AN ERROR OF MODERN INDEPENDENCY. 539 contract them by pressure, that the largest among them should not give space for more than a thousand people. So long as our onepastor system is continued, no place should be on a larger scale, if pastoral oversight is to be anything more than a name. Three-fourths of our places would be large enough, if not adapted to receive more than from five to seven hundred. The effect of this state of things would be, that no popular minister would need be apprehensive as to having a sufficient congregation. The congregations would naturally be more numerous, and with less disparity between them, there would be less of inquietude and rivalry. With the increase of congregations there would, of course, be an increased strength in the ministerial In this way strength would have place where it ought to be found at the great centres of our population; and the strength augmenting at the centres could not fail to make itself felt in a thousand ways at the extremities. Much might be said about the demand made by such places on the physical strength of the preacher; about their tendency to destroy all natural speaking, by necessitating, in the case of most men, an unnatural straining of the voice; and also about the chances which such places supply of feud and scandal, when the one man, for whom the structure has been raised, has to give his place to another. But these are light evils compared with those we have enumerated, So long as our system shall be a one-pastor system, so long every great chapel must be, in its working and history, a great evil. As to those who may be ready to fasten on these admissions, and to proclaim them against us as vices of Independency, it shall be sufficient to say, that English Independency is what it is, notwithstanding these drawbacks; that the evils complained of exist only partially, even in our large towns; and that they are evils which have not come from anything inherent in congregationalism, but from the errors and practical oversight of congregationalists. It is admitted, however, that, speaking generally, English Independency, while possessing a considerable measure of the aggressive spirit, is not so aggressive as it should be, bearing in mind the extent. of the means of usefulness which Providence has placed at its disposal. 540 ART. IX.-(1.) Progress of Russia in the West, North, and South. By DAVID URQUHART. Trübner & Co. (2.) Russia: its Crimes and Plots. 1853. By a Russian. Allen. 1853. (3.) The Czar and the Sultan; or, Nicholas and Abdul Medjid. ADRIAN GILSON. Vizetelly. 1853. By (4.) Turkey Past and Present. By FRANCISQUE BOURET, late Representative. Translated by J. HUTTON. Clarke, Beaton, & Co. 1853. (5.) The Greek and the Turk. By E. E. CROWE. Bentley. 1853. (6.) Revelations of Russia. Colburn. 1844. Secret History of the Court and Government of Russia. By J. H. 1853. (8.) Russian Turkey. By G. P. D. Saunders & Stanford. (9.) The Times Newspaper, 14th and 15th October, 1853. (10.) The Portfolio: a Collection of State Papers. Ridgway. 1835, 1837. (11.) Le Portfolio. Paris: Truchy et Le Doyen. 1836, 1837. In our last number, we addressed ourselves at some length to the Russo-Turkey question,* in the hope we regret to say, the vain hope that this vexed subject would be satisfactorily settled before the winter commenced. But although, to use the grotesque, yet expressive language of the late Viscount Castlereagh, that question has been dangling about the councils of the nation' for now full nine months; yet on this first day of November, the prospects of a satisfactory settlement are nearly as remote as they were at the end of February or the beginning of March in the present year. The country, which was at first anxious, has now become agitated and uneasy. Commercial, monetary, and financial operations have been greatly deranged -enterprises of 'great pith and moment,' have suffered-and vent has been given to the public discontent at several numerously-attended public meetings, convened, nevertheless, at a time when the reading and influential men appearing at halls and platforms, are generally absent from the mart and the Exchange, and those other places of public resort, where those deeply interested in the public weal most do congregate. The anxiety on the question far from diminishing, increases with each new delay; and, at the period when we pen these lines, has attained a state of painful and dangerous tension. Under these circumstances, and considering, moreover, the great importance of the question internally and externally-not merely in reference to our trade and commerce, but on the relations of Russia and *See August, p. 227. MR. URQUHART'S HISTORY. 541 Turkey with Europe, and the world, we deem it our bounden duty not to omit this opportunity of again recurring to a theme which is of palpitating interest to the statesman and to the politician-to the commercial man and manufacturer, and not less so to the philosopher and philanthropist anxious for the progress and improvement of his species, for the diffusion of light and liberty, and the blessings that follow in the train of freedom and civilization. The work which we have placed at the head of this article is in many respects a remarkable, and in all respects a curious production. The name of Mr. Urquhart ought, by this time, to be pretty well known in all parts of England, considering the number of pamphlets he has published, the fragments of works he has sketched, the number of speeches he has made at public meetings, and the singular doctrines he has occasionally promulgated; yet, so immersed are men in all parts of this busy island in the pursuits of industry, and the worship of Mammon, that we doubt that there are many beyond those who have paid a special attention to topics connected with Russia and Turkey, who know much of a gentleman who, notwithstanding the eccentricity of some of his opinions, is well entitled to a hearing on questions connected with Turkey and Russia. Mr. Urquhart is a man of a respectable-indeed, we believe, of an ancient Scottish family-for he claims to be chief of the clan of Urquhart of Cromarty, and is now verging on, if he has not already attained, his fiftieth year. He was educated at St. John's College, Oxford, and, after travelling some time in the East, where he acquired considerable stores of information, was appointed Secretary of Embassy at Constantinople in 1837, then being of the mature age of five or six and thirty, without ever having previously been attached to any embassy, or having gone through those intermediate grades generally deemed indispensable in that mysterious hierarchy, in which interest, routine, and favouritism have too long ruled. The appointment of a man who had never been a précis writer or attaché, paid or unpaid, was, at the time, lauded by diplomatic reformers, who knew nothing of Mr. Urquhart but that he had given his mind to the consideration of questions connected with the government, trade, and resources of Turkey, and it was, by them and others, augured that a new and a better era was about to open on old jog-trot diplomacy. But these hopes proved fallacious. From causes into which it is unnecessary to enter, Mr. Urquhart and his superiors did not work harmoniously together, and he was ultimately relieved of the public charge to which he had been appointed, after no very long period of service, by Viscount Palmerston, then her Majesty's principal Secretary for Foreign, as he is now for Home Affairs. Into the merits of the question, or rather of the quarrel, between the former Secretary of Embassy at Constantinople and the then Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs we do not mean to enter here, for sufficient materials are not yet afforded to or revealed by the principal parties for pronouncing a judgment: but we think there can be little doubt that this passage in Mr. Urquhart's diplomatic life has given a peculiar tinge of bitterness and bias to his opinions, and, in reference to one individual, at least, has led him to make imputations, which, however ingeniously supported, are, in reality, quite without foundation. The blunders of English statesmen in reference to Russia and Turkey, have, for a quarter of a century or more, been great and manifold. They have been blunders of ignorance, of carelessness, of inconsiderateness, and of the grossest miscomprehension; but we do not impute, nor does the intelligent portion of the country at large, in our day, impute to any one of the officials engaged, the charge of personal corruption or of treason to the crown and interests of England. In the hearty hatred which Mr. Urquhart bears to the Russian system of government and diplomacy we go entirely along with him; but he has allowed this hatred, which, in his case, has arisen to an absorbing passion, to delude and mislead him, not merely as to the general power of Russia, which he overrates, but in attributing to her diplomacy an influence all but universal and omnipotent. In almost all that Mr. Urquhart says as to the flagitious unprincipledness and chicane of the Russian system of managing affairs, we entirely agree with him; but we do not think, as Mr. Urquhart openly asserts, that any man in the cabinet of Great Britain, no matter what his politics, has been for the last five and twenty years the corrupt instrument or tool of Russia. That the ablest and most sagacious men have been occasionally and unwittingly the tools of a power whose professed objects are to mystify and delude, and failing in delusion, then to sow snares and mistrusts among the nations, for the purposes of accomplishing her own selfish and criminal ends, may be freely admitted to any censor of our statesmen; but there is a wide difference between the being the unconscious dupe of Russian artifice, between the being bamboozled and bit by her, so to speak, and being her corrupt and subsidized servant, wearing the livery of England, but receiving the while the pay, and gold, and bribes of Russia. It may be that not a century ago a Marquess of Carmarthen, then GENERAL OBJECT OF RUSSIA. 543 Secretary of State, received certain perquisites from Russia: but such days are past and gone, never, we hope, to return. A strong enough case of laches, ignorance, and incompetence, may, we admit, be made against English statesmen without resorting to the imputations of personal bribery and corruption, imputations unde served and unmerited by any public men who have held office for the last quarter, indeed we might say for the last half-century. A great latitude of criticism, indeed of carping, may be allowed to a man who conceives he has been ill-treated and ill-used when doing the State some service; and we are prepared for any amount of sourness and severity with which a dismissed, and therefore a disappointed man, may treat the author or the instrument of his dismissal. But however unmeritedly Mr. Urquhart may consider himself used, and his prospects of preferment blasted, he should not resort to imputations of personal corruption against an official whom he had an opportunity of impeaching if he really believed him guilty of the treasons against crown and country, which the charge he makes fully implies, if it means anything more than airy words. Mr. Urquhart was a member of the last parliament of Queen Victoria, and sat as M.P. for Stafford from 1847 to 1852; yet, during these five years, no personal stain of corruption was attempted to be affixed on the noble lord the member for Tiverton by the M.P. for Stafford. Having said so much on this branch of the subject, for the purpose of showing that we in no degree partake of the feeling of personal passion, we had almost said of personal rancour, which too palpably sways Mr. Urquhart's mind in reference to one individual, we nevertheless admit that, on public grounds, and from the Blue Books themselves, a very grave case is made out against Viscount Palmerston; a case in which it is satisfactorily proved that he has played into the hands of Austria and Russia as effectually as the most pro-Russian or pro-Austrian of the cabinet in which he sits at the present moment, or has sate at any period of his long official life. But to impute this conduct to personal corruption, is more wild and paradoxical than the charging on Russia the French invasion of Spain in 1823 to put down the constitution, and the Anglo-French intervention in 1834 to sustain the Constitutionalists and the Christinos against the Carlists. It is perfectly true, as a general principle, that the object of Russia, since the days of Peter the Great, has been to set the powers of Western Europe by the ears, for the purpose of embroiling them with each other, but no real ill-feeling, it should be remarked, arose between France and England, because of the expedition of the Duke of Angoulême in 1823, or because of the |