The Sun.
London, England, 1855-06-04 00:00:00

no great difficulty, for it is said not to be much
longer than Waterloo-bridge, will have a vast
effect on the future operations in the Crimea, and
if we can only close the communication by
Perekop, which may not be very difficult either,
for wo can land troops within 20 miles of it, all
the entrances to the Crimea will be hermetically
sealed, and the Russians will, like rats in a trap,
be compelled to surrender at discretion for want
of food and other necessaries.

The taking of the various positions in the Sea
of Azoff, particularly that of Genitchi, cuts off the
supplies from the river Don, which debouches
to the north-east of the Sea of Azoff. But we
must not forget that there are three other im-
portan; rivers running through the heart of
Russia, and navigable for considerable distances.
There is the Dniester, which constituted the
boundary of Russia until the cession of Bessarabia,
in 1812, and which falls into the Euxine on the
north-west, not far from Odessa. The Boug, or
Bug, the former boundary, which passes Nico-
laieff, one of the great Russian arsenals, and the
Dnieper, which runs from Ekaterinovslaf in a
south-westerly direction, and debouches into the
Gulf of Perekop, only forty miles from the
isthmus. With our naval power we may easily
command these rivers, and strike a formidable
blow at the power and commerce of Russia in the
East.

Let us not waste or misapply the opportunity.
Let our Ministers only prove themselves imbued
with the national spirit, and Russia will no longer
be formidable ; she will be thrown back at least
a century and a half, and lose all that she has ac-
quired since the reign of the first PETER. Let Hon.
Gentlemen look to it, for the Government will
only yield to a very strong pressure from without
on such a point. They will still truckle to Ger-
manism if permitted to do so.

Much blame was cast on Mr. DISRAELI by every
section of the opposite camp for shaping his mo-
tion so as to avoid all avowal of a policy, and for
reducing it to a mere notice for Whigs to quit,
and an invitation to Conservatives to come in.
The blame was, perhaps, deserved. Time was
when Mr. Disraeli's motto was "No AUSTRIAN
ALLIANCE, NO FOUR POINTS." Has anything
occurred which should induce him to change
it ? Is he to pursue with impunity a course
of ambiguity and uncertainty for which he
invokes censure on Ministers ? Had he stood to his
motto the country at least would have adopted him
as the right man. It was not, indeed, for de-
sertion of his former avowal that the Liberals
of the Press and Parliament attacked him ; his
crime in their eyes was, that he wanted to be in
and turn their friends out ; and they trium-
phantly asked, what better policy than theirs he
had to offer. The country saw with regret that
after weary conferences, and continued evasion of
her duty by Austria, after everything had satisfied
the public mind that the Austrian Alliance and
the Four Points were the most dangerous of
sunken rocks before as—yet, Mr. DISRAELI ig-
nored his former manly demand, and sacrificed
his country's wishes to those probably of the
COBUROS, with whom, if he carried his motion,
he might soon have been in close, though invisi-
ble, contact.
If, however, Mr. DISRAELI deserved censure
for abandoning his country's flag after he had
once hoisted it, what shall we say to Mr. GLAD-
STONE? We have always hitherto had a good
opinion of his official as well as his personal
conscientiousness. It is extremely difficult, how-
ever, to retain such an opinion since his great but
sophistical effort on the 24th. 111 his arguments
were directed against the War, yet because it
commenced under an ABERDEEN and GLADSTONE
Cabinet he professed to justify it. He fathered
the Four Points, yet was satisfied to negotiate for
peace on the basis of a transparent evasion by
Russia of the only point of substantial importance.
He declared that the victories of the Allies and
the Crimean expedition had humbled the arro-
gance of Russia, and induced her to negotiate on
terms which before she disdained ; yet when he
wanted to force his peace-at-any-cost views on the
country he declaimed on the horrors of bloodshed
as if any one needed light or persuasion on
that subject, and denied that another Alma
and Inkerman, or another province invaded,
would have any humbling effect at all !

We deduce two inferences from such un-
pardonable special pleading : the first, that Mr.
GLADSTONE never was at heart in favour of the
War at all, but that having been forced into it as
the only means of retaining office, he now magni-
fies the results of his unwilling policy. The
second, that, released from office, he takes his na-
tural position as the advocate of Russia, and of a
peace which shall leave her as injurious and dan-
gerous to Europe as ever. Perhaps he is really
planning to take office at the end of the War with
the Manchester gentlemen and the Peelites, minus,
of course, their more manly former colleague, the
Duke of NEWCASTLE.

How can the country over trust such a tortu-
ous man again ? Put the best face on it, suppose
that his views really changed with his position,
—what, then, is the worth of a leading Minister

(for such his oratorical powers would ever make
him) who could persuade himself, now that black
was white, now that white was black ? We must
think, however, that Mr. GLADSTONE and those

lately with him in the Cabinet were at the bot-
tom of all the mischief. Sir DE LACY EVANS,
with the practised eye of au old General, told
them, but too truly, that they sent out troops at
first for show and not for fight. We need not
recall Besika. Bay, Sinope, waiting on Austria,
and for that reason the too late expedition to the
Crimea, the Black Sea ports half blockaded,
Odessa and Nicolaieff spared, and all the unmanly
and fatal titnidity and vacillation of the late Ad-
ministration. The recent proceedings in the Sea
of Azoff convince us all that Sebastopol might, by
a right use of our fleet, have been starved into
submission before now, and the Rua-

sian army in the Crimea starved too.
Mr. GLADSTONE and his principal assuredly
transgressed with most awful results the article of
war, on the charge of violating which poor BYNG
was victimised to party. The thousands lying
beneath the sod before Sebastopol, about whom
Mr. GLADSTONE declaimed so solemnly, lie there,
we hesitate not to affirm, through hint and those
like-minded with him. He and his Rassianising-
Austrianising clique are answerable for that blood.
The men who starved the War in the most im-
portant campaign of all, who compelled Russia to
believe that they would never fight her in earnest,
and who were dabbling in Austrian diplomacy
while our army and navy were literally dying for
want of work, and when they ought to have con-
fronted Russia, as though Austria were the poli-
tical nonentity she is—these are the men who have
laid our troops in Crimean graves. Mr. GLAD-
STONE declaims as if the advocates of vigour were
answerablemust
bring.
It bloodshed ; but if he have a
conscience, we envy him not the reflections which
time
It may be too
much
to hope that Legislators
'I will listen to our counsels, remarkably as they
have hitherto been - justified by events, and been