The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-28 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, JUNE 28, 1864.

bled here in London only for the express
purpose of wrangling over a big table
in Downing-street, and then (after the
lapse of a certain number of weeks) of going " bock
again," like the deliberate Scotchman in the jest.
book—of marching down the hill of difficulty after
they had marched up it so ceremoniously and even
' ostentatiously like the King of FRANCE with his
40,000 men in the ludicrous couplet. Beholding
the exact fulfilment of one's often• expressed antici-
pations as to what that result must be, with Earl
RUSSELL at the Foreign-office—one is almost tempted
for once to emulate poor simple-minded Mrs.
NICKLEBY, with her self•complacent anticipation
of the realisation of her little prophecies—" And
when I say I said so—don't you say I didn't !"
That a melancholy failure such as this of the foreign
policy of Ministers, should have befallen that policy
of the Government, under the Secretaryship at the
Foreign-office of Earl RUSSELL, frightful though
it is for the nation to realise, thus painfully, under
the gaze of all Christendom, cannot in reason be
matter for very much astonishment. Tne marvel
is, simply, that it should have been allowed by
the Prime Minister to wind out its whole
tangled reel of ignominy, uninterruptedly—
that Prime Minister being no other thin
Lord PALMERSTON! It is when we come to realise
it all—that is, the whole of this lamentable and
really ignoble situation of England as she stands
now, isolated and derided, among the nations of
Europe—it is when we come to realise all this,
through our undimmed remembrance of Lord PAL-
MERSTON'S long-protracted and resplendent career,
that we regard the position of his Ministry at
this moment with a pang of profound grief.
Otherwise than for our wondering (almost
incredulous) recognition of the fact that it
is no other than Lord PALMERSTON, who
is the Chief of the Administration that hes
come thus deplorably to grief under the scorns
ful gaze of Europe, our feeling in the matter
must have been purely, and simply, and solely one
of intense and unmitigated indignation. Bat—
remembering the extended and illustrious career of
this great statesman—

" Who would not mourn if such a man there be ?"
such a one, so pre-eminently distinguished, fallen
thus at the close of his career into a plight so de.
plorable—
" Who would not weep if Atticus were he ?"

If among all the great statesmen of this country
now living there was one identifiei more conspi-
cuously than any other with all that is proudest,
haughtiest, most chivalric in the typical character
of Englishmen, as a race, that man was this last de-
scendant of a great Saxon Earl who flourished
anterior to the Conquest—that man was HENRY
JOHN TexPee,third Viscount PALMERSTON. He who,
as about the knightliest chief among the knightly
chiefs of his age, was described so finely but a very
few years since by one of the me et eminent leaders in
the formidable array of the Conservative Opposi-
tion now confronting him, as "Riding to War no
vizor to his helm ln _Riding to Thar, forsooth! We can
but think now with a pang, while watching the
strange and wholly unwonted course thus taken by
him—Riding to War ! Say rather, with a ping almost
of vicarious shame while saying it—say rather than
" Riding to War"—Sneaking to Peace ! "No
vizor to his helm?' Instead of that with the golden
spur half shorn frotu his hee!, with the hitherto
unemirched plume upon his battle•dinted hel-
met broken and draggled ! Yet this is the
same world-famous English Statesman before the
terror of whose name remote enemies of our country
and of our Government hesitated when they were
merely meditating a slight to the name or the
honour of Eugland ! It is the same great English
Statesman of whom the late Sir ROBERT PEEL
—the great Sir ROBERT PEEL—once, upon a me-
morable occasion, excleimed in the house of
Commons, in the midst of a general sense of exul-
tation among those who actually heard the words
uttered, as afterwards among those who read
them as reported in the public newspapers—" We
are all proud of him !" Our one only consolation,
in his regard, new is to think of what he
has been for more than half a century ! One of
those statesmen the nation has been proud of! And
this during more than half a century ! For, it was in
1809, during the height of the mighty power of
NAPOLEON, when that last and greatest of the
World's Conquerors was not so much Emperor of
France merely, and King of Italy, and Mediator of
Switzerland, and Protector of the Confederation of
the Rhine, as he was Master and Lord Paramount
of Continental Europe—it was at a period so
remote as that from this present hour, it was as far
back as in 1809 that Lord PALMERSTON first assumed
a distinguished position in the House of Commons,
and in England, as an Administrator. Then—
five-and-fifty years ago—he was appointed Sec.
retary at War upon the resignation of Viscount
CASTLEREAGH. Previously, in they ear immediately
preceding it, namely, in 1808, he had made his
first notable speech in Parliament, when opposing
Mr. PON SONBY'S motion for the production of papers
relative to Lord CATHCART'S expedition to—
Copenhagen ! During the previous twelvemonth,
that is, in 1807, he had already been, although at
the time but in his twenty-firth year, as one of the
Junior Lords of the Treasury, a member of the Tory
administration of the Duke of PORTLAND and Mr.
PONSONBY. It was in 1809, however—as many as
fiftyefive years ago—that he assumed, as we have
said, a conspicuous position among the statesmen
and alkainistrators of England by becoming
Secretary of War in the room of Lord CASTLE-
REAGH, during the height of the Great Nee
poleonian wars. Since then he has been, as
the world full well knows, almost continually
in cffice, now as Secretary at War, now as Foreign
Secretary, finally twice as Prime Minister of
England—to end his great historical career at last
with an anticlimax as deplorably incomprehensible
and humiliating as that now revealed to the bewil-
dered apprehension of the country (hitherto so
" proud of him,") through his astounding
Ministerial statement last evening in the
House of Commons. As frightfully demon-
strative of the depth of humiliation to which
his proud spirit has at length cone
descended, under the guidance apparently
of Earl RUSSELL'S saturnine and sinister
influence as a Foreign Minister, it will be sufficient
to excerpt but one single passage from the close of
Lord P.. ALMERSTON'S speech last evening, when
making this perfectly astonishing, and still to this
moment utterly incomprehensible statement—the
passage, namely, in which the Veteran Prime Minis-
ter lest evening remarked :--" I do not mean to say—
and I think it right to put in that reservation—l do
not mean to say that if the war should assume a
different character, and if the existence of Den
mark as an independent Power in Europe should
be at stake—l do not mean to say that if we
had reason to expect we should see at Co-
penhagen the horrors of a town taken by assault—
the destruction of property, the sacrfice of the
lives not only of its defenders but of its peaceful in,
habitants, the confiscation which would arise, the
capture of the Sovereign as a prisoner of war, OR
EVENTS OF TI TAT KIND--(` oh, oh')—l do not
mean to say that if any of these events were
likely to happen, the position of this country
might not possibly be a fit subject for re considera-