The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-19 00:00:00

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THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENJNG, DECEMBER, 19, 1862.

11•111101111 MY
A TLANTIC AND GREAT WESTERN
C 3.. RAILWAY (NEW YORK DIVISION).
Coupons due Ist January next will be paid in London at
the Banking House of Messrs. Heywood, Kennard, and Co.,
at the rate of 48. to the dollar. •
London, No. 9, Old Broad-street,
Dec. 16, 1562.

able for the purpose herein stated.—l am, dear Sir, very
faithfully youre,

tion the Duke expressed himself as perfectly satisfied with
the replies given to the various questions.
After visiting the drawing-room, and inspecting the
various drawings and sketches executed by the cadets dur-
ing the past half-year, his Royal Highness and Staff left
Woolwich about 2 o'clock, a salute being fired from a bat-
tery at the garrison.

"ROBERT K. BOWLEY,
General Manager, Crystal Palace.
`' Sir C. Wentworth Dilke, Bart., ece
76, Sloane-street, S. W."

"Exhibition Building, Dee. 18.

" Sir,—Her Majesty's Commissioners direct me to request
that you will thank the directors of (he Crystal Palace
Company for their letter of this day's date, and for the re-
newed proof therein given of the desire of the company to
contribute to the success of the International Exhibition.

FRENCH CIRCULAR ON THE AFFAIRS
OF GREECE.

The following is a translation of the circular
upon the affairs of Greece recently sent by M.
Drouyn de Lhuys to the representatives of France
abroad:—

" I am, at the same time, however, to state that the Com-
missioners are unable to avail themselves of the obliging
offer made by your directors.
"The Commissioners have intimated to his Royal High-
ness the Prince of Wales their decision to abandon the pro-
posed ceremony of the distribution of the prizes. They
have made public their letter to his Royal Highness on the
subject, and they have addressed a communication on the
same effect to all the foreign countries represented in the
Exhibition. They feel therefore that, independently of
other considerations, they could not with propriety request
his Royal Highness's permission to make new arrange-
ments.

Paris, Dec. 4, 1862.
The affairs ;of Greece have occupied the attention of
Europe for some little time. They have more particularly
interested the three Powers who guaranteed Hellenic inde-
pendence, and they have led to continuous communications
between those Powers, the result of which, we trust, will
be complete unanimity of opinion. I propose to give you
a short analysis of the views that have been exchanged, in
order to enable you to inform the Cabinet to which you are
accredited of the considerations by which we have been in-
fluenced. I undertake this task with all the more confi-
dence, because the Emperor's Government is convinced that
it has followed the course most in accordance with its en-
gagements and its principles.

"The objection to holding the ceremony at South Ken-
sington was not the impossibility of lighting and warming
the Exhibition building, but the difficulty and inexpedi-
ency of attempting to do so in the limited time at the dis-
posal of the Commissioners.—l am, Sir, your obedient
servant, "F. R. SANDFORD, Secretary.
" G. Grove, Esq., Crystal Palaoe, Sydenham."

In Greece we have no interests differing from those of the
other two Courts. Without waiting for you to be urged by
a y overtures, our first care was to request the Emperor's
Minister at Athons to oonoert with the represientativoo of
England and Russia such measures as were deemed ne-
cessary.

The rivalries sometimes seen in former days had ceased
for some years. Nothing had recently happened to disturb
this good understanding, and we were justified in hoping
that the dangers it was necessary to provide against in the
present crisis would be easily averted.

These dangers were of two kinds : they might arise out of
the aspirations of Greece yielding to its ideas of aggression
against Turkey; or they might result from the election of
the new sovereign, if it was of a nature to disturb the equi-
librium of the influences upon which the present state of
things in the East is based.

It was necessary in the first place to appeal to the intelli-
gence of the Greeks, and to dissuade them from everything
likely to arouse the susceptibilities of the Porte, or cause it
uneasiness. The cabinets of London and St. Petersburg were
agreed upon this point. Animated, ourselves, by that soli-
citude for Greece which during forty years has inspired
France with so many generous resolutions, we immediately
recommended the Provisional Government to employ all its
influence in calming the national sentiment. We did not con-
ceal from it that our interest would only be secured in pro-
portion to efforts in favour of the maintenance of order and
of peace. Our counsels had no other object than that of
strengthening it in the sentiment of scrupulous respect for
the acts which have determined its relations with Turkey,
and placed Hellenic independence under the guarantee of
European law.
The Emperor's government has regarded from the same
point ,of view the questions connected with the choice of a
sovereign for Greece.

We had wished if possible to carry out the arrangements
of 1832 in all their integrity, by maintaining the crown in
the dynasty to which it was then confined. Public feeling
in Greece did not, however, permit us to hope for a return
of opinion in favour of King Otho, whose misfortunes we
could only deplore, and we soon felt convinced that any at-
tempt to lead the suffrages of Greece towards a Prince of
his dynasty would undoubtedly be a failure. This opinion
was alike shared by the English Cabinet and the Russian
Government. While showing themselves disposed at first
to recognise the candidature of a Bavarian Prince, none of
the three Powers thought that it should be forced upon
Greece. She was then about to seek a Sovereign in another
Royal family.
The protecting Powers thus again found themselves
placed in the position they occupied before inviting King
Otho to the Hellenic throne. Obeying a sentiment dictated
by a just appreciation of general interests, they had bound
themselved in 1827 by express stipulations not to seek any
private political or commercial advantage, and applying
this principle in their selection of the sovereign for Greece,
they signed on the 3d of February, 1830, a protocol which
excluded all candidature on the part of a prince of their
dynasties. They had named at first Prince Leopold of
Saxe-Coburg, now King of the Belgians, but only after
having decided that he no longer belonged to the Royal
family of England. _ _ _

In one sonie we admit that circumstances are no longer
absolutely identical. The three Powers were empowered
by a formal delegation of Greece to dispose of the crown.
Now the Greeks make direct use of their sovereign power,
and France, England, and Russia may have decided upon
exclusions to which they are reciprocally bound without
being justified, perhaps, in compelling the Greeks at this
moment to adopt their views. But, without pretending
that this restrictive clause of the protocol of the 3d Feb.,
1830, is rigorously applicable to the present state of things,
I think I am not mistaken in saying that the spirit of this
stipulation still exists, and that it is permanent, like the in-
terests which dictated it. Its object was to hinder Greece
from finding itself some day under the exclusive influence of
one of the three courts, because that court would then be-
come dominant in this respect, and would soon be so also
throughout the East, the destiny of which would thence-
forth be in its hands.

Guided by these considerations, we have judged the elec-
tion of a new sovereign and the various candidates men -
tioned.

We have had no difficulty in seeing that the Greeks were
intent above all in obtaining a king from some power suffi-
ciently strong to afford them support, and to second their
aspirations.

The Emperor's Government, for its part, felt it to be of
the utmost consequence to be free from all interested views.
If it had been less free from personal considerations—if it
had thought less of general interests and of the treaties
which protect them, it might have offered to the suffrages
of Greece a name not without prestige. It has preferred to
give fresh evidence of its solicitude for the peace of Europe
and scrupulously basing its conduct upon engagements, it
has rejected all idea of a French candidate.
We had at first merely to express ourselves in general
terms upon the candidatures of Prince Alfred and the Duke
do Leuchtenberg. We would not enter into a more com-
plete examination while wo had reasons for thinking that
the British Government was not disposed to give Prince
Alfred to the Greeks. All that we could say at first was,
that the idea of an English monarch at Athens, associated
as it was in the plans of the Greeks with the assumed
abandonment of the lonian Isles by England, would arouse
aspirations among them which might lead to the gravest
complications, and inevitably increase the confidence they
placed in the support of England.
By his origin the Duke de Leuchtenberg had claims upon
the special sympathy of the Emperor's Government. It
might have been fitting, perhaps, to examine whether,
not being really admitted to the rank of the princes of the
Imperial family of Russia who could succeed to the crown,
he was affected by the exclusion stipulated in the protocol
of 1830 ; or whether he was not, in more than one respect,
in a similar position to that in which Prince Leopold of
Saxe Coburg was placed with regal d to the English royal
family at the period when he was chosen by the three
Powers as sovereign of Greece. We preferred to recognise
without hesitation that his accession might also cause some
troubles in the East, deeming, nevertheless, that those
troubles would perhaps be less with a prince who, belong •
ing to the Eastern church, and satisfying the religious sen-
timents of the Greeks, would not be similarly necessitated
to flatter fhe national ambition, and to offer to Greecehopes
of immediate aggrandisement.
In a word, the Emperor's government, in expressing it-
self thus simply uttered an opinion, without deviating in
anything from its line of conduct; it had no candidate;
it was ready to act with England and Russia in assist-
ing Greece ; in enlightening and directing, if necessary,
her choice amid the difficulties she had to encounter in con-
ciliating her wishes with the interests of Europe and the
disposition of treaties.

The English Government proposed to us a common
action, with the view of declaring at Athens that the three
protecting courts i egarded the engagements of the London
protocol as being still in vigour, and that they could not re-
cognise the election of a prince belonging to one of the three
families of France, England, and Russia. The idea of pro-
claiming in each case the obligations agreed upon in 1830
was only in conformity wilh our own intentions; and we
expressed it spontaneously at Athens on the morrow of the
revolution. Thus we replied to the London Cabinet that we
were quite ready to make known to the Provisional Go-
vernment of Greece that we considered ourselves bound by
our former obligations. The principles of our public law
did not, it is true, authorise us to establish in an official
document that we should indefinitely refuse to recognise
any sovereign that had been elected by the free and spon-
taneous suffrage of Greece, in opposition to the engage-
ments of the Powers ; but, with this reserve, we had no
objection to associate ourselves to the views of the English
Government, and to agree with it, and with the Russian
Cabinet, to exclude every candidature not within the con-
ditions prescribed by the stipulations of the London Con-
ference.
The same proposition having been made at St. Peters-
burg, Russia, after having declined collective action,
offered to inform the Greeks, if the English Government,
on its part, did the same, that it considered the stipulations
of 1830 to be still in vigour; but this reply did not satisfy
the London cabinet. IL seemed to see in the hesitation of
Russia in explaining whether the Duke de Leuchtenberg
was comprehended in the stipulations of exclusion, a cir-