progress, proposes to regenerate modern society by pounding it with the primæval sledgehammer of Thor. The world changes, and the methods proposed by the worshippers of force for organizing what they imagine, in spite of their daily experience, to be an anarchy, would be the most brutal of all anarchies themselves. At all events there can be no harm in asking the advocates of a policy of aggrandizement clearly to state the case with which we may |