The Sun.
London, England, 1870-11-02 00:00:00

TrIE PROCLAMATION •FROM TOURS.

The Telegraph, in commenting on the Proclamation of
the Government at Tours, says: France must now look to
a new quarter for a prospect of relief from her present un-
speakable sufferings. Her existing rulers cannot afford
to be rational—" Defence to the last franc and
the last man" is their raison d'etre; and, had the
land not become demoralised, that fierce appeal to
all its manhood might have aroused a power
mightier even than Stein's system. But the France
of our day cannot shew the world how a country can
be saved ; the towns are selfish, and the communes
bewildered. Therefore, while anything whatever is
to be saved while present horrors and tumults
to come, may possibly be averted the plain
sense and sober patriotism of the nation should
take counsel, and speak out firmly. It is stifled for the
time by the manifestoes of the lawyers in command, who,
`were they true patriots, would risk their popularity with-
out hesitation by advising France to make the best peace
she can. This course they neither dare nor choose to
take ; and unless sheer agony and desperation ere long
force from the inhabitants a cry for respite and
for an arrangement, the bitter fight must rage on, with
new victims, new sufferings, and an ever widening gulf of
hate between the maddened combatants. Such, then,
is the stage which the war has now reached. The
manhood of the Fatherland is still being drained off
to carry out the work of slaughter, pillage, and
destruction; while France, taking counsel only from
wounded pride and patriotic despair, gathers her scattered
resources for yet another effort. One army on the Loire
to stem the tide of invasion, another in the north to
break if it can the lines that encircle the yet unvan•
quished capital, and a third in the south, to which Gari-
baldi has lent the aid of his simple heroism ; add that yet
unknown force, the " resolution of Paris," and we have
all the factors of the problem which M. Thiers will
make a last effort to solve. Will the Government
of Defence endorse the passionate appeals of Gambetta,
or will it master the real lesson of the surrender of
Metz, and admit that fortune has for the time aban-
doned her wayward and ungrateful child ? Look
ing back a few weeks, what can the sound judg-
ment of the country trace but a constantly accu-
mulating burden of misfortune ? The elements
of disaster have multiplied, and those of hope have ono
by one vanished, leaving each aspect of the momentous
difficulty more formidable for those who resolutely refuse
to confront what they cannot remove.

We learn by telegram that Rear-Admiral A. Far-
quhar, the commander-in-chief of the Pacific station,
arrived at Panama last week on board his flagship
Zealous.
On Sunday nearly four hundred sermons were
preached in Northumberland and Durham in aid of the
medical charities of those counties. In Newcastle alone,
where the " Hospital Sunday " movement was initiated,
considerably over £l,OOO was collected on that day.
DEATH OF THE VISCOUNTESS HEREFORD.—We
have to announce the death, on the 26th ult., of Emma
Jemima (Dowager) Viscountess Hereford, daughter of the
late Mr. George Ravenscroft. She married Robert, 15th
Viscount Hereford, Premier Viscount of England, 25th
November, 1841 ; and after that nobleman's death, in
August, 1855, she married, February 23,1857, Lieutenant-
Colonel Thomas Ireland Blackburne. She was the
mother, by her first marriage, of the present Viscount
Hereford.