The Sun.
London, England, 1855-03-03 00:00:00

vainly endeavoured to impress upon Europe—
but also against the Latin and the Anglican
Churches, each of which he would have „absorbed
in turn, whenever a favourable opportuni;,y could
have been adopted.
It is difficult to judge such a man correctly,
to estimate accurately the motives by which
he was influenced. In a private station he might
have been a great, nay, more, a good man. He
had many virtues—was temperate, brave, and in-
dustrious. No labour was too great, no hard-
ship too onerous to encounter. And yet, with
all these high qualities, combined with many
physical advantages, through the unconscientious
pursuit of a phantasm, he forfeited the prestige
attached to his name, which will now serve to
point a moral—teaching a lesson to future
monarchs as to how they venture to disregard the
laws of justice and honour.
In the early part of his career success crowned
all his efforts. No opposition was offered to his
will. Possit, quid posse videtur. He could do any-
thing, because it was supposed that all things
were within his power. There was no resistance
to his will. A remonstrance, or at most
a protest, was all he had to fear. Still he moved
warily, and with circumspection, and it was not
until, in an evil hour, he saw his " friend of forty
years' standing " at the head of the English Go-
vernment that he ventured to carry his long-
treasured projects into operation. From that
moment all was changed. An avenging NEMESIS
attended his footsteps. Defeat and disappointment
met him on every side. His veteran troops were
defeated by inferior numbers—his boasted fleets
were kept skulking within their harbours. Holy
Russia was invaded—his stronghold beleaguered,
and even his capital menaced. He had to swal-
low a very bitter leek in consenting to treat on
terms that he once contemptuously rejected.
These matters told on his constitution, and, as we
have stated, he probably died • from the violence
of his own passions, adding to the myriads of
victims who perished on his account !

A momentous question now arises as to the
successor. Should his eldest son, ALEXANDER,
ascend the throne, it is probable that we may
obtain a just and honourable peace. Should his
paramount claims be set aside—should the ambi-
tious CONSTANTINS assume the purple—we must be
prepared for even a more desperate struggle than
if NICHOLAS had survived. Under any circum-
stances, there is but one course open for France
and England. They must cast aside the scabbard
until they obtain ample material guarantees
against any future aggression. Sebastopol
must be surrendered and dismantled—the Rus-
sian fleet in the Euxine reduced within reason-
able limits, so as to occasion no alarm to any of
the neighbouring States. There are many other
matters to be regarded, but these, at least, are
indispensable, which must be looked to in any
aspect of affairs. It is a great event for good or
for evil. It is incumbent on those in authority
not to neglect or misapply the golden opportunity.

The country must bestir itself. Two months
hence it will be too late. All was lost last year
because the winter, and, we may add, the spring
also, were thrown away. Negotiations at Vienna,
and fleets politely waiting outside the Black Sea,
sacrificed precious days, weeks, and months now
atoned for in the Crimea. We must not allow our
Ministers to play that game again. Whether we
distrust Whiggism or not, its efficiency will de-
pend on us—the People. Government is but the
maehinery, we are the steam ;- events have raised
popular opinion and feeling to high pressure, and
it needs but a few leading men to turn that pres-
sure upon the inertness of office. Let the coun-
try but speak its mind everywhere and resolutely,
let it but show what would be the results of a
dissolution, and we shall have our work done.
QUEEN and PRINCE CONSORT too, and Lords and
Commons will join to do it. The English people
are, after all, far more powerful than the Coburgs,
the aristocrats, and the Peelites together ; let them
but put forth their power, and courts and their
cousins will shako in their closets, and will not
dare to transform the Ministers of England into
the Ministers of petty German Princes.
The country has, indeed, forced an anti-national
clique from office, and the philo-Russians (in-
cluding one literally half-caste Russian) have been
sent to rusticate, but philo-Austrians still are
powerful in the Cabinet ; the only man in the
House of Commons fit for the active duties of the
War-office is turned adrift because of his adapta-
tion to it, and a mere red-tape arithmetician sub-
stituted for him ; and worse than all the states-
man (?) who would leave Russia every in3h of her
stolen territories is sent to Vienna to offer this
splendid condition to Prince GORTSCHAKOFF,
and to assure him that, let Russia hold
out as long as she may, she will at
the worst but lose a few more of those serfs for
whose lives she cares not a straw. Five years of
armistice would put all that right, and make the
Baltic, Poland, and the Black Sea more formid-
able than ever to the liberties of Europe. It is at
our peril, therefore, to drop the reins which we have
grasped. The very quality of Lord PALMER-
STON'S colleagues and subordinates shows, either
that he is not master of his position or that he
does not comprehend it ; in either case the people
must be awake. They must strengthen him, or
instruct and command him, as the case may be.
The point for the people to insist on now, is a
Polish, Alliance. We call it an alliance to place
the matter in its true light. Alliances are the
hoax of our diplomatists ; long hopeless months,
months of pestilence and bloodshed to our troops,
they have wasted in seeking Austrian and even
Prussian alliances. They have laboured to change
friends of Russia and spoliation, into friends of
justice and enemies to robbery ; they call it
splendid work when Prussia remains the avowed
friend of Russia, and Austria has not as yet been
persuaded to fire a single shot. This precious
alliance is the boast of both the old Cabinet and
the new ! Now, fellow-countrymen, will you
tolerate this miserable juggle longer ? Will you
not tell these precious diplomatists—" Gentlemen,
you have tried your hand, now let us try ours.
We demand the Polish alliance. You will look
aghast—there is no Polish Monarch, no Polish
Court, no costly ambassador to it, no Royal
cousins, half German, half Russianised ; Poland,
good sirs, has no diplomatic status." We have
only to reply to diplomatists, " Gentlemen, this is
no time for your miserable formal cant. Fifty
thousand of our soldiers, and fifty millions of our
money gone, through your vile formalism, has
determined us to change shadow for reality, and
cajollery for plain dealing. Poland is a nation ;
its alliance we will have. Do you ask its limits,
we reply, test them. As far eastward of Prussia
as Poles would join with you against Russia
—that is the Poland we mean. Let
the CZAR keep any provinces he has
governed so paternally that they prefer Russia
for a fatherland ; all else that speak the
Polish language, that would gladly swell the
ranks of our armies, that would rejoice to form
parts of a Polish Commonwealth, under any
native Government, is Poland, not Russia. That
is the country whose alliance we demand, to whom
we would proffer the most ample help, and on
whose shores we would land a hundred thousand
Frenchmen."
This alliance we demand as the keystone of
our policy, the one condition of a successful cam-
paign, the equally indispensable condition of a
secure peace, and the only "material guarantee'
D
on which we can rely. Deeply cherishing our
ridiculed sympathy with cg suppressed
urgent
them presses now.
Wequite as
nation-
alities," and disgusted with any Englishman who
wants it,
the Poles. We needt, something more
much as they do us. Our second splendid fleet
is collecting at Spitead amidst e second
the Tihnto. :Wollo the
it pay,
eulogies of

7.4*

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