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

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

TIMES.—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, affiuity, 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
must 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 iteeif 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 wi,h
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-
dealing, 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 an idle listener or she must take 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 Representa-
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 te, 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; butif 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
RS 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 artists 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 not play, and whether 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
denied us, and, hating 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
YE ells 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 teat, of all Sovereigns
he is the one best qualified to instruct, to conciliate,
and do all else 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.n
our homage, and even credulity. It is that tins
almost preternatural personage should have shown
himself. 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
Congress, should it ever be more than an ideal con-
ception ? Where 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 hospitality, 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 efftct to the
recommendation of a cherished project, offered
as
a safeguard. the proposal of a Congress Is not.
founded in the condition or the requirements of
Europe, but in the personal character of the Em-
peror of the French. 2. The Congreiss, as
thou
pro-
posed to the Governments of Europe, 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 have no power
to control them. It is, therefore, well adapted to
become a focus of intrigue, and a nursery of war.
3. The Congress of 1864 is called expressly to undo
the work of that of 1815, and, to mark the sntago-
nism more distinctly, as that was held at Vienna,
this is to sit at Paris. In order to efface the 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. notinferior to that as-
sumedfl hvejeto
Congressr y.
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a publication in Paris, the Congress will not be able
even to compare in importance with that which it
is designed to eclipse. 4. It is most unlikely that
the Emperor of the French has set his mind on a
meeting of this eb,F,,eter without having provided,