Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc

Excerpt

A LEADER FROM A FOREIGN NEWSPAPER: THE NEW RUSSIAN MANIFESTO.

Mention was recently made, in Vol. ix., p. 218., of the valuable character of many of the leading articles in the continental journals, and a wish expressed that translations of them were more frequently communicated in our own papers to English readers. The great newspapers of this country are too rich in varied talent and worldwide resources of their own, to make it worth their while in ordinary times to pay much attention to information and disquisition from foreign politicians, on subjects of the day; but the infinite importance to England, and to the world, of the present warlike struggle, renders it a matter of corresponding weight to know how far the foreign press, in the great centres of movement and intelligence, stand affected to Great Britain. Perhaps, therefore, as a specimen of this kind of writing, you will for once admit, among your varied contents, the following article from the Kölnische Zeitung of May 4:

"While in England, as a preparation for war, a day of humiliation and prayer is held, on which the Clergy exhort the people to look into their own breasts, and to discover and forsake those sins which might provoke God's punishments; while the most powerful nation of the world commences war by humbling itself before God, on the part of Russia a new manifesto appears, the arrogance of which can scarcely be exceeded by anything human. The Czar speaks as if he were the representative of God upon earth. His affair is God's affair. He carries on war for God, and for His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Saviour. God is for him, who can be against him!

"Such a document has not proceeded from the cabinet of any European power since the Middle Ages. It exceeds all which even Russian diplomacy has accomplished, in its zeal for Christianity, during the last century. For it is worthy of notice that nowhere is religion so much publicly talked about, as in the place where least of it remains, among the higher classes in St. Petersburgh. Religion there is inter instrumenta regni. When Catherine II. permitted her husband Peter III. to be imprisoned, in order to rob him of his throne and life, the cause of this was communicated to the Russian people on July 9, 1762, as follows:—'First of all, the foundation of your orthodox Greek religion has been shaken and its principles are drawing near to a total overthrow; so that we ought to dread exceedingly lest we should see a change in the true ruling faith transmitted from antiquity in Russia, and a foreign religion introduced.' So wrote Catherine II., 'the greatest of the queens, and of the ——,' the friend of Voltaire, the greatest lady-freethinker of her age. But she wrote still farther:—'Secondly, the honour of Russia as a state, which has been brought to the highest pinnacle of her victorious arms with the loss of so much blood, is actually trodden under foot through the newly-concluded peace with her bitterest enemy.' And who is this bitterest enemy of the orthodox Russia? The King of Prussia, Frederick II.!...