RUSSIA AND THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1321, 22 November 1864, Page 5

RUSSIA AND THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES.

(From the Times.) We are in possession of information which comes to us in a very authentic shape, that Russia fully expected the breaking out of war as the result of her correspondence with the English and French Governments last year, and she was resolved that this time at least she would do something batter with her fleet than suffer it to be cooped up behind the defences of Constadt, or sunk ingloriously in the harbour of Sebastopol. She had studied with mnch attention, and apparently no little profit, the tactics of the Confederates in the present civil war. She had seen how much injury a very smalt force can inflict on a very large and flourishing commerce, and though she probably did not anticipate that she could gain, in spite of England, successes as de cisive as those achieved by the Alabama and other Confederate cruisers, she still might very reasonably think that she could strike a blow which, though it might not succeed in crippling the commercial superiority of England, would nevertheless inflict great discredit on her arms and serious damage on her commerce. She well knew that after war had been declared her fleet could not hope long to keep the seas against such a force as England and France could bring against it. She had chosen a vulnerable point,and on that, so soon as war was declared,she was determined to make a swoop. For this purpose instructions had been issued to the Russian admirals on the American and Californian coasts, directing them to leave their respective ports by different routes for a common place of rendezvous, to be ascertained in mid ocean by latitude and longitude. The fleet thus assembled was to hold itself in readiness, in the event of a war with England, to bear down on the Australian colonies. Melbourne was to be the first place attacked, then Hobart.Town in Tasmania, then Adelaide, then Sydney, then New Zealand. The force that was to be assembled for the purpose was fully adequate to the service required of it. The ships that were to be detached from the New York station would have mustered. 156 guns, and those from Japan and California, would have carried altogether 43 guns ; the number of seamen was 2971, and there were 127 officers. The vessels were principally armed with 68-pounders, but the admirals had orders to obtain from New York whatever rifled guns they might require. Of course, there is nothing in this story, true as we believe it to be, to excite in the minds of the people of this countrj«-«»y sort of ill-feeling against liuseia. If England will go to war with powerful nations she must expect they will choose the weakest point they can find, whether the cause of the quarrel be an idea, a nationality, or a sentiment. The plan seems to have been skilfully conceived, and was, no doubt, far better than the old one of treating your fleet as something that is to be laid up in lavender, to be protected and taken care of instead of being employed for the purpose of injuring the enemy. If l we had been foolish enough to be drawn into a war with Russia for sueh a chimera as the regeneration of Poland, we should not have had the slightest right to complain, though she had made us feel the evils of the conflict in the most sensitive place and in the severest manner.