The Sun.
London, England, 1854-07-29 00:00:00

THE COMING STRUGGLE.

e
One of Bonaparte's amusements at St. Helena was ridi-
culing the folly of Great Britain in securing for herself no
better bargain at the Peace. "So silly a treaty," he Raid,
" as that made by your Ministers for their own country
was never made before. You give up everything, and
gain nothing." Whether we were " silly" or not depends,
not on the epiniou of a military despot, who may possibly
be incompetent to judge of our interests for us, but ou
our own national views and aims. We are now at war,
and we know that Parliament will soon cease its sittings,
and that, during the recess, the plan of another peace may
be concocted in the interests of despotism. No such
scheme must be ratified. After the last great war, if we
had wished for territorial aggrandisetnent, of course we
should have made such a treaty, while we held such influ-
.ence as would have enabled us to help ourselves to a share of
the plunder. It did trot enter into the Great Soldier's
head that the British are not a nation of conquerors
measuring their fortunes by their victories ; but, on the
contrary, so far advanced in civilisation as to regard peace,
rest, self-containment, and regularity of the national life
as worth more than the nominal wealth of au accreti,u of
foreign territory and heterogeneous peoples. It did not
occur to Bonaparte that the progression we desiro is in-
ternal—consisting rather of elevation than exiension. It
did not occur to him that there might be sonnithinw sacred
and solemn to us in the ancient landmarks, anti that we
had rather decline touching them on our own account. It
did net occur to him that a time might come when we
should feel a serene satisfaction, in the micht of the dis
turbances of Europe, that our landmarks are ancient, and
that, while strong to aid the right, we are distracted by
no fears of territorial loss, and no embarrassments from
the stir among stolen nations, forcibly brought under our
rule at the peace. Bonaparte could foresee, with wonder-
ful accuracy, what a man of his own sort would
do in the middle of the century. He predicted the course
that the Czar has taken (though without estimating the
weakness of an empire so governed) ; but it did not enter
his head that in that great day—iu the day .of the_ bursting
of the floodgates, and the tempestuous conflicts of despo-
tisms—it might be a supreme blessing to any European
nation to find itself safe and calm on its island rock, above
the storm, and able to succour the sufferers from it. Such
a blessing is now ours ' • and we shall feel the privilege
attendant upon moral wisdom and political moderation
more and more from year to year, if the present war runs
on, as many wise men anticipate, to a final conflict between
dynasties and peoples. •
Bonaparte thought, as most potentates on the Continent
thought, that it was a very fine thing to cut and carve among
the nationalities, and deal with peoples : s rules a accuse the
Owens and Fouriers of dealing with individuals or associa-
tions; and they all took for granted that the thing was
done the matter settled; and that any disturbance or restive-
ness that there might be would subside under the pressure
of a strong government. It can hardly be but that a doubt
of this must now be haunting many minds which, while
ill at ease, still dread all change. If there happens to be
iu the royal palaces of the continent an atlas of half a cen-
tury old, any casual glimpse of its European contents
must agitate any royal mind. Such a work is probably
among the forbidden books in countries where the press is
not free. It is otherwise with us ; and we, dispassionate
and at ease about the whole matter, can contemplate that
old map of Europe in a way which is perhaps as prophetic
as it is mournful and instructive.
There are the Peninsula and Switzerland and our own
country, bounded as they are now, France nearly so :
they and no others. As for the rest,—Poland first attracts
notice. There it stretches,—beyond the D wine, beyond
the Dnieper,—touching the Baltic, and very nearly reach-
ing the Black Sea. There was no Austrian frontier then
which need keep watch against :Russia; Poland separated
Russia from all the rest of Europe, except a small portion of
the Bla-'k Sea which belonged to Turkey. As for the other
now reduced countries,—there is Hungary stretching along
the Polish frontier, and down to the Danube, and away
to the Adriatic ; and Italy looks as if it were settled down
for ever under its natural boundary of the Alps. Between
them lies little Austria,—so humble as to look as if her
portion of the Netherlands were her chief title to conside-
ration : and there is little Prtissia, niched in, like Rutland
among our English counties. There is Russia, now more
changed than any country, unless it be Austria and Prussia.
No Finland belonging to her then,—no Poland,—no access
to the Danube,—not a foot of ground beyond the Don.
There is Sweden, compact and complete, with her two sides
of the Bothnian Gulf, and her frontier on the Gulf of Fin-
land. There is Nor way in her independence, with herfroier
of fiords on the one hand, and of mountains on the other.that
There is something melancholy enough in the
aspect
despotisms
of
Rms of
old map, where we see, as it were, the d
Europe lying in *ait to seize and devour the victims
whom a greater despot was to turn out to wander within
reach of their clutches.
It was he who, as a sovereign, Bonaparte was not yet a sovereign.
prepared for the removal of
so many landmarks, and enabled Russia to do what a pre-
vious encroachment on Poland and Turkey
were htleylet shtoeeTott.;
she was inclined to do. His conquests
and the consequent redistribution of territory atthethree peace.
And And is it so certain—as the Metternichs, and the Castle-
L:Ve!seinmeetnerael,waanyl. bnieelieetvpedeetphlaet thereseemu
reaghs, and the- Nesselrodes thought—that
no-
thing more to co7icil
were reactionary
now to be becoming much of the same mind.
There is more to come ; for
_that redistribution was
made without and against the assent of the peoples. Bel-
gium could not be kept united with Holland ; anti theunion
of Poland with Russia, and of Hungary and Italy with
Austria is not a whit more real ; and nobody now
supposes it can ever be made so. The essential principle
—its violation of which no arrangement of crowns can
stand in modern times—that it is the people and not the
sovereigns who must decide (when choice becomes neces-
sary) under what rule they shall live—having been wholly
set at nought in the redistribution of Europe, the scheme
may give way at any moment, and must explode in the
fleet conflagration. This certainty, or rather the reluc-
tance of rulers to admit the fact, is the real cause of the
dilatory and hesitating conduct of the war. Delay, how-
ever, will do no good, while it gives a wholly indefensible
advantage to the general enemy. The lesson we English in
particular have to learn from a comparison of the old and the
modern map of Europe is, first, that our business is to strike
a strong and heavy blow at the chief aggressor, without a
moment's delay from apprehension of what cannot possibly
be avoided by delay; secondly, that we must on no account
so entangle ourselves in alliance with any despotic Powers
as to find ourselves on the wrong side in the day of the up-
rising of the oppressed nationalities; and thirdly, that if it
should fall to us to find on our side the Finlanders, or the
inhabitants of the provinces on the Danube, the Dnieper,
the Don, and the Kuban, in their severance from the Rus-
sia which they hate, we must see that the choice shall be
theirs under what nationality they shall range themselves,
or whether they shall has a one of their own. These are
the rules of our duty in the coming reversals or commo-
tions of Europe ; and we shall best show our sense of our
superior blessedness, and our privilege of disinterestedness
in the great cause to which we have pledged oursolvo6, by
discharging the duty well,---Daily Fen.