The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-16 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 16, 1863.

Is Earl RUSSELL'S facetiousness the other day
at Dundee to be accounted for in any respect, we
wonder, by reason of a certain self-complacency at
the successful development by him during the holi-
days of certain extremely odd new phases in his
Foreign Policy ? Scarcely have the Houses of
Parliament been prorogued, scarcely have the mem-
bers—hereditary and representative—been fairly
scattered far and wide throughout the provinces and
upon the continent, as well as upon the wide seas in
their yachts, when Earl RUSSELL effects a change in
the diplomatic arrangements of the Government, such
as he would, for certain, never have ventured upon
while the Legislature was actually sitting. Sir
JAMES HUDSON is coolly turned to the right-about
at Turin. He is compelled to vacate his place there at
the British Embassy—in order that another of those
interminable ELLIOTS may slip into it quite com-
fortably and conveniently. The long vacation
enabling the noble Earl to carry out his affectionate
intentions towardsthus furthering theinterests of his
kinsman by this distinguished and most desirable
promotion, the thing is in due course done accord-
ingly. And done so quietly, too—by an announce-
ment in the Gazette! No vexatious worrying of
either the Foreign Secretary himself in the House
of Lords, no troublesome annoyance inflicted upon
his representative in the House of Commons, the
hen. member for the borough of Southwark, who
sits there during the session upon the Treasury
bench in his responsib:e character as UndereSccre-
tary for the Foreign Department ; no annoying
questions put either here or there, now to Earl
RUSSELL by one of those sarcastic peers on the
side of the Opposition, now to Mr. LAYAIID by one
of those metropolitan members who are always so
eagerly in quest of knowledge under difficulties!!
Sir JAMES HUDSON—about whose removal we, at
any rate, can speak quite dispassionately, having
4 supreme indifference es to the sequel of
the diplomatic career of his ex-Excellency—
Sir JAMES HUDSON has only to withdraw
silently from his position at Turin as English
ambassador ! Mr. ELLIOT has only as silently to
step into his empty shoes, and to occapy his vacated
vesidence in that capital of Piedmont—for we can
hardly yet surely speak of Turin as the capital of
Italy, without running, at least, a very imminent
hazard of wounding the amour propre of every
Lombard, Tuscan, Neapolitan, even, we might say,
of every Modenese, Parmese, and so forth, in the
the length, and whatever there is in it of breadth,
of the whole Roman peninsula. All the penalty
Earl RUSSELL has been subjected to, in consequence
of his flagrant subordination of public interests
of all kinds to the petty individual interests of one
among the large cluster cf his own numerous kith
and kin, has been in the way of printed commentary
Upon that extraordinary proceeding, extraordinary
even from him and for an ELLlOT—sarcastic
leaders in the daily and weekly newspapers, and
an occasional caustic gibe in the shape of a hu-
tells illustration in the pages of our
London ehari • van. The accomplishment of his
amiable design in regard to Mr. ELLIOT, with only
this slight Coat .
to himself in the shape of ridicule
endured, was, in
doubtless, itself a circumstance
calculated to lighten considerably the spirits of the
°reign Secretary at the very commencement of his
autumnal holidays. Bar
'even then, it fails to explain
the height of hilarity attained by those lightened
spirits of his upon the occasion of the noble earl's re-
cent publis appearance at Dar,d
ee. Something very
different, indeed; something
mere exhilirating
than the quiet E ffecting of this dexterous insinua-
tion of an EI LIOT into the suddenly etcated British
Embassy at Turin, must have inspiredthat most
unusual vivacity on the part of the Foreign
Secretary one ordinarily rather didactic in
manner, and given to 2n undue display at
gravity than to the convulsion of his audience,
whether in Parliament or out of it, into bursts of
irrepressible hilarity.
Yet it is only necessary to glance down Earl nus-
sELL's speech lately at Dundee, to recognise that
the noble lord was in what is called familiarly and
emphatically tip-top spirits while he was speak-
ing- But far his name appearing at the head of
his speech to the Du ndeeites, we might, from the
character of the inte •
rruptions, have been led to
suppose that it was an after dinner harangue
by
Mr. BUCESTONE, or an •
oration upon some very
serious question, indeed, a Church matter of
great importance, cr a more than usually anxious
topic connected with finance, spoken to a
laughing audience by that veteran light comedian
of politics, the First Lord of the Treasury.
Laughter, renewed laughter, once even, intense
langhter—these were the kind of interruptions to
Lord RUSSELL'S speech the other day at Dundee.
Whence, this abounding hilarity on the part of the