The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 2, February, 1864: Devoted To Literature And National PolicyVarious
History
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 2, February, 1864: Devoted To Literature And National Policy
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
to France), on Nena Sahib no less than on Abraham Lincoln. The
never-discarded aim of Russia to plant its double cross on the banks of
the Byzantine Bosporus, and its batteries on those of the Hellespont,
and thus to transfer its centre of gravity from the secluded shores of
the Baltic to the gates of the Mediterranean; the never-slumbering dread
of this expansion, which has made the integrity of Turkey an inviolable
principle with the British statesmen of every sect; and the growing
inevitability of a bloody collision on the fields of central Asia of the
two powers, one of which is master of the north, and the other of the
south of that continent, have rendered Russia and Great Britain
inveterate foes. To strengthen itself against its deadliest opponent,
one courts the alliance of France, the other that of the American Union,
both not from sympathy, but in spite of inveterate or natural antipathy.
Against a common enemy we have seen the pope allying himself with the
sultan. Russia always hates England, and from time to time fears France;
both these powers continue to offend the United States, and at least one
of them now threatens a Polish campaign: why should not the czar lavish
his flattering marks of friendship on a great power which he hopes to
entice into an unnatural alliance? It is not American freedom which the
czars are fond of; they court American power as naturally antagonistic
to that of England, at least on the seas. Wielded entire by a Jeff.
Davis, with all the Southern spirit of aggression, it would be to them a
more desirable object of an _entente cordiale_.
But why should we not accept the proffered aid, though the offer be
prompted by selfish motives? Threatened by a wicked interference in our
affairs, which might prove dangerous to our national existence, why
refuse additional means to guard it, though these be derived from an
impure source? Will an innocent man, attacked by assassins, repulse the
aid of one hastening to save him, on the ground that he, too, is a
murderer? Certainly not. History, too, proves it by noble examples.
Pelopidas, the Theban hero, invokes the aid of the Persian king, the
natural enemy of the Greeks; Cato, who prefers a free death by his own
hand to life under a Caesar, fights side by side with Juba, a king of
barbarians; Gustavus Adolphus, the champion of Protestantism in Germany,
acts in concert with Richelieu, the reducer of La Rochelle, its last
stronghold in France; Pulaski, who fights for freedom in Poland and dies
for it in America, accepts the aid of the sultan; Franklin calls upon
the master of the Bastille to defend the Declaration of Independence;
Ypsilanti raises the standard of Neo-Grecian liberty in hope of aid from
Czar Alexander I, and happier Hellenes obtain it from Czar Nicholas, and
conquer; the heroic defender of Rome in 1849, Garibaldi, fights in 1859,
so to say, under the lead of Louis Napoleon, the destroyer of that
republic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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