The Sun.
London, England, 1854-01-30 00:00:00

vived, that last token of their credulity would
have been effectually dissipated by' the now
long since notorious blundering of the last no-
table Vienna Conference. But the popu-
lar antipathy to the diplomatic mystery we
are here referring to, one of long date, and not
one merely summoned into existence by the
errors of yesterday. It has been growing more
and more of late years until it has in these days
of ours, in this new crisis of events, after a peace
of nearly thirty-nine years' duration, become sim-
ply, be it said, intolerable and unendurable. We
can no longer consent to have palmed off upon us
a few enigmatical and meaningless phrases on
the ground of its being inexpedient to make
any premature revelations. At as early a
I period as practicable, a bill will have
to be presented to both Houses, giving the
entire collection of official documents con-
nected with the Eastern Correspondence. France,
with all the restrictions imposed there upon the
Press, and upon the Tribune, has learnt more
during the last eleven months, as to the foreign
policy of her rulers, than England with all the
vaunted freedom secured to both Tribune and
Press by our glorious constitutional Govern-
ments. The outspoken, and humane, and mag-
nanimous despotism of NAPOLEON has iu this
respect set before us an example worthy of imi-
tation. The Moniteur has, in one particular
at least, afforded a salutary hint to the twin
branches of our Imperial Legislature. The manly
candour of M. DROUYN DE L'HuYs has contrasted
favourably with the timorous reserve, not to say
the suspicious over-caution, evinced by the ABER-
DEEN Administration. It will be well for inde-
pendent Members in the House of Commons to
preserve these things at this momentous juncture
in their recollection. It may be salutary, at the
very least it is undoubtedly judicious, to recale
them to the popular remembrance now, when we
are about to witness the commencement of a
Parliamentary Session pregnant with important
consequences, not only to ourselves, but to the
rest of the great nations of Christendom.

Mr. COBDEN wants to see our foreign policy
founded on a principle. We have no hesitation
in saying that the noblest principle on which a
powerful nation can found its foreign policy is that
of the strong protecting the weak. It is the prin-
ciple on which it founds its domestic policy, on
which it establishes its courts of law, and arms
them with the embodied physical force of the
community. It is the principle which distin-
guishes political civilisation far more than any
particular form of government ; and it is the dic-
tate equally of Old and New Testament religion.
The impulse to self-defence is, we believe, of
divine origin; but resentment of another's wrongs,
especially when it prompts to sacrifices in his
behalf, is still more divine. A nation, like an in-
dividual, is never
,acting more thoroughly
under the inspiration of Christianity than when
it is prepared to endure many hardships rather
than see its neighbour nations overpowered by
lawless ambition and insatiable love of conquest.
'We have always felt that the greatest difficulty of
the out-and-out advocates of peace principles was
in replying to such a question as may now be
asked concerning the East. Shall the stronger be
suffered to overpower the weaker, while you look
on with power to prevent it ? We think that an
affirmative reply is the reply of selfishness or
cowardice, or both, not of the noblest instincts
of our hearts, nor of Christianity itself.
We cannot doubt, indeed, that noble principles
and self-interest concur in the long run. As in
a well-governed community the certainty that
society will endure no outrage on the life, liberty,
or property of the weakest of its members results
in commercial confidence and prosperity, so, in
the community of States, the assurance that any
violation of the independence of the smallest will
bring down on the aggressor the effective ven-
geance of all the 'est, is the best guarantee of
peace and its attendant blessings. To bid us use
every means of averting bloodshed before pro-
ceeding to extremities, i no more than we do in
the case of the vulgar burglar or highwayman.
This, however, has been tried to the uttermost in
the present case. Tried while the impudent
robber professed to act the pawnbroker with the
stolen provinces, and refused to part with his
booty except for a still more valuable consid-
eration.

We will not follow Mr. COBDEN at length into
his commercial calculations. The plain fact,
after all, is, that Turkey is a free-trade country,
Russia amongst the most exclusive ; that our
trade with Turkey is fully double our trade with
Russia, and that it is a growing one with the
former country, a declining one with the latter.
Mr. COBDEN himself objects to go to war for
tariffs, and we quite agree with him there, but we
object to staking the claims of nations on each
other's sympathy on their reciprocal profitableness.
We trust it would never occur to us, if we saw a
man in danger of being knocked down and robbed,
to inquire whether he was a good customer of
ours, or a customer at all. We would act by him,
and by a nation also, as we suppose the Good
Samaritan would have acted could he have
been present in time with a pair of COLT'S
revolvers. We fancy he would not have passed
on, keeping them in his pockets, till he himself
was attacked. In a word, we object to settle
great moral principles of this kind in the counting-
house and the Exchange. Money is worth some-
thing we full well know ; but there is something
also worth much more ; and in times of piping
peace there is danger of becoming habituated to
estimate things by Consols and the Board of Trade
Returns, when honour, and our duty as a member
of the family of nations, ought to be the first
standards.

Mr. COBDEN'S gteat argument, however, is, that
our fears of Russia's gaining maritime power,
perhaps supremacy, by taking possession of Con-
stantinople, are groundless, since even, if she did
become such a power, she would have so many more
interests at stake, that we should have, in her
fears, guarantees for her good behaviour. Unfor-
tunately it is not true that a great trade is a check
on the ambition of great maritime powers. The
Dutch and the Venetians to whom Mr. COBDEN
alludes, were, in the days of their maritime great-
ness, notorious examples of the contrary. So was
Spain when her navy was most powerful . We ourselves
can hardly claim to be left out of the list ; in-
deed, from the days of Tyre and Carthage, and
of the ancient Athenians, power at sea has always
been unsparingly used by the nation possessing it,
be its commerce what it might. Strange, indeed,
would it be if Russia should be the first exception
in history, and that a bear afloat should be less
disposed to pounce on the shores of civilisation
than a bear on land to overleap its boundaries
and seize its territories. It is absurd to hope
that a power would use moderation at Esea which
already has shamelessly appropriated its neigh-
bour's possessions on every side. North, South,
East, and West, the border possessions of Russia
are but memorials of barbarian cunning or vie-
-len ce. The broad skirts of her Empire are dyed
in blood.

One subsidiary argument is the appeal to con-
sistency. We are told to carry out our principle.
What is good for Turkey is good for India, for
Lombardy, and for Rome. Weleave our continental
neighbours to settle their part of this controversy;
hut we deny emphatically that our proceedings in
India can for a moment be compared with this
hypocritical crusade of lawless ambition under the
mask of religion. The really unrighteous wars
in India—the present Burmese one, for in-
stance—the press of this country has de-
nounced as fully as Mr. COBDEN himself.
But the majority of those wars were more or less
forced upon us ; they were wars of self-defence
necessitating conquest. But Turkey has long
ceased to be an aggressor. As to the real danger
to European liberties of allowing a semi-barbarian
power to bestride all Europe, from the White Sea
to the Egean and Adriatic, no pane person ought