The Sun.
London, England, 1855-10-24 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1855,

" Peace at any price" we also are ready to take
for our motto. Be the price what it may we
would pay it ; not, however, in the worthless
paper of treaties, but in the stuff which no diplo-
matic frauds or forgeries can deprive of value.
Any price whatever which Russia requires in the
line of Sebastopols, Bomarsunds, Kinbourns, and
Otchakoffd, taken or blown up ; even if she
think wo ought to buy peace of her by captur-
ing Sweaborg and Cronstadt next summer, and by
liberating Poland and Finland from her barbarous
grasp, we shall most gladly pay that price ; any-
thing whatever, any price she likes in the way of
" material guarantees" we will gladly give for
peace ; anything, in a word, but the price of
abasing ourselves, of flattering her pride, and of
leaving obvious grounds for future ware. We
prize peace so highly that we would willingly
purchase it at a cost sufficient to insure its lasting
for many generations. The infernal evils of war
are too great in our judgment to be dealt with by
local or temporary remedies, and we advocate,
and have always advocated, placing Europe on the
basis which should extinguish the grand causes of
modern international war. Is there, we ask, any
hope for lasting peace but on the foundation of
the despised and ridiculed rights of nations ?
Mr. BRIGHT we leave out of the question, be-
cause he can have, on religious grounds, but one
mode of obtaining peace ; to Mr. ConpEN, how-
ever, and to all who profess strong solicitude for
peace, and who rely on secular modes of obtaanine
we may make a very different
and preserving it,
appeal. Mr. COBDEN has argued with great ful-
ness and plausibility the question of international
arbitration as a substitute for War ; and as a
corollary the reduction by general agreement of
the immense standing armies of the Continent,
and of this country too. Now, what above all
things necessitates those standing armies ? Is it
not the artificial division of Europe, and the
11°)Y, more properly the Hellish, alliance of a
few crowned despots to maintain it ? Bat for
the mutual assistance of despots, Spain, Rome,
Naples, Lombardy, Hungary, and probably
Poland, too, would by this time have all been
free, liberally governed, and desirous rather to
trade with each other, and with all the world,
than to maintain costly standing armies as the
yoke on their own necks. The determination of
most continental rulers to be despots, and also to
hold territories diverse to their natural domains
in race, or language, or nationality, or in all these,
are the two things which render large standing
armies necessary. Russia must keep an immense
military force, while she will persist in treading
out Polish nationality, in assimilating Finland to
the other parts of her enslaved dominions, and in
constant aggression on the East and South. Prus-
sia, of course, could not hold her medley of pro-
vinces, and keep them, by the grossest lying and
perjury, out of the long-promised free institutions,
-without an immense army. The bigoted and
cruel tyrants of Vienna could never maintain
their disgusting rule over the free-souled Magyars
and Lombards but for an army which keeps their
exchequer bankrupt, Nor could any of the
despots long maintain their seats did they not
engage to uphold each other, when, as in 1848
perfidy and oppression had shaken so many
thrones.
While there are large standinc, armies there
will he temptations to war. while there are down-
trodden yet living nationalities, and despots over
them, there must be standing armies ; hence, till
the nationalities are restored to their rights, and