The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-09 00:00:00

the enemy. Such language is a libel on the patriot-
ism and the courage of the British nation. We ear-
nestly desire to remain at peace with the United
States—how earnestly, we have shown only too well
by our constant advocacy of a strictly neutral atti-
tude, by the calmness with which we have met every
species of slander and vituperation, by the patience
with which we have endured the want of cotton,
from which a month of war would have effectually
delivered us, and by our refusal of recognition, in-
tervention, or mediation. But if war must come—
and nothing is so likely to produce it as such at-
tempts to give countenance to the assertions of the
American papers that there is really a sympathy in
England for the barbarous policy of a sham eman-
cipation under servile war—we shall, we trust, be
found realy to meet it, not undervaluing its perils
or its losses, but certainly not the least afraid of
finding traitors at home who pray for the success
of the enemy and the ruin of their own country.
The almost invisible minority who hold this lan-
guage have no feeling in common with the English
nation. We desire to enjoy our liberties, and for
that purpose to live under the rule of law. We do
not wish to see a return to ex officio prosecutions
for violations of a statute which it is open to any
one who pleases to enforce, and while we abhor the
slavish timidity which would call upon Government
to abridge liberty at home in order to conciliate
animosity abroad, we are firmly convinced that as
no law has been strong enough to put down smug-
gling when a large profit is left on the transaction,
so the Northern States must provide themselves
with some better defence than our Foreign Enlist-
ment Act and their own inefficient navy if they
wish to arrest the depredations and confound the
enterprise of the Confederate States.
HERALD.—The Polic. insurrection has now done
for Poland all that it could do. It has failed to
effect its purpose, but its achievements have not
been small. This time the heroism of her sons
will not be fruitless for Poland. They struggled
to realise a dream, but they have not the less gained
some solid successes. They have proved to Russia
that, although they cannot throw off her yoke, they
can, and will, make her rule infinitely more costly
than profitable, that her sovereignty shall be con-
stant burden and a shame to her, until she loyally
fulfils her solemn pledges and respects their na-
tionality and religion; and they have committed
Europe afresh to the guardianship of their rights,
which she undertook in 1815, and shuffled out of in
1831. They can do no more. If they carry on the
struggle, they cause at the best a wanton sacrifice
of life, and they may lose all the advantages which
they have gained. The most sanguine amongst
them cannot now believe that they have the slightest
hope of carrying out their great programme; their
oniy hope can be that the continuance of the
struggle may extort concessions from Russia or
bring the armies of Western Europe to their aid.
But Russia is ready now to make all the conces-
sions that she can make. She will never be in a
better disposition to do them justice. The Czar has,
we believe, always been anxious to fulfil his obliga-
tions to Poland. Ho may well have scrupled to
undertake that difficult task whilst still engaged
upon his great scheme of social reorganisation.
But the public opinion of Europe has reached him.
The appeals and remonstrances of the Great Powers,
the conviction of the impossibility of giving his
empire internal peace until Poland is satisfied,have
all had their due effect; and it may be confidently
asserted that if the insurgents were to at once lay
down their arms that step would be followed by an
amnesty and a constitution assuring Poland a large
measure of autonomy. The language of his Minis-
ter to the Western Powers commits him beyond all
escape to such measures, and those Powers would
treat any evasion of these assurances as a breach of
good faith which they would soon take care to
punisb,and could punish very well without recourse
to war. But no such attempt at evasion need be feared
if at this moment the Russian Government should
be placed in the position to act justly towards Po-
land. So long as the insurrection lasts it cannot do
that justice, and it is to be feared that if the Poles
persist some months longer in their now vain fight
it will not be disposed to do justice when the oppor-
tunity does come. The spirit of the Russian people
is rising too. If, after some months, the struggle
terminates by the destruction or expulsion from Po-
land of all the men who have taken part in the fight,
men who have stayed to wreak their vengeance on
the enemy long after all hope of defeating him had
passed, the consciousness of a complete triumph,
anger at the obstinacy with which the fight has
been fought, will get the upper hand in the minds
of the Emperor and his councillors. The sympathy
of Europe will as usual have exhausted itself; some
other object will have attracted the general inte-
rest ; and although the Governments will still urge
counsels of mercy and justice, their action will not
be halt so efficacious as when it was but the expres-
sion of the universal feeling. Indeed, granted the
hopelessness of the struggle (and no one can doubt
it), the persistence in it is in every s:nse dangerous
and ruinous to Poland. We know how the Rus-
sian soldiers make war—at least we may take the
description which the Poles give. If ruin and de-
solation accompany every Russian colonic, what
must be the condition of the larger part of Poland
if this fight is to be fought on some months, and
small bands are to wage in every province that par-
tisan warfare that the Russians, like the Piedmon-
tese, deem it best to meet by destroying every build-
ing which can afford shelter and every substance
that gives nutriment to a human being. So
long
as Langiewicz held his own, and it seemed possible
for the one Polish army to maintain itself, it was
perhaps excusable to hope, in spite of all reason to
the contrary, that Poland might establish her in-
dependence. Now there is not the slightest pretext
for such a self-deception, except indeed in the delu-
sion that if the war only lasts France will rush into
it, and England will follow her as a sort of drag-
chain. The notion that France would go to war
on behalf of Polish independence betrays a gross
ignorance of the character of the Emperor,
the position of France, and the condition of Europe
generally. France has strong and warm sympathies
with Poland, but the French Emperor and the bulk
of the intelligent classes know well the difficulty it
not impossibility of displaying those sympathies by
war. Even in the war with Russia, when France
and England were combined, they made no attempt
to strike Russia through Poland, and the reason was
that they thoroughly appreciated the immense dif-
ficulty of such an operation. The difficulty would
be as great now, whilst the justification of such a
step is quite wanting. France cannot go to war to
enforce the fulfilment of those treaties of 1815 which
she has herself torn up, and she cannot go to war
from mere sympathy with a gallant struggle which
she knows could under no circumstances be success-
ful. France does not believe herself capable, and
if she believed herself capable she would not be mad
enough to make the effort of conquering Russia,
Austria, and Germany, and that is what she must
do if the war is to be one for the independence of
Poland. It was a comparatively easy thing to help
Italy to her liberation. The battlefield was near;
what little strange ground her armies had to cross
to reach it belonged to the friends she went to help
—but even then the Emperor eta! ed before he ac-
complished the task he had set himself. If it has
been his mission to raise France again to the fore-
most place upon the Continent, and to gratify the
pride of herpeople in their country's fame and power,
it has been even more his work to develop the na-
tional resources and endow the land with all the
benefits which flow from the steady culture of the
arts of peace. War for Poland would mean per-
haps victory for France, but certainly destruction
of all the progress which she has made under the
Empire. The Emperor sympathises with Poland,
and has laboured to help her. He has attempted to
obtain the co-operation of England and Austria to
a common intervention in St. Petersburg. Whether
or not England, France, and Austria act together, li
it is pretty certain that they are agreed as to the
concessions they would ask for Poland. England may
take her stand upon the treaties of Vienna. France

and Austria may base their intervention upon other
grounds, but all three have asked, and will ask again
in substance the same thing—the autonomy of Con-
gress Poland and the recognition by Russia of the
Polish nationality in all those parts of her domi-
nions in which it embraces a considerable portion
of the inhabitants. There can, we repeat, be no
doubt that Russia would give what they ask if the
insurgents should have the wisdom to abandon at
once the hopeless struggle. Should they do so, and
their surrender be followed by these concessions,
Europe will be bound to see that they are honestly
acted up to; and her supervision, and the growing
dependence of Russia upon the West, the changes
taking place in her own political and social organism,
furnish good guarantees for the gradual attainment
by the Poles, if they have but the political wisdom
to build up a fabric of liberty—not, indeed, of the
independence which died for ever in 1795, but of
the great civil and religious liberties to which
national independence can only be regarded as a
means. In their last struggle the Poles began with
armies, and sustained a long time an undecided fight.
Beaten at last, they were crushed, as it seemed for
ever, every rag of liberty was taken from them.
In this engagement they began without arms, they
had but one army, and that a small and ill-disciplined
one—the struggle has lasted but a few weeks; but
if it ends to-morrow its issue will be the restoration
of the liberties they lost in 1831. The contrast
speaks trumpet-tongued for the progress which the
warld has made in the space of one generation.
POST.—Although the intelligence which daily
reaches us respecting the progress of the Polish in-
surrection ceases to excite thesame amountof interest
as at the outbreak of the revolt, it would be incorrect
to suppose that the efforts of the insurgents are
gradually becoming weaker. An insurrection in
Poland in its commencement naturally took us by