The Sun.
London, England, 1855-04-06 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 1855.

" Lord JOHN RUSSELL and M. DROUYN DE
L'Huys decline the King of Prussia's invitation
to Berlin." So it is announced by the telegraph,
and we can easily credit the intelligence. It
would, indeed, have been strange had it been
otherwise, had the representatives of France and
England abandoned their important duties at
Vienna to dance attendance on the King whose
duplicity or vacillation has occasioned so many
grave complications, and led to the exclusion of
the Prussian Plenipotentiary from the pending
conferences. For what purpose could their pre-
sence now be required at Charlottenburg ; and
what serious apprehensions would it not necessarily
excite amongst all desirous of obtaiaing a speedy
and honourable solution of the existing diffi-
culties ? Austria might then, indeed, complain,
she might well suspect that there was some under-
hand proceedings on the tapis.

The mischief arising from the ostentatious pro-
menade of Lord JOHN RUSSELL with Prince
GouTscaaKoFF would be far exceeded by the
friendly visit of the French and English diplo--
matists to the capital of FREDERICK WILLIAM—a
visit which could only be regarded as a complete
turning of the tables on Austria, the holding of a
new Congress, from which her representative
would be excluded.

No further time need- now be wasted in the
exchange of useless courtesies. The season for
action has arrived. France requires an immediate
and decided answer to her reasonable demands.
There can be no more equivocation—no evading
the plain alternative. The principle that "those
who are not for us are against us " must at once
be enunciated, and the German Potentates must
choose the side on which to array themselves.
The circumstances of the case prohibit neutrality.
The Western Powers can guard against open
enmity ; but pretended friendship, while render-
ing covert assistance to the enemy, is far more '
formidable. We cannot permit parties to remain
with their forces cn a war footing, ready to step
in, and turn the scale of victory at the moment
when the belligerents, exhausted by their previous
exertions, are placed at the mercy of the by-
standers.

Austria has already entered into solemn en-
gagements with the Western Powers, has made
plausible promises, which she should at once be
required to redeem. By the Treaty of the 21
December she engaged to support the Allies,
unless a settlement was effected with Russia on
the basis of. the Four -Poin's. Russia accepted
the conditions as explained by the subsequent
Article of the 28th December, and if she now en-
deavours to wriggle out of the responsibility, if she
shows that she was merely striving to gain time,
and had no bona Me intention of making the
necessary concession, -then it is incumbent on
Austria to show that she has some respect for her
plighted faith, and that, like Carthage of old, she
shall not become a byeword and a reproach
among nations.
From the beginning it was obvious that there
was but one way in which the Third Point could
be carried out, so as to afford security and restore
confidence to the nations in the vicinity of the
Euxine. Sebastopol was " a standing menace"
not only to Turkey, but to Europe. As we have
already stated, it threatened the Danube as well
as the Bosphorus. Bitter experience has proved,
beyond the possibility- of doubt, that no reliance
can be Placed on the professions of moderation ;
that
any Power which Russia possessed would be
unscrupulously
used whenever suitable opportu-
nity occurred m
• The retention of the Crimea by
Russia might be regard an extraordinary act
of generosity, that as
But with Sebastopol could scarcely be justified.
still fortified, it could only
be looked on as evidence
of
insanity, similar to
allowing a madman to keepa Possession of a deadly
weapon,
paroxysm of rage, to be turnedagainst his keepers on the
first
If Russia means fairly, Why should she desire
to retain the power of acting
unfairly The
fortifications of Sebastopol cannot be
.required for
the protection of her own territories. It is only
as the means of aggression that it can be useful,
it is ridiculous then to speak of the honour 0;
dignity of the CZAR being opposed to the demo.
lition of its forts. As well might the burglar
speak of his " dignity " being involved in the
surrender of his " jemmy " and his " centre-bit."
Besides, Russia has already waived other matters,
respecting which but last year she spoke in an
equally decided manner. She has since that,
time materially abated her pretensions, and there
is no more reason to suppose that, if the Western
Powers are now firm and decided in their de-
mands, she will not make the additional conces-
- fii.)llls reqUirqd• She will make every effort to

avoid the unpalatable alternative ; but, when no
other course is available, she will swallow her leek,
albeit with many wry faces and impotent threats
that she will " most horribly avenge " the insult.
There is nothing, then, for the Western Powers
but the ultimatum—that the forts of Sebastopol
be forthwith demolished, and the Russian fleet
destroyed or withdrawn from the Black Sea. No
confidence could be placed in the promise of limit-
ing the naval power of Russia so long as the
impregnable fortifications and well-stored arsenal
remained. Vessels of war would speedily fill the
convenient port, vessels which would not be heard
of until they sailed forth bristling with arms, and
manned with disciplined seamen, trained in the
Baltic, and transferred to the Euxine, ready to
inflict an irreparable blow when least expected.

After what has occurred it would be a childish
credulity which would rest contented with any
promise of Russia which it might at any future
period be her interest to violate.
It would be an equally solemn mockery to
speak of the construction of naval stations at
Sinope or Varna, or both. What would our eco-
nomists say when, after peace had nominally bean
restored, and otir over-burdened taxpayers were
demanding relief from the war imposts, when the
Income Tax was again reduced, if the Chancellor
of the Exchequer brought forward an estimate for
some twenty or thirty millions of pounds ster-
ling for the construction of the intended for-
tifications at Sinope ? How would the main-
tenance of an adequate fleet in the Euxine
be provided for ? and what would be the natural
feelings if the destruction of the incipient fortress
and the sacrifice of our fellow-subjects should
stamp the blood-stained bay with a notoriety
more infamous, a massacre more sanguinary, than
that by which it has already been disgraced ? the
victims being Englishmen, not Turks ! How
would the blind credulity that rendered such a
thing possible be execrated, and what indelible
shame would rest through all future ages on the
names of those responsible for the calamity ! Even
if the Western Powers were contented to incur
the enormous pecuniary outlay, and the perpetual
expenses rendered necessary from the too sensi-
tive regard for the AUTOCRAT'S dignity, the
arrangement would be impracticable, inasmuch as
there could be no security during the protracted
interval between the commencement and comple-
tion of the forts at Sinope and Varna. Once
more, then, we repeat the watchword, that should
be stereotyped in every British journal—that will
find an echo in every French and English heart
until the important problem is solved, " DELENDA
EST SEVASTOPOL !" The sword so reluctantly
drawn cannot be restored to its scabbard until the
indispensable sacrifice is accomplished, and security
for a permanent peace duly perfected.

Already we have reminded those pre-cccupied
by the warlike incidents transpiring in the Crimea
that occurrences of considerable public import
have been simultaneously taking place elsewhere
than before the batteries and earthworks of Sebas-
topol. Besides Sebastopol, as we recently re-
marked, other cities have been beleaguered.
Besides the Crimea, other foreign States have
been invaded. There have been other, if lesser,
contests than the one waged by the Allies against
Russia. There have been other would-be spolia-
tors no less flagitious, and we rejoice to add no
less unsuccessful, than the AUTOCRAT.

A few sentences may not be amiss in the way
of cursory elucidation.
It will, thereupon, be perceptible at a glance
how little in all this we have spoken at random,
and how very far our words have been from those
of merely empty antithesis or flippant exagge-
ration.

A retrospective survey of the principal events
of any significance which have been recorded,
during 1854-5, in our own columns and in those
of our contemporaries—indicates rather glaringly,
among other facts, the somewhat curious one that
a great Democracy has striven to emulate a great
Despotism by its lawless attempts at territorial
aggrandisement. If the Russian Autocracy has
endeavoured, per fas aut nefas, to absorb among
its other possessions the whole of the long-coveted
Danubian Principalities—the American Republic
has hungered and thirsted after Cuba, after the
Sandwich Islands, after " this, that, and the
other," among the insular tidbits, whether a Cuba
or a Sandwich, both in the Southern and in the
West Indian Archipelago. Scarcely had the
Japanese been brought to their senses by the
formidable maritime expediti6n sent against them
by the Government at Washington, when another
expedition of a different character, a genuine filli-
bustering expedition was "on the cards" for the
seizure of the brightest jewel in the Crown of
Spain—in the event, that is, of the Cabinet of
Madrid showing itself inconveniently disinclined
t) sell the gem in a villanously huckstering
fashion far certain
.millions of dollars—for a don-
ester of so many hundreds of thousands of
" thanks"—for a—consideration ! The nefarious
design was only the other day inopportunely
blurted out, in the hearing of whoever listed,
by the little Congress of Plenipotentiaries ga-
thered together on the margin of Europe in the
persons of the United States' Representatives at
the Courts of St. James's, the Escurial, and the
Tuileries. So inopportunely did these wiseacre
Ambassadors let the cat out of the bag in this
particular instance, that we may presume the pro-
jected capture of Cuba by Congress is to be shelved
at least for a while, if it has not thereby in con-.
sequence been permanently abandoned. For the
rest of-tha world, besides Spain .and America, are
now, by reason of that astonishing betise on the
part of the Envoys of Yankeedoodledum, awake
to the whole value and bearing of the enterprise.
Beyond which it is uncertain as yet how far any
such design would be countenanced by the newly-
elected Congress, agitated as it is in its earlier sit-
tings by its redoubtable muster of raw Know-No-
things and ripe Locofocos, muchlesshow any scheme
so disgraceful as the bartering of Cuba for gold
could be encouraged by the still immature Cortes,
guided in its constitutional labours by the pa-
triotic influence of ESPARTERO. Moreover, in
addition to the baulked scheme for the seizure of
Cuba, there have been divers others of a scarcely
less grasping kind cherished in the core of the
bosom, in the heart of hearts of the great United
States Democracy. The American Republic, as
herein.before mention ed, has for a considerable time
past looked askance upon the yearned-for group
of the Sandwich Islands, with an eye to
their wholesale acquisition. It.appears, however,
by recent advices from the other side of the At-

taken place in the negotta
lantic that a rather anno.yitniognihiftocrhthhaesirsaundndeexnaly..
and not by any means morally pre-
tpiacZeuiaMr:anwhile, diplomatic intrigues of this
Pwoosrsleklas inseenebaareszter, have in those quarters of the
l:
popund---bylar and accompanied rather plentifully by
ki
Political movements of a very different
uproarious didarbances and sang
uinary
revolutions. Lynch-lave
ribly than ever throughout California. Insur-
rection nourished more ter-
rection has devastated Peru--ehili being more
or less agitated up to the present moment
by the still unsettled question as. to the

presidency. The interne, :it le war which has, dur-
ing many months past, rage 1 uninterruptedly over
Mexico—good and evil for .;une fluctuating capri-
ciously between the rebel troops and the forces of
the Republican Governm( a it—appears at length
to be happily approaching -the period of its ter-
mination—if we may at lea st be permitted so to
conjecture from the recent -return of SANTA ANNA
to the capital, after the gel llant old veteran had
effectually routed the insurzents near Marenes and
driven ALVAREZ to the wavessity of a precipitate
retreat, crippled by a desperate conflict, and dis-
pirited by an overwhelmilag sense of the fullness
of his discomfiture.

Possibly, by the way, tile interruption to which
we have already referred as having closes for a
the negotiations set on foot by the Government at
Washington for the annexa,tion of the Sandwich
Islands to the territories already comprised with-
in the limits of thelTuited States' dominion, may be
attributable, in some measure, to the influence of
a new, and yet more remarkable, political intrigue,
which seems to have suddenly sprung into exist-
ence in California, the promoters of the said in-
trigue being numbered among the more daring
and lawless of the free and easy citizens of San
Francisco. The enterprise alluded to being nothing
less in short than the organisation of another
United States, having its shores washed not chiefly
by the waters of the Atlantic, but principally by
those of the Pacific. The formation, in other
words, of a Great Western Republic, including
among its various States, besides the otherwise
coveted group of Sandwich Islands, the fair and
fertile fields of Senora, together with these a slice
or two carved by the dagger of intrigue or by the
sword of conquest, from the already hacked, and
hewed, and partially dismembered regions of
Mexico, and, as the heart and centre of the whole
motley confederacy, the as-yet-separate but soon-
to-be-bnited states of Oregon and California. An
agreeable prospect for all the contiguous territories
of the North American Continent ! A picture
almost as alluring nowadays to the less civilised
among the gold-seeking Citizens of the World as
that which very lately flashed and faded with the
blended brilliancy and evanescence of a dissolving
view before the dazzled and bewildered senses of
the zdiggeri of Ballarat ! So that day-dreams
of new-born and robust democracies have re-
cently, in effect, been indulged in by some
simultaneously in the gold fields of Califor-
nia and the auriferous wilds of Australasia.
A cursory glance at what has been here briefly
but suggestively enumerated will be sufficient,
we conceive, to show that 'Westwards and South-
wards there have been, and still are visible :con-
temporaneously with the War in the Crimea, any-
thing rather than indications in States of internal
quietude or of international tranquillity. The
bombardment of Greytown constitutes by no
means the only transatlantic companion picture to
that of Bomarsund, or that of Odessa, or that of
Sebastopol. California, Mexico, Chili, Victoria,
and Yankeeland, have each contributed their
quota to the uproar, and bloodshed—the " bub-
ble, bubble, toil and trouble" making up the hell-
broth of war concocted during 1854-5 by the De-
mon of Discord, designated by Lord BYRON, pic-
turesquely enough, as "Red Battle," but known
more correctly nowadays as Red-Tape Diplo-
macy. Additional glances elsewhere than in
the direction of America, will demonstrate
no less distinctly and disastrously that that Gob-
lin of Mischief has been busy in yet more remote
and scattered possessions—in the African and
Asiatic Continents, no less than in the European,
the American, and the Australian.

If the public were n)t thoroughly persuaded
that Lord LUCAN is a highly meritorious but much-
injured officer, a perusal of the pamphlet just
issued, containing a report of his Lordship's speech
in the House of Lords in extenso, a plan of the
locality in which the fatal Light Cavalry charge
at Balaklava was made, and an Appendix, in which
the arguments of those who defended his Lordship's
recall are met, must go far to insure that result.
Ample grounds, we are of opinion, will be found
in the pamphlet for the belief that, after having
proved himself a skilful and gallant general—
after having routed 3,500 of the enemy with a
force of 700 men, his Lordship was compelled,
through misconception and blunders on the part
of others higher in' command, to order a charge of
which he did not approve, and which was followed
by the most deplorable results, and that when an
attempt was afterwards but too successfully made
to fix the odium of the charge upon him, he was
deprived of the opportunity of vindicating himself
by a technical objection at once untenable and
absurd ; and to this conviction, we are persuaded,
will be added a feeling of pleasure at the energy
and perseverance displayed by his Lordship in his
defence against apparently overwhelming odds.