The Sun.
London, England, 1855-01-23 00:00:00

:On Secret Diseases, their Self-management and Cure.

The GREEN BOOK.—.A. comprehensive and popular exposition
of genito and urinary diseases—their nature and treatment, com-
prising especially primary and secondary symptoms, all forms of
urinary derangements, stricture and spermatorrhcea ; with 250 en-
gravings and prescriptions.

The BLADDER, URETHRA, and BECTUM.—Comprising
Urinary Derangements, Constipation, and Ilmmorrholds.
Vols. 6 and 7, companions to the preceding.
TIE ENJOYMENT OF LIFE. 110 W TO BE HAPPY.
"Juconde ViTore."
"Few words to fair faith."—Shakespere.
Sherwood, 23, Paternoster-row; Maim, 39, Cornhill ; or of
DP. RICHARD CULVERWELL,

Brother, Successor, and Twenty Years Consulting Colleague orthe
late Author of the above, 10, Argyll-place, Regent-street, London,
who may be advised with on the above matters daily, from Ten till
Five, and in the evenings, from Seven till Nine.

THE CLIMATE OF THE CRIMEA
requires the best and warmest Clothing, Hosiery, Boots, &c.,
which E. MOSES and Son have on hand in the most extensive and
best arranged stock. The climate of England at this season has
the same features—variable, cold, and damp. The establishment of
E. MOSES and SON, Alineries and Ald,gate, and their West-end
Branch, present the most suitable articles of dress, the most fashion-
able and comfortable, and one uniform pi incipie of economy in price
is observed in every department. Juvenile Clothing, the most ele-
gant and durable, ingenionsly cut and made, and consideraqy
cheaper than at any other establishment. E. MOSES and Sox's
Wholesale Department displays the best and most extensive stock
of Clothing, Shirts, Boots, &c., from which merchants, captains, and
others should select.

SPECIAL NOTICE.—UntiI March 1,1555, E. MOSES and SON'S
ESTABLISHMENTS will be CLOSED at EIGHT O'CLOCK EVERT
EVENING, except Saturday, when they will be open till 11 o'clock.

CAUTION.—E. MOSES and SON regret having to guard the
public against imposition, having learned that the nntradesman-like
falsehood of " Being connected with their Establishment," er " It's
the same concern," has been resorted to in many instances, and for
obvious reasons, they beg to state that they have
No CONNEXION Wl= ANY OMER HOUSE IN OE OUT OF LONDON,
except their own Establishments, as follows :

London City Establishment, 154, 155, 156, and 157, Minories, 84
85, and 86, Aldgate, opposite the Church, all communicating.

London West-end Branch, 506, 507, 508, New Oxford-street, 1,2,
and 3, Hart-street, all communicating.
Bradford (Yorkshire) Branch, 19 and 20, Bridge-street.
Sheffield Branch, 3G, Fargate.
Colonial Wholesale Branch, Melbourne, Australia.
Merchant Tailor, Clothiers, Hatters, Hosiers, Furriers, Boot and
shoe Makers, and General Outfitters for Ladies and Gentlemen.

IMPORTANT.—ShouId any article not give satisfaction, it will be
exchanged if desired, or, if preferred, the money will be returned
without hesitation. All goods are marked in plain figures, the lowest
price, trom which no abatement can bo made.

Th-e Establishments are closed from sunset on Fridays to sunset
en Saturdays, when business is resumed till 11 o'clock.
A new Bock for Autumn an 4 Winter. " The Commercial Cornu-
copia," containing full lists of prices, our system of self-mew:me-
meat, &c., tee., may be had on application, or post-free.
Id Von parte Francais. Qui si parla Itatirno.
liter soricht man Deutsch Aqua sa !labia Espano.
.An Illustrated Almanas for 1555 cratison application, or post free.

FAILURE IN THE IRON TRADE.—We regret to have
to state that the furnaces, two in number, of Messrs.
Turiff and Sharp, at New Cumnock, were blown out on
Friday last, the firm having been compelled to suspend
payment. The outlays connected with these works have
been very large, some six or seven miles of railway, to
be traversed by locomotives, having been made for the
purpose of bringing the mine to the works ; and
another line of railway, over difficult ground, having
been made to connect it with the Glasgow and South-
Western Railway. By this suspension a large number
of workmen have been thrown out of employment, tem-
porarily at least. We have not heard particulars of tin,
liabilities of the firm, or the prospects as re.ards tht
settlement of their affair:,—Glasgow Daly DIaFl,

The session that virtually opens to-day will decide one
of the most important questions that can arise in the his-
tory of a people. That question is neither more nor less
than this, Whether England is henceforth to be a mili-
tary Power ? While we ask the question we almost hear
it objected on this side and on that, that such a question
can never be asked in any Parliamentary or noticeable
form ; that nobody will think worth asking what almost
everybody is pieparod to answer one way ; that, supposing
the question to be decided substantially and in effect, it
will be by the gradual decision of the time, warping our
habits slowly and imperceptibly to peace or to war ; that,
in all probability, England will always remain what she is,
prepared equally for peace and for war, though perhaps
somewhat hindered in the prosecution of war by her con-
stitutional ideas and mercantile habits. Indeed, it is always
probable that nothing decisive will be done, and that we
shall go on doing what we have done before. In answer to
all these very tural objections, we must repeat our strong
persuasion that the question is virtually asked, and will,
to a very great extent, be decided this very session. What
if the question be not asked at all in any manner what-
ever, literal or virtual, and everything relating to the war
be permitted to go on as it has done before,—that will
itself be a decision,—perhaps a final decision,—that Eng-
land is henceforth not to be a military Power. It is quite
evident that on the present system we cannot wage war,
and it is sheer extravagance and downright murder to pre-
tend to do so. It is demonstrated beyond a shadow of
doubt that such is the dead lock of authorities and de-
partments, such the complication of forms, such the intru-
sion of foreign and injurious influences in every part and
step of our military administration, that we cannot
cope with the elements themselves, much less with
a respectable foe. It is quite evident that we can
no more wage war to any effect than the " Train
Bands" under a staff of John Gilpins, or any other
mock militia. The immense material and pompous or-
ganisation of war, which cost us some twenty millions a
year, are a delusion and a snare, simply because we don't
possess the mode of working them to any effect. After
half a century of the most expensive and elaborate susten-
tation and improvement, our military system has at last
been set to work. It has been about a twelvemonth at
work, and during that twelvemonth has been urged. and
encouraged, and warned, and assisted, :Ina ...reeled, and
chided, and resuscitated in every possible way. Nor is
there any reason to suppose that it would have fared better
in other possible hands. Yet the result is failure, failure,
failure—a perpetually descending bathos of non-per-
-fermance, confision, delay, perplexity, impotence, and
whatever ends in nothing. The system is found as im-
possible to work as a ship that will not obey its rudder, or
an engine that cannot be get into motion • or a figure of
bones and sinews, into which we cannot breathe the
breath of life. The dead lock is absolute, final, inevitable,
and desperate, from Whitehall to the camp before Sebas-
topol. The Minister of War, the Commander-in-Chief at
home, the Commander-in-Chief in the Crimea, down to
the purveyor of stores at Scutari, and the miserable lad,
dozing, hungry, naked, and frost-bitten in the trench, are
all equally dummies. They can do nothing. They are
mere blocks in the inanimate system that answers no other
purpose than to make us flatter ourselves we are prepared
to go to war, when we certainly are not. They constitute
a scarecrow, which has long ceased to frighten our foes,
and only deceives those who maintain it. Now, if this
session, in the face of the utter wreck of this fabric, the
thorough detection of this imposture, the absolute collapse
of this stage giant, suffers the thing to go on, and votes
supplies an all the rest of it as heretofore, then we say it
virtually, and perhaps finally, resolves that England
henceforth shall net be a military power.
We have been accused of personal feelings in
our remarks on the war, and of reflecting on this
or that officer maliciously or wantonly. The tenour
of our complaint, however, has been entirely against
the system, and, under that system, we really believe the
ablest Minister will be likely to find himself crushed and
disabled. The promised reform in the War Ministry, that
cost a break in the last session and 17,0001. a year, simply
relieved the Minister of War of the care of fifty colonies,
and so far was a great and positive advantage ; but it left
all the complications, all the divided, co-ordinats, and con-
flicting authorities of the existing system unchanged ; it
left the Duke of Newcastle incapable of giving an order
which he might, on the best grounds, believe to be abso-
lutely necessary for the salvation of an army ; it left him
recoiling not so much from the responsibility of decisions
as from the trouble and uncertainty that attended their
execution. When this is the case with the man most re-
sponsible for the administration of the war, and vulgarly
supposed to be really and entirely responsible, what must
be the case with a multitude of other officers industriously
subordinate andpowerless ? It is the object of the system to
destroy freedom of action, and the spirit engendered by the
system is to do as little as possible, and even to know as
little as possible. That is the language alike of the officers
in the field and the functionaries at home. We are only
too fully persuaded that at the approaching day of trial,
when all who have been so unfortunate as to share the re-
sponsibility of this enterprise will be called to a searching
and terrible account, they will all be well able to defend
themselves. They will all be able to point out that they
had not the authority that the occasion required, that
their delays were necessary, that they could only indicate
wishes when commands were to be given, and might begin
a measure, but could net carry it out; that they were
thus necessarily dependent on chance and caprice, and
the chances went against them. Could we think
the system possible, we should have adopted a more
severe line as to the conduct of individuals. Nay,
men who have been present for months in the Crimea
have been under the belief that we were only too apt to
screen individuals for the sake of our correspondent. In
point of fact, we have not censured them as they seemed
to deserve, because we well knew that the system was one
under which they could not do their duty. _ . .

But the prepossession most fatal to the hope of a right
decision, and most conducive to the wrong decision of
leaving things as they are, is the idea that there is really
no such alternative as that of being a military power or
not ; and that a country like ours, mainly addicted to
peaceful pursuits, may without any violent change, or any
institutions very discordant from its general policy, con-
duct at least a defensive war with respectable success. Now
all experience, and especially that of the present age, is
dead against this prepossession, which is simply a piece of
English narrow-mindedness. War is war, and cannot be
made anything else than war. It will not be reduced to
a system of ledgers, memoranda, desks, stores, uniforms,
and other dead or dormant affairs, such as may answer,
possibly, for a domestic institution. In our own times
every Power worth anything in war is an expressly mili-
tary Power, under an Emperor, who is, in fact, the head
of the army, as his very name denotes. Not one of the
Emperors now reigning in Europe is either a constitutional
Sovereign or the legitimate heir to his throne. One chief
of one military bureau out of a dozen is no match for the
man who can say, "Sic role, sic jubeo, stet pro rations
toluntas." Of course, we are not demanding the creation
of a military despotism, but we are demanding that with-
out which military success, and even the preservation of
an army in the field, is impossible—one undivided respon-
sibility. Do we object to the creation of such an office ?
Well and good. The objection is reasonable enough. It
would be peculiarly reasonable in the mouth of a Bright,
and perhaps of a Cobden. But let us be consistent. Let
us give up war altogether. Let us take rank as a commer-
cial nation. Let us settle as the Dutch, the Venetians,
and some other ancient military Powers have done, and
become the humble spectators of our neighbours' quarrels.
It is possible we may be the happier, nay, even the better
for it ; that is, if our neighbours will let us alone. If
they will not let us alone, then we must enjoy what hap-
piness they choose to leave us—what morality or religion
they choose to prescribe or encourage. If we are still too
proud for this, and wish to keep up with the first rank,
then we must not mince the 'natter. We must have a
proper military organisation, with sufficient unity and
power, and sufficient adaptation to its purpose in all other
respects, to make us a match for our Imperial Allies and
antagonist.