Russia, on the other hand, hesitates to hand over Ili for various reasons. In the first place, it is not certain that China has _permanently_ reconquered Eastern Turkestan, nor is it clear that the Imperial exchequer will be able to bear a continual strain upon it for Central Asian expenditure. Moreover there is the unknown quantity of the rivalry of Li Hung Chang and Tso Tsung Tang, and whatever influence the latter may have with the army and the ruling caste on account of his Mantchoo blood, the former holds the purse in his hands, and can at any moment paralyse Chinese activity and strength in Central Asia. The Russians also, whatever rash promises they may have given at Pekin--and they certainly did promise to retrocede Kuldja to China, whenever the Chinese should be strong enough to return to Central Asia--formally (_teste_ General Kolpakovsky's proclamation) annexed Kuldja "in perpetuity." In the eyes of the people of Central Asia, that proclamation defines Russia's tenure of Kuldja, and not the vague promise that was uttered in the ears of the authorities at Pekin. Now Russia knows this as well as we do; and she is aware that no strict adherence to her word of honour will induce the people of Western, as well as of Eastern, Turkestan to believe that she retrocedes Kuldja for any other cause than fear of the Chinese. The Khokandians, the Bokhariots, as well as the Kirghiz, the Calmucks, and the Kashgari, will all argue that Russia restores Kuldja not through any desire to fulfil her engagements, but simply because she cannot decline to fulfil them without engaging in a war with China, and her compliance with the demand would then be construed as an admission of her disinclination to encounter China in the field. In fact, even if Russia had promptly restored Kuldja, she would not have secured the credit she might have claimed for her good faith, and she would have had no guarantee that the Chinese would have rested content with the cession of Ili proper and not gone on to claim, in a moment of military arrogance, the restoration of the Naryn district, which China at a period of weakness had herself ceded to Russia more than twenty years ago. Then, besides these objections to the surrender of Kuldja on political grounds, there are commercial and fiscal reasons why Russia should be loth to restore this province. Not only has it become highly prosperous and thickly populated under Russian rule, but it has also been raised into one of the most fiscally remunerative portions of the Russian possessions in Central Asia, and then there is its admirable frontier in the Tian Shan, which places the future trade with the western parts of China more at its disposal, than it is through the Semipalatinsk and Chuguchak route, and, above all, it effectually dispels all sense of real danger from attack. The Chinese would find that to force the Tian Shan range into Kuldja would be a task almost impossible for them, and they would be compelled