The Sun.
London, England, 1855-02-26 00:00:00

than protocolling at Vieina, where, under the
circumstances, he cannot possibly be of any. If
the stolen territories of Russia are not to be re-
claimed—if she be not compelled to relinquish her
menacing aspect in the Euxine, our soldiers have
bled, our tax-payers have groaned under their
accumulated burdens, in vain.

Lord JOHN has now changed places with his
former subordinate. It was owing to the pre-
dominance of " Germanism" that he se sum-
marily and contumaciously dismissed the Foreign
Secretary in December, 1851. A similar in-
fluence may now be in operation to dilute our
demands to the utmost possible degree. We cer-
tainly cannot rely greatly on the " COBURG" as-
sistance, when we see the
" Ulysses" of the House
avoiding committing himself in any shape, and
conniving at Austrian and Prussian " thimble-
rigging." The manly example of Sardinia might
bring a blush into the cheek of LEOPOLD had he
retained the power of so doing.
The great feature of the new, or rather the
modified, Administration, is the nomination of
Sir GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS to the head of the
Financial Department ! We cannot speak in very
hopeful terms of the appointment. The ante-
cedents of the Right Hon. Baronet do not war-
rant any undue exultation at the additional
strength conferred on the Government. But he
himself is a Baronet, and, what is still better, the
husband of an Earl's sister, and having from
thQ very commencement of his careeer been
shoved into office whenever or wherever
there was a vacancy—his appearance even
as Chancellor of the Exchequer will be
stricttly selon les regles. The retention of that
important office by Sir CHARLES WOOD for several
years proves that it is not incompatible with the
most unequivocal mediocrity. A valuable man
might possibly have been obtained—one tho-
roughly acquainted with our national finances,
and the appointment might have conciliated many
staunch Liberals, who must be greatly dissa-
tisfied with present arrangements. But the
Honourable Gentleman the member for Glas-
gow boasts no personal title, no aristocratic
connexions, and the simple fact that he is better
qualiled for the office than any other man in the
House is forgotten—the single disqualification
that he is a man of the People, is sufficient to
ignore all his other claims, however powerful.
The " Evergreen, " who will accept any
post in any Administration, goes to the Ad-
miralty ! Is this a time to entrust a de-
partment on the efficient management whereof
the honour and safety of the nation so
greatly depends to such hands ? We cannot
doubt as to the nature of the reply that will be
returned.
It is said that Mr. VERNOI4 SMITH is to be the
new President of the India Board ! Others say
that Lord ELGIN is to fill the situation.
Whoever it may be, however, there must
be an improvement. It would be difficult
to find a Member of either House not competent
to fill a vacancy created by Sir CHARLES WOOD.
Some of the inferior appointments to places
outside the Cabinet are better than those above
referred to. We shall, however, await more de-
cisive information before considering the minor
changes.

With the House of Commons we can do but
justice to impassioned genius, and, had we been
present, must hare sympathised with the cheers
that greeted the touching and beautiful appeal
which concluded the speech of the hon. member
for Manchester on Friday night. His allusion to
. the angel of death abroad in the land, the beating
of his wings almost heard, while no averting blood
could be sprinkled on the sideposts and lintels of
our doors, his personal appeal also to the Prime
Minister, could not but touch every heart when lis-
tened to, for they cannot be read without emotion.
So much the more, however, are we bound to
weigh in the scales of impartial justice the con-
clusion which his eloquence was intended to sup-
port. There is no need to think the speaker dis-
honest ; his foregone decision, and his warm ima-
gination are quite sufficient to account for all.
The real object of Mr. BRIGHT'S speech was to
gain the good will of Lord PALMERSTON, by ex-
cusing him and Lord JOHN RUSSELL, while he
laid on them chiefly the responsibility of the War,
and all in order to nail them to the Four Points
as the basis of peace. To secure a Four-Point
peace—this was his grand object. His commen-
dations of Ministers, his pictures of distress at
home, and his appeals to our national honour, not
to recede from, or rather to ask more, than the
Four Points which our Ministers had agreed to,
had all this one end in view.

Mr. BRIGHT adroitly, but not quite correctly,
argued that but one of the points was now the
subject of controvesy. Carrying out the details
of the first two satisfactorily would be no easy
matter ; but the free navigation of the Danube
would never be worth seven years' purchase with-
out the enforced disarming of all Russian ports
near its mouth, and, indeed, the restoration of all
the territory adjacent to the estuary to its right-
ful owners. Joint protectorate of the river, like
joint protectorate of the Greek Church in Turkey,
is but a miserable farce when one of the protec-
tors is convicted of the most intolerable abuse of
such an office hitherto. In every direction Rus-
sian CZARS have been barefaced plunderers of
their neighbours' territory, and to allow them the
smallest locus standi in the affairs of an adjacent
country is to insure its absorption in due course.
The grand difficulty to be adjusted is, however, as
Mr. BRIGHT observes, the fourth point—what
shall be included in requiring the " preponderat-
ing power" of Russia in the Black Sea to cease.
Now, we deliberately say that nothing less than
the destruction of every naval arsenal or dock-
yard, and of every purely military fort, is the
sine qua non. The Allies can do this now, and
they ought to do it. Sebastopol as a fortress
must be utterly destroyed, and its reconstruction
be prohibited, under penalty of a visit to the port
by an English or French fleet. Nicolaieff must
share its fate, or it will soon become almost as
dangerous. Odessa may be allowed as many guns
as London or Liverpool, for commerce more will
not be needed. All the Circassian forts must, of
course, be utterly destroyed. Not a vestige of
reasonable title has Russia to •one inch of the sea
coast belonging to the brave mountaineers. Any-
thing short of what we mention would merely
entail on the Western Powers the charge of main-
tabling a large fleet in the Euxine. Whatever
forts and
ships are left there to Russia will become
the measure of force which we must equal or sur-
pass, if she is not to preponderate.
We have discussed the question on the ground
of the Four Points ; but,
of course, we think a
peace on such a basis would be a most ruinous
one. Mr. BRIGHT put forth all Ins' powers in de-
picting the horrible loss of life caused by
the War,
and the great sacrifice especially which must at-
tend the stormSebastosphool,ulfd leave to theor he actually
contemplates a peaceingof
which
assassins of Sinope that infernal stronghold. It
that the ery and
is just just here, however,
note the passion
meat of the far-seeing statesman,n
of the orator, and the sentiment of the poet, are
is certainly not Mr.
required ; and the former