Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/12

6 though reduced by misgovernment to a point far below its natural level; a country moreover from which India could be threatened much more effectively than from Khiva or Bokhara. Needless to say that we could not have saved Persia, and that she could not have defended herself: six or eight regiments would be enough to overrun the whole kingdom.

That Russia has during the last three centuries extended her borders farther and faster than any other European state is undeniable. But then she is the only European state that could so extend itself. The settler who lives on the edge of the wilderness may take in as much land as he pleases, while a proprietor in Kent or Normandy cannot push his fence six inches back without risking a lawsuit. And in her extensions to north, east, and south, where she found either unoccupied lands or races inferior to her own, she has really played the part of an improving and civilizing power.

Territorial extension, however, which marks a period, sometimes a long period, in the history of almost all great states always comes sooner or later to an end, sometimes, as with most of the countries of modern Europe, because there is no longer room for it, sometimes also, as in our own case and that of the United States, or as of Rome in the time of the early emperors, because it is believed to be no longer for the interest of the state itself. Twenty years ago we used to have panic-fits about the extension of the United States. We now know that they do not desire either Canada or Mexico or the Antilles, and have even neglected chances of getting a footing in the two latter. Similarly, we have ourselves repeatedly refused to found new colonies or annex new territories in the East, though the world does not yet credit us with such moderation.

Now Russia seems to have reached this point, when for her own interest further territorial growth ought to stop. How far she sees this herself, I shall inquire presently; meantime let me endeavor to state the grounds for believing that she would only injure herself by attempting to incorporate the provinces of Turkey, for example, or to wrest from us any part of India.

Russia has already more land and vaster natural resources than she needs or can deal with. Not to speak of the mineral riches of Siberia, still only half opened up, or of the fertile countries along the lower Amour, or of Turkestan, or of Transcaucasia with so many sources of wealth only requiring capital for their development, she has in the southern part of European Russia, between the Dnieper and the Ural River, a region of unsurpassed fertility not a third or fourth part of which is now under cultivation, and which could probably support a population as large again as that of the present European dominions. In this vast tract, which one may call the "Great West" of Russia, colonization does indeed go on, and now the faster since railways have been made through it; but it goes on with nothing like American or even Canadian speed, and at the present rate another century will not see the country even fairly well settled. People in western Europe often talk of Russia as "overflowing with men " of her "teeming millions," and so forth. The truth is that she is the most sparsely populated of civilized states, with the possible exception of Sweden, and that her population increases slowly. She is a child in the shoes of a giant. Instead, therefore, of grasping at fresh territories which she is not able either to occupy with settlers or develop by an expenditure of skill and capital, it is her interest to concentrate all her energies on her internal growth, to fill up her empty spaces, improve her communications, train her people to add the higher forms of skilled industry to those comparatively rude and raw handicrafts which, speaking broadly alone at present thrive among them. One cannot travel through the country without seeing that this policy, already to some extent begun, will make her more prosperous and more powerful than any course of conquest could possibly do.

Further, Russia is at this moment unfitted to assimilate or administer new territories, and notably such territories as the Turkish. So large an empire as hers is already requires a great multitude of officials, and the supply of good officials is far below the demand. I do not speak merely of corruption, which every one in Russia asserts to be so widely spread — for of its existence a stranger has no means of judging — but of incompetence for the higher administrative functions. Russia, it cannot be too often repeated, is a new country, where civilization has but recently taken root. Great efforts have been made, and made with much success — for the people is not only a quick but a really gifted one — to spread education and rear up a cultivated class. But that class is still small, compared with the whole population, or compared with the same class in France, Germany, or 