The Sun.
London, England, 1870-11-25 00:00:00

ANOTHER LETTER FROM MR. MILL.

Mr. John Stuart Mill returns to the charge
respecting the Treaty of 1856. Lord Shaftesbury,
in answering Mr. Mill's first letter, some-
what misinterpreted the philosopher's opinion.
Lord Shaftesbury understood him to have said
that a country was not bound to observe the
terms of a treaty unless they were so convenient
that the country would be ready to enter on them
afresh. Mr. Mill explains that he did not mean this,
but said that a country was not bound to enforce the
observance of terms which it had imposed on others,
unless it would impose them afresh at the present
day. "There is a wide difference,". says, Mr. Mill,
"between affirming that I may break a promise as

soon as it is inconvenient to me to keep it, and main-
taining that if another person breaks a promise made
to me I am not necessarily bound to shed his blood."
Treaties, he maintains, aro the proniises of
nations, and in their breach there are all degrees
of guilt, but the degree of Russia's guilt in the par-
ticular case before us cannot be decided offhand.
Treaties, like other engagements, will be broken if
they are imposed without limit as to duration, and
mankind is only just beginning to find ' out
that it is folly to exact , engagements
for all time, and that anything to which a nation
attempts to bind itself or others in perpetuity,
whether constitution, dynasty, or irrevocable law
will sometime or other be shaken off by those whom
it oppresses. If we wish to colzbat the Russian doc-
trine with success, we should, says Mr. Mill, make
no more treaties, except for terms of years.
NATIONAL PRIDE AXE CONFIDENCE.

The Bishop of Carlisle has delivered a spirited
address at a meeting of the School of Art attached
to his diocese. In his lordship's opinion Englishmen
should take a national pride in all the
arts they • had been enabled to render perfect,
and they should also have a national confidence in-

herent in theta when Russian bears and other savage
animals begin to growl. It was disgraceful,' the
bishop thought, that men who knew that ,this
great nation, England had keen blessed with an

honourable name in history, and with magnifiCent
resources of all kinds, should quail and exhibit a
pitiful spirit if an angry look was thrown across the
seas at them from the Continent. There used to be
a feeling that Englishmen could bear the brunt of
any foreigner; and boasts like these should have truer
grounds to support them at the present day than in
the past.

MIUSSIA AND RUSSIA.

The Continental Correspondence protests indig-
nantly against the notion that Prussia and Russia
are in league respecting the claim of the latter to

an alteration of the Paris treaty. "We may
declare, without fear of contradiction, that Prince
Gortschakoff's note was as great; ands no doubt, as
unsatisfactory, a surprise to the Prussian Cabinet as
to any in Europe. The GOvernment of
Prussia would scornfully reject the idea
of being made a party to so undig-
nified a proceeding. If Prussia's engagements
clo not allow het tot the; moment to interfere, it will
bit ifith mush Viet that she Withholds her Voice in
the councils of EttrOVe.' Pew pefsdnA *ill believe,
with the evidence before thorn, that Ru ssia has no
agreement with Priissia, Mit this statement, at any
kate strengthens the iiiipireision that Bismarck did
not want the question opened at present.