The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

*--
TlMES.—Despatches for St. Petersburg were sent
last night from London, Paris, and Vienna, with
instructions to the representatives of Great Britain,
France, and Austria at that city to read these de-
spatches to Prince Gortschakoff, and to deliver
copies of them. They are couched in friendly
terms, but all convey an intel'igible warning to the
Russian Government. The Russian Government
on their side have sent General Berg to Warsaw to
supersede the Grand Duke Constantine. Vigour
without cruelty is said to be the spirit of his in-
structions. So far from being terminated, as at
one time seemed probable, by the flight of Langie-
wicz and the dispersion of his army, the Polish re-
bellion appears to gather strength and resources
from despair, and fresh confidence at the very mo-
ment when cold calculations, based on the ordinary
events of ordinary wars, would have led us to sup-
pose that nothing remained but abject and complete
submission. There is no occasion to go over again
in detail the csse of Mr. Finkenstein and the four
unhappy Poles, his companions in misfortune,
which has already received such ample notice at
the hands of our correspondent in Poland. Suf-
fice it to say that an English traveller, with his
passport perfectly regular, having been vised by the
Russian Minister at Berlin, examined by the Aus-
trian authorities on the frontier, and again exa-
mined by the officer on duty on the Russian fron-
tier, was stopped by a major in command of a por-
tion of the Smolensk Regiment, and compelled,
together with a lady who had accompanied him,
to pass the night in I.is carriage under a guard;
that four Poles, non-combatants, were brought in
next morning; and that, incredible as it sounds,
the soldiers of the Smolensk Regiment, in defiance
of the efforts of their officers to restrain them, killed
three of the Poles with bayonet wounds, and left
Mr, Finkenstein and the fourth Pole apparently
also dead. After a while the assassins returned,
and strove to complete their work by beating Mr.
Finkenstein about the head with the butts of their
muskets. The lady who accompanied him was
wounded and partially stripped of her clothing. It
is only duo to the Russian officers to say that they
appear to have done everything in their power to
prevent these detestable proceedings, and that
their own lives were placed by the conduct of
their men in the utmost jeopardy, the officers
threatening to fire on the men, and the
men retorting by threatening to fire on the
officers. Mr. Finkenstein was plundered of money
to the amount of nearly £l,OOO. he owes his life
to the benevolence of a Polish family, who them-
selves plundered, and put in imminent risk of their
lives by the private soldiers of the Smolensk Regi-
ment, had yet the kindness to wash his wounds,
and restore him to that existence of which they
themselves had no guarantee from one moment to
another. The Polish army under Langiewicz next
appeared, and although in the very crisis of his
fate—for it was only two days before he crossed the
Austrian frontier—the Dictator contrived to send
Mr. Finkenstein, bleeding from two-and-thirty
wounds, together with the surviving Pole, in a cart
to Cracow, and to spare his own surgeon to accom-
pany them. Mr. Finkenstein, who, strange to say,
seems likely to recover, has laid his case before the
British Government, and, of course, no time will be
lost in demanding reparation from the Government
of Russia. We do not doubt that all that is asked
will be promptly accorded. Nobody supposes that
the Emperor will regard this most signal outrage
with any other feeling than that of indignation and
shame. It can have no effect on the good relations
between England and Russia; but it is an event of
great significance. This comes of strong govern-
ment, of treating the wishes and the rights of man-
kind as nothing, and appealing to the sword as the
first arbitrator in all cases. The man of the sword
comes to recognise his own omnipotence, and to con-
sider that as he is stronger than the prople because
they are unarmed, so he is stronger than his officers
because they are few. Thus, military government
destroys military discipline, and the constant ap-
peal to force ends by setting me ro numbers and
brutal strength above the control of law, justice,
and reason.
POST.—The intelligence which some twoor three
times a week reaches us from North America has
long since lost that interest which it formerly
possessed. Events which have lately occurred
on our own continent have, by engrossing uni-
versal attention, contributed much towards
this result; but, independently of this con-
sideration, it is undeniable that since the
commencement of the present year the Ame-
rican news has been monotonous in the ex-
treme. It is a matter for congratulation that
we are no longer called upon to record the stories
of battles like those of Antietam and Fredericks-
burg; but still, the reflection is far from agreeable
that whilst the respective governments and armies
of both North and South have for the past three
months remained in the same relative positions,
both republics are bleeding at every pore. War is
a great evil, but it is one which entails much more
serious consequences when it assumes what may be
termed the chronic form. It is no doubt shocking
to hear of a battle having been fought in which the
slain are counted by thousands ; but then it is such
battles which hold out the brightest promise of
approaching peace. Men are not marched against
each other by military commanders for the mere
purpose of slaughter, but with the view of gaining
ulterior advantages which may enable them to dic-
tate the terms of peace. Since the war commenced
in America it has, however, unfortunately happened
that many and bloody as have been the battles
which were fought, they have hitherto been utterly
barren of results. This has arisen principally from
the invading Power having been in almost every
engagement in the field unsuccessful. The North
stands to the South in somewhat the same relation
as a besieging army to the town which it invests.
Over and over again have attempts been made to
penetrate into the capital, but they have failed.
The besieged must content themselves with repel-
ling attacks ; they are not in a position to compel
their assailants to raise the siege. If an investing
army is able to take possession of the town, the
struggle is of course at an end, but no amount of
blows inflicted on it by the garrison, short of utterly
routing it, will terminate the siege. The siege of
the Southern States has now continued two years,
and the assailants have for all practical purposes
not advanced an inch during that entire period.
The series of assaults have now for a time been sus-
pended, and the assailants appear to have deter-
mined on following out on a gigantic scale the
plan of starving the besieged into submission.
It is needless for us to say that such a method
can never succeed. If the South is to be subdued
it must be by force of arms and the extermination
of its people. The effects of the war have been
to develop its industrial resources in an extra-
ordinary degree; and it now possesses within its
confines the means of producing all that is required
either in time of war or of peace. It is idle for the
North to suppose that it can ever tire the South into
submission. What end, then, let us ask, can be
gained by permitting the war to pass into its pre-
sent chronic condition ? There seems no reason
why, if the Federal Government is indifferent to the
disgrace of becoming bankrupt, the war should not
be thus protracted for a long series of years. The
South is powerless to effect a peace; it can only act
on the defensive as long as it is attacked. But if
the North is apathetic, is the rest of the world to
remain impassive? The North is the Government
officially recognised, and on it is cast the onus of
vindicating its authority. It is not sufficient for it
to assert that the population of the South is in a
state of rebellion; it is bound to exhibit reasonable
activity in reducing the insurgents to submission.
The ground on which the non-interference of neu-
trals in the quarrels of belligerents is based by
international law, is, that war sall be carried on
with such activity as may tend to the speedy re-
storation of peace. On any other assumption it
would be monstrous to expect that neutrals would
submit to all the inconveniences entailed upon them
by the wars of other nations. One belligerent has
an undoubted right to blockade the ports of
another, and that right has been made available by
the Federal Government in the present war. But
suppose the North, seeing the hopelessness of its
, attempts to overrun the South, were to withdraw
its troops within its own frontiers, and instead of
concluding peace were to say—" The war still con-
tinues ; we do not despair of reducing the South to
submission; we possess a large and efficient navy,
and will maintain our blockade of the Southern
by
ports"—sup pose such a course to be pursued the
North, would it be sanctioned by the maritime
Powers of Europe? Would Frauce and Ecgland
continue to support a large portion of their manu-
facturing population on charity becauset the Federal
Government thought proper to
naval superiority, by blocked urn to account its
blockading the South, after it
had abandoned all hope of enforcing subjection by
the
tmployment c
its
t land forces? It is needless

to say that they would not. The blockade of the
Southern ports can only be recognised as an inci-
dent of the war in which the forth is engaged, and
not as the sole means by which war is to be pro-
secuted.

HERALD.—No question which has agitated
Europe of late years has commanded the sympathy
of all parties and of all creeds to such an extent as
the cause of Poland. When the electric current
ceases to communicate news of importance from
across the Atlantic, and the unpropitious season
compels a lull of hostilities between North and
South, the eye turns immediately to the telegrams
from Poland, anxiously seeking to glean some ray
of hope for the successful issue of the unequal con-
test that noble nation has carried on, at intervals,
for nearly a century, against its gigantic oppressor.
Is the defeat and capture of Langicwiez the precur-
sor of the dissolution of all the insurgent bands
throughout the country as quickly as the news of
the fall of their chief reaches them across the wide
tracts of scarcely inhabited forests ? Or will the
fire of insurrection, once ignited, continue to spread
until it has embraced in its flames every square mile
which owns the Polish as its native language, from
the Prosna to the Dnieper, from the southernmost
part of Podolia to the most northern extremity of
Courland ? The answer to these questions is the
more difficult from the meagreness and conflicting
nature of the information with which we are sup-
plied. It must depend entirely on the degree in
which the four classes of the inhabitants—the aris-
tocracy and large landowners, the nobles and smaller
proprietors, the serfs and peasantry, and the mer-
cantile class, consisting chiefly of Jews—make com-
mon cause to subveit the foreign yoke. The nobles,
analogous to the freemen of England in former days,
constitute about one-fifth of the entire population,
and include all who are, or whose ancestors have
been, freeholders. It is this class among whom
the insurrection originated and who still form its
backbone; nor shall we exceed the truth in saying
that among these the utmost unanimity exists in
their determination to submit to any sacrifices and
to endure any martyrdom which might lead to the
liberation of their country. This proceeds from
natural causes. It is they who have experienced,
in their fullest rigour, all the measures of per-
secution and coercion to which the Russian
Government has deemed it necessary to have
recourse, from the ukase, ordering the trans-
portation of forty-five thousand noble Polish
families to the Caucasus in 1832, up to the recent
edict of conscription, of which the present insur-
rection is the natural offspring. The stringent
regulations of the police law press most heavily on
the smaller proprietors. In Wolhynia and Podolia
it has long been unlawful for neighbouring land-
owners to pay one another a visit of courtesy or
friendship, unless with a passport, and this boon is
rarely granted to such as are suspected of" national"
ideas. The richer aristocracy find means and influ
ence to evade these irksome restrictions, of which

their less opulent neighbours have to endure the
utmost measure. The former, too, can seek a respite
from the severity of the Government at home, by
obtaining leave to spend as much as three years, sub-
ject to good behaviour,in travelling abroad; and even
when in Russia their greater command over the
luxuries and amenities of life enables them to forget
more easily the political nonentity to which they
are reduced. Hence it is not so often at the gate of
the castle as at the door of the more humble house 1
of the "noble" that the listener will hear at nightfall,
spite of Russian interdiction and espionage, the
solemn strains of the collected family singing the
celebrated national hymn, " Our country, our free-
dom deign restore to us, 0 Lord." We would not
leave it to be inferred that among the highest
classes there exists any coolness or indifference to
the fate of their country. Among those who perished
at Warsaw in 1861 were members of the noblest
families; among those who led the great procession
of thousands, unarmed, save with crucifixes and
lighted tapers, which crossed the Bug in the face of
the Cossacks, who seemed paralysed at the solemn
sight, were men, and ladies too, bearing the
proudest names which have graced the past history
of their country. But among the members of the
highest aristocracy ardour and zeal for action are
certainly tempered with more of prudence and fore-
sight, partly perhaps from the causes above men-
tioned, and partly from the greater certainty with
which they would be singled out as terrible ex-
amples and victims to the sure and certain *enge-
ance of the Czar. It yet remains to be seen whether
the great proprietors have thought the present a fit-
ting opportunity for attempting the hopeless task of
wrestling with the Northern Colossus, or whether
they have regarded the struggle as a vain, useless
expenditure of blood and treasure, which might, if
allowed to fructify and increase, at a future period
be used with greater success.