Emperor held that an
effective means of achieving this would be to give the nation such a
status "that it should be accounted not enthralled by Russia, but
attached to her in virtue of its own manifest interests." "This valiant
and trusty people," said Czar Alexander I., when winding up the Diet of
Borgo, "will bless Providence for establishing the present order of
things. And I shall garner in the best fruits of my solicitude when I
shall see this people tranquil from without, free within, devoting
itself to agriculture and industry under the protection of the laws and
their own good conduct, and by its very prosperity rendering justice in
my intentions and blessing its destiny."

Subsequent history justified the rosiest hopes of the Emperor. The
immediate consequence of the policy he adopted toward Finland was that
the country quickly became calmed and settled after the fierce war that
had been waged there, and that in this way Russia was enabled to
concentrate all her forces upon the contest with Napoleon. According to
the words of Alexander I. himself, the annexation of Finland "was of
the greatest advantage to Russia; without it, in 1812, we might not,
perhaps, have won success, because Napoleon had in Bernadotte his
steward, who, being within five days' march of our capital, would have
been inevitably compelled to join his forces with those of Napoleon.
Bernadotte himself told me so several times, and added that he had
Napoleon's order to declare war against Russia." And afterward, during
almost a century, Finland never occasioned any worries, political or
economic, to the Russian Government, and did not require special
sacrifices or special solicitude on its part.

If we may judge, not by the speeches and articles of particular
Separatists, but by overt acts, during that long period of time the
Finnish people never failed in their duty as loyal subjects of their
monarch or citizens of the common fatherland, Russia. The successors of
the conqueror of Finland spoke many times from the height of the throne
"of the numerous proofs of unalterable attachment and gratitude which
the citizens of this country have given their monarchs." And in effect,
neither general insurrections against Russia's dominions, nor political
plots, nor the tumults of an ignorant rabble--such as our cholera
riots, workmen's outbreaks, Jewish pogroms, and other like
disturbances--have ever occurred in Finland; and when disorders of that
kind