The Sun.
London, England, 1855-06-07 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

(From the Times of this day.)

Sir James Graham has given us another phase of that
penitential mood in which the seceders from the Cabinet
are pleased to express themselves. He is of opinion that
we are all of ns in the wring, and that we should all of
us undergo a certain amount of voluntary humiliation.
The difficulty is how to do it, and how to prescribe so as
to hit our several cases. Sir James himself and his
friends have gone out of office ; that is their share in the
general humiliation, and they have all the more right to
call on everybody else to do likewise. But, as nations
and potentates cannot go out of office so easily, what is to
be the substitute for Ministerial abdications ? Russia,
Sir James thinks, has done enough. Her pleasant views
—that is, her arrogance, her lust of rower, her intrigues
—though Sir James is much too gentle to ascribe these
infirmities to our gallant and self-denying antagonist,
have now been whipped enough. Has not Russia been
sufficiently humbled by seeing her tallow and hides shut
up in her ports or compelled to travel by rail, while we
were flaunting our flag all over the Baltic and the Black
Sea ; by seeing her works at Bornarsund pulled to pieces;
by her defeat at the Alma and Inkerman • by having
to scuttle her ships and block up her harbours ? Has
she not exhibited much Christian humility in allowing
her own Plenipotentiary to sit at the same table with
the Turkish ; in permitting other European States be-
sides herself to have a voice in the protection of Chris-
tian .Tvloldo-Wallachians ; in permitting Germans and
others to enter their own Danube without foundering on
the bar, or being fired at by the Russian forte, or
stopped forty days or so in some filthy lazaretto ? Has
not Russia made the astounding concession that Tur-
key is a European State, and has she not at last gone
so far as to concede that the Bosphorus may be abso-
lutely open, whether Turkey wishes it or no ; or
that Turkey may send to England for assistance
whenever the Russian fleet is seen at the entrance
of the Bosphorus I In fine, Russia has done as much as
can be reasonably expected from her, and it is now our
turn. We must mortify our pride, resist the temptation
of military glory, wean ourselves from this wicked rivalry,
and call our fleets and armies home, where we are to
keep them for many years on their present scale, not for
the purpose of conquest, but for the sake of moral dis-
cipline, and to remind us of our follies. France is re-
commended to swallow our example, and Swallow the
dose with as good a grace as she can. We shall all be
better for it in the end, sadder and wiser, and less disposed
to think too highly of ourselves.
No disparagement to the Christian virtue of humility,
but it does seem rather an odd recommendation of a par-
ticular course that it is so very humiliating, and that we
want rubbing down. Was that the secrtt of Sir James's
own official career, and was he sent as a' wholesome chas-
tisement to the proud people of England ? There is a
great deal of advice which a comfortable rector feels
much awkwardness's in giving, to his hard-working, ill-
paid flock, and there is an incongruity of the same kind
in the old border baronet, a man of great wealth and
aristocratic position, telling small people to gulp down a
dose of national humiliation. The truth is, that these
small people, the toiling millions, have, on the whole, a
rather dull time of it. They do not achieve many triumphs
in their private affairs ; they make little ground ; they do
not enlarge their borders, or make many advantageous
eonnexions. Their splendour is confined to the family cir-
cle and a few friends; theirluxuries to the fireside, to news-
papers, books, and such cheap and universal enjoyments.
They often find it hard work to keep up the interest of life,
especially in the long winter evenings and the long sum-
mer days, which they have not money or leisure to enjoy
as they would like. Under these dreary circumstances
they take to national objects of interest. They hope
for the day when Lord Panmure shall send his compli-
ments to the papers, and inform them that the allies
have walked into Sebastopol, or smashed Cronstadt, or
that Russia has seen the error of her ways, and made an
ample apology for her follies and crimes. Sir James
may be philosophica.ly indifferent to such foolish specu-
lations and such ephemeral triumphs. Why should he
care about such things, when he is just as great a man
whether we take Sebastopol or are pushed into the sea ?
The mass of the people have little else to care for, an,l
are as proud of their armies and battles as the Roman
citizens of their amphitheatres and games. This may
be a vulgar taste, but we confess to some sympathy with
it. We did think that our alliance, and even our frier d-
ship, was worth a good deal. We had read with pride
of the European influence of Cromwell, of the enterprise
and perseverance of the Prince of Orange, of the wars
of Marlborough, of Nelson, and of Wellington, and the
vast spread of our empire over nations to whom our
rule is an unquestionable blessing. Sir James Graham
thinks we have had enough of these follies, and rejoices
to see in the present state of affairs in the Black Sea an
opportunity for a little national hunoiligtion.
But in the course of this homily an odd difficulty
seems to have presented itself to the mind of Sir James
Graham, which neither his worldly wisdom nor his
Christian sentiment enabled him to dispose of. So he
leaves it to the end of his speech, where it comes in
like the notes which a clumsy writer cannot engraft
into his text, or like a secular postscript to a spiritual
letter. What is the Sultan to do? What, too, are the allies
to do with him? It will he the task of the next generatior,
says Sir James, to prepare for the fall of the Ottoman
Power. This is rather a singular comment on the two
Russian propositions, which Sir James thinks we were
in the wrong to refuse. If Sir James hat made up his
mind that Turkey must go to the dogs, so much so that
ail we have to do is to distribute the inheritance of " the
sick man," what is the value of his opinion as to the
working of this or that proposition for the independence
of Turkey ? But, even if Sir James retained this opi-
nion of the impending downhill of Turkey, one might
suppose that the sentiment which prompted him to re-
commend a general self-humiliation to all parties in the
war should also have taught hires to leave Turkey to die
a natural death, without troubling himself about the dis-
posal of her goods. But, humble as we are, we are
forth with to apply ourselves to see that when she goes
at last nobody is to administer to her effects, neither the
East nor the West, neither the Russians nor ourselves

If we are, however, to interfere, if we are to keep up our
army and navy, if we are to enter on a long course of
policy, why not :take all this trouble for the positive
purpose of securing as much as possible the independ-
ence of Turkey ? That is something worth the trouble,
not because the Turk is so desirable a member of the
European community, but because he is a member. • t

is less evil to keep him than to do without him, and,
after having had a finger in his affairs for a century or
more, it has become a traditional policy to support him.
But here is the share in the general humiliation which
Sir James distributes to the Turk—he mu't prepare to
give place to his betters, and see his own friends setting
his house in ceder before the breath is out of his body.
But, for the matter of humiliation and the crime of
imposing too hard terms on Russia, Sir James is obliged
to plead guilty to having himself conspired to limit her
fleet in the Black Sea ; only ho says he never meant that
proposal for an ultimatum. It was not made as an ulti-
matum. Russia was still at liberty to make her own
propositions, which she did, though she was not suc-
cessful in persuading us to accept them. The case,
however, is simply that Russia has refused to make a
reasonable proposition on the point of the greatest im-
portance, so we are still at war, and the war must work
itself out to its own results. Of these results Sir James
takes a gloomy view, and he appears to think we have
under-estimated the strength of the foe before whom we
have thrown away the scabbard. But Sir James's views
are proverbially gloomy in opposition, and be is always
disposed to make the most of difficulties. Fifteen years
ago, with many expressions of distrust and apprehension,
he approached the awful subject of the Chinese war. "If,
unhappily, we are on the verge of a rupture with that
country, nothing could be less wise than to despise our
enemy • it was prudent in time well to consider what
were the resources, what the strength of that country with
which we were about to engage in a hostile struggle."
Such was the exordium of a long speech, heavy
and gloomy enough to crush the energies of any Govern-
ment that did not know Sir James Graham. He was
soon after the most energetic member in a Government
which made short work with China. Only put Sir James
in office once more, in a position to suit his own ideas of
independence, and we shall not hear much more of our
powerful and generous foe, or of the duty of humbling
ourselves before him. It is usually the Opposition that
advises a nation to fast in sackcloth and ashes. Doubt-
less the advice is natural to their feelings at the moment,
but it comes with little grace from one of an Adminis-
tration that committed the very sins we are now invited
to atone for.

( From the Morning Herald of this day ).

The Government and the Government organs have
for the last few days been in an ecstacy of delight.
Everything has gone weil with them. Lord Palmer-
ston, by tiding over Whitsun-week, has got rid of the
Vienna Conferences, and may meet all objections by
asserting that they no longer exit, and that the debating
anything connected with them is simply holding a dis-
cussion upon a caput mortuum. But, better than all this,
signs of returning vitality appear in our fleets and armies
in the Crimea. A successful advance has been made on
the line of the Tchernaya, and the expedition to Kertch,
which formerly proved abortive, having once more pro-
ceeded to the eastward, has passed through the straits --
which Sir James Graham reported to be utterly imprac-
ticable, as well on account of want of depth of water for
large vessels, as on account of ships having been sunk
in the passage—and performed some real and effective
work in the Sea of Azoff.

The ignorance, real or affected, of the late First Lord
beingf as it was, simply part of the system of know-
nothingness so effectually followed by the late Govern-
ment, and carried to such a length as to induce Lord Strat-
ford de Redcliffe positively to refuse to adopt the means
suggested by Admiral Dundasto procure someinformation
regarding tile/Crimea previous to the embarkation of the
troops, and the object of this professed ignorance being
known to the public, we can afford to pass it over in
silence. Englishmen will make their own comments on
it. With respect, hovever, to the late successes of our
fleet and army, we must say that every incident of this
nature which has occurred, so far from being a source of
congratulation, either to the two Coalitions or to the
country, should be a heaping of coals of fire on the heads
of the first, if they have hearts in their bodies, and a
source of the deepest and most lasting regret to the
second, for having neglected to force upon a treacherous
Government the adoption of those very measures in the
course of the summer of 1854.
We have now been nominally at war with Russia for
fifteen months, and the treasonable manner in which that
war was of a set purpose reduced to a nullity, as far a,4
effective measures were concerned, has been the cause of
all the misfortunes and losses to which the nation and
our soldiers have been subjected. For the first time in
fifteen months has a measure been adopted whichit was
obvious to the commonest capacities should have been
the very first step taken when the war was resolved on.
• Long and bag before that war broke out we over and