The Sun.
London, England, 1854-01-07 00:00:00

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LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 1854.

January finds events at last thickening. So
rapidly, indeed, that we have scarcely leisure to
regard otherwise than cursorily those exhilarating
but unhappily fallacious rumours of a thorough
change in the administration of affairs at the
Horse Guards—barely a moment to heave a pass-
ing sigh over the death, in his eighty-ninth year,
of the illustrious PLuNKET—hardly more than a
fleeting opportunity to estimate as it ought to be
estimated this extraordinary rise, in the depth of
winter, simultaneously in the price of bread and
coals—matters, to a certain extent, of almost
secondary importance when weighed in the
balance against the probability of a general war
among the chief States of Christendom. Sooner or
later we have all along maintained that
that war would come inevitably. During
the last ten or eleven months we have insisted
upon this, and we have asserted again, and yet
again, and yet again that the struggle could only
be rendered more disastrous by delay, the cause
of contention being thereby deplorably compli-
cated, and the evil passions of the aggressor being
consequently roused to an extraordinary increase
of rage and temerity by the weakness evidenced
by our prolonged diFlomatic negotiations. Unfortu-
nately, our warnings have all along been
more clearly justified by events as the time has
elapsed, and occurrences have become multiplied.
Everything has failed in the way of pacific con-
trivances for the effecting of a bloodless reconcilia-
tion. Russia, has advanced both in the audacity
and the criminality of that monstrous policy which
was first announced to the world at large by the
arrogant and lawless course pursued by the CZAR

towards the Sublime Porte, through the mission
of Prince MENSOHISOFF. There have been san-
guinary conflicts both in Asia and in Europe.
There have been, meanwhile, as frequent evidences
of moderation on the part of the SULTAN
as there have, been reiterated indications of
ferocity, obduracy, and implacability on the part
of the Russian AUTOCRAT. Throughout all which
the allies of Turkey have been drawing up fresh
proposals, emending old notes, striking out pass
sages in this ultimatum, and interpreting new
ones in that—until the latest document from the
hand of our Master-Diplomatists has borne some-
what of the blurred and withered aspect of an
over-used palimpsest manuscript.
Until—
worse than that brutal massacre of the
Turks has evidenced, more glaringly than
ever the barbarity of the Government of St.
Petersburg and the heinous guilt of our mistaken
and monstrous procrastination. Throughout both
France and England indeed, it has been at once
recognised that the butchery at Sinope has been
a deadly blow directed by Russia against the
two Western Powers—the fleets of those Powers
being. actually at the time of that disastrous inci-
dent quietly at anchor at Beycos in the Bos-
phorus—what for ?—for the protection against
such assaults of the supreme councils at
Constantinople. Thereupon Lord PALMERSTON
retires from the ABERDEEN Cabinet in dudgeon,
and is generally understood to have only been
induced to return to it on condition of a more
energetic policy being adopted by our Administra-
tion.

While the Emperor NAPOLEON -hitherto
restrained by an honourable remembrance 'of his
famous speech at Bordeaux, anti still further by
the timidity and the German leanings of the Bri-
tish Coalition—at length avows his determi-
nation no longer to tolerate the continuance
with impunity of this • monstrous course of
duplicity and political criminality on the
part of the Autocratic Government of St. Peters-
burg. Whence, of course, it at length comes to
pss—as we have insisted from the outset that it
must ultitely—that more active measures
are forced. upon the hitherto vacillating,
and hesitating, and procrastinating, and
temporising Allies of the Sultan Ann- TM'
MEDJID. So that orders at last ° emanate
from Downing-Street and the Tuileries that the
combined fleets are—not to enter the Black Sea I
No—not that, even now after all these wondrous
provocations. No—but that they are to send two
vessels, a British man-of-war and a French man-of-
war out of the•Bosphorus, and steaming across the
Black Sea to Sebastopol—there to inform the
Russian Admiral that in the event of his leaving
that port and advancing with his fleet from the
Crimea, he will at once be fired into by the
maritime armaments of France and England.
Armaments that will then, of course, hasten at
length from their anchorage in their snug rallying
nook of Beycos in the Bosphorus. So far at
least this is good good at any rate when
contrasted with the past stagnation. Happily,
too, the announcement of these modifications of
policy come to light simultaneously with the offi-
cial publication at Paris of that masterly State
paper from the hand of M. DROUYN DE L' HUN'S
—the circular, dated the penultimate day of 1853,
announcing in dignified terms the blended vigour
and moderation animating the Councils of the
French Government.

The modern efforts to establish Reformatory
Schools for young criminals must attract the sym-
pathy and obtain the support of the whole com-
munity. The public, the press, and the Govern-
ment, all look upon them with deserved favour,
and they are not unlikely next session to receive
such support and encouragement as it is in the
power of the Legislature to give. It is, ho wever,
to be feared that, in a work of this nature, the
difficulties in the way of legislative aid, however
willingly it might be rendered, will turn out to be
very formidable. Everything urges the vigorous
prosecution of these efforts. The youth of the
unfortunate subjects of them appeals to our com-
passion. We resent for the moment the clever
wickedness of some young rascal guilty perhaps of
a petty theft ; but we soon remember that, though
young in years, he may be old in the discipline of
crime ; that orphanhood, or, far worse, the com-
pulsion of dissipated parents, may have made him
from tender years a vagabond and a thief ; nay,
it is quite a possibility that he may have been, as
a babe, hired out to a worthless female mendi-
cant to be rocked as it were into a life of sharping
and roguery. At the very worst, the incorrigible
young villain, with whom neither decent parents
nor masters desirous to improve him could do
anything, is but a young villain after all, and
we cannot willingly surrender youth to ruin.
In addition to these natural feelings for the
young, we have now the weighty conside-
ration pressing on our very selfishness that
we must keep the criminals we grow. We are
no longer allowed to export them. The colonies
have declined to become the sink of the mother
country, and we must either produce fewer crimi-
nals or bear 'the sight of their chains and forced
labour under our own eyes. For the latter a
partial provision was made in the last sessions of
Parliament, and it is a gratifying fact, that, for
some little time previously, benevolent individuals
had been giving special attention to the preven-
tion of youthful crime, by converting the depraved
lad into an industrious and self-supporting member
of society.

The great meeting at Birmingham is a plain
proof of the interest which the active friends of
this movement have succeeded in creating ; and
that conference will certainly be followed by some
practical results. We heartily congratulate Lord
SHAFTESBURY, Mr. HILL, Mr. STURGE, and the
other benevolent labourers in this cause on their
success thus far. One remark we think it im-
portant to make. There was some difference of
opinion at the conference, as might be ex-
pected when so many gentlemen met who
had all been working enthusiastically, but inde-
pendently, for the same objects. Now, we are all
mere learners as yet in this department. Foreign
institutions are by no means adequate tests of the
best modes for English lads who grow up under
such different auspices ; and our own are but in
their infancy. We need, therefore, full and fair
trial of every method. It is a subject which will
bear such trial, unless we foolishly venture at once
upon some costly national project, with a costly
array of commissioners, inspectors, and the like.
The right way will never be found without sacri-
fice, nor without the trials of numerous philan-
thropists, all full of confidence in their several
schemes.
A few, or even many, failures are of
comparatively little consequence, as at the worst
the lads cannot be injured. The grand thing, we
believe, is to encourage at first every effort con-
ducted by persons whose character, station, and
good sense warrant a. reasonable belief that they
will do something. Some general powers, we
think, might be conceded with advantage to the
Home Secretary for authorising occasional grants
of money, and for empowering the local authori-
ties to place the lads for requisite terms at such
schools. While, of course, the liberties of the
subject must be guarded, yet it is folly to
be pedintic about the liberties of youths,
at an age when they ought to be under
some control, and when it is but too plain that
they are beyond the control of parents or masters.
Schools of this kind ought, indeed, to be fully
open, as they are voluntarily at present, to the
neighbouring magistracy, and to all respectable
persons who may wish to inspect them. They
are not prisons, but schools ; it is absolute go-
vernment for instruction, and not for punishment;
and the eye of the public will be at once an en-
couragement to the scholars, and a check to any
improper exercise of authority on the part of the
master.

These remarks have been suggested to us by the