The Sun.
London, England, 1855-05-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TIE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

( itrom the Times of this day.)
In the common acceptation of the word "prejudice" it is
confined to matters of tote or theoretical opinion. It is,
however, just as often a tre.possessioet as to matters of fact,
and is quite as injurious b that shape as in any other. For
this we do not want a hater illustration than several tho-
roughly false but inveterab opinions held by, nearly all Eng-
lishmen about the stintwl Power of tl e States engaged in
the present war. People used to speak, and indeed speak
now, about Russia as having. a=almost innumerable popula-
tion ; as overrun with pgrulous tribes; as ready to pour
hordes over. Europe ; as inexhaust*ble ; as having nothing so
cheap as men, and so forth, England,
on the contrary, and
even Fiance, were suppesel to be comparatively States, in
which men could be counto, were precious, and
-hausted. But how stands the fact ? First, that England
alone, without either France or Turkey, is no slight antago-
nist to Rusaia, even in merentunhers ; for, while the British
_lsles contain, in
,a compacted available position,•thirty-six
millions, the utmost that Al the Russias contain in the half
of two continents is only-&ixtr
Millions, a large proportion of
them almost unproducible. gut
-England and France to-
gether are quite equal in poptlation to the whole of Russia ;
and, with Turkey, immenselysu
perior. Such is the value of
one prejudice. Another was and is that England has no re-
; serve. She has an army, it ietrue, but one that is so widely
Land seriously occupied that wlen some 50,000 men had been
sent to the war the only reserve was the Militia; which has
yet to be embodied and trained, When this supply threatened
,to be -scanty the next chance tras a foreign legion, Now,
what is the fact ? Sir E. Per shall answer for us. There
is now in India an army of nearly half a million of men at the
disposal of this country. In that art*? Micro are about
30,000 Europeans belonging to the Queen's Service, in-
cluding cavalry and infantry of the Line; and 46,000'
European troops in the Company's service, of every arm,
except cavalry. The exact aggregate which Sir •Ers-
'tine has made out is 457,000 men, with 12,000 officers,
and maintained at an expense of 20,596,000/. Large and
costly as this army may be, it sits light on the population and
resources of. India, and might essily be increased, especially
from the warlike tribes lately added to our dominion. Here,
then, is a reserve, and an ample reserve, well organised, offi-
cered and generally with some exierience of war. How could
it be said that we had no reserve' Of this immense force
70,000 are British soldiers. Of tilt rest, the irregular native
"cavalry is just the force we most rquire in the war, and can-
not supply from home. Here, that, is everything that we
want for our present necessity—nusabers, organisation, disci-
pline, -European courage and talett in all its developments,
practical experience in all its forms—in fact, the substance of
all that we have been accustomed to ascribe to Russia, and to
reckou as her superiority over tit< Western Powers. When
such is the fact, and such the prejtdice, and when, too, we
practically disregard the fact, and realise the prejudice, Sir
Erskine Perry has taken, as it appeers to us, a very reason-
able course in moving for a committee "to consider hew the
army in India may be made most available for the war in
Europe, and to inquire into the -stets necessary to be taken
if it should be deemed expedient t# constitute the army of
the East India Company a Royal artlY." We must confess
to a great regret, though perhaps no ;Teat surprise, that such
a motion, in the present state of this ,onntry and the present
prospects of the war, should be thrown out by a decisive ma-
jority.
As the progress of the war is only too likely to make the
question of reinforcing our army in the East very serious and
urgent, not to say vital, we wish our legislators would go a
little below that smooth surface of commonplace topics in
which such such speakers as Sir Jas. Hogg would wish to keep
them; There are some grave considerations, as it happens,
peculiar to the condition of this country, bearing on the sup-
ply of our army, on our military strength, and our very ex-
istence as a military power. The British Isles contain, it is
true, 28,000,000 of inhabitants; but no people in the
workPsuffers so great and continual a.thdrawing them from
drain of men for pur-
poses calling them from home, and wr
the physical "of the country. Mott other countries
strength

have their armies and their chief enterprises within their
own borders. We send out swarms, in which the males
greatly preponderate, to our colonies and to America. We
have the largest navy and mercantile marine in the world.
Great part of our army is distributed over many colonies and
dependencies. In particular, as Sir E. Ferry states, there are
70,009 British soldiers, in one form or another, assisting to
preserve our Indian empire. As some measure of tho total
number of men withdrawn from our defences at home and

from our European exigencies, there were at the last census
of the British Isles 713,366 more women than men, being a
greater disparity of the sexes than is to be found in any other
country of the world. This, too, happens in a country where
there is more profitable employment for men than in any
other, and where all these demands conspire to aggravate the
difficulty of recruiting our armies. Now, with what reason
can we talk of Russia's immense population and our own
early exhaustion? With what justice can we say we have
done our utmost when we have sent out 50,000 men I Here,
then, comes prejudice—if we are to continue in the plan of
constantly supplying a large army to a distant dependency
awl weakening our position at home,•without taking proper
steps to qualify the constant and systematic damage we are
doing to ourselves, we4shall certainly pay for such folly in
the long run, for while we are grasping at the Indian shadow
we shall lose the European reality—that is substance, shadow
and all.
• -we ;mail not repeat here what we have often urged be-
fore, on the gross injustice and fatal impolicy of rejecting
the ready aid of Indian talent, Indian experience, and Indian
organisation to supply the utter want of those qualities
at the war nor need we, as Sir E. Perry has done it so well.
We will rather assist his argument by impressing upon the
attention of our readers the broad fact of this so-called small
country, in the midst of its many calls, always supplying,
70,000 soldiers to India, and not receiving in return one sol-
dier to replace that vast drain. No country ever acted on
egt eanwd dy
itthsaitnfisuysentecme
abtehfoorme,c.orAclolifsoldrmdeor
esmo,pi7eistltiohautt telavloerwpiin.
to hold distant countries in subjection made a fair exchange of
armies, so that while Italians were holding Britain, or Nurai-
din, or Dacia, Britons, Numidians, and Daciaus were sta-
ti med in Italy, and even supplying candidates to the Impe-
rial purple. Whatever the final results, the Roman Empire
would not have lasted ten years without that interchange.
At this moment Russia is carrying on the war with forces
drawn from the heart and extremities of Asia, as well as
from the most northern shores of Europe, either directly en-
gaged in the Crimea or replacing the troops sent there. Rus-
sia, could not carry on the war without doing so ; and when
we talk thoughtlessly of her overpowering population it is
these distant regions that we are unconsciously thinking of.
Our case is the same as Russia's, only we have not got ,the
sense to see it, and shall not see it till our eyes have been
opened and our wits quickened by a succession of disasters.
We have attained to an empire by a sort of accident without
attaining to imperial minds, and in some respects are about
as much at fault in our position as Sancho Panza in his king-
dom of Barataria. The fact is, we aro governed by cliques, re-
presented by such men as Sir James Weir Hogg. There is
an Indian clique, and a Military clique, and a Naval clique,
and a Landowners' clique, and a Whig clique, and a Lawyer's
clique, and some other cliques, and other people who represent
the feelings, if not always the real interests, of the several
classes ; but the very last thing understood, or even recognised
in this country, is, that we are an empire, the largest in
the world, as well as the most populous, the richest,
the most various, and the most united in its interests.
That the House of Commons should deliberately sanction the
idea that we can go on for any length of time keeping
70,000
British soldiers in the East, and a good many in other parts
of the world, besides our navy, without borrowing soldiers in
return, while we are taking an active part in a great Euro-
pean war, shows how little that body has risen to the sense
of its own " imperial" character. The case is not one of
etiquette, nor is it one of military precedence and pay ; it
concerns something more than the feelings of the Horse
Guards, or even the present convenience of the East India
Company; it is a question of imperial necessity. It will ride
over scruples and break through regulations. It will compel
the notice of Governments and constrain a divided and reluc-
tant Legislature. We shall see before long with the sharp
eye of calamity that empires can only be sustained by mutual
giving and taking, and that if we would remain a leading
Power in Europe, and a dominant Power anywhere else, we
must replace in Europe the men we send to Asia.

(From the Times of this day.)
The singular motion of which Lord Grey gave notice last
night in the House of Lords will bring under the review of
Parliament the conditions of peace lately discussed at Vienna,
and we await with entire confidence the all but unanimous
verdict of both the Lords and Commons on this issue. While,
however, these debates are impending in the assemblies of
the Legislature, it is desirable that the country should
thoroughly understand the nature of the proposals made by
the allies and the artifices by which they were defeated. The
memorandum of the 28th of December, 1854. which is pre
fixed to the protocols of the subsequent Conferences at
Vienna, states in very plain and explicit terms the bases on
which the negotiation was opened, and the objects which
the allied Powers have undertaken to effect. It included
the total abolition of the Russo-Turkish treaties with
reference to the Principalities, by providing that none
of the stipulations contained in them should be re-
vived at the peace; it stated that, in order to secure
the free navigation of the Lower Danube, the channel
of the river should be withdrawh from the terri-
torial jurisdiction existing by virtue of Article 3 of the Treaty
of Adrianople ; it proposed to connect the Ottoman empire
more closely with the balance of power in Europe, and to put
an end to the preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea ; and
lastly, to cause Russia to renounce her claim to an official
protectorate of the Christian subjects of the Sultan belonging
to the Eastern Church, and to surrender all the articles of
former treaties on which that claim was founded. These terms
were framed by France and England, adopted in the most
formal manner by Austria, and accepted by Russia as the
basis of negotiation. The whole question of the conduct of
the several Powers in the course of this tramaction reduces
itself therefore to this,—whether they adherei with sincerity
and honour to the principles they had laid down, and whether
they were prepared to act on the solemn declarations they
had made. As far as England and France are concerned, we
presume that it will not bo contended by word Grey that
these Powers retracted or evaded any of the concessions they
had announced their intention to make, but that, on the con-
trary, they carried their conciliatory policy to the very fur-
thest limit. Lord John Russell declared that, "in the eyes
of England and her allies, the best and only aimissible terms
of peace would be those which, being most in harmony with
the honour of Russia, should at the same time be sufficient
for the security of Europe." Did Russia, then, adhere with
equal fidelity to the engagement she had cortracted before
this negotiation opened ? Does Austria adlnre with equal
fidelity to the principles which she embodied to those Notes,
which she sanctioned by the Treaty of the 2dof December,
and which she proclaimed from the beginning to the end of
the Conferences of Vienna ? The answers to illese questions
involve the present position and the future poitical relations
of Europe, and we shall proceed to colloid°. them succes-
sively.

No portion of these papers has more excita our astonish.
ment than the Russian document read by Pince Gortscha-
koff to the Conference on the 21st of April,and numbered
" Annex A to Protocol 12." In this coomuuication the
Russian Cabinet declares that in accepting to Four Points
as a basis of negotiation it has neither conealed from itself
their true meaning nor thought of alteringit. Yet in the
following paragraphs it proceeds to disfigur(and evade with
the most ovidont sophistry the principal onditions of the
Third Article. It is true that the ruling ida of the arrange-
ments proposed is to put an end to the isiated position of
the Ottoman Empire, to connect it with the Wane° of power
in Europe, and to bring it within the publi law of the civi-
lised world ; yet on the very first discussi9 of this subject
Prince Gortschakoff flies off altogether fror the engagement
Lasapci by t1;10 (41©r Powers; ;lot 01/17-80 *act, but WS*,