The Sun.
London, England, 1854-05-06 00:00:00

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LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 6, 1854.

It appears to be a conspicuous characteristic of
the policy of her MAJESTY'S Government that it
. should insinuate itself into any course of proceed-
ing by a series of changes exquisitely graduated.
There is nothing, that is to say, bold or brilliant
in its proceedings. It does nothing that can sur-
prise the public into enthusiasm—absolutely no-
thing that can by possibility captivate the
admiration of the community. Does it resolve
upon entering upon the most just and honourable
war ever thrust upon a great nation by the crimes
of a lawless adversary ? It does so not with a
decision in any way befitting either the dignity of
the Crown or the glory of the Empire, but by a
succession of diplomatic manoeuvres, bringing the
country by slow, by agonisingly slow degrees
to a position of at first dubious, but ultimately
indubitable, hostility. Is this just, and honourable,
and popular war accepted as an unavoidable neces-
sity by the unanimous approval of the population ?
The Ministry contrive to drive slowly in, like a
wedge in some machine of torture, the gradually
increasing demands of the supplies requisite for
the liquidation of the debts incurred by the fitting
out of our military and maritime expeditions.
Instead of repelling the flagitious and unjusti-
fiable aggressions of the AUTOCRAT at once by a
commanding display of determination ! Instead
of candidly coming to the nation forthwith for
funds in every way sufficient for meeting, without
further delay, the earlier difficulties of our warlike
expenditure ! It has not been after this fashion
that matters have been conducted across the
channel. There—while Ministers in England
were reprobating the notion of any necessity
' arising for a rupture with the CZAR, while the

Earl of ABERDEEN was persisting in the security
of peace and in the integrity of the designs of
the AUTOCRAT—M. DROUYN DE L'HUTS was
publishing, from time to time, in the columns of
the Moniteur, those masterly state papers which
were nothing less than a sequence of dignified
protests against the craft and criminality of the
Russian Cabinet, protests penned by the French
• Minister for Foreign Affairs in the name of the
imperial Government. Then, again, as to the war
funds, the conduct of the Emperor NAPOLEON'S ad-
ministration has been not one jot less magnanimous.
, No insinuation there of the monetary wedge of
. torture. But a manly appeal, in the first instance,
•to the patriotism of the population. Nobody will
have yet forgotten how that appeal was responded
' to, by the proferrecl contribution of nearly double
the proposed loan of 250,000,000 francs. How
is it here with ourselves ? Why, the moneys
needed for this extraordinary expenditure, instead
of being acquired by a grand, and prompt, and
. becoming appeal to the patriotism of the commu-
nity, is being squeezed out in driblets by an intol-
erable arrangement of the Chancellor of the Ex-
. chequer. First of an, the
country is en-
couraged with the statement that no loan
whatever will be required and then out
sneaks, a week or two afterwards, that pro-
ject of the Exchequer-bonds, amounting,
to all
intents and purposes, to the very loan which the
_nation had been before assured would be unnecessary.
Additional supplies are asked from the Rouse of
Commons by the Secretary-at-War and by the
First Lord of the Admiralty, and soon after these
enlarged estimates for the army and navy are
• granted with an unstinting hand by the paying
-branch of the Legislature, further supplies are
:-demanded as supplies that are supplementary.
And so, bit by bit, million by million,
the wherewithal for the carrying on the
war against the Russian AUTOCRAT is being
doled out by the people of England. Not
that this is in any manner owing to niggardliness
•on the part of our population. But that the
Government is lacking in courage and in decisiqp,
-.now in regard to the war funds, just as it had
previously been in regard to the war itself, when
it was "pottering" over the arrangement of the
Blue Books afterwards laid before Parliament,
instead of attending to bolder proceedings than
those protracted and abortive negotiations. We
still in the rut of this gradual Ministerial de-
scent from the possible good to the actual evil--
in a monetary sense. We were so moving on-