The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-13 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

TVAEs.—The customs and the law of all the world
are very suspicious of absolutely gratuitous proceed-
ings. They endeavour to protect the simple, and to
protect themselves against those who are not so sim-
ple, who appear before the world as spontaneous
movers and disinterested benefactors. There must be
some wisdom in a universal prejudice founded on a
common instinct and dictated by Nature. No doubt,
law itself discovers that the property and rights
within its cognizance are transmitted much better
in the order of descent, affinity, alliance, purchase,
and other secular causes, than by the more ca-
pricious and impulsive rule of private or public
benevolence. So a man is aways supposed to have
an interest, an object, or a duty capable of definition
and measurement. When men enter a meeting, they
innst have a known ground of interest or duty to
stand upon. When a man appears as a deliverer
of his conscience, or a messenger from Heaven, he
unites against himself all who are conscious of a
more humble footing, and who are content to be so
taken. Even law itself is at a disadvantage when
it interposes without extreme necessity to reconcile
or reduce to order, those who think they have really
something to quarrel about. Such is the weak and
odious position which England is invited to take in
a European Congress. She can only appear with
high-sounding moralities addressed to persons who
are not moralizing, but playing a game of prizes
and forfeits. In such a company England will
always be as the stranger who intruded himself
among them, and must needs be their judge. If we
could imagine a man taking his post in a country
fair, and preaching the moral duties of horse-
delling, that would be our case in a Congress. The
man who is most respected in that sphere is he who
gets the most, or pays the least, for a given animal.
If England is ever to enter a European Congress
without more than the present occasion, she must
either be en idle listener or she must rake the office
of preacher and adviser. Her position will be at
once difficult and invidious. She has certainly a
large budget of suggestions, but she will have to
wait for opportunity and willing ears. We give a
great deal of our time to business, and
very little to preaching and praying ; and the
latter is about the proportion of talk that England
is likely to have in a Congress—that is, so long as
she confines herself to her original footing as a
perfectly disinterested and unprejudiced adviser.
Indeed, if she is perfectly consistent, and so con-
tinues, she will come under the spirit of her own
law which forbids the presence of a " spiritual per-
son" in her leading House of Legislature. The
general impulse of the crew will be to throw the trou-
blesome prophet to the mercy of the storm, which
his presence will be supposed to have created. But
the discomfort of an unmitigated unpopularity will
remedy itself by a worse evil ; and, that she may
not be abused and insulted by everybody, England
will naturally seek the friendship of some, and,
therefore, the enmity of others. The bad position
of a representative who represents nothing but the
public opinion of his country, and some harsh con-
clusions upon the conduct of its neighbours, will
itself be an element in the materials of intrigue, and
will be used by those who can use everything to
their purpose. Every time the British Represeeta-
tive receives a rebuff, he will be driven to seek that
sympathy which even the severe and impracticable
sometimes require. In the years 1814 and 1815
England brought to the Congress immense sacrifices
already ma le, and professions that required no
proof. She had done all that she could, and nothing
remained but to offer the moral of the tale which
for twenty years had been sounded in the ears of
all nations. But when she had done everything
even to refunding as much as if had been the con-
quered instead of the conqueror, she found herself
a mere shadow of the past. Mortified and out of
temper, she quarrelled as all the rest did, and was
on the point of an alliance with France against
Russia, when Napoleon threw away his own chance
by escaping from Elba, and taking the game once
more into his own hands. It is impossible to say
what England may be driven to do when she finds
her words received with contemptuous neglect. It
is said to be a reason against war that it is like a ball,
in which though you know your first partner you do
not know your last; but if a nation enters a Congress
with no partner at all, it is still less able to foresee
what may change its resolution. The worst of all
solitudes is to be a.one in a crowd, and even the
assumption of superiority does not make it agree-
able. Yet what will the British Representative be
able to do in his original character but sit en his
throne of opinion and proclaim those maxims of
justice and piety the sound of which, according to
the poet, aggravates the torments of the damned ?
His first appearance in the Congress will be simply
as one of those statues which, speechless and blind,
hold their idle scales over the heedless mob of a
market or an exchange. We know how little power
the works of the mightiest artiste have to overawe
the living conscience or palsy the rude hand. So the
statue will have to grow warm, to flush, to throb, to
move, to descend from its pedestal, and take a part
in the work before it. That is what the British
Representative will most certainly do, and neither
people nor statesmen can say what he will not do,
what partnership he will not make, whose game he
will nor clay, and wnether when all is over the East
or the West, the North or the South, Sovereigns or
nations, will have most reason to thank him. But
even if it were possible to preserve a proud supe-
riority to parties and interests, and to carry out the
character of umpire, that is the very character
already assumed by the Sovereign who opens the
proposed Congress. Even that barren dignity is
denitd us, and, haa ing nothing to gain in a sub-
stantial sense of the word, we find the honours of

impartiality claimed by another. France is to be the
iEitus who governs the winds; France, the Jove
who distributes with equal justice the warning nod
and avenging brand. Napoleon 111. proclaims to
Europe what we have been proclaiming in every
mode possible in a country and with a Constitution
such as ours. By a dexterous obtrusion of his per-
sonal history he points out that, of all Sovereigns
he is the one best qualifi-d to instruct, to conciliate,
and do all 9.lse necessary to a European settlement.
He alone has played all honourable parts, suffered
exile, confinement, poverty and contempt ; endured
the threats and malignity of all parties and powers ;
and he alone is capable of entering into all feelings
and wants, understanding all difficulties, and media-
ting between the direst antipathies and the
fellest antagonisms. How can England, stable,
well-to-do, and tranquil, always rich, and
always the same, pretend to vie with a
man raised by Providence for the very purpose ?
There is only one thing wanting to complete the
proof of a mission which makes such demands o❑
our homage, and even credulity. It is that this
almost preternatural personage should have shown
himselt exempt from the foibles which mark the
common herd of successful adventurers. But though
France may be glad for the moment to overlook a
few excesses of power, some trifling annexations,
and a policy of aggrandisement, neither we nor the
rest of Europe can forget so complacently. What
we see in France is the man of violence, not the
founder of a temple of justice and peace. Yet the
last is the character claimed in this address to the
Sovereigns of the Old World. Not even is this to
be ours. What, then, shall we have to do in this

Congross, should it ever be more than an ideal con
oeption ? There is no place left to us. The honours
of peace and war, of abounding mercy and prevail-
ing strength, of conception and execution, of a
humble bearing and a magnificent nospitality, are
all to attach by natural gravitation to France. We
should not grudge her anything that would make
her happy and contented, if only because we know
not how soon her fortunes may be ours ; but we
must still ask what part is left us by this ambitious
performer, and in what guise we are to enter the
scene. We might be content with even a second or
a third rate part, but we are left with none at all.
DAILY NEWS--The discussion which has fol-
lowed the French Emperor's speech has established
a few points of which in the present state of nego-
tiations it may be useful to take note :-1. The pro-
posal of a Congress is made without the assignment
of any adequate reason. The grounds put forward
to justify it are unreal and factitious. An imaginary
danger is :pretended in order to give effect to the
recommendation of a cherished project, offered as
a safeguard. Ile proposal of a Congress is not
founded in the condition or the requirements of
Eurbpe, but in the personal character of the Em-
peror of the French. 2. The Congress, as pro-
posed to the Governments of Europe, is without
definite aims and objects ; it is a court to which all
the passions, ambitions, and rivalries of the world
are to be invited, but which will harveessnyy of
no power
or
to control them. It is, therefore, well adapted to
become a focus of intrigiusec,aannedd
expressly
nursery
3. The Congress of 1864
the work of that of 1815, and, to mark the Antago-
nism more distinctly, as that was held at Vienna,
this is to sit at Paris. In order to efface tu
e acts of
the Congress of Vienna, that of Paris must assume
in the name of peace and " the legitimate aspira-
tions of peoples " a power not inferior to that as-
sumed by the other in the name of victory. Less
right cannot be attributed to generous sentiment
than to the conquering sword.
Paris must therefore take to itselfla'uhtehoCrointygrteossreo-f
re-
distribute territories and dominions, with or with-
oh ht,
thee
ciodneaseonft
iotsf
tanepnutbolif
publication
ina Paris,
p atuhtehir possessors, or it will not
or. Without the remarue-
of Europe, foreshadowed in many
even to comparein pthoertCsoonoogrwesisthwtihllantowt
hbieoahbliet
is designid to eclipse.
oathe
tlm
,i;ogphas set his mind on a
4. It is moat unlikely that
oeroth.s cr of theh French
f 4racter without living provided,

by arrangements with one or more other F Sisv'eThrse
for
the success of his undisclosed Plana- de-
claim of a Congress to the exercise of power, 1a
;ions
quate to a " supreme arbitrament" in the qnes
which the ambition of sovereigns and states LT.t.,
bring before it, is certain to be resisted by those wh
may be prejudicially affected by it ; and thus
gonisms will arise, alliances and counter-allialle" 7
will be formed, and the Congress will have diveken;
Europe into hostile camps. In the pr.aaent state 01
Europe these, and such as these, would the
dencies of a Congress like that propo.ied by
da tiger
Emperor of the French. They constitute a'
greater far than any which, apart from thoJnl cad
be said to threaten Europe. On the other side, an f
to allay alarm, we are told of the pacific id,"sa °t
Napoleon 111. Nobody has the slightest doubt tho_
bo the ten-
the Emperor of the French desires and inte,od°
peace—that is to say, if the world will let him bale
his own way, he will not make war for war's sake'
Further than this his Majesty's antecedents do net
warrant us in extending our confidence. The dein"'
stration, at recurrent periods, of his predominance
in Europe is for him a domestic necessity. Itt
is for Frenchmen the compensation for tila
privation of liberty in which they so strange],
acquiesce. If the Emperor's ascendancy can be
established peaceably, well ; but it not, still it lunar"
be established, and that in a manner patent to all.
the world. Before this overwhelming necessity 011
mere sentiment gives way. The fact does not co'
cern England nearly so much as other countries;
We do not live from day to day on assure flees. or
the influence we exercise in this or that foreige,
capital. Batons external policy is founded on
of the rights of others, and we know that there 15
a point at which pressure such as the French ET,:
peror seeks to exert becomes unendtwable, and lot':
to war. The British Government he.s a most seTict
duty °
to perform in deciding on the answer to b
respec,k
returned to the Emperor's overture; ht:t its con roe:
we imagine, cannot be very doubtful. The Enl,9e
ror's proposal, though in many points obiectionabl!,
should be examined with a view to ascertiOu
whether it is capable of modification,so as t o become
the starting poitit of a work useful to Eurore•
British Government cannot be expected toe 'robe-a
on a p )liFy of adventure. We ought to know, i 1011/:t
othey things, whether any limitation of thest
of discussion will be admitted, and what is its ,
ciple. We ought to know, moreover, what wi. (.1",
held to be the position before the Congress of
°
power unwilling to make the sacrifices which m
be required of it. When war has placed some oft.'}
parties to a Congress in a position to exact, an
others in a position to yield, concessions, the recoil'
structive work of diplomacy Las a basis in fact ; but
this is not the situation of the Powers now con'
yoked. No general necessity furnishes a guarantee
of general consent' For himself, the Emperor Na"
poleon may easily promise magnanimity and mode,:
ration, because it is well understood that, althongi:
France may gain much in this Congress, she is 11°,,'
to be asked to give anything. The difficulty vily'
arise entirely out of the situation of other Stao'
The English Government certainly cannot attribute
to the Congress power to override the rights c'
sovereign States, and if the intention todo so existl4
and the combinations are prepared beforehand, vie
shall do better to stay away. We cannot lend oC
sanction to acts of aggression, past, present, or tt:
come, with whatever specious sentiments or imPas,
ing show of authority it may be sought to cove'
them. The Emperor Napoleon will be asked, there'a
fore, to present his scheme in a more definite as
appreciable form, with guarantees for t he respeett
due to international riots; and upon the' nature °,
his answer the decision of the British Goa•ernraen"
will depend.