The Sun.
London, England, 1855-11-19 00:00:00

THE MIDILUpST MANIFESTO.

(Front the Weekly Dispatch.)
The letter of Mr. Cobden has already been translated
into all the Russian newspapers and into every Legiti-
matist Continental journal. It is praised, confirmed, ac-
cepted as true, with exultation. It is hailed, as all the
former letters and speeches of the Manchester school
have.been on
the same subject, for the value of the cer-
tain information it is presumed to contain of our weak-
ness and wavering—of our incompetency to sustain the
war—of the drain
iit makes on our resources—of our opi-
nion that Russia s strong, stubborn, and ample in re-
sources. It is the peculiar characteristic of all the mani-
festoes of the Muncasterian fanatics on this topic, that
they are manifestly so framed as to admit of publication
by the enemy—that they are conceived in the spirit of
placing the prospects of Russia in the most favourable
light—that they carefully avoid even a hint of censure
upon the Czar or his cause—that all their abuse and con-
tempt are reserved for their own country, its cause and
its champions, and all their praise and reverence for the
character and conduct of the common enemy. No im-
partial reader can rise from their perusal without the
conviction that they are calculated to raise the hopes of
the enemy, to induce him to continue the war and to ex-
pect victory in the field, from our weakness, or triumph
in diplomacy from the treachery of our Senators. In
fact, whatever may be the motive of these letters, they
have all the effects of treason on the issue of the war.
We can respect the conscientious convictions of pious
men, religiously opposed on evangelical principles to all
war. We have even forbearence and toleration for the
opinions of those traditionary politicians who have inhe-
rited, in their Radicalism, the principle of noninterven-
tion. We can be charitable to the deepest economical
' prejudice against a standing army, loans, and a war ex-
penditure ; and even bear with a fixed idea that all
money spent either ou defence or military strength is
extravagance and ruin. But that men calling themselves
Radicals, and affectiesg some love of liberty—that re-
presentatives of the people pretending to patriotism, and
assuming the garb of moral or social Reformers and
model philanthropists, should have effused all this per-
petuum mobile of talk, and diarrhoea of epistolary re-
monstrance and casuistry, on the one subject, which ar-
rests every mind and absorbs every other interest—that
accountable creatures, the free citizens of a free State—
glorious in its achievements, and distinguished for its sa-
crifices for the happiness of the human race, should have
for two years stood out from among the sympathies and
disgusted the public opinion of all good men, in infinite
futile verbosity, to denounce this war and its promoters,
without the utterance of one word of reprobation of the
delinquencies of a remorseless tyrant—that they should
reserve all their reprobation for their country and its
heroes, and make no sign of execration of that huge pub-
lic criminal who, in defiance of the law of nations and the
rights of states, avows, with brazen vice, the purpose of
continuing the fillibustering felonies whereby his pirate
den has grown under his ancestors to proportions dan-
gerous to the liberty of the world—indicates a degree of
mental callosity worthy only of a moral rhinoceros with
a hide impervious to all those suggestiofis which do re-
verence to humanity. From the time when Sturge and
his tail beflunkied Nicholas at St.' Petersburg, protested
against the war, but uttered no word of censure against
its sole author, and (a Jenkins in drab !) called meetings
of Englishmen to detail to them the "Court Circular" of
the tyrant hypocrite—from that time until now, your
Cobdens and Brights have, with a reticence which men
of observation can understand and penetrate, heaped un-
measured abuse on their own people, Government., and
warriors, for presuming to "rail on the Lord's an-
nointed," and hive left both friends and foes to infer that
they adopted, or at least saw no wrong-doing in, the
conduct of the common enemy. It is not a't scar, but
only this war, that they object to ; it is not that they
challenge the principle, but that they demur to the ex-
ample; they do not say that to fight is wrong, but that
to invade Holy Russia is crime, and to enter the lists
against the Czar is blasphemy. For such whimsical cos-
mopolitans to affect solicitude on the subject of our al-
leged failure to enlist recruits is an act of the most trans-
parent hypocrisy. If they are to be believed in their
professions, the fewer our troops the better, because the
sooner must the war burn itself out. They would con-
ceal the fact if they credited it—they would suppress all
notice of their apprehensions if they were real, in order
that we might be surprised into peace by the exhaustion
of the fuel that feeds the flame of Bellona. It is be-
cause that he does not himself believe in what he makes
the blue book ray that Mr. Cobden labours to induce
us to give it credence, and, we blush to add, falsifies
the true meaning of public documents for the purpose.
He execrates us for fighting, and then expresses his
alarm that we have not got men enough to fight.
He points to the slowness of recruiting as proof of the
unpopularity of the war, and then complains of the uni-
versal delusion of the people by the press, and of the
mercenariness of the press in recommending itself to the
people by advocating a continuance of the contest ! Nay,
he argues that the nation must be opposed to the war
(which, nevertheless, albeit we are assured all states-
men, and our aristocracy also, condemn it), because
those who are clamorous for the prosecution of hostili-
ties rather prefer to pay others to fight than to shoulder
themselves the Blink rifle—as if the best blood of Eng-
land had not set honour in one and death in the other,
to sacrifice fortune and comfort in the service of their
cause and country—as if nobody is free to desire the
punishment of a felon unless he is prepared himself to
act as a hangman—as if it was impossible that Mr. Cob-
den's soul should be in cotton, because ho " hired mer-
cenaries" to collect the cow-dung for dyeing his calicoes,
and sat at ease in his counting-house while his " hands'
were printing gowns from his blocks. To support this
hypothesis he makes use of statistics which, we trust,
may for ever remain without a parallel of perversion
among representatives of the British people. He says,
that at the Alma the British troops amounted to 26,000
men, and so shuffles the returns as to make it be b
heved that, while from October, 1854, to January, 1855,
we had no fewer than 71,389 sick and wounded in the
hospital, oar recruits during that time only reached
20,618. Thus, while according to his assertion the
whole number of the army originally sent to the
Crimea, and the recruits afterwards enlisted, reached
only 47,418, the number of sick and wounded
of these 47,000 reached 71,006, or 24,000
more than the whole ! Although a civilian by profes-
sion, and a Quaker in spirit, he has had his own private
review of our army. Ho has peered into our sentry-
boxes—marked the measured tread of the guards to
their watch at the Bank of England inspected the
patrol at Kens;ngton-gate—watched the hors.,men at
Whitehall—and to cheer up the spirits of the enemy (for
it can have no better purpose) he asserts that our troops
are but raw bop—their bone and muscle mere cartilage
—that few as are the recruits they add nothing to the
strength of the army—and that we were di-graced at
the Redanl by the cowardice of our " gristle." So it
was gristle which rushed on at Balaklava, stood the
shock of battle at Inkerman, endured and braved all
in the trenches ; and " the imminent ,deadly breach"—
which never was surpassed in noble daring by the bravest
of the brave at the Regan, the assault on which, utterly
impossible of success end fraught with neerly cei taSn
death, perhaps no other troops in the world could have
teen prevailed upon to attempt. Gristle or no gristle,
they won against enormous odds the only three battles
the enemy could be prevailed upon to fight with them ;
raw or not raw, they invade Russia—they hold their
ground—they take endless towns and castles, and the
strongest fortress in a'! the world. Without help f:orn
any but their own ally, against the secret machina,,,ons
of Germany and the neutrality of all, they, the poor
5,000 per month —out of whom Mr. Cobden contra ives
to squeeze 18,000 sick and wounded per month (!)
make daily reconnaissances, tempt,the ()eerily to fight by
every inducement of numerical snperiority to them, and
hold the territory of 60,000,000 "of the most stubborn
race in existence." If such be the composition of our
army, what must be the worth of that which they have
never encountered but to beat ?

Wo never seo them but we bid them to stay,
They never s; US but they wish us away.
We always are re? Iy—steady, boys, steely !
To fight and to conquer again ana agn,n.
Such are " the inflated pretences and abortive perform-
ances" which an Englishman is not ashamed to impute
to his fellow-citizens. Fur our part we hold the opinion
that the perfo..nance fe7 exceeds the pretension. The
phrase designed to hearten up the hood-winked serfs of
Russia does not deceive their rulers. Of all men in
Europe Gortscbakoff and the Czar are the last who will
regard the seizure of Sebastopol as an abortion. If "we
have undertaken the work not merely of one nation but
of half Europe," it is not the first time, with fewer men
and less money, that, single-handed, we have withstood
the combi'ation of all Europe against us ; and that our
ally has planted his victorious standard on every capital
of the Continent—aye, even on that of Moscow itself—
in a cause not half so honest as, and far less generous in
its objects, than that of thrusting back a tyrant to big
"
den. The " boys" who conquered at Waterloo e.
e
" beardless" as those who saw " the front 00fj..rie..
battle,a
lour" at Inkerman—and yet, as they baffi
rial Guard then, they will crush the myrmidonset
Czar now. Let Mr. Cobden keep his m c
a
i When
"
easythe
of the
as to
mind
"every step they take on Russian territory.
we have completed the conquest of the Crimea with the
" gristle" which has so often already triumphed, and
command the Black Sea, wo
shalt rest contented with
our work. Earthworks and
as the bayonet will then be
our defence against the R
ussians, as their advocate -
sures us theirs will be against us ; and as we find our
" beardless" boys are quite a match for the manhood
of Muscovy, why our
InanhOod" may, with perfect
security to theiisueofthecontesotf,
Rstauyssaia available for
t home. Who
knows truly that the population
0, or
. the half of that ! The
French and English
conscription is 60,00,0
0 census 18 accurst© and known.
Who can tell that of the enemy I There are millions
nominally under the sceptre of the Czar who never heard
of him, and can never be available for war—savages whe
fight with bows and arrows—B.amschatkans and
Laplanders, and Arctic Fins—denizens of
wrstes, with
not a soul to ten square miles. Our increase is at the
rate of 300,000 souls a-year. What is that of Russia ?
We will venture to say not half as much. That even
now she is far more deficient in men than we are is evi-
dent from the fact that latterly her army in the Crimea,
her own territory, has fallen below in number that of
the Allies, " 3,000 miles," as we are Po often told, from
our own shores. It is not the absolute number of a
people that is the test of their military strength,
but their available numbers in proportion to the ter-
ritory they have to cultivate and Live ujon.
The waste of life suffered by Russia before her recruits
reach hr,ad-quarters from places thousands of miles away
is incalculable. In this war she has already drawn fifty
soldiers from every thousand souls—of whom one-half.e
only are males—so that 10 per cent. of her ent..ronally
population have already been swallowed up, ay vino male
children, the infirm, the old, to produce
mtbeelneweea
cessary for subsistence, and to find the lfortghe:
the
war. All this bluster about the stubbornness of the Rue