The Sun.
London, England, 1849-03-26 00:00:00

MARCH 26, 1849.
9

member of the British Government. We are not our-
selves of the number of those of whom the Peel paper of
Saturday says that their whole theory of foreign politics
consists in regarding one quarter of the globe as a field
of battle. We as little desire as our contemporary that
Russia should be impoverished, weakened, or op-
pressed. But this is not a case of the oppression er
weakening of Russia, but of the oppression and weaken-
ing of Turkey and her provinces; and it behoves the
people of England—the meanest of whose artisans, as
the late Lord Grey well said, is interested in the main.
tenance of the balance of power—to see that neither
Turkey nor any of her dependencies are overborne,
crushed, mulcted, or filched away, under the pretence of
what is preposterously called Russian protection. We
admit, with our contemporary, that suspicion or dislike
can never be the groundwork of any system of foreign
policy—worthy of the name of British. We admit, with
our contemporary, that gratuitous incivility or causeless
suspicion is always to be deprecated. But is suspicion
causeless in this case?—for that is really the question.
To our simple apprehension—and if our contemporary
would read a course of Russian history he would
find this no " historic fancy"—'to our simple appre-
hension, suspicion not only is not causeless but
is well giounded, and we have the satisfaction of
knowing that two such inconsiderable statesmen as
Pitt and Canning believed suspicion of Russian
designs to be well grounded. History, however,
speaks irrespectively of names or of persons, however
great and authoritative. From the time when Peter the
Great captured Azoff and advanced into Moldavia, the
Cabinet of St. Petersburgh has never abandoned its pro-
jects in reference to Turkey and her Danubian pro-
vinces. Tcherkask, Taganrog, and the Crimea, were
witted to Russian conquests, and by the treaty of
Kamardjee, in 1774„ a large track of land, lying be-
tween the Bog and the Dnieper was ceded to the Czar.
The foundation of Cherson was afterwards laid by Ca-
therine in the mouth of the Dnieper, on the spot from
whence Swatislas, many centuries before, had set out
to invade ;Constantinople. To indicate the imperial
object in the creation of this city, the Empress, accord-
ing to Pallas (Reise durch des Russchen Reiches), caused
an inscription to be placed over the western
gate in these words :—" This is the road to Byzan-
tium." Then, as more recently, the object of the
Russians seems to have been to advance in every
campaign from water to water, always securing the per-
manent possession of the places they had left behind in
their march. At the conclusion of the campaign in
1791, by the treaty of Jassy, Oktchakov was ceded to
them, and so they advanced from the Dnieper to the
Niester, securing all the intervening country. After the
campaign of 1812, they obtained by the treaty of Bucha-
rest the land lying between the Niester and the Pruth,
thus pushing on their territories to the latter river.
Having by these means annexed irrevocably to Russia
all the Turkish possession on the north of the
Euxine—by the treaty of Adrianople in 1829,
and by the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi in 1833, the
Cabinet of St. Petersburgh obtained further ad-
vantages. In''lB4o the same encroaching Cabinet pro-
posed that a Russian naval force should occupy the
Bosphorus, and a Russian military force land on
the Asiatic side of the strait. All these circum-
stances taken in conjunction with the secret article of
the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, against which France
protested, disclose a settled purpose justifying suspicion,
and more than suspicion—justify inn vigilance, wakeful-
ness, mistrust—though we do not go the length of say-
ing actual hostility. Count Nesselrode, in replying to
the dispatch of Viscount Palmerston, written in the past
year, stated that the moment order was established in
the Moldo-Wallachian provinces the Russians would
withdraw. If we be rightly informed, order was never
interrupted for more than a few days, and restored trail.
quillity has now prevailed for the apace of nearly eight
months. Yet the Russians remain in their winter quar-
ters, and evince not a particle of what the lawyers
call the animus revertendi. The taste of the
Russians none can dispute, for who would not
prefer Jassy or Bucharest to Archangel, to Revel,
or to Toula ? But this is not a question of taste,
but a question of State policy, which concerns all the in-
dependent powers of Europe, and as such it should be
seriously and steadily regarded by all the Cabinets.—
Viscount Palmerston, we will do him the justice of stat-
ing, admits that the subject is of sovereign importance
—lays great stress on maintaining the integrity and in-
dependence of the Porte, whose independence he alleges
was "cared for and regulated by the treaty of 1841"
avows that he " bates not one jot" what he said when in
opposition—and proclaims that there can be no parti-
tioning of the Danubian provinces of the Porte without
a European contest—without a derangement of the ba-
lance of power—and without a detriment to those who do
not share in the spoil. But at the same time the Noble
Viscount believes that Russia has no desire to infringe
en the provisions of treaties, and no intention of perma-
nent encroachment. On these grounds, and as discus-
sions and representations were actually pending, the
Foreign Secretary objected to produce the papers re-
quired by Lord Dudley Stuart. Bur, in eliciting the
tree expression of independent opinion, and the remark-
able avowal of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, that
there could be no partitioning of the principalities with-
out a war, the Noble Lord the Member for Marylebone
doubtless accomplished the object of his motion. Should
the Russians not retire before the Ist of May, it will
then be competent to Lord Dudley Stuart to re-open the
subject with a stronger case than ho has hitherto pre-
sented to the attention of Parliament.

WHAT IS WHIG POLICY ?
(From the Weekly Dispatch.)
Mr. Editor,—A nation without a policy in its measures
is like a man without an object in life. An aimless
existence becomes a useless existence. The best powers
and opportunities run to waste. Semblances of grandeur
and prosperity only resemble the green foliage of the
barren fig-tree, and only deserve the sentence, "Cut it
down—why cumbereth it the ground."
Towards this condition the great and glorious British
Empire is verging. Our Government grows purposeless.
It deals in shams. Its professed objects are continually
abandoned, and its aims are essentially imperfect. The
time was, when two contrasted systems of policy, each
upheld by a great party, were constantly before the na-
tion. One was for prerogative, and one for liberty. One
fur class privilege, and the other for equal laws. One for
enforcing theological uniformity, and the other for pro
tecting the rights of conscience. One for war, and the other
for peace. They were wide as the poles asunder. But this
state of things has been quite obliterated by the practice
of each party, for the sake of retaining office, or of da-
maging what it could not prevent, doing the work of
its opponent. A Tory Minister carries Liberal
measures, enfeebled by a dash of Toryism; and a Liberal
Ministry carries Tory measures made incongruous by an
alloy of Liberalism. The confusion has penetrated into
the very souls of statesmen. No man knows where to
have them; and they know not where to have themselves.
The faction of Trimmers formerly held the balance of
party; it has now swallowed up and absorbed the parties
themselves. Foreigner or native, nobody knows what
we are about as a nation, either in our internal concerns
or our relations with other countries.

From the Whig Ministry we had a right to expect the
repeal of the navigation laws. It is simply a necessary
supplement to the repeal of the corn laws. Free-trade
principles make a halt in their practical application, and
become a dead letter until applied to this subject. Now
what is the conduct of the Government ? Last year,
they made, at first, big show of fight; the Free-traders
mustered around them in strength ; hostile talking was
loud, but friendly majorities were large ; and then they
dallied, and procrastinated, and hesitated, and at last laid
the subject by for a more convenient season. Of course,
their majority this year has diminished. How could it
be otherwise? Who believes them to he in thorough
earnest ? And who of their followers likes to be dragged
after them, marched and counter marched, led in single
file, now into the new lobby, now into the old lobby, for
division after :division, at two or three o'clock in the
morning, all for a measure which, after a certain stage
has been attained, is " withdrawn for the present ses-
sion?" And what is their proposition? A nominal
freedom of navigation, which, by retaining the monopoly
of the coasting trade, injures alike the foreign adven-
turer (who must have his profit to minister to our wants)
and the British consumer who is so deeply interested in
free, cheap, and abundant imports. What is our coasts
isg trade to that of the United States with their im-
mense sea-board? We shall lose that for our ship-
owners by our tergiversation and their own purblind ob-
stinacy. This is ono great flaw in the proposed measure.
There is another, in the claim which empowers the
Queen in Council to suspend the law altogether, and to
return to the restrictive system against any nation which
is thought to deserve such retaliation by not conceding
similar advantages. Thus the free-trade principle of
the proposition is plentifully diluted, both with the
doctrines of monopoly and those of reciprocity. Then,
Sir, it is a damning fact that the Government has made
this, if not as a Cabinet yet as an Administration,
an open question. Their new colleague, Mr. Baines, the
successor of Mr. Charles Buller, at the head of the Poor-
law Department, is avowedly a zealous and firm sup-
porter of the navigation-laws. He pledged himself to
constituents that he should remain so, and continue
to speak and vote as formerly, at his re-election after
having accepted office. Could no Free-trader be found fit
to preside over the Poor-law Commission? Is Mr.
Baines the only man capable of the functions connected
with this department? And is he alone, of all the subor-
dinate officials, so sturdy in his principles as to be
allowed a liberty of action which they notoriously do not
possess? The supposition is absurd. Under-Secretaries,
and Lord Advocates, and Vice-Presidents, and all that
class of persons, are continually obliged to swallow their
former votes and words, as best they may, and act in
unison with the chiefs of the Government. The Cabinet
is is generally relentless on this point,
a . whatever be
Even
b
amount of damage it inflicts on the ind,li.vbison be dthough a Ward should peril Sheffield, is
com-
pelled to choose between Manchester and 'the Board of
Trade, and a Hawes forfeit the representation of Lambeth,
would the support of Mr. Hume's motion for reform be
tolerated in any place-holder? And why, then, in a new
and untried man, whose name brings with it no especial
prestige of administrative ability, should this insubordi-
nation be sanctioned of opposing the repeal of the navi-
gation-laws ? Plainly because Ministers are not so
thoroughly bent upon carrying that repeal as they are
upon defeating any further reform in the representation.
T i
hey are in no hurry. They are not in sariest in the

[PRICE SD.

one case as they are in the other. The expectation is
afloat, not without apparent grounds, that they will,
even should the Bill pass the Commons, and that it
must, quietly submit to its rejection by the Lords. If
so, they will be trifling not only with the principles of
free trade as a national policy, but with the interests of
all consumers, and of those connected with various
branches of industry, all injured grievously by the pro-
longation of this unsettled condition. Sir, whatever the
temper of the Lords, or the diminution of the majority in
the Commons, Ministers can make this repeal law, if
they choose. They have simply to proffer their own
resignation as the alternative. They are the " indis-
pensable men." Peel will not take office at present; Lord
Stanley and B. Disraeli cannot. The ball is at the foot
of the Whigs, though how long it may remain so no
prophet in politics can predict. To palter now will bring
upon their heads the shame and curse of neglected and
abused opportunities.
I will take another instance. Religious Liberty is a
portion, as well as Commercial Freedom, of their pro-
fessed and traditionary policy. It deserves, in like man-
ner, to be incorporated in a great national policy. The
practical occasion for its assertion was created by the re-
turn of Baron Rothschild for the city of London. Where
is the Baron? where the representation? and where the
Government Bill? The first was quietly consigned to
the tomb of all the Capulets. The Whig measure is
cut up into tailor's measures. What has followed? A
hotchpotch of proposed Legislation on the Parliamen-
tary oaths. The Pretender is left out, and a new clause
stuck in against interfering with the " settlement of pro-,
perty." Are Members to swear against Communism and'
Socialism? or against Robert Owen? or against meddling
with tithes? or against what? Who knows? Accord-
ing to the present Bill, there is to be a new Protestant
oath, and a particular oath for the Jew, and the old
Catholic oath to be retained, and also the Quaker right
of making affirmation. The members will thus be all
sorted out into their several sects. Let any one beyond
these several boundaries be returned, and all the work
(unless his religion, or want of it, be excepted as a final
exclusion) must be gone over again, and a new form
(Oath 5) be prepared for his especial use. Such is the
farrago which is put in abeyance till after Easter, when
it may, perhaps, by "double, double, toil and trouble,"
be sent into the consuming cauldron for liberal measures
"in another place," and become smoke like its prede-
cessor. This is not the conduct of true men. There is
neither faith nor honesty in it. No sternhecessity:compels
them to remain a Government without a policy. They
know, and have proved, the power of threatening to re-
sign against their liberal supporters. Lord
Althorp worked that machinery with full effect
when he was leader in the House of Commons. And
they can, if they so will, prove the power of an alterna-
tive determination to resign, as against their Protec-
tionist and intolerant opponents. What would happen,
even were they taken at their words? To be more
baffled than they are ,or than they pretend to be, is beyond
possibility. With them in front of him, oa the Opposi-
tion benches, were Peel to consent to succeed them, he
would triumphantly carry far more liberal measures than
they even venture to nibble at. To leave their places
would instal their policy. The world has not much
confidence in public men. Unless a prompt and ener-
getic course be taken by the Whigs, they may depend
upon it that the last rag of their character for integrity
and consistency is gone for ever.
The people themselves must fix the waverers; those
out of ,office, at least; for Dowing-street seems spell-
bound against popular influence. The people themselves
must work out their own deliverance; and the nation pre-
scribe and enforce a truly national policy. I
rejoice to see that this great metropolis is
arousing itself from slumber. Why should all the
toil, and the glory, be devolved upon Manchester and
Liverpool? The " Metropolitan Financial and Parlia-
mentary Reform Association" has somo stirring themes
in its prospectus. Chords are touched on which even
the League did not play, or which it struck but slightly.
The pursuit of Representative Reform, in a business-like
manner, joined with Financial Reform, is a novelty,
which is alike portentous and powerful. A great task
is undertaken, for it must not be forgotten that crude
notions of Protection still abuse the minds of many. The
new Metropolitan Association promises to pursue con-
jointly the work of economical instruction and practical
emancipation. I heartily recommend it to the support
and co-operation of all who are tired of the spectacle of
Party without principles, Government without aim, and
a Nation without a policy. It promises for the people
more of intelligence and power, which cannot fail to
bring more of prosperity and progress.