The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-17 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, SEPT. 17, 1863.

An Old East India Company'e officer, travelling
recently over the desolated and ensanguined battle-
fields of this protracted insurrection in Russian
Poland, has, naturally enough, deduced from the
mere fact of its long continuance, of this inter-

minable lengthening ont of the insurrection—one
alternative. This alternative he has to-day very

lucidly put, through the medium of a very manly,
outspoken communication to our contemporary the
Morning Post. Either, he insists, the insurrection

of the Poles is much more powerful, is much more

popular than it is said to be—Or the Russian army,

no opposed to the insurgents, has fearfully dege•
nerated since the days of the Crimean Iv ar ! Those

are the horns of the dilemma, between which, this
intelligent, travelling Englishman, himself a
veteran of the Old East India Company's
service, has placed every apologist of- the
Russian Autocracy, every believer in the integrity of

the Muscovite power, every vindicator of the policy
maintained, under various phases or aspects, at the
point of the sword, at the thongs of the knout, at
the muzzle of the rifle, by the Despotic House of
RoMANOPF. And the one flagrant and undeniable

fact to which this Old Officer directs attention, we

do certainly think, speaks quite plainly for itself—
speaks not only quite plainly, but trumpet-tongued
A people unarmed, trodden under foot, as it were,

during the chief part of one whole century, holds

its own, unaided in any way externally, excepting

by the sympathy expressed by various remote
nationalities—holds its own, thus unaided, month

after month, against the legions cf a despotic rule
of 60,000,000—those legions armed to the
teeth and highly disciplined ! No wonder the
gallant Englishman who is travelling there, out in
the actual seat of war, observing the facts we are
here alluding to, with his own eyes, no wonder, we
say, that we find him hesitating not to assert—" I

am convinced now that not only the insurrection is

much more powerful than we seem to think, but

that the Russian army is no more to be compared
to that of Alma, Inkerman, and Sebastopol, than
their army of 1854 to the half-savage and irresis-
tibly steady fanatics led by SIIWAII.OFF." In saying
this, the writer frankly acknowledges that before
he had gone out there from England into the very
scenes of this deplorable conflict in Russian-

Poland, he bad formed an entirely different opinion

of the state of things, than the one he has since been

compelled to arrive at, the one we have seen him

just now indicating in words so very emphatic
and so wholly unmistakeable in their drift.
Instead, he says, of finding Poland, as he had been
lea to believe he should find it—namely, a Mar►tyr

nation, or as he himself expresses it, "a sheepish
agglomeration of fanatics ready to be slaughtered
but unable to conquer"—he found it—what ? Let
his "u words indicate what it was he really did
find it to be—" A powerful nation, confident in its
strength,
and unshaken in its determination never
more to submit to the Muscovite rule !" 2 hat is
what he found---that, we should rather say, is
what he find,: for he writes from the midst
of the region Of
this revelation to him—
his communication
to the Post being dated
As recently as last Saturday, the 12th in-
stant, this " Old E./."
• hailing our con-
temporary from Tarnow!
So firm does he find
this determination, on the
Part of the insurgent
Poles to be, the determination, that is, never more
to submit to the Muscovite rule if they
can help it,
that he writes now,
on the 12th instant, from Tar-
now,.t s of
"I cannot but feel sure that Russian dominion
in Poland is at an end, and that even all the e
our diplomacy will never succeed in restoring Rus-
sian dominion in Poland, unless we aid them, by
arms to destroy all the Poles and then re-colonise
the country with Don Cossacks." In this opinion,
of course, he may be altogether mistaken. But, at
any rate, it is a very noticeable circu
• mstance
that such is the opinion of a di passionate and
intelligent eye-witness, writing from :the midst of
the occurrences now transpiring in Russian Poland.
The conviction thus avowed by this travelling
Englishman, himself a man of military experience,
is, for all the world, a matter of es much
import and significance, as any argument
put forth in the fore of the most elabo-
rately concocted document prepared by the most
skilled and practised diplomatist, writing,
not from the seat of war, or we suppose we ought to
the seat :of the insurrec-
say more correctly,
tion, but from the foreign offices of London and
Paris, of Vienna, or of St. Petersburg. And the
view taken thus —upon the spot and from the life—
by " An Old E.1.C.0.," comes to us, we
cannot but
think, all the more impressively, seeing that it
appears—not in any organ supposed to express the

opinions of Mr. POPE HENNESSY and the asrira-
tions of Prince CZARTORYSKI, but in the columns
of a contemporary popularly understood to be the
organ of Viscount PALMERSTON.

The progress of toleration during the last few
years has been marked and rapid. We have learned

not only to widen our views, and to regard with

respect and sympathy those whom previously we
loaded with censure; bat we have learned also to

extend our indulgence to the prejudiced and inta:e-

rant narrow objections, and one-sided arguments

no longer provoke bitter replies and -Angry conten-
tion; they are generally met now 'with quiet dis-

approval, or perhaps with some degree of contempt.
It is felt even by the partisans whom they oppose
that it is safer to leave their denunciations to eva-
porate in empty air, and to trust to the general good
sense of the public to counterbalance the ill-directed
enthusiasm of a few than to attempt to convince
hopeless prEjudice. Twenty years ago Mr.
WHALLEY would have been the leader of a fierce
contention, waged on both sides with acrimony and
eagerness. His energies are now comparatively
powerless, and those whom he attacks know better
than to attach too much importance 'to his on-
slaughts. The general feeling of the English public
is tolerably unanimous on such points. There are,
of course, degrees of difference, and considerable
exceptions both to the precepts and practice of tole-
ration, but as a general rule it is felt that the less
the law interferes with a man's private sayings and
doings the better, so long as he does no harm to the
body politic. Sabbatarianism is one of the few in-
stances in which war is still waged as matter of con.
science and opinion ; but notwithstanding the in-
fluence of some earnest and highly respectable
advocates of an enforced observance of the day of
rest, public opinion has always resisted any attempt
to legislate on the matter. The fate of Lord
ROBERT GROSVENOB.'S Sunday Trading Bill is still
fresh in our recollection, and it is a pity it has not
served as a warning. to the well-meaning but mis-
taken advocates of Mr. SomEs's measure. Not long
ago we had an example of Scottish feeling on the
subject, on the occasion of the Channel Fleet visit-
ing Leith. The hors or of the good men
of the town when they beheld numbers of
the population of that misguided port forsake their
Sabbath retirement to visit these ships of war was
so great that some of the more influential took upon
themselves to write a remonstrance to the Admiral,
which unwarrantable interference called down upon
them a retort as cool as it was courteous. We have
just had, Lowever, a still more striking instance of
the lengths to which Sabbatarianism will go—an
instance which few, we believe, will have read
of without deep regret, that even the bountiful
gifts of Heaven should prove an occasion for the
display of man's bigotry and injustice. The de-
tails of the case aro too well known to need
repetition. The brief outline is that some small
farmers at Leigh have been made the subjects of
a determined prosecution for the crime of getting
in their hay on Sunday, an act to which they
were urged by the treacherous state of the weather,
and the consequent risk they ran of losing their
crop—to them a matter of serious importance.
The accused were found guilty, and fined, one of
the magistrates making the sage remark that he
saw no difference between haymaking, selling
corn, or ploughing land. The farmers refused to
pay the fine, whereupon a distress was levied on
their goods; a cow being taken from one, a chest
of drawers from another, together with other
articles of similar value. Meanwhile such an
outrageous case could not fail to attract notice in
the vicinity. A strong feeling of indignation
was generally expressed, and the sympathy of
the neighbours found expression in the very prac-
tical form of a defence fund, organised for the
purpose of enabling the losers to try the validity
of the Act. The treasurer of this fund
very properly applied part of the money
at his disposal in repurchasing the goods
seized, which he, of course, subsequently re-
turned free of charge to their original owners.
It remains to be seen whether the case will again
be made a matter of litigation, but, as it stands,

is too exceptional and important to be passed over.
The question is, whether a few individuals of pecu-
liar views and strong prejudices shall be allowed
to take advantage of an old and obsolete Act which
woul.d certainly never pass either House at the pre-
sent day, to outrage the general sense and spirit of
the community by punishing men for doing an act
lof necessity, which was, moreover, clearly an
exceptional one, on the Sunday. Enforced
religion is never worth much, but it may
certainly be questioned on what authority these
persons so loudly condemn the farmers for
rescuing useful and valuable material from the
chance of waste and destruction. A correspon-
dent of one of our contemporaries, writing on
this subject, remarks that he has known many in-
stances of hay, when in a forward state, being
entirely destroyed by heavy rains on Sunday, and
we trust there are very few men of common sense
and common feeling among us who do not better
understand the spirit of the great MASTER'S teach-
ing than to b'ame these poor men for doing what
appeared to them an act of simple necessity.
The Good and Eloquent JEREMY TAYLOR, ranks the
obligations of the sacred day in order-Ist, works
of necessity; 2d, of charity; 3d, of religion; but,
in their anxious enforcement of the observances of
the last, the prosecutors in this case appear to have
lost sight of the obligations of the two former.
The whole case is entirely contrary to the spirit of
English law, and the practice of English social life.
Whether it goes any further or no, we trust that
this is the last case of the kind of which we shall

hear, and that others equally prejudiced and
intolerant will at least retrain from such open

attacks and such determined oppression. Mean-
while, how long is a law which permits such

extravagance to be suffered to encumber our

statute book ? If the next session be not more

folly occupied than the last, hon. members might
profitably spare a portion of their leisure for the

expulsion, or at least the revision, of any act
which gives the semblance of legal authority to

an officious intolerance which ought to have been
•

ong ago extinct among us,

Lord RUSSELL'S despatch has been published.
It is
of some considerable length, and enters fully
into all the chief points of the question. He states
that the despatch received from Prince GORTSCUA-
KOFF was net at all of a satisfactory nature. This
is very true, and it •
ls well that Earl RUSSELL thus
comments strongly on the very unfitting style in
which tha Russian Minister thought fit to address
of Western Europe. He next
vthereyAp
riloipederlyPoswniTadverts upon the views taken by
the Prince respecting the «m
oral and material
assistance" which the insurrection in Poland re-
ceives from without, and also that he declares the
re-establishment of order must precede the measures
for pacification in Poland, Thereupon Earl RUSSELL
proceeds to consider the several points upon which
the Russian Government chiefly descant. They lay
great stress upon resrect for authority, but, forcibly
argues Lord RUSSELL, they cannot be ignorant that
"clemency and conciliation are often more effective