Constitutional Whig

RUSSIA

This power of this empire as well as its territory is immense. With a population of upwards of fifty millions, divided among as many provinces and spread over at least 2,100,000 square miles, the influence she is capable of exerting over the destinies of both Europe and Asia renders her truly formidable. The Roman empire, it has been remarked, never equalled in extent every European Russia, which is but one third of the whole Russian Empire. Under the reigns of Peter, Catherine and Alexander, Russia has become a powerful warlike monarchy; and the general introduction of military discipline, joined to the wise policy of her rulers, has succeeded beyond calculation in reducing to some system and government the heterogeneous mass of beings composing her population. Cossacks, Poles and Tartars—the christian and the mahometan, are alike held in subjection to the government, and when occasion requires, unite their exertions to defend the possessions of their sovereign, or add to their extent. But this state of things in Russia, brought about as we have before remarked by military discipline, cannot from the nature of man be permanent. Already we have heard accounts of a conspiracy, matured in plan and nearly ready for effect, to the capital of the empire, and which the unexpected event of the death of Alexander, with succeeding occurrences, discovered, if not frustrated— Like conspiracies against the reigning monarch, be he who he may, will be formed, perhaps be afforded with all the success wished for by the conspirators, and in that case this widely extended country may be shaken to its centre, and in the convulsion new kingdoms arise from its now provinces.