The Sun.
London, England, 1855-08-02 00:00:00

TO THE PEOPLE AND THE ARMY.

(From the Weekly DispatcYt.)
Friends, Britons, Countrymen,—The first person
plural of the present indicative mood befits neither you,
this theme, nor this time. They call for a suspension
of the ordinary usages of life, and a casting aside of the
set phrases of society. Away with the stilts of author-
ship! Hang the editorial We ! There is nothing col-
lective in mind. Each man thinks alone, feels alone,
lives individually by the organism of a separate and
independent animal ecohomy. The mask of the
anonymous gives to mere reason the -calm and dis-

passionate weight of casuistry, unalloyed by the disturb-
ing forces of personal and private considerations. But
the language of the heart, the electric sympathy which
rushes from soul to soul, is best transmitted through the
current of individual impulse. I would here stand face
to face with each one of you. I would reach you all
by reaching each of you. I desire to collect the sum and
aggregate of public opinion, by standing foot to foot, and
gazing eye to eye, on the platform of each man's moral
and mental condition. Forget that you are mere news-
paper readers. This is no time nor theme for mere news-
mongery. Paul tells us that the fickle and frail
Athenians ran about their city, idly careless of their
fate, and crying agape with mere curious wonder, "What
news l" The glory of Greece departed from all her
isles, and the sons of heroes and philosophers became
the slaves and pandars to the vices of her barbarous,
but strong-handed conquerors. If you but hear with
the mere itching ear of prurient curiosity the muttering
perils and the din of war which encompass us—if your
eye, but not your mind's eye, looks out from the
watchtower of time, upon the cloud no bigger than a
man's hand, and the dust of the wilderness belo,v and
before you, as if "seeing, you did not understand')—
I would call to you from this keep of mine to "read,
mark, learn, and inwardly digest" the omens and. portents
that even now are gathering around us—and to interpret
which demands the inspiration of the wisest of our sooth-

sayers and the most far-seeing of our augurs. I would speak
to you as man to man. Now and here I would make

my- confession, and record my conviJicMS,
in-
stincts were against this war. My political and doctrinal
associations all condemned it. I saw the waste of life, of
money, the check to material progress, the arrest of
moral progress, which it was to induce. I looked upon
the sixty millions of Russian serfs, slowly emerging out
of the Scythian barbarism and Serbonian bog, the un-
kempt wildness of hyperborean savagery, into a glimpse
of European civilisation ; and, looking on them as a
large section of the human race, and of my own kind,
whom in their degree I was charged, by the dictates of
Catholic religious duty to serve as occasion per-
mitted, I pondered the sins and miseries of war—
.. ..

my share in the responsibility of declaring it. My
prejudices are all opposed to the inflated quackery of Red
Republican refugees and Socialist attorney-generals for
the whole human race. I have an awkward leaning to ,
the shrewd growl of Dr. Johnson, " Sir, patriotism is
the last refuge of a scoundrel !" I dread. •‘ magnificent
perorations." lam not partial to magniloquence of any
kind. I have been reluctantly dragged by my convic-
tions out of the current of my prevailing tendencies. My
sense of duty has banished me from the paradise of my
historical associations, my party feelings, my economical
crotchets. To say the truth, I was not the more disposed
to regard the war with favour than in its advocacy I
would "pursue the triumph and partake the gale of
popular opinion. You and my colleagues saw more
clearly, and made me see—you felt more naturally,
strongly, deeply, and brought me to the direction and

healthier sympathies of my countrymen. I do now regret
the deep sense of responsibility which weighed upon my
conscience as one charged to form public opinion, and
which drew back my hand from giving an impulse to
the war-cry which would leave " many a sweet babe
fatherless, and many a widow mourning.' But you and
I have looked at facts—hard, working-day, inexorable facts
---not at sentimental delicacies of fancy, rose- water dispen-
sations of Providence, love in a cottage, dreams, and nail-
enial visions. Poland --persecuted, prostrate, exanimated.
Italy—bleeding, crouching, scourged, in chains. Hun-
gary—crushed, quelled, outlawed, proscribed. Greece,
" but livingC reece no more." Servia, Circassia, Moldavia,
Wallachia, Asia Minor—all being sucked into the vortex
of Russian despotism and German intrigue and oppres-
sion. Bourbonism plotting in Spain and France to mas-
ter the ascendancy for legitimacy over Europe, and even
now selling its soul to the devil of Muscovy in return
for its aid in reconquering its last hold on France. Mus-
covy, at length swollen into " the Holy Russian em-
pire," a seventh part, it is said, of the habitable globe,
gradually approaching the Mediterranean through the
mouths of the Danube and the Dardanelles, by means of
coasting fortresses on the Black Sea, and getting nearer
and nearer the frontier of the Baltic by Finland con-
quests, until (Sweden and Norway conquered) her ad-
vanced posts would be within two days' sail of our
English coasts. . Her fleets and fortresses, "a stand-
ing menace to Europe," she strengthens and in-
creases. Her army of a million fighting men, not even
pretended to be needed for defence, can have no alterna-
tive function but that of a further career of "battle, mur-
der, and sudden death,"an organised curse to humanity—
a perpetual threat to Europe—a re itless, inexorable mis-
chief to the world—ever ready to help bigotry to quash
tree thought, and despotism to extinguish the aspirations
of civil liberty. Her tyrant proposes to plan a burglary
upon Turkey, asks us to watch at the door while he ruts
a pistol at the Sultan's bead, and offers us a share of the
" swag." We ask him to renounce the theft. He answers
by the march on the Principalities, the rnasss.cre at Si-
nope, the siege of Silistria, the shoring rip of the mouths
of the Danube. To say the truth, his agents among our-
selves have not been more mealy-mouthea than himself.
Mr. Cobden's pamphlet and speeches atl:vocate his seizure
of Turkey, and his teansfer of his cap; cal from Petersburg
to Constantinople. Many of our peers are his personal
friends—the relatives even of h;.a satraps. Our Conserva-
tive senators are Legitimists and Absolutists by instinct
and education. The Empssror and his cup were popular at
Goodwood and Ascot. 1.1.1 e saved the Houses of Hapsburg
and Bradenburg in 1848-49, and annihilated the rising
liberties of Germany. Austria and Prussia have cheated
our diplomacy, and are now, to all intents and purposes,
his allies and his tools, by the influence of that commu-
nity of interest which, by " fellow feeling makes us
wondrous kind." The two greatest and most powerful
nations in the world have been at war with him for
nearly two years. Hitherto his resistance and defence
have been successful. " Alone he did it." He has re-
jected all our terms of peace. Our Aberdeen Govern-
ment were traitors to us from the beginning, and its
leading members have, byj speech and vote iu every
division, given the lie to their acts as an administration,
and laboured in the interest of the enemy. Their suc-
cessors are openly charged with having entertained with
favour Lord John Russell's scheme for saving our
bacon by poltroonery, The Opposition are false, hollow,
and factious, plotting with the Peace Party to weaken
the Administration, and to gain power for the purpose,
finally, of patching up an ignominious defeat by a
paper reconciliation. Let that once be, and Prussia
Austria, and Russia will run together like drops of water,
France will be recovered to the Fusionists, Turkey will
be in the hands of the Czar, and England—where will
England be ? Your statesmen have crowned their in-
competency by cowardice, and excused their cowardice
by going to Vienna to be swindled. Your representa-
tives have been false to the mission on which you seat
them. There are none true, loyal, and trustworthy but
yourselves. The House of Commons, professing to re-
gist a. your decrees, has frittered away your cause, and
held the brief for the enemy. Pretending to denounce
Ministers for a want of vigour, the Opposition, by speech
and vote, have refused to grant the supplies necessary to
the successful prosecution of the war, and left Govern-
ment only a majority of three on the questionof the Turk-
ish guarantee. They deal dishonestly by us—"anxious to
wound and yet afra dto striae." They leave you in the
most dangerous of all positions—that ofan uncertain po-
licy at the critical conjunction ofa great European war. To
yourselves alone, therefore, you and I must look—you who
earn tie sinews of the battle and bear the burden of its
taxes—you who recruit our armies, fight our victories,
who look on death with grim calmness " i' the imminent
deadly breach"--who compete with each other to be
drawn for the forlorn hope, who made the charge at Bala-
!:lava, and stood like a rock against the sea spray at
lukerman, each hero beating back ten Russians, and
slaying twice his own number ore he slept upon the gory
field his sword had conquered—" for England, home,
and beauty." The wonders of moral and material pro-
gress enable you weekly to read this paper in the camp,
the trenches, on the plain, or in the fleet. While every-
where else there has been faction, selfishness, treachery,
cowardice, or stupidity, the masses, the military, and the
navy have sustained the grandeur of the national charac-
6r, borne out the heroism of our traditions, risen in their
self-sacrifice, their nobleness,their massive magnanimity of
conduct "above all Greek, beyond all Roman fame." Men
in England ! your comrades in the Crimea need succour,
can you hesitate ? The Czar is sending his enormous
armies to crush, to overwhelm, to delete them from the
face of the very earth. Will you " grossly gape on"
and see your countrymen made the victims of the
drunken fiends whom the Czar would make their
butchers ? You who read this, remember that they fight
for you, that their " limbs were bred in England,' that
they are your brothers, sons, fathers, neighbours, fellow-
citizens. It needs but your help to rescue them from
peril, and crown their and your courage with glorious
victory. Look not on this as an ordinary enlistment. Think
not the country but needs you in the barrack as a calling,
a mere portion of the routine of state and society. The
very fate of your country trembles in the balance. Hrs.
manity eagerly looks on, and marks the wavering fortune:
of a struggle big with its fate for centuries. Bast". ts
the recruiting station. Enlist in tens of thousand,
swell our armies into a force with which despotiusmneq will
unequal
see it to be in vain any longer to mainta.isn
and a hopeless struggle. To hesitateduityaton be lost.
When were you ever wantin
glory was to be earned by dangerwhelby,
darincgall?edTabneyd
"Coma and
enover and help us !"
call to you from the ranks,
They say,
They murmur, " We have need of you."
4, We will do or die whether you come or no—but will
you suffer us to be swallowed up by barbaric Scythian
hosts embattled against the liberties of the world, when
you turn the tide of fate and save those who stood up for
freedom and the honour of Old England ?" And
you,
who man our fleets and serve in our armies, who have
borne to higher flights of heroism and glory the flag and
fortunes of your country than history Can find _,
a match
for in our own or any other annals--y
(1 who have been
faithful among the faithless found"--you who, at least,
' have been in your duty when all others have proved false
' and craven—you who amid our despair
and distrust and
' suspicion, reassure us that the great staple of the na-
tional character has not " fallen from the mettle of its
pasture," but on the contrary has furnished themes
for " things unatteropted
you we would call to abate no
in prose or rhyme," to
e no jot of heart or hope—to
resolve that Sebastopol shall fall—that the Crimea shall
be conquered—that the Czar shall be humbled—that the
Russianand Prussia e m be dismembered—that Austria
shallbe PlAublied for their perfidy—and that