The Sun.
London, England, 1854-02-11 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1854,

Saith the Earl of ABERDEEN, Prime Minister of
England, though an octogenarian—" I for one
deny that war is inevitable. . . . I do not aban-
don
the hope of peace. . . . Please GOD, no effort
shall be spared on my part to preserve it." Re-
markable words, uttered not in 1853, but in
1854—not eleven months ago, but last evening
in the House of Lords, on the 10th of February.
Uttered while the people of this country still
have in remembrance the failure, again and yet
again, of the Vienna Conference. Uttered with the
blue book still damp from the press, half-thumbed,
in the hands of ourlegislators, both elected and here-
ditary—the blue book, recounting the whole of
those egregious blunders of modern diplomacy which
have illustrated the melancholy history, extending
back from the massacre at Sinope to the silver
star at Bethlehem ! No wonder the Earl of
DERBY intimated his belief, yesterday, that no
one participated in the hope still cherished by the
First Lord of the Treasury—no, not one single
individual among the vast masses of the popula-
tion.

It is tolerably well certain by thii time, that
within a comparatively brief period Ministers
will come down to the House of Commons for the
purpose of demanding pecuniary aid from the
votes of the assembled representatives. An assur-
ance that such a step would sooner or later be
taken was given to the country, it will not be
forgotten, at the close of the second paragraph of ,
her MAJESTY'S Gracious Speech from the Throne,
a paragraph ending with this candid and resolute
avowal—" I think it requisite to make a further
augmentation of my Naval and Military Forces,
with the view of supporting my repre-
sentations." Later on, moreover, her MA-
JESTY'S Speech added, with considerable signi-
ficance, in the sentence addressed exclusively to
the Gentlemen of the House of Commons—" The
estimates of the year will be laid before you, and
I trust you will find that, consistently with . the
exigencies of the public service at this juncture,
they have been framed with a due regard to eco-
ne'reY." Nevertheless, with these explicit
declarations fresh in our memory from the
lips of the SOVEREIGN, the Premier avows that
war is not inevitable, that peace may still
bo regarded as
within the scope of anticipation,
and that for his
part he shall spare no effort that
may lead to its preservation. Fatuity such as
this in a First Minister of the Crown was, per-
haps,never before surpassed,
or possibly even
paralleled in the annals of Constitutional Govern-
ment. With the Russian Ambassador, M. DE
recalled from the BRUNOW,Court of St. James's,
and the Russian Ambassador, M. DE KISSELEFF,
recalled from the Court of the Tuileries
—with the British Minister, sir HAMILTON
SEYMOUR, and the French Minister, General DE
CASTELBAJAC, instructed to take their departure
forthwith from the Court of the Russian AUTOCRAT
at St. Petersburg—with the diplomatic relations
thus manifestly interrupted, with the combined
fleets in the Black Sea, and the probability at
VI V —ia,most any moment of our hearing accounts of a
tse action in the direction of Batoum,or of
bYt:i or even of Sebastopol—the Earl of ABER-
.,:ists that war isnot even now inevitable; that
i;:irliay still be secured ; and that, "please Gon,"
, spare no effort
:21 •4 on his part to promote it!
5..7;"2' tb.e while active measures are being adopted on
liaaa SIN/ /NT