The Sun.
London, England, 1854-07-24 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, JULY 24, 1854.

The grave questions which to-night will be put
in issue are not, and ought not, to be made the
subjects of a mere party debate. They may be
stated in many forms, and illustrated by varied
details, but they may all be resolved into two
general ones. Has the Ministry erred on the Rus-
sian war question or not ? and if it has, is the
error attributable to venial or to censurable
causes ? We sincerely regret to be compelled to
take the more painful view of both questions.
We believe the Ministry has erred, and that it has
erred through the culpable predilections of some of its
most influential me mbers. Individuals in the Cabinet
doubtless sympathise largely with the national feel-
ing, but we speak of it as a body which votes in
secret (though it will not let other Englishmen do
so), and which we know only by its resolutions as
developed in action. We have, indeed, much fear
that even those members of the Cabinet who share
not in English hatred of Russian ambition, du-
plicity, meanness, and despotism, have yet far toe
much goodwill towards another despotism quite
as cruel, perjured, and mean—the despotism sym-
bolised by Spielberg, and worthily represented by
the Archduchess SOPHIA and her paramour JELLA-
MICH ; and between these two tendernesses for
two of the vilest despotisms of the age, the Turks
have been only half helped, Russia has been
spared, we have had a Sinope, a loss of the Tiger,
and a Galatia Karleby, but see Sevastopol fortified
by land as well as by sea, Cronstadt laughing at.
vessels too big to molest it, and the dangers and
losses to be ultimately incurred by our armies and
our ships incalculably increased. If the national
feeling succeed in compelling the Cabinet to take
" material guarantees" from Russia, it must now
be at the cost of tenfold more British and French
blood than would have been needed had we but
had from the beginning a Ministry which really
hated the CZAR as he deserves, and which would
have said to Austria, " With you, if you like ; but
if you don't like, then mind your own business
and let us attend to ours, at the peril of you
know what if you don't."
We have read dispassionately and carefully the
Counsel's speeches for the Ministry in the Edin-
burgh, but, all petty details aside, we ask how ,
any mortals who knew the odious and hypocrisies]
ambition of the CZAR by the S
rrAtoula cor-
respondence ;—and who knew the helples_ sness,
the bankruptcy, and the prostration es Ans_
tria, now shuddering at the ghosts es
numerable patriots, now trembling at inthe
S of the Northern Bear--how any set of me,
g -
could place the least faith in either ; or how they
could be justified in dealing with either as a reli-
able or hopeful government ? We cannot think
that men of common sense could doubt that the
conservation of despotism and the acquisition of
territory was the real object of two such states.
Hence we are unable to disbelieve that the two
vilest governments of their magnitude on earth
had, in fact, more of the good-will cf our Cabinet
than the down-trodden nations of Europe. To spare
Russia Sir CHARLES NAPIER was sent without gun-
boats and troops to the Baltic, and our Black Sea fleet
lingered in Besika Bay and the Bosphorus, when
it ought to have prevented Sinop-, have opened
the Danube—a thing now just shown to be prac-
ticable, and have destroyed Sevastopol before it
had time to accumulate its present garrison. To
please Austria the Turks were deprived of a Po-
lish legion, and Polish and Hungarian officers,
much as they needed them ; and Turkey's worst
enemy was forced upon the SULTAN to occupy
the provinces which his troops were libe-
rating a consummation happily prevented
by the poltroonery and barefacedly selfish perfidy
(f Austria herself. Much as we rejoice that
OILER, PASUA has reads-ced Allso:riqn occmpati'm
of the provinces superfluous, yet even the lead-
ing Vienna journal in this country cannot conceal
that it sees as plainly as we do the deplorable
shabbiness of a great Military power being ready