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century of clash of interest and clash of outlook. Pitt,as has been seen, in 1791 first voiced, though ineffectually,the dangers to British interests of Russian southwardexpansion. Experience in the Napoleonic wars andthe continued advance of the Russians at the expense ofTurkey and Persia bred in government and militarycircles the belief that Russia was a danger to the MiddleEast and the overland routes to India, and that thereforethe maintenance of at least a reasonably strong Turkeywas essential.Palmerston, who became foreign secretary in 1830,thoroughly agreed; and he did not hide the fact.Throughout the thirties Anglo-Russian relations couldnot be worse, and every incident was swollen disproportionately.Persia again came to the fore, and for thefirst time Russian instigation in Afghanistan was at work.Then a Russian setback in Central Asia and the changedRussian policy in the second Mehemet Ali crisis (seep. 281) eased matters. Fears as to the routes to Indiaand the Middle East receded into the background.In the thirties Russian commercial expansion in Turkeyand Persia caused much concern. Palmerston's successfulcommercial treaty with Turkey in 1838 redressed thebalance, and by the time of the Crimean War the Ottomanempire was a more important market for England thanRussia. All the more reason to support her; if left tothe mercy of the Muscovite bear his squeeze wouldeliminate British trade. Turkey was regarded by manyas attempting to go forward on the path of reform,whereas Russia not only shut herself up behind a toweringtariff wall, but figured as the fountain-head of brutaldespotism.Still more after 1848 public opinion tended to lookupon Russia as an obscurantist, slave-owning autocracy,ruling with the knout and the Cossacks, stocking Siberiawith innocent deportees, the persecutor of Poles andCircassians, the enemy of freedom throughout Europe,standing in all social, political, and religious matters atthe opposite extreme to England. In the Crimean WarEngland was fighting much less for the Turk than againstthe tsar pictured as the gendarme and hangman of413