The Sun.
London, England, 1836-01-08 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The shuffling, pettifogging Times has taken ad-
vantage of a mere verbal mis-translation in the fifth
number of the Portfolio, to charge us with an attempt
to pervert the meaning of a passage in Prince Lieven's
dispatch to the prejudice of the Duke of Wellington.
The French original runs thus :—" Le Duc de Wel-
lington, a employe l'intervalle qui vient de s'ecouler
enter la derniere session et celle qui se prepare, a
grossir de tout son pouvoir le nombre de ses adherens,
et dans cet interet vital, it a employe plus de soins
et d'adresse que toes ses predecesseurs.' The Port-
folio translation of these words is as follows :—" The
Duke of Wellington has employed the interval be-
tween the last session and the one about to open, in
increasing, to the utmost of his power, the number of his
adherents, and in this vital interest he has employed
more money and address than any of his predecessors."
Every school-boy knows that soins literally means
" diligence," or " application ;" but the translator in
this case turned into plain English the thought
really intended by the Prince to have been expressed,
for, immediately after this sentence, we find another,
concerning the interpretation of which no reasonable
doubt can be entertained. " Not being able," says
the Prince Lieven, still delineating the then Prime
Minister s character, " to conceal from himself the in-
sufficiency of his talents, as a Statesman and an orator,
to draw into the sphere of his opinions the majority of
both Houses, he wished to secure, at least, the number
of votes by means more simple, and which are not less
efficacious in this country than in any other." What
are the " simple" and the " efficacious" means here
alluded to ? Not, perhaps, the actual payment of so
many thousand pounds sterling for votes and proxies—
that is a mode of corruption which has grown out of
fashion since the days of Sir Robert Walpole. No ;
the Duke, according to Prince Lieven's informa-
tion, bartered money's worth for Parliamentary sup-
port—he gave in exchange for that precious commodity,
patronage—civil, ecclesiastical, military, and naval.
Younger sons were provided for—the pension list was
swelled ; all this was not a bank-note, it is true, but it
was something which at the final stage of the process
uniformly assumed, by a wonderful metamorphosis, the
form and the value of that magic paper. If soins,
therefore, be not " money," it is a sort of ingot, capa-
ble, by due voting, of being very easily converted into
the current coin of the realm. By way of repairing
the damage which the dispatch in question has in-
flicted upon the Ministerial character of its Tory
patron, the Times reminds us of the great victories
achieved by his Grace in the Peninsula. We have no
desire to cast a single cloud upon the Duke of Wel-
lington's fame as a soldier. In that capacity he stands
unrivalled. But his Grace is not the only example
of the truth, ascertained by historical experience, that
a mind educated in the camp, and formed to or-
ganise and impel vast military machines, has much
to forget and more to learn before it can com-
mand fortune in the council. The talent for ad-
ministering a great empire, for comprehending its posi-
tive wants, and its true interests at home and abroad,
for forecasting the probabilities of men's wishes, and
for directing their actions to a given purpose, may not
be of a quality superior to that which planned the
lines of Torres Vedras, and won the fields of Sala-
manca and Vittoria ; but undoubtedly it is a talent
perfectly distinct from the other in all its elements, and
in that course of thought which can alone mature it to
perfection. The whole progress of the leader of our
armies has been a path of fight that never can fade
from our :rational records. The career of the same man,
as the director of our domestic and external policy, has
been signalised by the most egregious inconsistencies
and blunders. He refused Catholic emancipation until
he coerced Ireland to resistance; he then gave her
what he had no longer power to deny—be gave it
in a manner that produced no gratitude—and he
endeavoured to oppose its natural consequences.
In that struggle he fell. He acknowledged Donna
Maria as Sovereign of Portugal, and yet, such
i.vas the flexibility of his mind in the presence of party
prejudices and passions, that before he left office he
was on the eve of violating the national faith by re-
cognising Don Miguel. His first act on assuming
the premiership was to declare the destruction of the
Turkish fleet at Navarino an "untoward" event ; ne-
vertheless, while our armaments were under his control,
he suffered Russia to cross the Balkan, to descend
into the plains of Romania, and to approach within
two days' march of Constantinople. A battle fought
in the time of one Government was, in the Duke's
estimation, unfortunate, because it weakened Turkey ;
but an invasion of the same State, calculated alto-
gether to annihilate her independence, which he might
have prevented or resisted, he permitted to be success-
ful ! It will require a century of sound policy in our
Councils to redeem this empire from the errors com-
mitted by the Conqueror of Waterloo, in his capacity
of First Lord of the Treasury. He was not
long enough Foreign Secretary to accomplish all the
mischief he had begun. The Times sneers with its
wonted effrontery at the opinions expressed some years
ago by Lord Holland upon the subject of Our alliance
with Turkey. When that Noble and accomplished
person delivered those sentiments, our alliance with
Turkey was a connection we had no great reason to be
proud of. The Ottoman empire was then under the
sway of the Janissaries—the Tories of that region ;
neither life nor property was secure ; law and order
were trampled upon beneath the hoofs of those armed
banditti ; the commerce of our merchants frequently
became the prey of their rapacity, and the persons of
our Ministers were often endangered by their violence.
Superstition, and its offspring, fanaticism, held the
capital in perpetual terror—and massacre and con-
flagration periodically realized its worst forebodings.
Lord Holland has nothing to repent of in having de-
clared that such a country was unworthy of being
allied to England. But now, the Janissaries are no
more. The abuses of Tory domination and bigotry
have yielded in Turkey, as in England, to bold and
searching and sagacious reforms. The Sovereign of
that empire, though not free from faults, has felt the
necessity of adopting European improvements in every
department of his Government. Ever since the hour
when the destruction of his Tory masters was com-
pleted, he has applied himself incessantly and effec-
tively to the extirpation of all abuses, and the- entire
regeneration of the national institutions. Life, pro-
perty, religious and civil liberty, are as inviolable now
in Turkey as in England. Our alliance with her has
at present nothing in it calculated to repel the lofty,
the unchanging, the truly English, the purely Whig
principles and feelings of such a Statesman as Lord
Holland. Besides, when that nobleman expressed the
sentiment alluded to, the daring designs of Russia had
not been developed. The Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi
had not been concluded. The Warsaw Speech had
not been spoken. The Throne of the North was then
occupied by a Prince, who felt that he owed a large
debt of gratitude to England, for the subsidies which
enabled him to save his empire, and for the prostra-
tion of his irreconcileable foe. But by whom has he i
been succeeded? By a Czar who outrages all the
decencies of Royal bearing, by the ferocity of his
language and the violence of his conduct—by a per-
son who, having no intellectual superiority of his own
to depend upon, has become the willing and degraded
instrument of an aristocracy, as fanatical, as igno-
rant, as base and as ravenous, as the oligarchy
which still struggles for ascendancy amongst our-
selves. If Lord Holland and his colleagues were
capable of conceiving the notion that Turkey
ought to be surrendered to the mercy of such a Calmuc
as this, we should be the first to resist folly and imbe-
cility so enormous and unpardonable. We should call
upon the country to expel such Ministers from the
Cabinet, and to set upon their foreheads a brand of in-
delible disgrace. But we have the satisfaction to
know that their deliberations are all that we and the
country can desire upon this subject—a subject every
day becoming of more pressing importance. Their
path is marked out. They see clearly the object which
they have to attain ; they have declared through their
proper representative, that the independence of Turkey
can perish only with the existence of England herself.
The time of action is not yet arrived ; if it had, the
Government is prepared for it. Of this the country
cannot long remain ignorant after Parliament shall have
assembled.—Morning Chronicle.

The appearance of a series, or rather a variety, of
documents, asserted to be " State papers," illustrative

of the history of our times, which have been published
at weekly intervals, commencing with the 28th of last
November, under the appropriate title of the Portfolio,
excites a good deal of attention. The first document,
which in fact constitutes the whole of the Portfolio
No. 1., is a memoir of Count Bernstorff to the King
of Prussia, dated in January, 1831, and therefore
about coeval with the Grey (Reform) Ministry, in
which will be found the prospectus and principles,
though not the first suggestions, of the Prusso-Ger-
man commercial league. With that we have nothing to
do at present. N 0.2 contains, Ist, a suppressed passage
of the Warsaw speech, with observations. The said pas-
sage is neither more nor less than an avowal that, hence-
forward, Poland has no rights—that Nicholas has no
duties to discharge towards her, except in his quality
of " Emperor of Russia,"—that is, the duty of sacri-
ficing whatever is Polish, absolutely and completely,
to the interests or demands of Russia. " On the
whole I am satisfied that things have arrived at that
point at which I am only Emperor of Russia. It is
in that character that you belong to me." He deigns
no longer to wear the mask of King of Poland. 2d
and 3d, two official papers on the state of Germany,
the latter of them drawn up under the direction of a
Russian Minister at St. Petersburgh, and distributed
(liberally !) amongst several of the German Govern-
ments. No. 3 is an important number. It offers some
striking observations on the Warsaw speech, on the
throwing away of all disguise by Nicholas, and on the
studied publicity given to that speech by the agents of
the Russian Cabinet throughout Europe. It is re-
marked that " the speech at Warsaw was addressed to
the Dardanelles. It announces a new series of mea-
sures of a far more decided character than those which
have preceded."—" The mask was worse than useless ;
it is now cast aside. The Muscovite banner is dis-
played, and feints and ambuscades give place to
a forward movement, where rapidity and counte-
nance are become the means of success." After
stating that a little while ago people were flat
enough to ask each other " Whether Russia had any
" mischievous designs ?" the Portfolio proceeds to say,
that it is no longer her designs that are discussed; it is
her intentions, which she has herself made known, and
that the question for Europe is transferred from a con-
sideration of the " projects" of Russia, to a calculation
of her power. It is manifest from daily occurrences
that Austria has begun to open her eyes more clearly
to the rapid and determined movements of the Russian
Government—to the effect of them upon the position
of her own northern and eastern frontier—and to the
necessity of being prepared for a course of action speedy
and decisive. But it is justly observed in these papers,
that the condition of Austria has within these six years
changed considerably for the worse. The treaty of
Adrianople, which so humbled and enfeebled Turkey ;
the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, whereby the latter was
laid utterly prostrate ; the annihilation of Poland, as
an obstacle in the path of Russia, and the establish-
ment of the Prussian league, by which a power es
sentially adverse to Austria has been infinitely rein-
forced and aggrandized in the heart of Germany, have
deeply impaired the self-dependency of the Austrian
empire, and will compel it, under any crisis, to
a more extensive reliance upon the co-operation of
friendly Powers in the West, than if the Emperor
Francis and Prince Metternich had exercised a little
earlier vigilance. Our apprehension is, that whatever
animation has been latterly displayed by the press, in
its strictures upon Russia, and its appeals to opinion,
is scarcely felt by that pertinacious Court as a circum-
stance upon which it had not already reckoned. The
Foreign press may even be regarded by Russia as a
safety-val‘i'e, through which national resentments at her
• audacity are harmlessly carried off and dispersed. The
Russian Government is supported at home in all its
most aggressive projects, by a worse than semi-
barbarous people, who have no sympathies with
Europe, and none but antipathies towards the un-
happy Poles, on whose behalf other nations
have felt and spoken, but without the energy to act ;
or towards the Turks, who, it is possible, may like-
wise fall a prey to the same inert and imbecile compas-
sion of the Western Powers, not capable of being roused
into manly effort or effective aid in f tvour of a brave
people, galled, trampled on, and tortured by
the public enemy of all national independence, all
human civilization, and peaceful prosperity. Few
things are more clear, from passing events, than that
Russia has now flung down the gauntlet : and that as
regards Europe, the long-worshipped " equilibrium"
—as regards Great Britain more especially, the most
pregnant resources of her political and maritime great-
ness, depend on the gauntlet being promptly and re-
solutely taken up. How far can we hope for such an
honourable result from the existing Whig-Radical
Administration ? We have reason to believe that
nothing would more effectually disconcert or paralyze
the machinations of " the movement," meaning the
revolutionary projectors here, than a bold and proud
assertion of the rights of England as against Russian
rapacity. It cannot be forgotten that Lord Holland,
riot many years ago, when the Duke of Wellington
called Turkey the natural ally of England, declared on
the contrary his own desire that Russia should break
up the Turkish empire, and take it into her own keep-
ing. He—honest man—saw no evil to be anticipated from
Russian ambition ! How much of the slowness and hesi-
tation to act against Russia, which we always thought
and said without reserve were exhibited by the Duke
of Wellington, when she had her foot upon the neck
of Turkey, may have been fairly attributed to such
demonstrations as that made by the Whig auxiliary of
the Muscovite oppressor ? What an earnest did it
not contain of the difficulties and embarrassments
which would have been got up by the Whig faction
to obstruct the bravest and most generous exertions of
this country under the ablest War Minister by whom
they had ever been directed ? The illustrious Duke
could not have forgotten the agonies inflicted on that
faction of which Lord Holland had then for 20 years
been among the most prominent leaders, by each suc-
cessive triumph achieved for the British arms under his
command in Spain—he must have remembered, as
every Englishman must, who reads the Parliamentary
records of the six years from 1809 to 1814 inclusive,
the screech-owl clamours with which every despatch
from the great soldier announcing a fresh victory over
the foreign foe was hailed by this disgraceful faction.
Those who were for abandoning Spain to Bonaparte,
it is no wonder were, some 16 or 17 years afterwards
for surrendering Turkey to the enlightened and merci-
ful Czar ; nor can we doubt that the manifestation of
such a spirit by Lord Holland and the Humes of the
other House must have inspired some fears into the
Wellington Ministry of the latter period, lest if they
should resort to coercive measures in defence of British
interests against Russia, the rabble of pedantic dreamers,
and twopenny economists, might have withheld the
means of all vigorous and successful operation. He re-
monstrated with Russia, and in some degree restrained
her. He did no more. The real estimate made by Rus-
sia of the Duke of Wellington, and her inward dread
of his sagacity and vigour, may be guessed at from
some of the documents in the subsequent numbers of
the Portfolio. It is not from the words employed
that we are disposed to judge, so decidedly as from the
temper of the Russian functionaries. There is the ill-
humour of spite and soreness in every paper wherein
they mention the name of our illustrious countryman.
They attempt to misdescribe and to undervalue him,
and to screen their mortification behind the language
of assumed disparagement. They knew that such
expressions were grateful to the angry Czar. When
they talked of his not seeing the consequences of his
own acts, they meant only that he had penetrated the
Russian purposes. It was not for nothing that an
intriguing Ambassadress had the assurance to threaten
George IV. with the resentment of Russia, if he should
select the Duke of Wellington for his Minister. Was
that an indication of contempt or fear, we should like
to ask ? So it is stated in the Portfolio, No. 4, that
after an " attentive examination of the despatches of
Russia during several years, there were, except Prince
Metternich, but two men in Europe who had given
Russia any trouble—Mr. Canning and the Duke of
Wellington." That it is true " she had overreached
the Duke of Wellington, but she had to fight for it,
and congratulated herself on the victory : ' whereas
" Lord Grey's Cabinet in the East, and in Greece,
had left Russia absolutely nothing to desire. It had
the merit of selecting Lord Ponsonby for the post he
at present occupies." Such are our hopes from Lord
Palmerston, the fag-end of Lord Grey's Russia-

loving Cabinet. Heaven send us a good deliverance.
We observe that nothing escapes the rancorous
knavery of these low-minded men. In one of their
journals within the present week, a long tirade is le-
velled at the Duke of Wellington, founded on a false
translation of a word in the fifth number of the Port-
folio. It is said, and played upon throughout a whole
article, that his Grace had employed more " money"
and address than any of his predecessors in increasing
the number of his adherents about the beginning of
1829. 11l as M. Matusewic or M.Lieven may have been
disposed to speak of the Duke, they did not say a word
about money. The French phrase is "II a employe
plus de sozns' et d'adresse que tous ses predecesseurs"
—more " diligence and skill." But a regard to truth
was too much to look for from a Radical, because the
Duke of Wellington cannot be injured by it.—Times.

Since the preceding remarks were printed, we have
received the following letter, and certainly it comes
from a source entitled to every respect. Still we are
not disposed to agree with the writer that these alleged
State papers are all forgeries. We well know that a
regular manufactory of literary forgery exists, and has
long existed, at Paris, and it is quite possible that
these documents have been submitted to the inspection
and revision of the degraded crew of fraudulent opera-
tives who manage this: French " Brummagem." But
in the whole catalogue of labourers in that disgraceful
smithy, we do not believe that there is one man who
has either political knowledge or literary skill sufficient
for the composition of these documents. It is very
probable that some of the documents are imperfect, and
that some of the journeymen-forgers may have been
employed to develope obscure expressions, or to fill up
occasional " lacunes ;" but this, we suspect, is the full
extent of the process performed in that workshop. It
is, however, quite as probable that the documents are per-
fectly genuine; for " Diplomaticus" has not to learn that
the portfolios of Statesmen are not always sealed books,
and that a confidential person is not always identical
with a person worthy of confidence. The internal
evidence, except perhaps in the last published letter of
Count Pozzo di Borgo, is in favour of the genuineness
of the papers. The disparaging and artificial tone
which diplomatists adopt, in order to impress an idea
of their own superior sagacity, would, we dare say, be
found in every private despatch of every Minister in
Europe ; for an Ambassador thinks it his duty, ac-
cording to the " good old rule," so frankly avowed by
Sir Henry Wotton, not only " to tell lies to the Court
where he is stationed, for the good of his country,"
but also to tell lies to his own Court for the good of
himself. The game is sometimes a dangerous one, and
a clumsy or rash player is frequently ruined ; but an
adroit and experienced gamester, whatever mischief he
may do to others, is pretty sure to escape harmless, if
he does not carry off the stakes. We could mention
two or three names, but we hate personalities. We
are, however, obliged to " Diplomaticus" for his hint,
and shall certainly look over the future Numbers of the
Portfolio w:th very scrutinizing care.