The Sun.
London, England, 1855-08-11 00:00:00

pass without the uses salty of some amendment Or othOr
Ahe uniform fate, their Lordships will be pleasenortioeuitber,
of the best as well as the worst bills that ever passed throne,
their house.

I, ft tAle.sii;6*(l3l,4

- •
..
(Prom the Morni;ly He:c.sid Of thisos
Mr. Gladstone is so good as to Te.mind nit that we4ve'goi!
n
:
into a war which is costing. as— •England and 'France-L.'
100,000,000/, per annum, and is sacrhqcing about 1,000 lives
per diem. Doubtless these are treinem.lOus . facts'; facts cal.'
avoidcula asking tedte maekveerirevmeryomoennet,sg How earn°, winto thise of predi
th
a,d.' But it as not possible to
camentl .By whose fault is it that, in et. me two or throe
years after the grand festival of peace—the Great Exhibition
of 1851:--England should have plungedh e
lt o:o
greatest wars of modem times ; a war, too, 11 which to go
forward, is to fcrco back the whole power of the' Russian em-
pire; while to retreat, is to confess Thissia to
,be Europe's
master 7" _

Who plunged us into this war ? First of all, wS must re-
peat the statement which we have often made, anal which
has never been contradicted, that the criminal weak.ness of
some of 'the leading members of Lord, 'Aberdeen's Govern.
ment led the late Emperor Nicholas li/commit that aggrea-'
'ion which commenced the war. • . •
Before took any step in the ' natter the Emperor
Nicholas not only conversed himself withtho'British ambas'
soder 'at his own Court, but he instructed: his representative,
in London to_do what was of fur more importance, to sound'.
the leading members of the English Government ; and when
Baron Bileinnow did so sound the Cabinet of St. James's, she
answer lie 'received Was a careless, laughing reply; amounting
to this, You may deal with Turkey as you like, we than
give you no- trouble." •
Nicholas thus was led into the scrape, and hence his re.
sentment shoWn towards' the British ambassador at St. -.Re-
tersburg. Had the reply of the English Cabinet in 1853 bean
prompt; firm, and decided, Menschikoff would not have been
sent to Constantinople, and not a Russian soldier would.haver
crossed the Frith.
SuCh Was ",the first act of folly on the part of Lord Aber-
deen'S Government. The second was a still more fatal one.
Feeling Compelled by the public voice to come to blows with
Russia, there Were a dozen wayS of dealing with that great
power, and of all these we managed to choose the very worst.
We might have at once closed •up the Black Sea and the
Baltic and thus have kept Russia in confinement till she
asked for terms of peace. This would ha-re cost us aboatfive
millions per annum, whereas we have already spent. fifty mil-
lions, and gained no more than this five millions would bairn
given us.
Or we might have landed a French and English force suffi-
cient to protect Constantinople, and then we might have
assisted the areassians to weaken the Russian dominions in
that quarter.
_ _ _

Or t'snaight have burnt or taken Odessa -and Kertch, and.
thus haVe starved Sebastopol.
Instead of any of these plans, we prefeired to set down be-
fore Sebastopol. Let Lord Palmerston's nearest friend in the
press, the Morning Post, describe the peculiar absurdities of
this step : _ _

" It has been well remarked that the "innumerable sorties;
of the garrison of Sebastopol are explicable only by the fact
that the fortress has remained uninvested from the beginning..
Restricted to no particular amount of reinforcements, unfet-
tered in drawing them along its line of communications, and
placing them successively upon its ramparts—with a blank
cheque-book, in short, upon the whole Scythian race—the
town has been as prodigal in the expenditure of blood as in
that of ammunition. It was never forced to live upon its
own means—never confined to its own resources."
Thus, having got into a quarrel by. our own _misconduct in
not warning Russia distinctly and in time, we next chose the
worst possible way of carrying on the war-'-the way in which
the enterprise would be most costly and most hazardous.
Now, let us ask, who are the men who are most to be blamed
for all this 7 _ .

„.
Lord Palmerston, who has his own share of the guilt to
bear, was merely Home Secretary. The foremost men in the
matter wore—

Lord Aberdeen,
• Lord John Russell,
The Duke of Newcastle,
Sir James Graham,
Mr. Gladstone,
Mr. Sidney Herbert.
-These were the men who first blundered into a quarrel with
Russia, and then, having got into such a quarrel, managed ae
to conduct the war as to make it almost equally difficult to
carry it on with honour, or to get out of it without disgrace_
Who does not know that it is a first principle of general-
ship to take care that you shall be able to effect a good re-
treat ? Now, England and France have set -down 150,000
men before Sebastopol, and where we beg to ask, is their re-
treat? It may be said that retreat is the last thing we are
thinking of. Aye, but what if a stay before Sebastopol were
impossible What if cholera were rife, and one-half of the
army were sick? Would any one tell us what, in such a case,
would become of the whole expedition ?
Well, this is the position in which Lord Aberdeen, Lard J.
Russell, Mr. Gladstone, and Sir J. Graham have placed us.
And what are these " distinguished statesmen " now doing ?
One and all, they have run away Absconding from the
Cabinet, on one pretence or another, they now blame us for
being at war; and insist upon it that we, ought to make
peace ! _ _

Upon what terms I Why, the two most distinguished men
of the whole clique—Lord J. Russell and Mr. Gladstone—tell
us that we arc dreadfully criminal in not at once grasping at
the Austrian proposal, and withdrawing from the war, on
condition that Russia will kindly permit us to keep in the
Black Sea, of English, French, and 'Turkish ships, an equal
force to the Russian fleet at Sebastopol t
Why, what prevents us—what has ever prevented us, from
saying to Russia, " We shall keep in the Black Sea, not only
an equal fleet to yours, but a superior one. And we will not
only do this ; bnt if you are angry, and choose to quarrel, we
will keep every ship you have cooped up in Cronstadt and
Sebastopol till you are in a better humour."
We can say this to Russia whenever we please. All the
world knows that we have this power. If, then, after sitting
down before Sebastopol, and remaining there for nearly a year,
we withdrew because-Rasaia had •consented to allow 7111 to
keep six ships in the Black Sea, the whole world would
see that all we really wanted was a pretext for decamping
'frmn the Critical

But what do Lord John Russell and Mr. Gladstone mean
us to understand ? Will they put it deliberately on recent
that they plunged into war with Russia, sent 150,000 men
into the Crimea, and spent of English and French money one
hundred millions, in order to force Russia to permit ns to
keep six ships in the Black Sea ? Is this to be part of the
English history of the nineteenth century? If so, assuredly
it will be a page which has never had its like before, and
which, we trust, will never have its like again