The Sun.
London, England, 1854-01-16 00:00:00

THE FUSIONIST POLICY.

-
Our Paris contemporaries having evinced extra-
ordinary,interest in the argument put forward by
the Times of Monday week, in its leading article,
in reference to the Fusionists and their policy, we
deem it advisable to give that artitle iv-its entirety,
as subjoined :

" If chivalry were to be looked for anywhere in these
degenerate and mercaptile , days. it should be in the
Fusionist press of France. The advocates of a cause
Which has little save one-sided historical recollections
and traditions to'support it, their somewhat sentimental
view of politics should them to place duty above expe-
diency,.and to urge the sacrifice of anything except honour.
But it is always dangerous to reason from antecedent
probabilities, especially in the case of baffled and de-
feated factions, for they generally prefer their animosities
to their principles, and the gratification of a momentary
spite to consistency in action or elevation in opinions.
Of all who have written on the questions at issue be-
tween the Western Powers and the Emperor of Russia,
none have taken so mean and grovelling a view of the
Controversy as the Fusionist press. They have busied
themselves in suggesting the meanest and most improbable
motives for the action of this country in opposition to
Russia. Unable to believe in anything but sordid objects
and .hollow professions, they have set themselves, with a
perverse ingenuity, to persuade the public of France that
their alliance with England is a bargain in which
France has been craftily overreached, and that, instead of
maintaining the violated law .of Europe in the coercion'
of a barbarous and aggressive Power and in the preserva-
tion of the rights of nations, France. is made the mere
tool of British policy, and is fighting for a prize which
.her perfidious ally is destined to bear away. The in-
terest of England, we are told, is " evident and consi-
derable." It consists in her preponderance in the Levant,
in her immense commercial relations with Turkey and
Asia, in confining Russia within the Black Sea, and
driving her from the East towards the West and North.
These are the objects for which Liverpool, Glasgow, and
London, we are told, are content to go to war, and for
which France is to be involved in a profitless struggle.
e have on a former obcasion disposed of miserable
insinuations of this kind so far as regards India, and a
very few words are sufficient to show'the hollowness of
the rest. The whole commercial system of this country
has undergone a revolution which excludes the possibility
of its deriving any advantage from the prosecution of
War. England seeks no exclusive commercial privileges.
Opening her own ports to all nations, she is content to
receive from them such treatment as their more or less
enhghtened views of their own interests may induce
them to give. She asks no pre-eminence, no predomi-
nance ; and where, as in China, she has dictated peace
to a conquered enemy, she made no better terms for
herself than for every other nation in the world.
'Liverpool, Glasgow, and London are well aware
that, in this age of the world, commerce is
not to be extended by arms, nor forced as a burden on
conquered nations at the cannon's mouth. It is to the
interests, not the fears of mankind, that the commercial
spirit of England appeals. Arms may protect her com-
merce, but that commerce must work out its own ex-
tension. The spread of our trade, and the increased de-
mand for our manufactures we find in the power, not in
the weakness, in the progress, not in the barbarism of
foreign countries. Our interests are inseparably con-
nected with the peace, order, and good government of
the world. Every step in advance is to our advantage,
every retrogression to our injury. We have nothing to
fear from the risral industry and eommerce of Russia,
crippled by restriction, borne down by taxes, choked for
want of internal communication, starved for want of
capital, and pining under the withering shade of des-
potism. The Russian fleet may be terrible to the Turks,
but its destruction, should it take place, will add nothing
to our nautical predominance, and will destroy the only
hostage we now possess for the good behaviour of its
master. But there is one thing which this country de-
sires, which Glasgow, Liverpool, and London desire,
and the preservation of which is worth all that
could be wrested from a barbarous enemy by a
hundred successful campaigns. That one thing
is Peace. The bare apprehension of war has already
destroyed more capital and defeated more enterprise
than would have served to convert the coasts of the
Black Sea from a howling wilderness to a smiling gar-
den. Blessed with the means of internal prosperity and
progress such as she never possessed before, it is not the
call of interest, but of duty and honour alone, that Eng-
land permits herself to be turned aside from these allur-
ing pursuits, and is ready to enter on a contest which
she views with reluctance and abhorrence. Such we
believe to be the feeling of France, and, therefore, when
the Fusionist organs ask what gain these countries pro-
pose to themselves by the war in which they are all but
involved, we answer None.
War is a pursuit in which the most brilliant success is
a heavy loss—a loss exactly proportioned to the degree
of social and political advancement of the belligerent
country. • flat France 'and England propose to them-
selves something better than territorial aggrandisement,
political preponderance, or commercial, monopoly. They
propose to establish the claim of the great European
public to consider itself something better, than a band of
robbers, where the strong. plunder the weak, and
those not immediately attacked, view the outrage
with passive indifference. They propose to vindicate
the supremacy of law over violence—of .the con-
science and reason of mankind over barbarous
might ; to preserve the
tyranny and overbearing
faith of treaties and the transactions of nations with
each other from that anarchy which is gnawing the very
vitals of their internal polity.
When they shall have
discharged this sacred duty, when they
shall have chas-
tiSed the aggressive power which tramples on public law
and spurns at the very idea of national independence,
France and England will gladly lay aside their arms and
return to the arts of peace, proud in the consciousness
that they have gained nothing by their sacrifices and
dangers except the respect and gratitude of Europe.
This is the only answer we can give to the question of
the Fusionist journal as to what France has to gain in
t tstruggle
doubt, it would be far
ea withbletoboßthusbaria. No
anches of the Bourbon family,
m r
eagre
united in nothing, we believe, 80 strongly as in their
hatred of this country and their subserviency to the
Czar, to see France false to her treaties, her honour, her
high mission among European States, covering such
baseness under the pretext of moderation and neutrality,
and suing for the employment of mediator, instead of
speaking with the tone of imperial command and autho-
rity. Whatever France lost by the
ejection of the elder
and younger branches of the Bourbon family, there
is no doubt that Russia has every reason to regret
their fall. The Revolution of 1830 intercepted an alli-
ance between the King of France and the Emperor by
no means favourable to the interests of Great Britain,
and Louis Philippe, in a long series of humiliating over-
tures, compromised the dignity of France in order to
procure the support of the Emperor Nicholas for the
title of the Orleans family.. What wonder that the fusion
of these two families should be inaugurated by an attempt
to divorce Francs from the alliance of. a country from
which they have received so many benefits, repaid with
such signal ingratitude ? What wonder that they should
seek' to degrade the policy of their, successor to the level
of their own, and to substitute for an equal and honour-
able league with England in a good cause a base depen-
dence on the crooked policy and barbarous pretensions
of the Court of St. Petersburg ?