Note 110 — Chapter VIII · ON THE RUSSIAN ARMY.⁠[101]

“The bankers of Berlin in 1853 refused the 5 per cent. Russian loan at 83, with a bonus of 17 per 100 on the nominal capital. For the last twenty years Russia has been borrowing, to cover the deficit left in her budget by her enormous military preparations.”—Léon Faucher, ‘Revue des Deux Mondes,’ Nov. 15, 1854, p. 809.

The position of Russia is well described by M. Léon Faucher:—“How can the riches of a country be spoken of, which is still on so many sides a desert to clear and people? There are scarcely 11 inhabitants to the square kilomètre (⅔rds of a mile). The average of life is only 20 years (less than half that of the inhabitants of London, which is 43), and this presents very precarious resources for recruiting immense armies. The middle classes in Russia are scarcely born; the nobles are in debt; the peasants are reduced to a state of serfdom, or live in a kind of communism which is the actual practice of the most immoral and barbarous theories; manufacturing industry is an artificial creation by high protective tariffs; agriculture, with the exception of the kingdom of Poland, is in a rude and patriarchal state. The forests, the steppes, and the marshes occupy ⅚ths of the empire; and can it be supposed that a soil thus badly prepared can furnish the means of successfully resisting the powers of the West, who have in abundance what Russia has a dearth of, or will soon have a dearth of, namely, men and money.”—Id. p. 318. These are home truths, and we have only to thank our late rulers that Russia is not already so far reduced as to be obliged to accept any terms that we chose to impose upon her.