The Sun.
London, England, 1855-06-09 00:00:00

from the chaff—of deciding who was true-hearted
and who the reverse.

Several of the Derbyite party, too, exhibited a
pro-Russian tendency which had not been sus-
pected. The Marquis of GRANBY, Lord C.
HAMILTON, Lord R. CECIL, Sir STAFFORD NORTH-
COTE, and Mr. WALPOLE all made speeches worthy
of the Peace-at-any-price party; and even Mr-
DISRAELI himself was crippled by the insubordi-
nation of his party. The most vigorous speeches
were those made by independent members, who
merely spoke for themselves, and not as the or-
gans of any considerable body. 'Mr. MACGREGOR,
Mr. ROEBUCK, and several others enhanced their
former character, and showed that there are men
who may still be depended on, and who cannot
be induced to betray the confidence reposed in
them. We must also speak in terms of unquali-
fied approbation of the speeches of some of the
Members of the Government. Sir WILLIAM
MOLESWORTH was particularly impressive. The
Right Honourable Baronet, in his brief ex-
planation last night, completely upset the accusa-
tions so pertinaciously and unfairly urged against
him by Mr. COBDEN, who, as we yesterday proved,
was himself a thousand times more liable to the
charge of inconsistency, even if everything he
asserted was as correct as it has been shown to be
inaccurate. The Attorney-General, too, spoke as
he always does, distinctly and unequivocally.
Wherever he may be, in or out of office, Sir
ALEXANDER COCKBURN will maintain the high
position he has so honourably achieved.
.Although brought to so " lame and impotent"
a conclusion, the debate has been one of no ordi-
nary importance. It has taught Ministers the
state of public opinion, and induced them to ca3b
aside the mystery in which their own views
were previously involved. The country
has now greater guarantees against a dishonour-
able and injudicious peace than it formerly pos-
sessed. It may repose greater confidence in the
Government, since the wide gulf that has been
created between them and their quondam col-
leagues. The Conferences having been finally
closed, we are no longer bound by the Four
Points, but may, considering the important suc-
cesses recently achieved, confidently look forward
to more satisfa,ctoryresults than any suggested dur-
ing the progress of the negotiations—results that
will be consistent with the honour of the Western
Powers, and insure the future safety of the Otto-
man Empire and the tranquillity of Europe.

Much forbearance is always due to Mr. BRIGHT
when speaking on peace or war. We all know
the tenacity with which an inherited creed clings
to us ; and it would be uncharitable to the last
degree to confound wilful with congenital blind-
ness. We will, therefore, attribute Mr. BRIGHT'S
most extravagant, and seemingly sophistical, rea-
sonings to the bias, the unconscious bias, of his
birth. We do not for a moment class the Hon.
Member for Manchester with the shifty or jesui-
tical Peelites who have turned over to his creed,
since their mismanagement of the War, or their
philo-Russian conduct of it ejected them from
office. They hate the War because it betrayed their
treachery and their incapacity. Mr. BRIGHT hates
it because he was taught from his cradle the doc-
trine of non-resistance. With such a creed, with
au excitable temperament, and withno outlet for the
incandescent matter within but that of his ora-
tory, it is not to be wondered at that he should
every now and then be subject to a rather ardent
peace eruption. It is not with him a set at the
Treasury benches, neither is it a shabby revenge
upon those who 'turned him out.

Whatever we allow to the man, however, no
- indulgence is due to his arguments. Indeed,
though we do not want homilies in the House of
Commons, we could relish the Quaker oratory
better were it more drawn from the speaker's
creed, and less attempt made to justify a creed
well enough adapted for Paradise, by the kind of
reasonings used among us fallen outsiders. We
always must feel, while listening to non-resistance
oratory, that if the speaker argues with us on our
own grounds he fails to convince us. We are the
wiser in our own line. The Quaker may array a
most portentous list of evil results before us, but
he does not overpower the deep-seated conviction
that a result, worse than all' he enumerates put
together, would be the fruit of adopting his
policy. He only makes an impression for the
time by magnifying, what even without his glasses,
appears to us of appalling consequence, but he
wants us also with him, to invert the instrument
when looking at what we most dread. This is, of
course, the common artifice of special pleaders,
and the unconscious one of honest but enthusias-
tic men.

Mr. BRIGHT'S reference to America, for in-
stance, is coloured entirely for one purpose—to
frighten the ten-pound householders, and the
manufacturers and merchants, by the appeal ad
crumnam. American freedom from debt, and light
taxation, and the English national debt and war
taxes were certainly a contrast broad enough. But
with the repeated commercial crises which we
had in the long peace since 1814, it was surely
mere clap-trap to set down to the War any dis-
tress among the manufacturing or agricultural
peasantry at the present time. Strikes, the habit
of spending in animal indulgence all their earn-
ings in prosperous years, and overtrading with
Australia and America, are fully sufficient to ac-
count for want of work and want of funds
amongst manufacturing operatives. In the agri-
cultural districts if the labourers are not well
paid it certainly is not because landlords and
farmers cannot afford it. In either case the War
is not answerable for the overtrading of manu-
facturers, and its reaction ; or for farm labourers
being at the mercy of the lords of the soil. The
proprietors and tenants of broad acres have this
year at least funds to make those ample and re-
munerative improvements which would raise the
price of rustic labour to the living point.
But does Mr. BRIGHT wish England to sink to
the level of United States' political selfishness ?
She never fought any battle for freedom but her
own, and we believe she never will. All her
battles of late, all her conquests, and all her pro-
jected conquests, have been in the interest
of slavery. The Union is, in fact, the Ame-
rican counterpart of Russia. Every man
there is a Czar, at least every member of the
tyrant majority ; and, as a part of that ma-
jority, he dooms all of the other party to an
official Siberia, and all his coloured fellow-
countrymen to worse than Russian serfdom. A
friend of the neg,ro fares worse in half the Union
than a friend of Poland would at St. Petersburg ;
and if there be no official censorship of the press,
it is probably because the mob do not choose to
be deprived of their privileges. Even a village
postmaster, in every part of the States, must
turn out if the party which gave him the appoint-
ment is in a minority. We expect soon to hear
that the qualification for the humblest offices
all over the Union is to be a " know nothing."
The present unfortunates who happen to "know
something" by some years of experience, must give
place to the dominant ignorance of the day. In
the line of conquest, by the testimony of her own '
best men, the %atm have rivaled, Russia