The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-03 00:00:00

sang froid to the story of doings which make for the
weal or woe of millions of human beings. A great

wit who is dead once observed that it would not
- -

spoil a man's appetite for breakfast if he were to
read in his morning paper that the whole empire of
China had been swallowed up by an earthquake.
Probably many persona will hear, without any sort
of emotion, that seventy millions of men are on the
eve of political enfranchisement, and see before them
the commencement of a new era of prosperity and
greatness. It may not seem to concern them much
that the Emperor of Russia is about to grant a
?nagna charta to his subjects. But in reality it does
concern them, and that very nearly. A war means
to an Englishman so many pence in the pound
added to the income tax; such and such an increase

in the price of the necEssities of life; so much taken
from the provision for wife and children. However
small the interest he feels in foreign politics, he

knc.we that they may take a turn which must involve
the country in war. He would not avoid that war,
if it should seem necessary to the maintenance of
the honour and influence of his country, but he

knows that he must pay his share of it, and that
may press upon him heavily. The prospect of a
constitutional reform in Russia should thus be a

matter of congratulation to all of us. We escape,
in the first place, the possible war which we might
have been called upon to wage in behalf of Poland.
Had Russia continued to behave herself in the
high-handed manner of those who will consent to
no compromise and make no concessions, had she
suffered us to believe that she was fighting, not
simply for supremacy, but with a view to the utter
subjugation of an unfortunate people, it would
have soon been more than the feeling of Western
Europe could have borne. But, if we are rightly
informed, the Russian Government is prepared to
grant more than the Western Powers have asked
of her. On the one hand, she is about to concede
to Poland an autonomy more complete than was
promised to her in 1815 under the collective gua-
rantee of Europe. Poland is to have her National
Diet, her national army, her separate courts of law,
her separate Polish administration, and an Impe-
rial Viceroy. We do not know what more even
Polish patriots can desire, and we are sure that
tuner concessions than these have never been
dreamed of by any of the friends of Poland. But

you cannot mend an old garment with new cloth
with any expectation of its wearing well. A con-

stitutior;al Poland in the midst of an absolutis.

Russia would b© an anomaly, an impossibility. I

was for this reason that the magnanimous pro

gramme of Alexander I. broke down. It was on this
account that the constitution granted, three years
since, to Poland, could not possibly be carried out
by Russian statesmen. A free Poland would be a
reproach to the rest of Russia, a continual cause of
disquietude, a centre of revolt, unless the rest of
Russia is to be free also. Since the accession of the
wicued and ambitious Catherine 11. the world has
looked on with much discomfort at the spectacle
of the gradual growth of the great military despo-

tism of the North. We are noiv to be reliered from
its incubus. Russia is to be conetitutionalised, de-
centralised, governed by local parliaments, and a
central representative chamber, in imitation of the
system which is working so well in Austria. As
a self-governed country is invariably found to be
less aggressive, less mischievous, and more amen-
able to reason than a despotic monarchy, we may
hope that the charter granted to Russia may save
Europe from many future wars, and the world from
much unnecessary misery. The emancipation of
the serfs was the baptism of the regenerated Russia.
The proclamation of a representative system for this
vast empire is as the right of confirmation which
admits it into the family of civilised nations. Up
to this time Russia, though ranking in military
strength as a power of the first order, has been at
the best a barbarous and heathenish country. The
revelations of the private life of her nobles and pea-
sants have made the ears of mankind tingle; the
tales that have been told by her court have horrified
the world. She has turned over a new leaf. There
is no more slavery in Russia ; there will be no more
tyranny. The pure life and the virtuous example
of Alexander 11. and his Empress have cleared the
precincts of her palaces from the harpies and vul-
tures that once frequented them. We shall hence-
forth find no more parallels among Russian princes
to the Neros and Agrippinas of old. The empire
has yet much to do to recover from the fatal
memory that her greatness dates chiefly from the
Infamous thirty-four years of Chatherine If. The
future of this empire, based on such a happy open-
ing, may be expected to outdo its past. The num-
ber of its population and the vastness of its terri-
tory have been the sources of the peculiar strength
and the peculiar weakness of Russia. o:her nations
of Europe had hardly a fair chance with the poten-
tate who could bring, by a single ukase, two millions
of men into the field. Nor was it possible to over-
run by any army that could be launched against it
a territory of such vast extent that it comprises one
quarter of the globe, and that the most inclement
and the most inhospitable. On the other band, a
country so spread out is wanting in power of con-
centration, and is in some respects hardly a match
for a people of one quarter its number if confined
within narrow limits. So !tang as she will keep
quiet Russia is in little danger from other powers.
Her territory, vast as it is, does not tempt them.
They are quite content that the trackless plains of
Northern Europe and Asia, where no one else will
live, should be peopled by this Sclavonic hive. All
the wars in which Russia has been engaged have
been provoked by her own desire to lodge herself
in more comfortable quarters. To some extent
she has succeeded, but not to her wishes. She
has obtained a footing on the Baltic, and on the
Black Sea. She has laid her hand on a thriving
people of Central Europe, and even now is con-
testing with them their meadows and corn-fields.
She has failed in her great ambition of trans-
ferring the seat of her empire to Constantinople.
It is worthy of note that the triumphs of Russia
have been obtained over second-rate powers, and
that she has generally been worsted by powers of
the first rank. Peter the Great, the founder of
modern Russia, prevailed against the Swedes after
many disasters to his arms. During the seven
years' war the Empress Elizabeth gained vic-
tories against the Prussians, whose power was
then in its infancy. Catherine subdued Poland,
and wrested much territory from Turkey in the
bloody campaigns of her lieutenants, Potemkin
and Suwarroff. It was not Alexander, but the
elements, that drove back a French army in 1812.
The Russians were defeated at Borodino—as be-
fore at Austerlitz—when side by side with Aus-
tria. The Polish revolt, and the Hungarian re-
volt, were successively put down by Nicholas;
but he succumbed to the Western alliance in the
memorable campaign of the Crimea. It is foolish
to make a bugbear of the Russian power, as
some people seem inclined to do. That power is
no menace either to us or to France. There is
no reason at all why we should not be on the
best of terms with it, not for state reasons merely,
or as a question of the balance of alliances, but
in the interest of the 70 millions that are under
its rule, who have yet in great part to be edu-
cated and civilised, who have a work before them
which will last for centuries, in the conquest and
cultivation of the soil which they people but
thinly. This vast dominion cannot solely be ruled
from St. Petersburg. Its inhabitants are to be
called upon to take their share in its govern-
ment. We wish all success to the plan—all pros-
perity, present and future, to the Emperor, his
simple-minded people, and their " Holy Russia."
PosT.—According to a certain proverb, no British
Act of Parliament was ever yet drawn up and
passed, through which a coach-and-four might not
be driven by a law-breaker of sufficient courage
and ingenuity. The presumption is somewhat bold,
but, like many other towering figures of speech, it
rests upon a solid foundation. Our friends across
the Channel, with their fondness for abstract prin-
ciples and tendency to analytical neatness, may
vaunt codification, smiling at an Englishman's need
of acts of consolidation, of explanation, and amend-
ment falling thickly upon each other session after
session. Nevertheless, by that means, clumsy
though it may seem to our neighbours, we gene-
rally manage to carry our point in the end. " The
Nuisances Removal Act for England (Amendment),"
which passed on the 28th July, is a case in point.
If scanned with moderate attention, in sequence
with other acts to which it refers, the metaphorical
carriage-drive which its provisions are intended to
bar will at once be obvious. Inasmuch as there are
more agreeable occupations than the perusal and
study of Acts of Parliament at any time, and COMA-
daring that September is the month least congenial
of all the twelve to that purpose, we may not do
amiss in summarising in few words the purport of
certain antecedent Acts of Parliament to which the
provisions of the supplementary Act passed in the
session just concluded refer. It would not be far
wrong were the assertion made that, prior to 1848
and 1849, the science which is inadequately trans-
lated into English by " public health," had no legis
lative and public recognition amongst us. Beyond
the provisions of quarantine (in respectof which
there are good reasons for bylii:ring they nave doac
more harm than rood) and of vaccinittion, the ex-
ternal circumstances bff,:eting public health were
taken less cognisance of by the State here than on
the Continent. At the same tune no injustice
should he done to the provisions of municipalenactments ; the fact, indeed, being that the post-
ponement of imperial legislation is doubtless in
some measure attributable to the circumstance
that municipal -- and therefore
eight has lessened the need of ,local —fore_
Parliamentary inter-
vention. The Nuisances Removal and Disease Pre-
vention Acts were passed under the inunodiate prc
sure of that terrible epidemic, the cholera. No great
marvel, therefore, it they were not more perfect than