The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-04-05 00:00:00

EVENING EDITION

e An Evening Edition of the NORTHERN DAILY
TIMES is now Published every Afternoon, at Three o'clock,
containing the Markets, together with all the News of the
Day, up to the hour of going to Press.

T:{R
DAILY TINES

ANNUAI

'th

IPTION TO THE NORTHERN
TWO GLTINEAS PER ANNUM.

ortlitru

SATURDAY,

APRIL 5, 1856

MANY of the London newspapers express great
indignation at the terms on which England has
consented to the restoration of peace. This
would be all reasonable enough, if those who
placed themselves in opposition to peace had
been led to expect any political advantages from

war, or if they had the treaty of Paris before them

With re

I to the real objects of the two years of
bloodshed we have witnessed and paid for, there
was no deception whatever attempted ; and, since
the terms agreed to have not yet been announced
officially, we think our cotemporaries show much
recklessness in the manner in which they have
dashed into se entiende la sepultura, whose mazes
none but diplomatists are suffered to tread.
Politically, we have no right whatever to be dis-
satisfied, as we were given to understand what the
policy of the war party was, two years ago, and
would be at the end of the most victorious contest.
Russian aggression was to be resisted ; but the
CZAR was not to be humiliated, or his tyrannical
power prostrated. The ABERDEEN Cabinet an-
nounced this policy openly. The Emperor NAPO-
LEON adopted it in spirit, and the PALMERSTON
Ministry have carried it out to the very letter•
There is no breach of Ministerial faith, or
national disgrace, therefore, is the acceptance of
terms of peace, which secures all we professed to
have in view.

If any material advantages have been gained,
they are concessions which we had no right to
expect, and they ought to be viewed as a palpable
proof of the conciliatory spirit in which the enemy
is disposed to meet the Western Powers. But it is
perfectly paradoxical to call (peace, under any eh-.
eumstances, " dishonourable." Dishonour lies in
breaking in upon the tranquility of nations. War
is the darkest of all human crimes

It is

murder and rapine for which no measure of
retribution can atone. We were not, we are proud
to say, the first to draw the sword, and if we have
saved a people from Russian bondage, and prema-
ture annihilation, and have been the first to accept
peace ; eternal honour is the reward that awaits us.
We were among the two-thirds of the British
public, who thought that the Paris Conference
would not have arrived at a pacific solution, but
since Russia has proved sincere in her desire for
peace, we say, let the world's tranquility be restored,
and preserved for another forty years, at any
price. Give civilisation another such season of
repose, and we will find some better uses
iron, brass, sulphur, saltpetre, char-
for our gold,
coal, ships, horses and precious life's blood, than
those of war. We shall have fewer millions of
our race heaping their maledictions on the heads
of despots, and crowns of fools. We shall not
want Dantes to portray the tortures of infernal
regions, or a Shakspere to lampoon the imbecility

of Kings, as warnings, or for our amuse-
The arts of peace are inexhaustible,

ment

and the modern growth of nations shows what

they can encompass

Compare the honours and trophies of war with
the comfort, affluence and grandeur, which waits
the squatter of to-day, in Australia and America,
ten or twenty ycars hence ! Look at the wealth
which has attended the industry of the once
houseless and disgraced footpad, in our penal settle-
ments, and the opulence and distinction the
children of the shoeless emigrant are enjoying in

almost every clime. It would take an age to
calculate all humanity has gained within the last

forty years. As civilisation rolls, on tgreat wrongs
correct themselves, and morality assumes the
mastery over political delinquencies and follies.
Fools and tyrants only can prosper in war. Wis-
dom reaps the harvests of peace, and we can point
to its conquests without a blush. As we did not
go to war to restore the Poles to independ-
ence, to emancipate the serfs of Europe,
to humiliate the Czar and prostrate his power
but to deliver Turkey from the hands of her
invaders, let us accept the deliverance
of the Ottomans as the terms of peace. And
if Russia will remain a military despotism let her
be left to die, as all such despotisms have died in
the face of Christianity. Let us accept those
terms which will release us from a war in which
nothing can be obtained beyond a further
and most unholy waste of life and treasure.

The Daily News, Sun, and Morning Advertiser are
the papers which profess to be most indignant at
the conditions of peace agreed to by Great
Britain. But we are quite at a loss to understand
what those journals would have us demand now
the avowed object of the deadly struggle has
Would they have us enter

been attained

on a war of nationalities, or a career
of conquest ? If they would have us follow
the first course, our policy is peace and
strict neutrality, which would not give offence to
France or any other Power. If they advocate the
latter, peace is our strongest ally, which while it
lays bare the wickedness, will demolish the enor
mities of despotism. Beyond this we presume the
journals in question would not carry the work
of subjugation. They would ask no more than to
see Europe living under Constitutional government,
and the millions of each of its races left to enjoy
one unbroken brotherhood. But what nation
would be mad enough to undertake an armed
championship in such a crusade ? Peace is the un-
failing reformer of abuses, and non-intervention
in the domestic quarrels of other States, the only
course by which we can hope to see its ends
accomplished. Censuring the terms accepted
by Lords CLARENDON and COWLEY, has already ;
evoked the displeasure of the French Government
and led to the seizure of the three London papers
we have named. Not that the event is of any
singular importance.
France is in a particularly gaseous state at this
moment. Her political fluids may solidify, or they
may liquify, and boil over, to the great amazement
of the world. She is on her trial, as well as all the
rest of Continental Europe. If she is to prosper
it must be, like ourselves, by universal tranquility.
That this doctrine is in high favour at the French
court, we can demand no more conclusive proof than
the avidity with which the Emperor NAP)LEON has
accepted the conditions agreed to by the Congress.
It is, consequently, much to be regretted that any
portion of the British press should suffer itself to
be so far led away, as to adopt a course which is
the most certain, of all others, to defeat the rea
object they seek. If we are " dishonoured'
by the terms of the Paris treaty, France must be
equally, if not more, humiliated by them. But
what is known in this country to justify
such an assumption ? Our cotemporaries
will not pretend to say that they have
seen the treaty—that they have penetrated
the tenebres of diplomacy, and broken through the
official mystery of these days, tout d' un coup. If
so it is rather hard that we in the provinces
should be compelled to wait for the formal publics•
tion of State documents, in which our readers are
quite as deeply interested as the inhabitants

Middlesex. But the editors of these three
London papers have not seen the treaty of peace,
and all they have said about its contents is based
on pure supposition, and it is much, and indeed
bitterly, to be lamented that they should have
exposed themselves to the censure of our Ally, and
to what may be still worse—the ridicule of the
world.