Pot and Kettle
Richard Cobden wondered how the architects of the British Empire had the nerve to accuse Russia of imperialism.
1854
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Richard Cobden wondered how the architects of the British Empire had the nerve to accuse Russia of imperialism.
1854
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
In 1854, British feeling was running high against Russia. That March, Britain had sided with Turkey in the Crimean War of 1853-56, and anxious journalists and politicians pointed accusing fingers at Russia’s military manoeuvres around the Baltic and the Black Sea, scolding her for her greed and disrespect for her neighbours’ sovereignty. Richard Cobden wondered if there was something amiss with his hearing.
THE Russians are accused by us of being an aggrandising people! From the day of Poltawa* down to the time of the passage of the Balkan* — say the orators, journalists, reviewers, and authors — the government of St Petersburg* has been incessantly addicted to picking and stealing. But, in the meantime, has England been idle? If, during the last century, Russia has plundered Sweden, Poland, Turkey and Persia, until she has grown unwieldy with the extent of her spoils, Great Britain has, in the same period, robbed, — no, that would be an unpolite phrase, — “has enlarged the bounds of his majesty’s dominions”* at the expense of France, Holland, and Spain.
It would be false logic, and just as unsound morality, to allow the Muscovite to justify his derelictions of honesty by an appeal to our example;* but, surely, we, who are staggering under the embarrassing weight of our colonies, with one foot upon the rock of Gibraltar and the other at the Cape of Good Hope, — with Canada, Australia, and the peninsula of India, forming, Cerberus-like, the heads of our monstrous empire, — and with the hundred minor acquisitions scattered so widely over the earth’s surface as to present an unanswerable proof of our wholesome appetite for boundless dominion, surely, we are not exactly the nation to preach homilies to other people in favour of the national observance of the eighth commandment!*
From an essay on Russia collected in ‘The Political Writings of Richard Cobden’ Volume 1 (1867).
* The Russian Empire’s emphatic victory over Sweden at Poltava in 1709 ended the Great Northern War and established Russia as one of Europe’s Great Powers. See The Great Northern War.
* The event that triggered The Crimean War.
* At this time, the capital of the Russian Empire was at St Petersburg in the far northwest. The Emperor was Nicholas I (r. 1825-55). He was succeeded by Alexander II, who moved quickly to bring the Crimean War to an end.
* Despite Cobden’s use of the pronoun ‘his’, the monarch of the United Kingdom at this time was Queen Victoria (r. 1837-1901). He was recalling British imperial expansion over the previous hundred years, which had been dominated by the reign of King George III (1760-1820).
* That is, Emperor Nicholas I should not argue that because Britain acquires territories under deceitful claims of ‘protecting the weak’ or ‘advancing our interests’, Russia can do the same. Cobden refused to justify bullying foreign policy on such grounds: see ‘Nobody Wants to Invade You’.
* The Eighth Commandment is “Thou shalt not steal”. See Exodus 20:1-17.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.