The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-28 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, SEPT. 28, 1863.

Earl RUSSELL has just now, through the medium
of a pretty long speech, been delighting the natives
of Perthshire, down at Blairgowrie. His Lordilip
is tolerably certain, however, through the medium
of that very same speech, not so much to delight, as
firmly and rather blankly to astonish the natives of
every other part of the three kingdoms. We may
take even the plaudits won by the eloquence of the
noble orator from the assembled tenantry at Blair-
gowrie, so indicative far more of their satisfaction
at hhving so important a member of the Cabinet as
the 7.(4loreign Secretary to listen to, than of anything
like a deliberate coincidence of theirs in the opinion
expressed by him in the course of his harangue.
Conning the speech of the noble Earl, under the
influence of no such purely personal and compli-
meneary feelings, that is, as one among a throng of
feasting tenants down at Blairgowrie—reading the
noble Lord's Address to that tenantry, now that it
comas reported to us from a distance, in cold blood,
in plain legible black and white, we can only
marvel at the rashness (in many particulars) of
an oration which does really and truly ap-
pear to us to be quite as much a mis-
take on the part of Earl RUSSELL as his
notorious despatch a few months back in regard to
that tedious Schleswig Holstein Difficulty. Here
—in this speech of Lord RUSSELL'S yonder in
Scotland—the blundering appears to us to have
about it a twofold hardihood. The daring
rashness of the remarks uttered by the Foreign
Secretary, both in regard to the Steam Items and
in regard to the Federal Government, surpasses
anything in the way of blundering rashness ever
yet ventured upon, even by Earl RUSSELL. Heart
and soul we go with the noble lord, of course,
when he contents himself with denouncing, in lan-
guage worthy of him as one of the youager asso-
ciates of -WILBERFORCE and CLARKsON, the hideous
abomination of Slavery : when be said, " For my
part, I consider that it is one of the most horrible
crimes that yet disgraces humanity." But when
Earl RUSSELL toeB
on to argue that England for
the most part, that is to say, the vast majority
of the people of this country, are in favour of the
Northern Government, rather than in favour of the
Southern Government, that Englishmen as a body
sympathize more with the Federals and less with
the Confederates, we can Only admire the wilful
Effrontery with which notorious facts,demonstrative
of exactly the reverse, are Coolly Pet aside as of no
earthly consideration whatever. It is true that in
the very laboured argument in which Earl RUSSELL
Put forth this astounding declaration, he strives,
Very speciously, to affect an appearance of
conspicu-
ous impartiality. But nothing less audacious than
what ave have said is the conclusion he eventually
arrives at. A conclusion, nevertheless, as we 411
know full well, utterly baseless and insupportable.
Again, when Earl RUSSELL talks, as he talked on
aturdsy to the convivial tenantry at Blairgowrie,in
refePeuce to those seizure of the steam rams with the
outi radish Egyptian
names (misnomers now in the
strictest sense of the Word, seeing that the PA
of that African province of the Turkish Empire ie.
no longer to be the purchaser) down in Nlr. LAIRD'S
shipyard at Liverpool—when Lord RUSSELL talks
as he talked on Saturday, in reference to that little
tran faction, certain, at least, we may he of this, that
he was "counting without his host!" It was
speaking of what the House of Commons
would
do in such and such a contingency, without the
smallest assurance in the world that they would do
anything whatever of the kind. " Everythinge, he
said, " that the law of nations requires, everything
that the present Foreign Enlistment Act requires,
I am prepared to de, even if it should be proved to
be necessary for the preservation of our neutrality
that the sanction of Parliament should be asked to
urther measures that her MAJESTY'S Ministers may