The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

TlMEs.—Parliament has at last digested the only
tough morsel which disturbed occasionally the quie-
tude of the slumbering session. Three times already
there has been an effort to get rid of that China
lump, which on each occasion produced a slight
nightmare and a small struggle without any happy
solution. Now it is all over. The unassimilated
morsel is dissolved ; China is clear out of the parlia-
mentary breast. Like a debt paid by a note of
hand, or a broken promise healed by the homage
of a plausible excuse, the claims of China have
been handsomely recognised, and the topic may
now fairly be struck off the parliamentary list.
Nothing, indeed, has been actually done ; it was
only a motion made and withdrawn ; very few
stayed to listen, because no one expected to have
to divide ; but it was something that China has
at last escaped the ignominy of a count out, and
that a tolerable sprinkling of the first and second
class speakers have submitted to be called up
in debate. It was just such a demonstration as
might be expected upon a subject which woe at one
time of immense interest, because of immense dan-
ger, but has now lost its interest because every one
knows that all danger is past. No one ventures to
treat it with open contempt, because it is in itself so
vast and may at any moment become so important ;
but at the same time no practical statesmen cares to
adopt it as a subject, because all moderate men are
not only agreed that the present policy is sound, but
they see that it is successful. It has for the present
lost its party importance, and is a bit of no man's
land, on to which every " independent member"
may ride his own particular hobby to caper and cur-
vet. At this moment the position of this country
towards China is the very model attitude of non-in-
tervention. Captain Sherard Osborn is come back
with his squadron, the instructions to our naval
officers confine them strictly to the defence of our
Treaty Ports and a ;little breathing circuit round
them, and the order is now on its way, if it be not
already arrived, which will detach Major Gordon
from the service of the Imperial Government.
Whether, as has been suggested, the Admiralty
have issued instructions that Chinese pirates shall
not be interfered with so long as they confine them-
selves to the plunder of native merchant vessels, we
are not informed ; but this far-strained application
of the non-intervention principle to non-interven-
tion between the robber and his victim was not
wanted to show that we are perfectly impartial
between the Imperial Government of China and
the hordes of plunderers who infest the country.
All we do is to protect our own merchants,
our own Treaty Ports, and our own commerce;
and that policy thrives so well that everybody
is satisfied with it. The amount of our trans-
actions with the Empire of China is in-
creasing yearly in a ratio that seems almost
incredible, and although some of the old-world
superstitions seem still to survive in our House of
Commons, and although gentlemen who ought to
know better seem to think with the Chinese that
commerce is only valuable when the exports exceed
the imports, yet the British public generally have
learnt that it is a good thing to have large trans-
actions with a great country, even if you have to
pay for its produce in the silver and gold you
accumulate from your commerce elsewhere. To the
seneral public it will be matter of congratulation
that tea has been imported from China in greatly
inareasCd quantities, and that silk has come over in
greater ab;:ndance. The present generation has
been brought up to believe that the more plentful
an article of gene; al consumption is, the more
attainable it is by the multitude who desire it ;
and, therefore, they rejoice that the commerce
with China goes on doubling itsCif, even although
it may be shown that the " balances of trade" is
against us. In the increase of the comnaers.-iial move-
ment at the Treaty Ports in China we do, there..foret
recognise, and we believe the public in general re-
cogaises, success of the modern policy pursued by
our Government. The closest reading of this debate
will fail to discover more than one practical suge
gestion to be drawn from the speeches of the speak-
ers, With that single suggestion it should not be
our business to quarrel, for it is one which was first
made in these columns, and was launched imme-
diately Ole news of the failure of the Osborn expe-
dition arrive'. It requires no very great astuteness
to discover that China has arrived at a point when
she must be either Cut up by conquest or eaten into
by the gradual growth of Free Cities. This idea was
the thought which pervads'd the debate of Tuesday
night, and which alone gave a vitality. We must
protest, however, that our notion of a Free
City is not that which was presented to the
House of Commons in this debate. A Free City
such as we see in the future of China is not a rock
like Hongkong, with its surrounding fleet, its Go-
vernor, its courts, and its wide jurisdiction. We do
not recognise as a Free City the fortress of a first-
class Power, existing as a menace to the neighbour-
ing country. China has a fringe of islands which,
if they became free in this sense, would advance the
interests of commerce much as the castles on the
Rhine protected the ancient navigation of that river.
Whether we bought or conquered them, such pos-
sessions as these could only tie a curse to us and to
the world. Hongkong is iu itself worse than useless,
for the action of its courts and the jurisdiction of its
Governor are a standing nuisance in the Chinese
seas. If we had a succession of Hongkongs all up
and down the coast, we must have a Governor and a
garrison for each; we should but multiply our ex-
penses and our chances of quarrel ; and, as the
example of Shanghai shows, such establishments
never could compete with a really Free City. The
Free Cities we hope to see are those which' grow of
their own accord, and which rise out of the cir-
cumstances of an abundant commerce and an un-
settled country. If the nations of Europe would
agree to stand aloof, we should very soon see little
commercial republics intrenching themselves and
extending themselves upon the shores of China!
Just such cities as arose upon the coast of Africa,
and in later history upon the coasts of Italy, when
similar dangers compelled traders to draw together
for defence and self-government. We believe
that our cheapest and our best policy is not to
establish, but to favour the growth of such com-
munities as may develope themselves into free
Cities. Nor can we expect that this development
will be the work of a day, or that so great a ruin
as that which is mouldering over the heads of one-
third of the human race can fall, and be reformed
into modern habitations, without many clouds of
dust and some terrible catastrophes. These specula-
tions, however, are of very minor importance now
we are all agreed that our interest is to force nothing
in China, but t 3 be content to defend our own, and
follow the course of circumstances. The active
policy of obtaining possession of islands round the
coast and turning them into fortified warehouses is
not likely to find many advocates; the passive
policy of holding our own and waiting is the policy
which is now being pursued with a very general
approval, and which at any rate has the advantage
of a present success.

POST.—The grand object to be attained by
the Confederation is so to arrange matters that
henceforth the territories of Denmark, wherever
the frontier may be drawn, shall be inviolate, and
that the encroachments of the German Powers
may be finally stopped. So long as what we
may term the process of Germanisation shall
be allowed to go on in Danish territory, the integrity
and independence of Denmark wia be gradually
sapped and undermined. If this were put an end
to once for all, it would be like arresting the dry
rot in the timbers of a ship or a house. The rid-
dance of a disaffected, seditious population is not,
in fact, a loss; it is in reality a gain. If the dis-
affected portion of the King of Denmark's subjects
could be made to undergo a change of mind and
feeling, and if there were not a population of some
forty millions of the same race only divided from
them by a geographical line, the case would be dif.
ferent from what it is. But the Germans have made
up tte3ir mind to possess themselves of as much
Danish territory as they possibly can. They have
Germanised Holstein, and a portion even of Schles-
wig. If this leavened portion of territory be not
cut off, like a mortified limb, the malady will gra-
dually spread over the whole body politic. Not
perhaps within the present generation ; but far-
seeing statesmanship has to look beyond so brief a
period as this. So long as the King of Denmark is
the sovereign of a German duchy, and subject to the
jurisdiction of the German Diet, so long will the
Germanising process go on, and so long will Ger.
many harbour designs for the dismemberment and
absorption of Denmark. The question then is—
How are these difficulties to be met and got over P
The Germans, of course, are fo;.• having both the
entire Duchies severed from Denmark and erected
into an independent State under the Prince of
Augustenburg, or some other Sovereign, and added
as a new member to the German Confederation.
This project is entirely inadmissible, for the obvious
reason that a large portion of Schleswig is inhabited
by a purely Danish population. Denmark could
never be expected to assent to so unjust a propo-
sition as this. The neutral powers, whose office
and duty it is to see that something like jus-
tice is done, could never give their sanction
to so unreasonable and inequitable an ar-
rangement. Another suggestion is to divide
Schleswig by a line which shall sever the Vanish
from the German population, and unite the south-
ern or German portion, with Holstein and Lauen-
burg, into a new State, to be brought within the
German Confederation. The northern or Danish
portion of Schleswig would then have to incorpo-
rated with Denmark Proper. But the difficulty here
is to find where the line can be drawn. In the north
of Schleswig the population is purely Danish. In
the Routh the Germans claim the preponderance,

But there is a broad surface between the two ex-
tremes where the population is mixed, and perhaps
about equally mixed. How is this portion of the
Duchy to be dealt with ? To incorporate a Danish
population with the new German State would be
an act of harsh injustice bordering upon positive
cruelty, The project of a personal union would
have the effect, if carried oat, of exposing Denmark
to the Germanising process, and to the ambitious
machinations of German politicians. Denmark for
the Danes, and the limes in Denmark, should ex-
press the nature of the new arrangement. What-
ever the equities of the case may be, as a question
of abstract justice, Denmark cannot hope, as a
question of fact and practical expediency, to hold,
single•handed, her ground in Holstein and South
Schleswig against the Germanised populations
within, backed by forty millions of foreign Ger-
mans without. The vast mass of aggressive matter
is pressing on and on, without a moment's cessation
upon Denmark. A personal union would keep open
the medium of communication through which the
Germanising process operates. Cut off this commu-
nication by isolating Denmark entirely from Ger•
many, and her chances of maintaining the indepen-
dence and integrity of her territories will be greatly
improved. The proposal for the people of the
Duchies to elect, by universal suffrage, under what
Government they shall henceforth live, would not
solve the difficulty about the mixed populations.
If all the inhabitants of both Duchies are to vote
in one mass, then, if the gross majority were
Germane, the effect would be to dispose the Danish
inhabitants of a portion of territory—namely,
North Schleswig—as if they were a flock of sheep.
If the purely Danish population of this Duchy are
to be placed under alien rule by a majority voting
by universal suffrage, with all the magical mystery
of the ballot-box to boot, it will be just as hard
upon them as if a single despot had disposed of
them. If the Confederates are to be coerced back
into the Union against their will by the Federals,
because these are in the majority, it will be just as
hard a fate as it would have been for the colonists
to have been coerced by King George HI. A vote
taken by universal suffrage throughout the Duchies
would not show what was the real feeling of those
parts where the population is either purely Danish
or purely German, or mixed. And even if it were
proposed to take the sense of the several districts,
there would be some difficulty in defining the
boundary lines for separating one from another.
But, considerable as these difficulties are, they are
by no means absolutely insuperable ; and it is for
their solution that the Conference has been called
into existence. A point of great immediate impor-
tance is the prolongation of the armistice. If hos-
tilities are renewed on the 12th of this month, the
Conference will have come to nothing, and its labours
will be at an end. While it is sitting, and there is
a suspension of arms, there is at least a chance of
a pacific settlement. It will be singular if all the
Powers who were parties to the Treaty of 1852 are
unable to frame some arrangements which will
satisfy the parties more immediately concerned by
minimising the amount of injustice to be done to
one of them. It is a hard thing for Denmark to be
deprived of her possessions in spite of a treaty to
which her despoilers were parties ; but we have to
deal with what is, not what ought to be. The ques-
tion is, whether the integrity and independence of
Denmark Proper shall be preserved intact, and this
cruel war be brought to an end, or whether the
conflict is to go on, with the chance of even this
territory being invaded and dismembered. It
fact, a choice of evils ; it is a hard choice, but it is a
necessary one. We have had to put up with such
a choice ourselves, and so has every other country'
at one time or other. We had to give up our Ame-
rican colonies ; the United States will have to give
up the South ; and Denmark, if she judge wisely,
will recognise as a benefit, rather than mourn as A
loss, the riddance of a disaffected population.