Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

82FUTURE INFLUENCE OF RUSSIA.

as she now is, will no longer submit, except to real strength: now the real strength of nations is obedience to the power which rules them, just as discipline is the strength of armies. Henceforth falsehood will react so as to produce most injury to those who would make it their instrument; truth will give birth to a new influence, so greatly will neglect and disuse have renewed its youth and vigour.

When our cosmopolitan democracies, bearing their last fruits, shall have made war a detested thing to all people,—when nations once the most civilised of the earth shall by their political debaucheries have brought themselves to a state of enervation, and from one fall to another sunk into internal lethargy and external contempt, then—all alliance being admitted impossible with societies steeped in helpless egotism, the flood gates of the north will again open upon us, and we shall have to endure a last great invasion, an invasion of no longer ignorant barbarians, but of a people more enlightened and instructed than ourselves, for they will have been taught, by our excesses, the means and the mode of ruling over us.

It is not without design that Providence is accumulating so many inactive instruments of power in Eastern Europe. A day will come when the sleeping giant will rise up, and when force will put an end to the reign of speech. Vainly, at that time, will dismayed equality call upon the old aristocracy to rise in rescue of liberty. Arms in the hands

before and after my journey. The candour and good faith with which I profess to write forbid me to retrench anything that I have already written.