The Sun.
London, England, 1855-12-28 00:00:00

THE PEACE PAMPHLET.

One of the great subjects of conversation in
Paris, for some short time past, has been a certain
pamphlet, which was about to appear in favour
of peace, and which rumour attributed to the pen
or to the inspiration of one placed so high as to be
able to judgo better than any other of the probabi-
lities of peace or war. The production in question
has just appeared, under the title of " Necessite
d'un Congrs pour Pacifier l'Europe," par un
Homme d'Etat. The following is a full translation
of the pamphlet:— _ _

" Paris, Dec. 20.
"According as the probabilities of a pacific solu-
tion assume greater consistency, certain organs of the
English press are endeavouring by irritating arti-
cles to endanger the effect of the sage resolutions
and of the calm attitude of the Allied Govern-
ments.
" In misrepresenting the form and the character
of a document which it is the duty of the official
parties to keep secret, a risk is run of offending the
Power which Europe has applied to for concessions,
when the interest of all is to facilitate the success
of the proceeding now entered on.
" It would be senseless to suppose that any states-
man of Great Britain can behold otherwise than
with the deepest regret this inconsiderate line of
tactic'.

" In the plans of arrangement now in course of
negotiation, no one has any idea of humiliating
Russia or depreciating the just share of influence
and authority which ske is called on to preserve in
the councils of Europe.
" France and England have united together for
a just war, not only because it was a just one, but
because their own history proved to Russia that she
could yield without dishonour.
"Do England and France find themselves
lowered or humiliated by the obligation in which
they were placed., the first to recognise the inde-
pendence of the United States, and the second to
renounce the consequence of the Republic and of
the Empire ?
" The result of the present struggle proves the
contrary.
" Yet both these concessions were wrested from
them by force of arms. It was France who con-
strained England to abandon her colonies in North
America, and it was England who, in a greater de-
gree than any other nation, contributed to detach
from the French territory Belgium and the Rhenish
Provinces; and yet France and England are at
present closely united.
"Proud of their now destinies, they assuredly
have a right to proclaim that, in making at present
the sacrifice of a policy incompatible with the peace
of the world, Russia cannot decline in public esti-
mation ; but that, on the contrary, she must in-
crease in the confidence and esteem of Europe, and
perhaps prepare herself for a not distant future of
'new and precious alliances.
" In that situation the duty of the statesman
is to seek out under what form and in what cir-
cumstance the acquiescence of Russia will best be
reconciled with the dignity of a sovereign who,
the day on which he will have signed peace, will
find in his enemies of the day before nothing else
than brothers.

" Since the Congress of Vienna five great Powers
have governed Europe with common accord. To-
day three of these Powers are at war, and the Epon-
taneous interventio of the remaining two, either
in an isolated manner or in conferences, fails to re-
concile them. It is, then, surprising that the
ordinary proceedings are insufficient to terminate
a conflict of so novel a nature ?

" One hundred and twenty millions of men are
engaged in the struggle ; on one side, they aro
dying for their faith ; on the other, for justice.
Thousands of cannon are thundering after forty
years' peace ; four thousand millions of francs have
been consumed in less than fifteen months, and
Europe awaits from this last holocaust of blood
and gold a peace which shall have no end.
" Such is the present war

" When interests so noble and gigantic are at
stake, can there be any chance of reconciling the
belligerent parties otherwise than by a congress ?
And is not that measure justified, moreover, by the
incontestable fact, that at the sole announcement
of the convocation of a congress the different po-
pulations would consider peace concluded ?
"And why is this anticipated confidence ? It is
because nobody is ignorant that the sole difficulty
is to find a conclusion worthy of the struggle, and
that after the fall of Sebastopol and the destruction
of the Black Sea fleet, peace became possible. In
fact, a new position was created by this event, and
it was pointed out with clearness in the address
delivered by Napoleon 111. to the exhibitors, and
in the official papers of his diplomacy.
" As long as a decisive success had not been ob-
tained, the Allies could only think of increasing
their forces on•the field of battle. In pursuing, at
the price of enormous sacrifices, a result which
would turn to the advantage of all, they could not
admit that neutrality had a useful mission to fulfil.
But as England, France, Turkey, and Sardinia
had sufficed for the task, and as the proposed aim
was attained, the position of neutrals could bo
looked at in a more favourable light.
" It was then that the Emperor, making a
solemn appeal to the pressure of public opinion
with the view of terminating the war, exclaimed !
' Let Europe decide and declare who is in the right
and who is in the wrong, for that will be a grand
step towards a solution.'
" He proclaimed with conviction and truth that,
in the present epoch of civilisation, the success of
armies is but temporary, and that definitively it is
public opinion that carries away the last victory.
" Thus, in the thoughts of the Allied Govern-
ments, the last victory will be the conclusion of a
peace. And it is public opinion in Europe which
will have the merit and the honour, provided it in-
terferes in the negotiations, assists at their various
phases, and officially pronounces on all the minor
difficulties which may issue from the discussions.
" A congress can alone offer the opportunity of
doing this.
" The readiness with which the secondary States
have replied to the invitation of the Emperor of
the French proves that Europe is prepared for that
great spectacle.
" Whilst Sweden was engaging herself by a
treaty, the Governments of Central Europe, of the
first, second, and even of the third order, were ad-
dressing to the court of Russia friendly representa-
tions, by no means comminatory, but expressing
in the clearest manner the necessity of making con-
cessions which would guarantee to the Western
Powers the fact that the object of the war was
really acquired. At the same time each of them
informed France and England of the steps Shish it
had taken, and invited them to receive with mode-
ration the propositions that Russia might make.
The majority of the sovereign courts are conse-
quently co-operating at this moment in the nego-
tiations. But their co-operation is isolated, non-
official, and without force. Theirs are local opi-
nions, and disjointed ; it is not the general opinion
of Europe which they express.
" In order that the general opinion be rendered
useful and imposing, that it may carry away that
last victory which shall definitively endow the
world with peace. from the fact that it will leave
behind it neither victors nor vanquished, it must
necessarily be manifested solemnly, in an assembly
of the representatives of all the States, where va-
rious modes of thinking may be conformed in one

idea, and where the will of all may have but one
voico.

" In a congress, Europe will be represented and
personified.
" Ambitions will be restrained and menLl minds
revivified ; above all, over the powers will be sus-
pended a supremo authority, which will ennoble
the sacrifices, give to moderation the character of
magnanimity, impose a salutary restraint pn reli-
gious or national exigencies, over-excited by the
contest, and render to each government a perfect
liberty of action with respect to its subjects.
"It would be most desirable were the idea of a
congress to proceed from Russia, and if, taking into
consideration as a basis of negotiations the propo.
sitions carried to St. Petersburg by Count Ester-
hazy, she were to propose to deliberate on them
not only in a simple conference, but in an assem-
bly of all the sovereigns, and after solemn and
sincere declarations on the origin, the character,
and the results of the contest.

" Such an overture would be a more certain in-
dication of the pacific dispositions of the Cabinet
of St. Petersburg than a pure and simple accept-
ance of an ultimatum which might have no other
aim than to retard the recall of the Austrian am-
bassador. It will be remembered that a similar
acceptance preceded the first conferences at Vienna
and did not prevent their failure. If Russia were
boldly to adopt this step, her language would have
a character of frankness and of grandeur which, in
freeing her diplomatists for ever from the reproach
of duplicity, would materially facilitate the con-
clusion of peace.
66 It is only necessary to open contemporaneous
history to comprehend that Alexander 11. may
enter on thispath without humiliating Russia, and
if lie considers the much greater sacrifices which
the other powers have been compelled to make
for the progress of civilisation, he will bless God
for having reserved to his people, in a similar crisis,
a privileged position. When the hour of American
independence sounded, England had no idea that
the annihilation of her old colonial policy was for
her commerce and her navy the germ of an unli-
mited development. At the moment when coalesced
Europe made Napoleonian. France violently return
within the limits of the old monarchy, no one could
foresee that the resuscitated Empire would find in
the renunciation of her conquests the means of ex-
tending over the free States of Europe an influence
more powerful than that of Louis XIV. or of
Napoleon I.

" It has been necessary that the national honour
of the two countries should suffer nearly half a
century of humiliations before they could clearly
see into their new destinies and frankly resign
themselves, one to the loss of her North American
possessions, and the other of the conquests of the
Republic and the Empire.
" But Russia, after a peace of forty years, which
has changed the face of the world, softened man-
ners, and brought nations together in amity, enjoyed
a better fate. Immediately after the struggle she
was able to, appreciate and appropriate the results
of it ; and at the -very moment at which-she re-
nounces her old Eastern policy, she sees that that
policy does not die, that it is regenerated, and that
in civilising herself triumphs.
" What idea- animated Peter the Great with re-
spect to Constantinople ? An idea as generous and
as holy as that which conducted the King Saint
Louis, Richard of England, and Leopold of Austria,
to the tomb of Christ.

" Can we feel surprise that this idea, a living
tradition of all reigns, should have been enveloped
in mystery, have grown in the dark, and that when
it appeared in open day, fully armed, it succumbed
and became transformed into a conflict of giants ?
No ? for from the moment it was conceived it had
that destiny. It was exclusive and incomplete, for
it only aimed at the enfranchisement of the Greek
communion ; it was aggressive and encroaching,
for that enfranchisement implied a territorial re-
arrangement of Europe.
" But Europe, which the creator of Russia had
only seen exclusively commercial at London and
Amsterdam, irreligious and dissolute at the Court
of the Regent, and which could not comprehend his
great conception, was at that time undergoing a
grand transformation. Whilst Catherine and Ni-
cholas were slowly opening the road to Constanti-
nople for the armies of Russia, the old feudal edi-
fice of the West was crumbling away, and on its
ruins Napoleon was founding the base of a new po-
licy and a new society.

."
At a distance of one hundred and fifty years,
the ideas of Peter the Great have found before
them a regenerated Europe, drawing after it al-
ready the Eastern world into its principles of order,
justice, and tolerance, by the sole attraction of the
wonders of civilisation, and raising aloft the cross
in the metropolis of Islamism.
" The will of Peter the Great was from that mo-
ment accomplished.

" And whop, in the nineteenth century, Russia
directed her armies and fleets on Constantinople,
she committed as grave an error as if England or
France had recommenced the crusades. But let
her admit that error and renounce her system of
isolated propagandism, let her claim her share in
the collective protectorate which Christian Europe
has achieved, and this claim will not be refused.
Is Europe ignorant of the fact that the co-reli-
gionists of the Russian people compose three-
quarters of the population of Turkey, that the ill-
feeling of the Cabinet of St. Petersburg can create
there enormous difficulties, and that its sincere co-
operation would, on the contrary, become one of
the most essential elements of the pacific regenera-
tion of the Ottoman empire
" Such is the truth as to the origin, the charac-
ter, and results of the struggle.
" Were Russia to accept these views, and the
negotiations of the cabinets to adopt at once inspi-
rations as liberal ; were a congress to meet with
such sentiments of frankness and honour, where
the conscience of sovereigns would co-operate with
the talents of diplomatists to reconstruct with
solidity and justice the equilibrium of Europe, who
would dare to doubt of success ?

" No person;
"Prepared to agree, as in a family deliberation
before their peers, the belligerent powers would be
authorised to conclude an armistice as a proof of
the legitimate hopes which would proceed from the
new form of negotiations.
" Soon all the difficulties would be smoothed
away ; for it cannot be admitted that a congress of
sovereigns, united to regulate, in the name of the
common weal, not only the Eastern question, but
all the other difficulties which had sprung up since
the congress of Vienna, would fail in its efforts.
"Is there a single interest which would not de-
rive benefit from the immediate pacification of
Europe ?

" Are not Prussia and Austria impatient to re-
cover the share of influence which has become more
and more compromised by the unsuacess of their
effort ?

"Does not Russia aspire to resume the course
of internal prosperity, and to liquidate honourably
and grandly the traditions of a policy which was
generous at the epoch when it was conceived, but
which has been condemned as inadequate by the
progress of civilisation, and which she would have
been compelled to renounce sooner or later in her
own interest, as in that of the world ?
" The Anglo-French alliance is eternal. It will
attain its object amidst the days of misfortune as
in those of prosperity. But would it not be for it
a stroke of fortune to triumph at that period of the
war when, having nothing further to destroy than
the Baltic fleet, the interests and ideas of the two
nations might be brought into apposition ?
4, Finally, if the secondary Powers of Europe
contribute in a direct manner to re-establish peace,
if Europe is indebted to them in some degree for
the commencement of endless labours, for the re-
forms and benefits which will ensue from that grand
event, will not a similar service rendered prove a
better guarantee for such states from the eventua-
lities of the future than any protectorates.
"The assembling of a congress will therefore be
for the benefit of all. The necessity for it results
from the five great Powers being unable to come
to a precise understanding. Its formation has been
in embryo since the appeal made to the general
opinion of Europe by Napoleon 111. The wish for
it inspires every breast, and the official proposition
which will be made for it will neither meet with an
adversary nor a person indifferent to it from the
very day when a sovereign court shall have as-
sumed the initiative."

PROPOSED
REASE IN THE LIVERPOOL OM RATES.
—At the weekly meeting of the Liverpool Dock Com-
mittee, held yesterday, a report was presented from the
sub-committee on rates, and adopted. This report re-
commended an increase on the dock rates on imports,
Which, on the aggregate, will augment the rates to the
extent of about 10 per cent. On American cotton it is
proposed to levy a rate of 6d. per bale, instead of the
present rate, which averages about 40. per bale ; South
American it is proposed to fix at 3d., and East Indian
at 4d. per bale. Guano and some other articles are also
' proposed to be raised.
THE FUNERAL OF THE POET ROGERS.—Yesterclay
morning the mortal remains of Samuel Rogers were de-
posited in their final resting place in the family vault in
the graveyard of the quiet and picturesque little church
of flornsey. Thus has passed away from ns one of the
last links which connected the poets of the last genera-
tion with those of the present day. Mr. Rogers, we
believe, was the last survivor of the great literary men
whose works and genius served to nurture the first spark
of the poetic flame in the breast of such men as Byron
and Moore while they were yet school boys, and who,
in their turn, in after life, as they advanced maturity
and fame, bestowed both their friendship and esteem on
those whom they had learned to admire in their boyhood.
Mr. Rogers was bora in 1764, and bad therefore, at the
time of his death, reached the venerable age of 92. The
funeral was strictly private, and was only attended be
the relatives and a few of the oldest literary friends.