The Sun.
London, England, 1855-01-16 00:00:00

We certainly have no right to identify the great
American nation with the sentiments of their press,
but yet it is impossible entirely to separate the
two. Every leading newspaper in America, as
well as in England, must represent and reflect a
certain section of public opinion, or else it would
cease to maintain its position, and sink into insig-
nificance. We do not pretend exactly to define
the precise rank which the Netv York _Herald
occupies among Transatlantic journals. We know
that it is published in the first city of the Union,
possesses a considerable circulation, and is con-
ducted with as much ability as is required for
periodical literature in America. We see, also,
that the sentiments of the New York Herald with
regard to the present war are echoed from every
quarter of the States, and we therefore make no
apology for seriously calling the attention of a na-
tion united to us by so many ties to the libels on
her character and her honour which every steamer
brings to us from America in the shape of com-
ments and hopes with regard to the present state
and future prospects of the war with Russia. The
AmericaLs have frequently shown themselves
acutely and even morbidly sensitive to European
opinion, and can hardly view with indifference the
very serious injury which the conductors of their
press are daily inflicting upon them.
Oar American contemporary is of opinion—first,
that Russia has prevailed in the war hitherto ;
secondly, that she will prevail in it ; and, thirdly,
for the sake of the American Union, 'that it is
desirable she should prevail ; and consequently it
desires sincerely the triumph of Russia, and our
humiliation. We will not waste time in arguing
whether Russia, who finds herself compelled to
accept o.nditions greatly inoro stringent than
those to which a little while ago she would not
even deign to return an answer, agrees with
her republican apologists, and is either satisfied
with the past or confident of the future. These are
matters of opinion, and as such, however perverse
and distorted, are no objects for censure. But we
would gravely put it to the good sense of the
American nation whether the success of Russia in
the present struggle would really be to them that
great material advantage which they aro taught to
believe. It may be quite true that the Czar, being
without a friend in this hemisphere, holds out, as
the Herald phrases it, " the right hand of fellow-
ship" to the other ; that Russia -is the enemy of
England ; and England, in an honourable and
noble sense, a rival as well as coadjutor to the
United States. The Czar may be prepared to tempt
America, for aught we know, with commercial ad-
vantages. He may represent himself as ready to
employ an American engineer to lay down an
electric telegraph, to buy iron for railroads when-
ever he finds money to make them and cannot get
iron from England, and to use American steam-
vessels, if by any means they can roach him through
the blockade of the Allies. We may grant all
these, and these are literally all the considerations
which our contemporary can urge to support the
monstrous proposition of a community of interests
between the United States and Russia. The
answer is not difficult. _ _

As to the employment of American citizens in
Russia, the vast American continent itself offers so
wide a field for enterprise and exertion that the wish
of a patriot should rather be that the genius and in-
telligence of its inhabitants should continuo to be
employed in subduing it to the purposes of man
than that such valuable qualities should be at-
tracted to foreign lands. Let Scotland or Switzer-
land send out her sons in search of foreign gold.
America has room upon her ample breast for
all her children. As for supplying the Czar with
American-built ships of war, as long as we remain
masters of the sea it will be impossible, and when
we have lost that mastery it will be superfluous.
Railways and telegraphs are not the works of a
nation unable to raise money by: loan, possessing
double the population and half the revenue of the
united kingdoms, at war with all the world, and
driven to the utmost extremity to find supplies for
every day as it passes by. The Herald talks of
commerce, but commerce is between countries
whose natural products are different, and not be-
tween those which, possessing so many natural fea-
tures in commen, are rather made by nature for
competition than exchange. Russia is to take
American iron. When ! During war, when the
blockade will keep it out, or after peace, when the
English iron will undersell it? There remains
nothing, then, but the " kindly feelings" of the
Czar to his Republican friends, and " the right
hand of fellowship" which be proffers to their grasp,
hot with the life-blood of Republican Poland and
Democratic Hungary.
But, further, if Russia wins, England loses in a
much greater proportion, for it is far easier to de-
stroy than to transfer commercial prosperity, and
Loudon might cease to be the mercantile capital of
the world without transferring that honour either
to St. Petersburg or to New York. The com-
merce of Russia would not be pure gain, but would
be obtained at the expense of the commerce of
England ; that is to say, America would exchange
customers of boundless wealth for customers with-
out capital, obliged to borrow the very funds re-
quired to cultivate the ground—customers whose
laws are equally administered for others with whom
bribery sits barefaced on the judgment seat, —a
land whose institutions are stable and fixed for
a land which must pass one day from slavery to
anarchy, and from anarchy to revolution. But,
suppose the predictions of the Herald fulfilled, and
its wishes gratified. Suppose united Europe too
weak for the barbaric might of Russia, Turkey
overwhelmed, Prussia absorbed, Austria mediatised,
and France and England, if spared for a while,
occupying towards the Czar a position such as
Saxony, Wurtemberg, or Bavaria,—would such a
state of things be beneficial to the United States ?
Would they feel confident that they could ride out
a storm in which so many gallant ships had been
wrecked Would they be able single-handed to
roll back a Power flushed with the conquest of so
many valiant hosts, and so many ancient nations ?
Would " the right hand of fellowship" be held out
and the same kindly feeling be extended to them
as that which now works so powerfully on Repub-
lican sensibilities ? Let them know themselves
better. If ever the dream of universal monarchy
should be realised again in Europe, and seek to
realise itself in America, the state of the Union
would irresistibly suggest to the fortunate despot
the same game as Macedon employed towards
Greece. What field for his energies could a King,
master of countless armies and boundless treasures,
desire better than 30 Republics, connected by a
frail federal organisation, and separated by every
motive of interest and passion that can agitate and
pervert the human mind ?
True, we may be told there is the generous feel-
ing of patriotism, the noble abhorrence of tyranny,
the sympathy with right and justice, the repug-
nance to wrong and violence, which would weld
these fragments into one compact mass, and
teach every State to forget selfish and personal
considerations is a manly struggle for the public
good. Alas ! where is this spirit to be found ? Not,
assuredly, in the pages of those of our American
contemporaries who, without pretending to be able
to justify the quarrel of. the Czar, or to controvert
the verdict which the conscience of United Europe
has recorded against him, cannot repress their as-
pirations for his success, because, base as are his
ends and vile as are his means, they believe—as
we have shown, most falsely and absurdly—that
some cents of profit are to be gained by the over-
throw of all that is free and noble in Europe—the
destruction of arts and learning, and the return of
a deeper darkness than Goth or Vandal brought
upon the Roman world. For they, at least, were
superior in valour and virtue to the race which they
conquered ; but Russia brings nothing with her to
compensate for the ruin of the existing state of
things. Her barbarism is more corrupt than our
civilisation—her slavish hosts less valiant than our
free citizens.

Surely these things ought to weigh for something
with a nation that boasts to be the asylum of free-
dom and the depository of the higher and nobler
destinies of humanity. "It is not for gin-sling
and sherry-cobbler alone that man is to live," says
Sydney Smith, "but for those great principles
against which no argument can be listened to, prin-
ciples which give to every power a double power
above their functions and their offices, which are
the books, the arts, the academies that teach, lift
up, and nourish the world—principles (I am quite
serious in what I say) above cash, superior to cot-
ton, higher than currency—without which it is
better to die than to live."—Times.

A HERO.—The following incident is related of a pri-
vate in the 82d Regiment, which left Edinburgh last
week. A soldier's wife had come up from the country.
Not without heroic exertions, probably, she had come
possessed of money sufficient to purchase her husband's
release ; and to buy him off was the object of her visit.
The poor fellow looked with the intensest solicitude at
his young wife and her only child, and his eyes filled ;
but, brushing away a tear, he exclaimed that he could
never bear to be branded as a coward by his companions,
and to the East he must go.—Echnburg4 Courant.