The Sun.
London, England, 1862-05-22 00:00:00

meat paper there is now again at par, and she has,
therefore, no difficulty in borrowing all she wants.
But to Austria no one will lend from abroad, and
no one at home unless by some kind of compulsion.
How can it be otherwise ? Lenders do not like
borrowers who return every year, and generally with
increased demands. In 1857 Austria fell short, in
round numbers, by four millions a quarter. In
1868, by three millions and a half. In 1859, the
year of the Italian war, by twenty-four millions and
a half. In 1860 by six millions and a half more.
In 1861, having estimated her deficiency at four
millions, it turned out to be ELEVEN MILLIONS !
And now this year she furnishes a paper esti-
mate of revenue and expenditure which again
exhibits a deficiency of close upon six millions.
Her total estimated revenuelis £29,659,980. Her
expenditure, £35,458,600, and of this twelve
millions and a half are absorbed in meeting the
charge for the national debt of two hundred and
ninety-six millions.
The reader who will have but the moderate
degree of patience required to note these few finan-
cial facts will ask, what in the world this ever-
bankrupt State means to do ? She is said by Mr.
ROEBUCK and Mr. JOHN LEVER ORELL to be rich
beyond our imaginations. A second Turkey, with
wealth enough for an empire double her size—only
—the wealth does not come out. It is wait-
ing to be " developed," these hopeful autho-
rities tell us—now long it has waited, and
how much longer it is likely to wait, they do
not add. There are mineral treasures, and agri-
cultural treasures, they say, almost without limit.
True, but so much the worse for a Government
which wastes its subjects' resources on armies main-
tained for no purpose on earth but to govern despo-
tically and against their will a large proportion of
the people where these treasures lie hidden, and
where they will lie hidden, till the Austrian incu-
bus is removed.

At this moment, as for a long time past, Venetia
and Hungary are the cause of Austrian bank-
ruptcy. No one doubts that simple justice to both
would restore everything. The pride which per-
sists in regarding the Italian quadrilateral as an
outwork to the rest of the Austrian conglometa-
tion of States, costs her an immense army, not less
than one hundred and fifty to two hundred thou-
sand men there ; to which must be added the hand,
some price Italy would willingly pay for entering
on quiet possession. Then Hungary, to which she
has not even a treaty right, costs her, though dis-
armed, a large army. Hungary only asks her
clearest rights, and with becoming national dignity
and sense refuses to accept anything less. She
would treat honourably after their restoration, not
before. To withhold these rights this beggared
Empire is put to an enormous expense, while could
she humble herself to renounce brute force, and
concede them, she would find in Hungary a right
arm in war, and a mine of wealth in peace. Till in-
deed these rights are conceded, Austria will but go
on from bad to worse. It is freedom only and con-
tentment which can develop the resources of Hun-
gary. Illegal taxation, the exclusion of the coun-
try from the sea, the turning of all trade through
the channels of protected and costly manufactures in
the German provinces, and the suppression of self-
government—a policy of this kind it is which keeps
Hungary comparatively unfertile and poor.
It is much to be regretted that all the influence
of our Government on this question goes the wrong
way. Lord RUSSELL, and we suppose Lord PAL-
MERSTON, still seem quite content to sacrifice Hun-
garian independence to Austrian despotism. They
cannot conceive of an Austria without Hungary,
and Hungary herself does not ask for a separation
of the Crowns. But our statesmen's grave error is,
that they yield to Austria) in , her wish to
amalgamate Hungary with her German provinces
—while the Hungarians justly feel themselves,
politically, a far greater and nobler nation than
either of the petty German duchies, or than all the
German provinces together. They might justly de-
mand that the Archdukes of Austria should rather
become Kings of Hungary residentially, as well as
in title and fact, instead of Hungary being swamped
in a Reichsrath got together from a host of petty
States. Our perverse Ministers will not see with
all England in this, and they as grossly misrepre-
sent our nation in Hungary as they honourably
represent it at Turin, Rome, and Naples. How
long is this to.last ? Oar moral support of Austria,
as the facts we have mentioned prove, is
but a support which ends in ruining her
finances almost beyond hope of retrieval ; while it
is given in the teeth of this nation. Has Hungary
no one in the British Parliament to call our Govern-
ment to account ? Will not Sir G. BOWYER say
one word for the aged Catholic Archbishop of
Gran, who, at ninety years of age, stands so nobly
by his country's rights ? Are the members for
oppressed nationalities tired of official snubbing,
and the cold shoulder of both Whigs and Tories ?
But really the most slavish English friends of
Austria could not render her better service than to
call upon her to fill her Exchequer, by substituting
cheap political justice for ruinous standing armies.

H.R.H. the General Commanding-in-Chief has
no sinecure. Happily, however, he has evidenced be-
fore now his resolute determination to shrink from no
responsibility. And the responsibilities thrust upon
him of late, more than once, have been certainly of
no ordinary character. They have required a ca-
pacity for discrimination so unusual, a tact, a deli-
cacy, and yet, at the same time, a vigour and a
promptitude that might not, very surprisingly for
the moment, have bewildered a man of larger ex-
perience than his Royal Highness. Notwithstand-
ing all which, it is but justice to say at once that
H.R.H. has acquitted himself, under these peculiar
and, even in some respects, distressing circumstances
to very general satisfaction.

Deprived, as Her MAJESTY'S Army has now been
or ten years back, of the mature wisdom, the
ripened judgment, the perfect temper, the inimi-
table
precision, and the inexorable firmness that
combined to give so much weight to any decision
pronounced his
by Grace the Duke of WELLING-
TON ---it is so far
it is, in effect, an
an advantage for the Royal Forces,
appreciable security for their
ready and loyal acquiescence in every decision pro-
nounced by his Grace's successor,
that the latter
should be a Prince of the Blood. As such
he is, in a great measure, removed from the
possibility of having imputed to him any
party or personal predilections.
There is, in
the mere accident of his birth, a guarantee for the
serene and equable balance of his judgment.
And
beyond any doubt whatever, it will be admitted
upon all hands, that when a close came at last to
the long rule of the Dake of WELLINGTON at the
Horse- Guards, a very critical and exceptional
epoch
1 may be said to have commenced in the annals of our
military administration. Kings of War there
were, doubtless, before AGAMEMNON. But,
after him, who would not appear diminished ? As
a Soldier, raised above all hissontemporaries, both
(as it were) by the height of his stature and by the
grandeur of his proportions—a GULLI VER amongst
the Lilliputians—hardly any successor could assume
his place excepting under a very obvious disadvan-
tage. Small discredit would it be even to the most
stalwart veteran amongst them all should he fail, in