The Sun.
London, England, 1862-10-28 00:00:00

—Who shall be for them under these altered circum-
stances
the founder of a permanent dynasty—
namely, a dynasty pledged before GOD and man to
the maintenance intact of a liberal Constitution.
There is absolutely no excuse whatever for any
armed interference with the doings of the people
of Greece, or with the conduct of affairs there
by the newly established Provisional Government,
having as its President M. MAYROCORDATO. Besides
all which considerations, it ought certainly to occur
to any one that the selection made thirty, long and
(for the Greeks ever since) miserable and melan-
choly years ago, by the five Great Powers, has
proved in all essential respects so really pitiable a
failure, that the very least those Great Powers of
Europe should now consent to, in regard to the
future regulation of the affairs of Greece, ought to
be to allow the Greek people to judge and select
freely for themselves.
if judiciously conducted this same settle-
ment of the affairs of the Kingdom of Greece
may lead to the satisfactory solution of a very
formidable and hitherto bewildering cluster of
eastern difficulties. Nothing to this end can
reasonably be looked for, nothing of a happy
i and truly auspicious character, if passion or pre-
judice, if diplomatic intrigues or armed inter-
positions are to be rashly adventured upon
by Russia, by France, by England, by Austria, by
Prussia, under the specious pretence of securing
more effectually the preservation of the Balance of
Power in Europe, and of ensuring to that unfor-

mnate land of Greece the make. believe of an en

lightened and independent government. As the
first and all essential preliminary to the formation
and consolidation of such a government the Five
Powers should with one accord apply the prin-
ciple of Non-Intervention rigidly to Greece, and
they ought to pronounce at once, in order to do this
effectually, in favour of the Greeks making their
own unbiassed selection of a Sovereign : if, as is but
probable, they should decide upon once more con-
centrating the powers of the state (this time wisely
and discreetly) in the hands of a Constitutional
Sovereign. A Sovereign, that is, carrying on the
affairs of the country in connection with a Popular
Ministry and a National Parliament.

As we expected, the whole chorus of Whig and
Tory journals have sung their bitter or con-
temptuous comments on Mr. COBDEN'S speech at
Manchester—but, occupying as we do for the pre-
sent a somewhat neutral position in the contro-
versy, we must confess that so far as the discussion
has yet gone, the great free-trader may claim an
unqualified victory. His opponents do not appear
to us to have touched his arguments. They must
pardon us if we remind them that a policy which
issues to the nation, which almost or solely upholds
it, in the Manchester cotton famine in time of peace,
cannot be sustained by general declamation, and
still less by " abusing the plaintiff's counsel."

This latter course is a very unworthy one. It is
repeated by the same journal which proposed to
place Mr. COBDEN'S property in the custody of his
friends, when that journal was so irate with the
French Treatyand the abolition of the Paper Duty.
The Times has, however, the satisfaction of
recording from time to time the complete
success of the treaty it so abused, and to be thank-
ful that it saved our foreign trade, and spared
the nation a heavy addition to the income tax. It
should remember, therefore, that on blockades also,
it is quite possible Mr.CoBDEN may yet convince the
nation, and that the Times may have the pleasure
of recording and praising the beneficent working of
his policy. Now, the argument, if such calumny
deserves the name, is, that in mere selfishness the
merchants of Euglani, for whose benefit chiefi3 the
Navy of England exists, want to escape all the
burdens incident to war, while enjoying all the
benefit of naval protection. It is wonderful that
the absurdity of such a statement did not strike the
writer. On Mr. COBDEN'S plan, and there perhaps
lies the real grievance with our contemporary, a
merchant navy would be self protecting. Its
unwarlike character would free it from the
risks of war, and, therefore, it would not " selfishly"
ask protection, and then refuse to bear its snare of
the cost. But the truth is, the commercial marine
only asks the same immunity as is now conceded by
all civilised nations to private property on land. It
is as reasonable to call it " selfish" for the Confede-
rates and Federals to demand mutually respect for
private property, as to brand with that name the
demand for immunity of private ships and their
cargoes.

A good deal of the argument is banter of Mr.
COBDEN for wishing to occupy the pedestal of
GROTIIIS. Those who misuse the name of GROTIUS
thus can little appreciate the genius of that great
scholar and thinker. He was not the man to be
deterred from free thought by the names preceding
him. On the contrary, he was just the writer to
be found side by side with the foremost of the
sober, yet earnest thinkers of the present day; and
had he lived to see an age of steam navies and
railroads, to see blockaded Russia disgorging
her produce through Prussia, he would have been
among the first to have seen that blockades had
certainly lost half their value, and perhaps to have
confessed that even a great naval Power would
injure itself more than its enemies by blockading
the ports of the latter. it is poor gratitude to the
great thinkers of a past age to hold them answer-
able for the application of their thoughts, in an age
when all the conditions of fighting itself, and of the
commerce of the world, have become' so widely
different.

We are, of course, told, for the fiftieth time, that
to abandon the right of blockade is to abandon our
sole means of self-protection. Yet the answer seems
very obvious. First, what Mr. COBDEN proves.,
last Russianecan
ea
r
that we cannot, now, effectually blockade a great
power. The de
unanswered,
epzo,fafnrodm,
so te
far
a s
w to
_h
war is quite u
see, must remain so. We want, as judges,
how these facts are met. But next what mean all
our discussions and doings of late years in regard
to ships and artillery. We certainly, as we ought,
rely on the ability of our fleet to meet an enemy's
invading fleet at sea, or still better, to blockade him
in his arsenal ports in his own country—Cherbourg,
Brest, Toulon, not Havre or Marseilles, are the ports
to which we should direct our naval civilities in
case of a war with France; just as in the late
war with Russia, the ports of real importance
were those of Sebastopol and Cronstadt. Though
Odessa was, indirectly, a nurse to the war, yet we
spared it. Why not carry out that policy, and
spare its trade also, so far as it was not " contra
band of war ?" It is really hard to see that dis-

tressing an enemy's commerce to the extent to
which we are now capable of doing :t, can be of
much service to us. Its chief advantage is the
very questionable one of furnishing prize-money
to our sailors; but so much more should we lose
through
any active naval Power's attacks on our
commercial
marine, that it would, probably, be
cheaper for our merchants to subscribe and pay
the prize-
themselves.
In regard the present war, we are told that
the United States, even 4
proposals to abolish had we listened to their
commercial blockades,
would
have declared Charleston the other Southern
ports municipally blockaded_
4 and would limn, an-

complished their end by interdicting trade with i
them. The answer is they could not do so to nations
which acknowledged the South as a belligerent, as
France and England have done. We should have
required them to take the towns, and to replace them
under their jurisdiction before they applied munici-
pal law to them.
But, Mr. COBDEN'S main appeal none of his
contemners have yet had the courage to meet.
Here we are in the midst of a terrible famine, a
calamity becoming worse and worse every day—
one which Mr. COBDEN'S chief opponent is com-
pelled this very morning to write on in the most
desponding tone—and this famine is wholly due to
the contemptuous rejection of the very proposal
now urged by Mr. COBDEN, when it was made by
America herself in 1859. It is, therefore, for the
advocates of commercial blockades to show that any
prospective advantage in regard to our national
defences is so clear and so valuable as to compen-
sate for the certain suffering and loss now entailed
on us by oar assertion of the right of blockade. As
we stand alone on this question, heavy, indeed,
is the responsibility of inflicting so much mis-
chief on ourselves, unless the necessity of so doing
can be shown to be a paramount one. We wait
for the proof of this. We must say we have

not seen it yet.
We are told that the " fundamental fallacy"
which vitiates all Mr. COBDEN'S reasonings is that
nations will not be bound in war by the conventions
they have made in peace. But this is an argument
against all international law, not to mention its
reducing the stipulations of the Treaty of Paris to
folly. The distinguished men who met on that oc-
casion, did not think so badly of their own country
or of other countries, as to imagine that any civilised
nation would agree, as they all did, to pronounce
privateering abolished, and, yet, when war broke
out, would disgrace itself by issuing letters of
marque. If there can be honour among thieves,
surely we may hope for it in belligerent nations.
But more than this; what is solemnly acknow-
ledged as binding international law, consists of
the rules which experience has taught nations
that it is best for them, even in war, to abide by.
Nations quite understand that they cannot, any
more than individuals, be permanent gainers by
availing themselves of every present advantage.
By all means let not commercial blockades be given
up until full discussion has satisfied the intelligent
men of all countries, that even in war they do not
repay the blockading nation for what it suffers
from them on the whole. Sneers and contempt
only prove the ignorance and conceit of those who
use them. They certainly do not admit of refuta-
tion. Argument, however, under the pressure of
the Cotton Famine will go far towards settling the
question.

What is to be thought of the astounding docu-
ment recently published in the columns of the
Kolokol? An address from tie Russian officers in
Poland to his Imperial Highness the Grand Duke
CONSTANTINE. Is it authentic? Can it in any
conceiveable way be authenticated ? For the honour
and credit of the Russian army we earnestly trust
that this may prove to be in some way practica-
ble. Not a signature is affixed to this address.
It comes forth quite anonymotisly. But never
was truth more plainly spoken right out,
than in this extraordinary communication. It be-
gins by saying :—" Your Highness,—The Russian
army in Poland is in a strange and insupportable
position ; it has to choose between being the exe-
cutioner of the Polish people, or refuaing obedi-
ence to its chiefs." And it adds,—" Soldiers and
officers are tired of being executioners. This office
has become detestable to the army. To charge un-
armed crowds, to persecute people praying in the
churches, to arrest by-passers in the streets, to
keep the Poles in a state of siege because they
love Poland—all this becomes daily, in the eyes of
the army, more and more inhumane, and there-
fore criminal." After continuing some time in
the same candid strain, the Address goes on frankly
to ask•—" What shall the army, with its present
spirit, then do ? It will not only not stop the Poles,
it will unite with them, and perhaps no force will be
able to stop it. The officers have not the power nor
the wish to do no. The army does not want to be
a traitor to the Russian people, but before all it
does not want to be an executioner, because that is
dishonest, and soils the Russian name. Your High-
ness! your duty is to save the army. There is but
one way of accomplishing this task—to cease the
vexations and persecutions of the Poles ; not to force
them into a rising; to suspend the state of siege;
to let Poland organise herself freely, according to
the wishes and views of the Polish people. You
must persuade the EMPEROR into this change if
you will annihilate the otherwise inevitable and im-
minent danger." By no possibility could words be
plainer than these words; more comprehensive, more
comprehensible; more signal, or more significant.
What will be said of this document by the supreme
authorities of Russia, by the Imperial Prince
to whom it is addressed, and by the mighty Auto-
crat with whom he is thus manfully asked to
intercede. The issuing of this bold and
startling address is hardly less amazing a pheno-
menon in Russian Poland and in Russia Proper
than the Handwriting upon the wall of the palace at
Babylon in the midst of the orgies of BELSHAZZAR.
" Maze, Tekel, Upharsin"—there are distinctly
shining the awful and luminous characters! Among
all the patriot-statesmen that may yet approach
either the presence of the Grand Duke CONSTAN-
TINE or that of the Emperor ALEXANDER 11. him-
self—is there none with heart, and valour, and
conscience enough to explain distinctly to the
PRINCE and the CZAR the import of this
ghastly intimation ! The Count ZAMOYSKI, 'had
be been allowed to remain a brief while longer at
Warsaw, or afterwards at St. Petersburg, might not
inaptly have enacted the part of DANIEL the Pro-
phet. As it is, however, the warning but just now
addressed, through the Grand Duke CONSTANTINE,
to the autocrat ALEXANDER, is so very plain, and so
glaringly significant that it needs not one syllable
in the way of explanatory comment.

generallySonie more
ovfemthenetsminor incidents of great wars are
.
taut movements.
skill or courage, iTntheeryesteixnhgibitthamnorethiendiivnaidpuora;
comprehend them. .andThweeexmpolrneitseansfilysTfuowlaloß:
and
" Stonewall" JACKSON are pre-eminently of this
stamp—the raid at the back, first of MTLELLAN
then of POPE, with the capture of the personal com-
fort and conveniences of the latter, will serve for a
story in America many a long day, and so will the
last very clever and bold raid of STUART into
Pennsylvania, and his riding fairly round
the whole rear of the Federal army, crossing the
Potomac higher up on the right, and re-crossing it,
laden with spoil, nearer Washington on their right.
For two or three thousand men at most thus to gal-
lop their horses tired—mount fresh Pennsylvanian
steeds, change their ragged coats and worn out
shoes at the expense of Pennsylvanian militia
stores, load a thousand spare horses with like spoil,
and then give the slip to all who were watching
for them, was surely a first rate achievement.
Another incident of a totally different kind,
amongst the last arrivals, oceured at New Orleans.