The Sun.
London, England, 1855-06-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

(From the Times of this day.)
Mr. Cobden is very good in his own province, but he is
about the last man to take for one's companion the moment
he is out of it. He reminds us of those travellers who,
wherever they go, are continually measuring everything they
see by some little standard of their own. They will take you
by the arm, and say, " Now just fix your eyes on the slopes
of that mountain, put the glaciers out of the question, ima-
gine the lake to be a river, supply a few trees, change one or
two of the larger chalets into villas, and don't look either too
high or too hard, and the view is exactly like that from Rich-
mond-hill." Very well. We will be as good-natured as we
can, put our senses into subjection, and sit under Mr. Cob-
den for a quarter of an hour or so. In company with a large
party of the House of Commons we have deplored the conduct
of certain politicians, who, after conducting England right
into the war, to the very gates of Sebastopol, and to the Con-
ferences of Vienna, have suddenly declared for peace, pro-
claimed the quarrel over, and England now the aggressor.
Mr. Cobden compares our remonstrances to the persecution
which Chatham, Burke, Fox, and we know not who besides,
brought upon themselves by their protest against the Ameri-
can and the Revolutionary War. We have only to forget the
trifling difference that the historical personages alluded to
were tolerably consistent throughout, while the statesmen to
whose course our remarks have been chiefly directed can only
date their present line from the moment that they left office,
a few mouths ago, on a wholly oli;tinct question. As for the
so-called " Peace Party," they are not a political party at all ;
but, though it is convenient to Mr. Cobden to forget, Ave
happen to remember that some of them, till the war actually
broke out, were the loudest declaimers against Russia in this
country.
Mr. Cobden next requests his hearers to be so good as to
suppose that we and others who ask for the vigorous prose-
cution of the war do so on purely philanthropical grounds,
from a chivalrous regard for the interests of Turkey. This
convenient supposition of his own ho claims to discuss as a
simple politician, on the principles of policy and expediency ;
and thereupon he launches out about " Utopian notions,"
about " schemes of universal benevolence," and " the behests
of the Almighty in every part of the world." lie then exhorts
all sensible people to cast to the winds all the declamatory
balderdash they have heard from the Treasury bench, as to
our fighting. for the liberty and independence of the entire
world. Tl " balderdash" is the fiction of Mr. Cobden's ever-
convenient imagination. We have treated Turkey as a mem-
ber of the European confederacy, and we take the very sensi-
ble, perhaps even selfish view, that if we sit by while Russia
swallows Turkey it may be our turn next. The obligation to
assist Turkey arises from mixed reasons of interest, justice,
and common humanity, like most other obligations. Nor is
it a new obligation or a self-impos-d one. It has come down
to us from former generations, and we should not only be act-
ing both harshly and meanly by leaving Turkey in the lurch,
but cutting our own throats into the bargain. In fact, it is a
complicated question, with many aspects, and has been so
regarded by everybody whose opinion is worth notice. Mr.
Cobden, for the convenience of talk, shuts his eyes to every
other aspect, every other bearing of the question, and abuses
the folly or the hypocrisy of all who would rescue Turkey
from the gripe of Russia. With a like regard to the imme-
diate exigencies of debate, Mr. Cobden talks of the States-
men and noble lords who worked Parliament into
this war, and whipped and lashed the country into a warlike
temper by exciting appeals to enthusiasm. Has Mr. Cobden
really so short a memory as this ? Is it possible he forgets
that for at least a twelvemonth not only Parliament, not only
the country, but Ministers themselves most of all, were
" worked," and "whipped," and " lashed " into the war, by
a numerous anti-Russian party, who addressed themselves to
the strong popular sentiment against despotism, and in favour
of nationalities I It is a people's war. Things had come to
that pass that no Government could stand, no House of Com-
mons could stand, that did not undertake the war. The
Premier stood the pressure from without till he was called a
Russian sympathiser. We were charged all over the country
with strong Russian sympathy. Over and over again we en-
treated the people to count the coat, and to consider that the
war once begim would be neither a little war nor a short one.
We desired them to think well over the character of the
people for whom they wished to incur such great sacrifices,
and to jeopardise the peace and prosperity of Europe. The
people saw that it was not only a Turkish but an European
question, and determined that the pretensions of Russia'
should be resisted. Yet Mr. Cobden can get up in the house
and gravely, nay, sternly, talk of British statesmen hounding
on the people to war.
After addressing to his own countrymen the most narrow-
minded and artificial view of the war that an Englishman
could take, Mr. Cobden, with great propriety, assumes a like
smallness of intelligence in our continental neighbours. He
talks of the traditions of war still lingering in Germany,
unfavourable to France; and asks what Germany, to
judge from the past, has most to fear. Is there even
common sense in this amiable suggestion? Does Germany
really fear France at this moment If Germany remembers
what happened half a century since, Germany will remember
also a certain seven years' war, and a certain thirty years' war,
in which neither French nor Russians were the principal de-
solators of Germany, but Germans themselves. As it hap-
pens, the Germans have been their own worst enemy ; and if
they went by the past, and cherished all sorts of unpleasant
traditions, they would hate the very name of their fatherland
as the most unnatural, fratricidal, and suicidal community
under the sun. Germans, however, have the sense to know
that dangers are not mere repetitions of the past, and that
other things are to be feared besides what happened yester-
day. Of course it is very convenient for Russia to be always
reminding Germany of what France did once upon a time,
but if danger is a matter not of history, but of existing policy,
present preparation, and impending force, then the West is
certainly not the particular point of the compass from which
Germany has the most to fear. This is what Mr. Cobden ad-
dresses to the whole of Germany. But he has a particular
appeal to Prussia, which, for the purpose, he insulates from
Germany, and conveniently supposes to be an out-of-the-way
State, sixteen millions strong. He introduces a Prussian gen-
tleman exclaiming at our unfairness in wishing little Prussia
to fight it out with big Russia, just as we set a dog on a bull.
he is this but Mr. Cobden's old trick of insisting that.
people shall see only just as much as he chooses to show
them ? Instead of proposing the unequal duel that
ho describes, in the first place, we, the French,
the Sardinians, and the Turks aro already in it neck
deep, and at no trifling cost of blood and treasure ; and then
we invite, not the Prussians alone, but the Austrians, and
all Germany, a population, as it happens, nearly equal to the
sixty millions of Russia. But if, as Mr. Cobden's model
Prussian suggests, that particular State is "at the door " of
Russia, where will it be when Russia, on Mr. Cobden's pacific
and sensible policy, has the Danubian Principalities, all Tur-
key, the Black Sea, the Archipelago, the Adriatic, and, in
fact, the keys of the East ? Prussia will then be not "at the
door," but in the mouth, already crushed and lubricated,
and prepared for absorption into the still more intimate re-
cesses of the monster which it already fears too much to re-
sist_

To carry out this candid, comprehensive, and truthful ac-
count of the crusade we have wantonly undertaken against
Russia, Mr. Cobden takes care to describe it as an invasion,
and intimates that it so far resembles the invasion of Russia
by the French in the late war. Mr. Cobden understands
the value of a nomenclature, for a man has only to name
things as he pleases, and he may argue as he likes. But no
fair and sensible reasoner, above mere sleight of words, would
ever think of giving the name of invasion to a mere landing
under the walls of a hostile fortress, when nothing was con-
templated beyond the destruction of immense naval prepara-
tions intended for the conquest of neighbours. Russia estab-
lishes a fortified port, with a navy out of all proportion to
that part of the world, and not required for any purposes of