The Sun.
London, England, 1855-11-19 00:00:00

(Front the Morning Advertiser of this day. )

We refrained from contradicting the assertions
of a contemporary that this vacant office would be
offered to Mr. Frederick Peel, who would be suc-
ceeded as under-Secretary in the War Department
by Mr. Layard, M.P., because although pro-
bably not intended as such, they were merely
regarded as a pretention in every well-informed
circle. It was impossible to regard in any other
aspect the policy of entrusting one of the most
arduous and responsible offices under the Crown to
a cold and stately young man, who would wish to
usurp that which his father would dis claim for his
offspring as a reward for his own great and im-
mortal services to the country. Mr. Layard, wh
has done more than any man to destroy the aris-
tocratical exclusiveness of the existing military
regime by exposing its fearful results in the mis-
management and disorganisation of the army,
would be the last man to whom the present Go-
vernment would offer the Under-Secretaryship of
the War Department.
As we were the first to state Ewe believe the Duke
of Newcastle, from motives which are creditable to
his Grace, will not accept the office Whitih has been
offered to him ; and consequently we may assume,
that it will be at once conferred on one is con-
nected with many aristocratic families—who has
long coveted it—and who had been fixed upon as
the successor to the late Sir W. Molesworth before
the formal compliment was paid to the Duke of
Newcastle of offering him the seals of the depart-
ment. We allude to the Right Hon. Henry La-
bouchere, M.P., brother-in-law to the Duchess of
Sutherland and of the E id of Carlisle, whose lady
is the niece of the Dukes of Devonshire and of
Sutherland, sister of the Duchess of Argyll, and
first cousin to the Earl of Granville. So that here
we have another Ministerial addition to " The
Families." That " interest" has again asserted its
power.
Mr. Labouchere is one of the most virtuous, but
at the same time one of the most timid and irre-
solute members of the House of Commons. His
timidity on many occasions . had formerly been so
marked that some of his own colleagues
it to imbecility. But if single-mindedness and
honesty sufficed to constitute tie statesman capable
of administering the executive affairs of 50 colonial
sovereignties, Mr. Labouchere would be unobjec-
tionable. attributed

The son of a French refugee in Holland, by the
sister of a successful American, he entered public
life as a man of actual opulence and enormous ex-
pectations. He visited the United States along
with the present Earl of Derby, Mr. J. Evelyn
Denison, and Lord Skelmersdale, whose daughter
in the following year, 1825, Lord Derby married.
Mr. Labouchere was highly complimented on his
" maiden speech" in the House of Commons by the
late Sir James Mackintosh. He was a Lord of
the Admiralty from 1832 to 1834, whelk he re-
signed on the dismissal by William IV. of the
Melbourne Ministry. On the return of Lord Mel-
bourne to power in 1835, he became Vice-Presi-
dent of the Board of Trade and Master of the
Mint. In 1838 Mr. Labouchere, with Sir Arthur
Aston and Mr. M‘Gregor, the present member for
Glasgow, were the commissioners who proceeded
to France for the purpose of negotiating a com-
mercial treaty with that country, and on the suc-
cess of which great hopes were entertained for the
future amity and mutual interests of the two
nations. The mission, however, terminated unsuc-
cessfully in consequence of the duplicity of Louis
Philippe, who, with his Minister, M. Thiers, pre-
ferred sacrificing the national interests to their, own
personal considerations. Mr. M‘Gregor's report
presented to Parliament was conclusive on the
subject.
About the same time, in consequence of some
difficulties at the Colonial-office, Mr. Labouchere
undertook the inferior office of Under Secretary,
the duties of which he discharged with industry and
satisfaction. On the appointment of Mr. Thomson
to the Governor-Generalship of Canada, in 1839,
Mr. Labouchere became President of the Board of
Trade, in which office, assisted by Mr. M'Gregor,
as secretary, he continued until the resignation of
the Melbourne Ministry, in 1841.
On the formation of the Family Compact Govern-
ment, in 1846, Mr. Labouchere was appointed to
the office of Secretary of State for Ireland, and
subsequently, on the removal of Lord Clarendon,
who was President, to be Lord-Lieutenant of Ire-
land, to the Presidentship of the Board of Trade.
Since the advent of the Derby Government he has
seldom appeared in public, and has rarely spoken
in the House of Commons.
In society Mr. Labouchere is considered cold
and diffident. He is, however, distinguished for a
quality which all respectable men must honour.
We have heard those who have mingled much in
the society of diplomatists and statesmen declare
their belief, that in most instances the leading am-
bition of such individuals is to be—expert liars I
The most unsophisticated are probably well aware
that falsehood is one of the most active and impor-
tant agents in political science and government ;
but few have any conception of the terrible extent
to which political society is demoralised by this
degrading and disgusting attribute. In striking
contrast to many public men Mr. Labouchere is
noted for an innate love of truth ; and those
who know him best believe that no conceivable
temptation would induce him +.
-0 compromise
his veracity. On one occasion he refused to
accept a sum of 18,0001. or 20,000/. the esti-
mated damage to his estate of Highlands, in
• Essex, by the intersection of the Eastern Counties
• Railway, on the ground that he did not himself
consider the railway did the least injury to his pro-
perty. His timidity, no doubt, arises from the
over-anxious zeal of an honest heart and mind

Is Austria a friendly power I We published on
Friday a letter from a Prussian correspondent, in
which it is stated that—" Within the last month
more than 100,000 cwt: of sulphur have been fors
warded from Austria to Russian Poland, and every
day about 600 cwt.s of this article continue to ar-
rive, packed partly in chests 2nd partly in casks."
The Prussian frontier authorities having refused to
forward this contraband of war, it is now removed
from the northern railway at thelast station within
the Austrian territory and forwarded to Cracow in
carts. Austria professes to be neutral in the war
now in progress ; Austria professes to lean more to
the Western Powers than to Russia ; and yet Aus-
tria supplies Russia with munitions of war to an
extent thit shocks the feelings of Prussian autho-
rities—not over-sensitive on this point.
Is Austrians friendly power? Letters from Bucha-
rest state that a foreign officer in the British ser-
vice, sent to that place by our Government to buy
horses and carts for the army, and bearing letters
of credit to the English Consul and the' native au-
thorities, has been arrested by the Austrians. He
is said to have had his English uniform stripped
off, and an Austrian military great coat given hini
in lieu of .t. The plea advanced in justification of
this insult is that Colonel Thier (the gentleman in
questionys a cleserOar from the Austrian service.
H. o appears to—tave been a political exile? a
Hungarian byloirthrwtree had served in the Atli=
trian army, but passed over to the Piedmontese in
1849. If the story be true, a Hungarian political
exile has been seized by the Austrians on a neutral
territory, for they possess no civil jurisdiction in the
Principalities, which are still regarded as part of
the Ottoman empire. The asylum granted by the
Sultan to Kossuth and other Hungarian exiles—in
granting which he was supported by the English
Government—has been violated in the person of
Colonel Thier; and the temptation to this outrage
appears to have been the opportunity it afforded
Count Coronini of insulting England by stripping
the English uniform from the back of his prisoner.
Is Austria a friendly power ? Every possible ob-
struction and insult is systematically offered to the
English Consul in Wallachia, in the discharge of
his official duties, by the Austrians. Nor is this
all. Mr. Colquhoun having incurred the hatred of
the Austrian military authorities in Wallachia,
and of their wretched tool (the ci-devant Russian
tool) Prince Stirbey, by his firm and judicious
assertion of the rights of England and her ally the
Sultan, the most unscrupulous devices are resorted
to, with a view to injure his character. Attempts
have even been made to bribe English journals to
lend themselves to these nefarious attacks upon Mr.
Colquhoun.
Yet the English Government, so prompt to drive
matters to extremities in a dispute with republican
America, tamely puts up with all the insults and
injuries heaped upon it by despotic Austria.
The truth is that the permission given to Aus-
tria to occupy the Principalities with her armies is
the worst fault that has been committed by the
French and English Governments during the war.
We protested against that occupation before the
crime was consummated. We proved from history
that Austria had repeatedly attempted to wrest the
Principalities from the Porte, and annex them to
her own empire. We showed that,in the war which
was terminated by the peace of Giurgevo—in the
negotiation of which Sir Robert Murray Keith
acted as the British Plenipotentiary—the Porte
was enabled to retain the Principalities solely by
the mutual jealousy which rendered its two assail-
ants Russia and Austria, each unwilling to see the
coveted prize in the hands of the other. We showed
how Austria was now taking advantage of the po-
sition of Russia to obtain for itself these Principali-
ties to gain which Russia had risked so much.
Time has proved that we were right. Austria is
usurping sovereign authority in the Principalities ;
Austria is compelling the Principalities to nourish
a portion of her army, to the maintenance of which
her own beggared exchequer is inadequate • Aus-
tria is preparing to colonise Wallachia and Molda-
via with her German subjects ; Austria has got
hold of the Principalities, and laughs to scorn
every representation of the Allies that they are
part of the Ottoman empire.
Can the Allies, or will they, insist upon the eva-
cuation of the Principalities by the Austrian army
of occupation ? It never was, or could be, of the
slightest use there. Its continuance i 3 a standing
outrage upon humanity, and a violation of the
great principle of international law, to assert which
the Allies took up arms against Russia.

(Prone the Morning Post of this day.)

While waiting for the supplementary details
which will complete for us the picture of the late
battle on the banks of the Ingour (nature having
everywhere imposed for the moment upon the
Allied armies a suspension of large offensive opera-
tions), it will not be lost time to glance more closely
at this last exploit in Abasia, and to consider thoo
results to which that victory will probably lead ;
for we may, without temerity, accept it as at once
the augury and the introduction of greater events.
It is significant that, although the Russians could
not muster, to arrest the march of Omer Pacha, a.
force at all equal in numbers either to their own
task or to the advancing columns, they neverthe-
less made the most strenuous exertions to resist
these, relying on an advantageous position be-
hind a river, and upon entrenchments defended
by artillery. Nor
was the enemy's numerical
inferiority the only evidence of his deficient pre-
paration or his failing strength to make good
in this region the overweening directions of the
Czar. A part of the array which disputed
Omer Paella's progress consisted of the Georgian
militia. The anxiety which could risk a conflict
under such circumstances shows the vital import-
ance attached by the Russian chiefs to the main,
tenance of that frontier line, while the issue pro-
claims the growing exhaustion of the requisite
means.

The 'rigour,
which is a rather rapid, but narrow
stream, flowing out of the Caucasus from east to
west, and emptying itself into the Euxine by
Anaklia, could not, of course, have been itself the
barrier on which the 12 or 14,000 Russians relied
for the arrest of Omer Paella's troops. We hear
of no great difference, at the scene of combat, in
the height of the opposing banks ; the stream,
besides, was fordable, the Turks crossing it in four
places (with their fire-arms aloft, and the water up
to the shoulder), in the very teeth of a powerful
fire. This operation must have required but a
few minutes—and, as the battle lasted five hours,
the main stress of it was evidently on the
Russian side of the little river. Some slight
discrepancy about the exact losses, respectively,
of the victors and the vanquished, exists be-
tween Lord Stratford de Redcliffe's despatch and
that of the Ottoman Government ; and it is even
probable that we have not yet anything like the
tale of what the enemy at least suffered ; for it
appears that Omer Pacha was enabled to give pur-
suit, always a more calamitous transaction to the
beaten than their overthrow in the actual conflict.
So much at least is quite clear, that not only a
signal -victory has been achieved, but that the
conduct of the British officers present in the en-
gagement was, in the most conspicuous degree,
admirable and heroic. Although the Russian
soldier defends an elaborate fortification with ea..;
traordinary stubbornness, his attitude behind
hasty and less perfect field-works is another mat-
ter. In all likelihood, the artificial defences be-
hind the Ingour (not to speak of the natural
protection of formidable convex heights), were
not of a nature to be compared with those which
English and French battalions partly stormed and
partly turned behind the Alma ; and, no doubt,
in the degree of strength, the two positions were
very different ; but the character of them is
one—a stream in front, then intrenchments, lined
with hand-fire,' and crowned with batteries. It is

the favourite situation of our present opponents ;
but the advance against it is generally the only
serious difficulty. If the assailants once penetrate
beyond the line of cannon, the Russians are not
usually successful in recovering by the bayonet
what they could not preserve by artillery. The
repeated rallies made by the self-same Turkish
troops in the recapture, from successive columns of
assailants, of the Tahmasb Tabia Redoubt, at
Kars, could have been effected by the Russians
only with so many relays of distinct and separate
reinforcements, supposing that positions had been
reversed. Still less could the Russians have re-
newed with one and the same small body of men
the numberless charges of our Guards at Inkerman
against au interminable series of ever fresh bat-
talions.
our readers that
It will have been observed by

This movement completes the rout and flinging
back of Russia from the third and last of the three
avenues by which she menaced Turkey and Southern
Europe. The Danube and Bulgaria were. the first
attempted, and they were the first closed against
her. The maritime approach was forbidden by the
presence of the Allied fleets, and rendered impossible
by the destruction of the Czar's. And now the third
and last road, involving every hope of reaching the
long-coveted prey, will be destroyed when the Rus
sian power is so annihilated in Asia Minor and
Georgia as to make evident the futility of the aggres-
sor's Trans-Caucasian dreams.