The Sun.
London, England, 1855-12-29 00:00:00

Spirit of the Public Journals,

(Prom the Tixtes of this (&131.)
Just as we are conclaiing the year 1855 we are
presented with a blue-book giving us detailed in-
formation as to our trade and navigation in the
year 1854. In that year, the first of what we are
told to consider a ruinous and disastrous war—in a
year during which we •
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iveatealy 7..fiziea by,
_b.. seat distrees and diSoreler were spreaq-
ing themselves through our commerce and our ma-
nufactures, we have the satisfaction of knowing
that our trade obtained a magnitude and develop-
ment never known before. The real value of our
imports during 1854 amounted to 152,500,0001.,
while our exports during this same year amounted
to nearly 116,000,0001. If we take the official in-
stead of the real value of our imports, for the sake
of comparison, we shall find that in 1850 they
amounted to 100,469,0001. ; and in 1851 to
110,285,00 W. ; in 1852 to 109,331,0001. ; in 1853
to 123,000,0001. ; and in 1854 to 124,338,0001.,
giving au increase of 24 per cent. in four years, a
progress unexampled in the annals of peace or war.
The value of the goods imported from foreign coun-
tries in 1854 was 94,000,0001., and the value of
manufactures and produce of the British isles ex-
ported during the same period to foreign countries
was 97,000,000/. There is every reason to believe
that the prosperity of the pre4nt year equals, if
it does not surpass, the proslpsiity of 1854, and
that the deeper wo have pltifigedlisto war the more
extended have been our commercial transactions.
We have, in very truth, called a new world into
existence. Tho vast sums which we have expended
in maintaining and provisioning our armies have
not been swallowed up iu the earth nor whelmed in
the depths of the ocean. They have been scattered
among a population which till now has lacked a
market for its produe 3 and capital to stimulate its
production. They have infused a spirit of enter-
prise and activity throughout the East, and are
destined, in no long time, to wean herpeoples from
their hereditary listlessness and rapine, and to
teach them the golden secret of industry, progress,
and order. Our manufactures are penetrating to
regions which they never reached before, and mar-
kets are opening themselves to us of which a little
while ago we did not dream. Never did unproduc-
tive expenditure trench so nearly on productive
expenditure as that which we have recently made
in the East. The money has been spent.not with a
commercial but with a political object, and it seems
likely that with a little patience and energy we
may roalise the former as completely as the latter.
Never, we apprehend, was it heard of before that a
nation was able to carry on a great war and at the
same time continue to derive almost all the advan-
tages of peace. But so solid is our commercial po-
sition, so favourable to us have been the condi-
tions under which the conflict was carried on, that
we seem for once to have conciliated contradictions
and to be husbanding at the very time we are
squandering our resources. Wages are high, prices
are well maintained, trade is brisk. The great de-
struction of capital, mistaken, by superficial ob-
servers, for a deficiency of the circulating medium,
does indeed embarrass those who have speculated
beyond their depth, ais4 check the outbreak of
future speculation ; bat it is not in the state of the
exchanges nor in the rate of discount that we shall
find the test of commercial prosperity, but rather
in the magnitude of our dealings and the profit
which those dealings yield us.
If we turn from the astonishing results which
these figures disclose, we shall indeed be struck by
the contrast. From the northern ports of Russia
during the year 1854 wo imported 1,299,0001.,
and from the southern ports 2,952,0001.—hi all
something more than 4,000,0001. War was not
proclaimed till the 27th of March, and, as English
merchants were naturally anxious to obtain such
payments as they could from a country with which
their transactions were about to close, the exports
for these three months were fully up to the average,
but the imports by sea during the same period
were only 55,0001., showing clearly enough how
greatly the purchasing power of Russia was im-
paired by the very menace and prospect of war.
Of course, as to the efficiency of our blockade these
returns can tell us nothing, for from the time the
blockade was proclaimed there would be no clear-
ances in our ports for Russia, and it is from clear-
ances that such reports as those we are considering
are compiled. But we may easily imagine what
must have been the pressure, mil during the last
nine months of 1854, occasioned by the sudden
stop put to the export and import trade of so vast
au empire—the first amounting ordinarily to
13,000,0001., and the second in the first throe
mouths of 1854 to upwards of 4,0)0,0001. What a
revulsion—what stagnation—what misery—what
despair must have ensued, we nay faintly guess
from what is felt here if any temporary cause ob-
structs the development of our commerce or checks
our transactions even in the remotest corner of the
globe. Russian commerce is nct indeed wholly
destroyed, for, thanks to the aid of her fond and
faithful Prussia, she can still export articles of the
smallest bulk and receive in exchange articles of
the first necessity. But this can only, be done
at a terrible enhancement of prise—that is, at a
terrible amount of want and misery. Of the in-
fluence of high prices in restricting the demand we
have just had at home a signal example in the case
of sugar. It was apprehended that the stocks of
sugar were likely to fall short. The result was a
competition among buyers and an enhancement of
price. The apprehension was of short duration. It
was found that the increase of price had so effec-
tually limited the demand that the stocks of sugar
would be amply sufficient, and thus the apprehen-
sion of failure had prevented the possibility of
failure itself. Even so it must have been with
Russia. The vast enhancement of the price of
whatever was not to be produced within her gloomy
dominions must have enforced upon her popula-
tion a degree of abstinence and self-denial which,
except with reference to the end in view—the
maintenance of the pence and security of the world
—it is painful to contemplate. We know not—
probably we shall never know—the scenes of misery
which are even now pasting in the midst of those
dreary solitudes, or to "hat extraordinary expe-
dients the Government of the would-be conqueror
of the world is driven to supply itself with the
most ordinary appliances for the conduct of the
war it has provoked. We could wish that when the
Czar is to deliver his answer to the proposals of
the Western Powers he would spread before him
the returns of the Board of Trade, and seriously
meditate with what prospect of success a country
in the commercial position of Russia can persevere
in war with a country in the commercial position
of England.

(From the Daily News of this day.)

We publish to-day a translation of a pamphlet
advocating an European Congress as the best means
of restoring peace, which appears to have fluttered
all the quidnuncs of Paris. It has been attributed
to "high inspiration." M. Drouyn de I'Huys, M.
Walewski, M. Guizot, the Emperor himself, have
all been hinted at as having had a finger in the pie.
Were we disposed to attribute this publication to
any author, more or less influential, we should
rather guess at M. Sylvestre de Sacy as the pen-
holder, and a certain meddling Princess as the
" high inspiration," than any of the parties who
have been named. Its leanings are Russian, and
its language that of a writer familiar with the ge-
neral tone of the journals of Western Europe. But
we vehemently suspect that it will ultimately turn
out that it is the production of some nameless
pamphleteer, and that all this guessing at authors
is a mere trick of the trade played off by a puffing
publisher.
The panacea for the hostilities under which Eu-
rope is labouring, recommended in the pamphlet,
is a General Congress—that is, a Congress of Eu-
ropean Sovereigns. Now, frankly speaking, Europe
has already had more than enough of such Con-
gresses. They have each and all of them proved
to be nothing more than conspiracies of Kings
against their subjects, in which the great Powers
sought at the same time to trick the small ones.
Their adjustments of the affairs of Europe have
proved sad ricketty and ephemeral affairs : men
are sick of the very name, and want to hoar no
more of them.

Who are to compose the Congress ? By what
process are they to bring their deliberations to a
practical decision? Are all the Sovereigns of Europe
to be represented in it ? Is each io have one vote,
or is this privilege to be reserved for the leading
Powers, while batches of the minors club together
to make up one vote ? Or are all to have a multi-
plicity of votes, the number allotted to each being
in proportion to that of their subjects, as is the case
with the slaveholding States in the North Ameri-
, can Union ; or in proportion to their wealth, real