The Sun.
London, England, 1855-06-16 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 1855.

Tl,e Honourable Gentleman the Member for
Aylesbury has accomplished the arduous task he
bad undertaken in a very judicious and efficient
wanner. He has passed through the ordeal with
flying colours, and has already obtained a recog-
nised position for the important topic which he
introduced, and with which his name will hence-
forward be inseparably connected, as that of :be
Hon. CHARLES VILLIERS with the Anti-Corn Law
agitation. The Hon. Gentleman, as we antici-
pated, proved himielf " fully equal to the occa-
sion." He spoke not only ably, but temperately,
and mar,3halled the long array of striking facts,
which he must have expended much time and
labour in obtaining, with great clearness. Not-
withstanding his propensity for " calling things
by their right names," and not sparing censure
wherever it has been merited, he carefully ab_
stained from affording a tangible opening to many
would-be assailants, who stood—

"Like greyhounds in the slip,
Straining upon the start!'

Perhaps " bull-cicgs" would be a more correct
designation for those anxious to join in " baiting
the Nineveh Bull." He was, however, guarded
on all points. There was one attempt at brow-
beating. An Honourable and Gallant Member,
who had that very morning, with singularly bad
taste, insinuated a want of veracity against the
Member for Aylesbury, endeavoured to commence
the sport, but the intended piece of military
dragooning was nipped in the bud, and the pug-
nacious orator was " induced to resume his seat !"
by loud cries of order. We trust that scenes of
personal altercation, which must always prove
more or less discreditable to the House, as well as
to the parties immediately concerned, may never
again be tolerated. Mr. LAYARD-the party
against whom these untoward practices have
chiefly been resorted to—has certainly not
suffered thereby, the missiles directed against
him having recoiled on his assailants.

The Honourable and Learned Gentleman very
judiciously removed some of the misapprehensions
that have been artfully contrived and industri-
ously circulated for the purpose of damaging the
movement. He showed that the demand for
Administrative Reform is not intended as a cru-
sade against the aristocracy. There is no reason
why a deserving member of the aristocracy should
not enter into the public service. He should
not be excluded from the competition, nor should
he, merely because he has "a handle to his
name," be allowed to distance all competitors of
less distinguished birth. It is against nepotism,
he protests—against the official blindness which
cannot discover plebeian merit, however strongly
developed, but which regards patrician deserts
through powerful magnifiers, which cannot discover
a suitable candidate for national employment in
any of the humbly born, or, if perchance, they
should by any means obtain admission within the
charmed circle, allows them to remain unnoticed,
while others of far inferior qualifications are pro-
pelled onwards by the force of interest. These
were the points so justly complained of, and it is
right that the real question should be known,
and that the opponents of all reform should not
be permitted to raise a fictitious issue on a matter
not really Controverted.

There was one feature in the debate worthy of
particular notice, and which affords the most
auspicious auguries for the future success of the
single speaker ventured to
movement. Not a
deny the propriety, nay, more, the necessity, for
la/Tr° and comprehensive measures of reform. Many
reasons were assigned for voting against the mo-
tion, but none ignored the existence of grave abuses
or controverted the soundness of the principle of ad
mission to the public service, and subsequent pro-
motion, by and merit only. This was the
gist of Sir E. BULIVER. LYTTON'S' amendment. It
Was the subject of every speech, and although the
Chancellor of the Exchequer discovered' a censure
on Ministers lurking in the motion, and resorted to
the stereotyped threat of resignation—the brawn,
fichnen put forward on every occasion—he
could
not, impeach the accuracy of the complaints.
The debate has been adjourned until Monday.
Th ere may, and doubtless will be, a considerable
against the motion, but r_ M T
_,AI7 A "DTI

~iorit

may well be contented with that which he has
achieved, for never hitherto has a question of re-
form made such rapid progress in so abort a time.

The Russians, who were so leniently dealt with
after the inhuman butchery they committed at
Sinope, as not to have the town of Odessa bat-
tered about their ears—the Russians, who mur-
dered our wounded soldiers on the battle-field
without reprisals—the Russians, whose honour
has been more consulted and has elicited stronger
expressions of consideration from certain of our
legislators than the honour and welfare of their
own country—the Russians, who skulk behind
stone walls, and sink their ships at the en-
trance of their own harbours at sight of the
Allied Fleets, instead of fighting them—the
Russians, who have never yet dared to engage an
English, French, or even Turkish vessel on terms
at all approaching to equality—whose strong-
holds, whose very capital has been and is menaced,
under circumstances that should have converted
the most faint-hearted seamen into heroes—
have valiantly slaughtered, under shelter
of the sixty-pounders of Hangoe, four-and-
twenty unarmed men in a cockle-boat !
And under what further circumstances? After an
attempt on the part of their victims at resistance?
After a refusal to obey a challenge to surrender ?
After neither. To believe the former of a mere
boat's crew were ridiculous, and opportunity for
the latter was not granted them. They were
murdered in cold blood, and where resistance was
hopeless or impossible—murdered while under
the protection of a flag of truce—a protection
savages have been ashamed to violate, and which
every civilized nation counts it " stuff of the con-
science" under all circumstances to respect—mur-
dered while landing on Russian shores a number
of Russian prisoners, the trophies of their libera-
tors' prowess and humanity !
And murdered, let us add, with Nemesis black
and menacing at the heels of their murderers
ready to avenge past misdeeds. Short-sighted as
they were cruel, impolitic as they were dastardly,
these butchers should have remembered that the
number of prisoners taken by the Allies far
exceeds that taken by the Russians, and that
at the game of reprisals they must infallibly be
the sufferers—that the fortune of an hour might
place this Hangoe and other fortresses of theirs at
the mercy of the Allied fleets ; that the Allied
armies under PELISSIER are gradually, but surely,
narrowing and undermining the defences of Sebas-
topol—burning all the while with eagerness to
revenge the fate of their slaughtered comrades,
and to reap the reward of their unparalleled suffer-
ings and endurance on its ruins. The Peace-A-
any-Price party will, of course, admire, in this
instance, the prudence of the power whose for-
bearance and humanity they delight to eulogise ;
and to them we look—to them alone, out of
Russia, the wide world through, for a vindication
of this most atrocious butchery, against which
every civilised power should enter its most un-
qualified protest.

The fall of Anapa raises in a practical case a
question of the highest moment in the future
policy of the War. We have already stated
broadly our own conviction, and it is one shared
by noble and honourable members of the Legisla-
ture. Hitherto, however, the advice of Mrs.
GLASSE has always been quoted for our benefit.
That advice now is out of date. We have caught
our hare at last. We have driven the Russians
from Anapa, and the Circassians have taken pos-
session of it. It formerly, indeed till 1828, be-
longed to the Turks. To us it is of little conse-
quence which of the two nations possesses it, pro-
vided it does not revert to Russia. That primary
condition settled, it would not, we imagine, be
difficult for the Turks and Circassians to arrange
the question with mutual good-will. When the
Turks held the entire eastern coast of the Black
Sea, they were, on the whole, good neighbours to
the Circassians. It is only since the CZAR seized
the coast as far as Fort St. Nicholas that the
Circassians have been debarred from trade with
the nations of Europe ; and that all the traffic
carried on has been in perilous winter weather,
when the Russian landlubbers dare not put to sea.
Now, however, by the fall of Anapa, Circassia is
liberated from Russian sea-coast fortresses, from
the Kouban on the north to Batoum on the
south. On the west their own mountains have
long been their impregnable defence, under the
noble SCHAMYL.

The question then now arises—Shall territory
from which Russians have been expelled be ever
desecrated again by their slavish and enslaving
presence ? In the- present case, from the cha-
racter of the noble people whom our navy has
released from the pressure of Muscovite ambi-
tion, the question is of the most generous, as
well as political interest. There is not a free
nation in the world which has beheld uninterested
the struggle of the brave mountaineers with the
hosts and artillery of the relentless CZAR. Eng-
land has always sympathised with them most
deeply ; not a journalist of any party here but
has felt a pleasure in recording their splendid
feats of arms against the numerous armies of
Russia. We think, then, the time has arrived
to declare our Circassian policy. That people
ought to know, for certain, that the East
coast of the Euxine will never be Russian
again. They ought to be converted at
once into active and lasting Allies of Turkey and
the Western Powers, by an irrevocable decision
that their ports shall again be open to the freest
trade with all Europe ; especially that gunpow-
der and all the munitions of war will henceforth
be freely imported into their country. It would
be, indeed, economical expenditure to present
them with some 10,000 rifles ; they are incom-
parable marksmen—self-taught Chasseurs de Vin-
cennes—and, if equipped as they ought to be, a
Russian troop could never enter one of their
mountain passes again.

We have now just the same claim to retain
Anapa, and the coast, or to give it to whom we
please, as the Russians had for being there at all
—the claim of conquest ; the same right to keep
it in 1855 as she had in 1828 ; and with
this difference, too, that we conquered
it in a war of liberation, she in a war
of the most shameless aggression. The course we
demand will, moreover, have a double advantage.
It will embolden all the people whose soil wetread
in attacking Russia to side with us. They will
take it as an earnest that they will never again
when peace returns be given up to the knout, to
Siberia, and to the terrible conscription of the CZAR.
It will have its inffuence at once from the Don Cos-
sacks to Bessarabia, from Poland to Finland.
Another advantage, if it really be one, is; it will
make Russia anxious to terminate the War. Cir-
cassia gone for ever, the Crimea rapidly following,
Ismail and Odessa only waiting their turn, the
CZAR will, we fear, be but too anxious for peace.
It should not be forgotten also, that the libe-
ration of Georgia, and the consequent relief of
Persia and Turkey in Asia, from immediate con-
tact with Russia is now an easy thing. The
Russian army in those parts has nearly lost its
communications with the rest of the empire ;
relieved on the coast of the Black Sea, the Cir-
cassians will render land communications by Dag-
hestan very ditlcA ; a few thousand troops, and
a few good officers to co-operate with the Turkish
army in Asia will almost at once annihilate Rus-
sian power in those parts. It is obvious how
such success would confirm English hold on Asia-
tic opinion. It would be heard of in every Indian
hamar, and in every nomadic Asiatic Court. We
should then also be in a position to demand that
the Caspian should not bo navigated by Russian
ships cf war only, to the exclusion of these of
1 Persia.

But what stands in the way of so natural, so
obvious, so self-commending a policy. We believe
the thief thing is the pride of our Vienna Pleni-
potentiary. The amour propre of Lord JOHN
RussELL is as serious a matter with the Whig
clique as the amour propre of NICHOLAS was
with Austria. .Ele has declared himself in favour
of saving to Russia all her stolen property, in-
deed of saving to her what no one knew she pos-
sessed, till he told us so at Vienna—her honour

Ut is,

then