The Sun.
London, England, 1854-06-23 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 1854.

Another of her MAJESTY'S Ministers—not the
• Earl of ABERDEEN, but Sir GEORGE GREY—has
been recently whining over the Evil of War. As
if England were to be frightened into a craven
Peace through the fear lest, in fighting the Battles
of Humanity, she might be weighed down by the
remorse of blood-guiltiness ! The occasion se-
lected by the newly-appointed Colonial Secretary
for the utterance of those drivelling lamen-
tations over the Horrors of War—was the
occasion of his re-election, on the 17th in-
stant, by the burgesses of Morpeth as their
representative in Parliament. " War itself," said
Sir GEORGE GREY, "is not a light evil: nay,
I may say," he added, "that it is the greatest evil
with which the human race can be afflicted."
These are the words addressed by a Minister of
the Crown to the people of England, by way, we
presume, of inspiriting them in that course of
Justice, of Right, and of Honour, upon the vin-
dication of which they have at length, after
mature deliberation, adventured. Is this lan-
guage befitting the lips of a British Statesman,
called to the administration of the affairs of the
forty colonies of England during the crisis of a
war with that gigantic and despotic Empire whose
Ruler is the mightiest of the champions of Bar-
barism, and, as such, the most formidable of all
the living foes of Liberty and Civilisation ? It
is surely somewhat anomalous, in regard to the pre-
sent Cabinet, that while Sir GEORGE GREY is moan-
ing over the Horrors of War, and the Earl of ABER-
DEEN is babbling about the blessings of Peace—as
if any man in his right senses could doubt for a
moment either the one or the other—either that
Peace is fraught with Blessings and War with
Horrors—Lord JOHN RUSSELL is declaring that
the only pacification that can now be looked for
must be one that is " durable, and solid, and
.honourable ;" and the Earl of CLARENDON is
insiStillg that " safety can alone be sought
ill curtailing a Power which menaces the peace
of Xorope and. the cause of progress and civilisa-
tion 1" Litera.lly, in other words, Sir GEORGE
GRIT ins blowing cold while Lord Joan RUSSELL
is blowing hot-.
.the
Earl of CLARENDON is blow-
ing hot while the
ABERDEEN is blowing
cold ! The Foreign Secrets
Secretary
.and the Colonial
Secretary pull in opposite directions The North
and the South, the East '
sith:,,,West, the nadir
matter
and the zenith, ourselvesallan
antipodes,of
the
wara r e
not more opposed than, in this
with Russia, are the Noble Lord. the President of
the Noble Earl th
the Council, and e First Lord
Nobody questions that •
of the Treasury. war 15
dreadful—but to L here comes Sir GEORGE (lazy
to proclaim its sinfulness to the men of Morpeth,
and through the men of Morpeth to the People of
the United Kingdom. Nobody again doubts for
an instant that Peace is holy, and pure, and in
every respect most desirable—but lo I the
himself of every
Earl of ABERDEEN must avail
imaginable opportunity to harp upon the neces-
sity of clinging to it at all hazard,
and of
repur-
chasing it, if once lost, by any sacrifice. Ob-
viously both Sir GEORGE GREY and my Lord
ABERDEEN, both the Colonial Secretary and the
Prime Minister, speak as they have spoken for the
purpose of damping the ardour with which the
country is disposed to carry on the struggle with
the mighty legions of the AUTOCRAT. It cannot
be that they wish to convince any one of the evil
of war and of the. good. of peace—because nobody
denies either the one or the other, as we have
already observed. Yet at the very time when
these two unfortunate Ministers of the Crown—
one of them unhappily the nominal head of the
Administration, are endeavouring to allay the war-
like enthusiasm with which the men of England are
disposed to support her MAJEsTY's Government ,