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. MAVROCORDATO. 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-
' went 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
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-
tunate 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.ConDEN 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, it such calumny
deserves the name, is, that in mere selfishness the
merchants of Englani, for whose benefit chiefij 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 share 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
GROTIUS. 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, ho 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
_past age to hold them answer-
ableapplicatton of their thoughts, in an age
great
for thinkersthe of a
when all the conditions of fighting itself, and of the
have become so widely
commerce
different. of the world,

We are, of course, told, for the fiftieth time, that
to abandon Ihe right of blockade is to abandon our
sole means of self-protection. Yet the answer seems
very obvious. First, what Mr. COBDEN proves,
that we cannot, now, effectually blockade a great
power. The de facto proof from the last Russian
war is quite unanswered, and, so far as we can
see, must remain so. We want, as judges, to hear
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 9" It is really hard to see that dis-
tressing an enemy's commerce to the extent to
which we are now capable of doing it, can be of
much service to us. Its chief advantage is the
t
very questionable one of furnishing prize-money
our sailors; but so much more should we lose
through any active
comrcial marine, that it would, probably, be
naval Power's attacks on our
cheaper for our merchants
the prize-money. to subscribe and pay
In regard to the present War
the United States, even had we listened to their
proposals to abolish commercial blockades, would
have declared Charleston and the other Southern
polo municipally blockaded—and Would have u.