The Sun.
London, England, 1852-09-21 00:00:00

ti• b)minit 241 n.

LONDON, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1852,

The prolongation of the captivity of Arsp-mi.
NADER is worse than a dereliction of duty on the
part of the French Government, it is the abandon-
ment on the part of the French people of all those
principles of honour which are most befitting the
country of 13AYABD, the land whose sceptre has been
wielded by so many heroes—dating
back from the
Emperor NAPOLEON to the Emperor
v r,
iziAULEMAGNE•
It is an incident, indeed, which could not but have
sounded incongruously bad it been possible for
FROISSART, without an anachronism, to hare em-
blazoned it upon the picturesque and gorgeous scroll
of his " Chronicles.' Those who best appreciate the
magnanimity of the French character have i
tmes, alsoawaited
with the greatest solicitude, though,
with the most implicit confidence, the announcement
w.c must
of that release of the illustrious EMlhi h
R
have constituted, among all acts, perhap.s its most
brilliant, aad certainly its most generous vindication.
Hitherto, however, these hopes have been doomed
only to continual disappointment. The circum-
stances which accompanied the capture h
of ABDEL.
KADER cannot be forgotten by te gene-
rality. It cannot be forgotten, for example,
that that capture took place at a moment
when it could have been least expected. The
glorious chieftain of the Arabs had up to that period
set at defiance the bravest as well as the most vigi-
lant of his European antagonists. He had evaded
their grasp with an adroitness that seemed little less
than miraculous. He had been to the conquerors of
Algeria what the phantom of the Flying Dutchman
had been to the earliest of our navigators—a terror
perpetually appearing before them, and that when
least anticipated, and yet invariably and altogether
removed beyond the reach of their vengeance. It
became at last so remarkable—this evasion of French
arms by ABD-BL-I(Ab
Ert—that it grew into the
happiest of all the jests directed against the councils
of the Tuileries, happier than any literary sarcasm in
the columns of the Charivari, happier even than any
pictorial sarcasm from the pencil of the inexhaustible
and incomparable Piiirrarori. A
....1113-EL-KADER,
moreover, contrived to render the ;
Jeat yet more
" telling" against his opponents by appearing
in Algeria. Scarcely
almost übiquitous had he
been forced to retreat in one
quarter
reason of an overwhelming superiority of numbers,
than he started forth at the opposite extremity of the ,
province—always free, always fierce, and always for-
midable. His personal influence among his wild
Arab followers was the more terrible, indeed, from
the enthusiasm inspired by one in whose veins was
said to flow the sacred rand royal blood of the
Prophet. France had experienced for years the au-
thority of this influence and the fury of this enthu-
siasm. Her anxiety, therefore, to put an end to a
contest so painfully prolonged became enhanced at
length, of course, proportionally to the extent of its
prolongation. Under these circumstances it was,
that the Commander-in. Chief cf her forces in Algeria
became aware, in 1847, that the EMIR, was entan-
gled in a web of difficulties that seemed to render idle
the vaguest hope of hi 3 errication. A BD-EL-KADER
found himself suddenly surrounded. He discovered
that upon all sides the French soldiery with their be-