The Sun.
London, England, 1856-01-18 00:00:00

vation. rather than suffer a stain on their honour,
and c' )uld we sacrifice nothing more to regain and
prese /I/ e ours ? Those who had no care for " na-
tior.alii les " would, perhaps, have thought the

present. Proposals passable last winter, and
viewed. as saving us another year or more of war;
but even they now participated in the common feel-
ing; tb►ey regarded the advances as ingloriously little,
after mach a year of fighting as 1855. They had
yield'bd to the natural wish for cheaper bread and
easier discounts, both which they imagined the
War alone prevented ; but when the fact of a
Vienna peace stared them in the face, they
blushed for any previous unmanliness, and quailed
at the picture which time would paint of their
d.oings. A Calico peace for England, and a Kars
peace for Russia ! An opportunity to have built
the fame of Old England on a renovated
Poland, and much besides renovated too—an
opportunity which, COBDEN being consul, will
certainly never return—and passed by in the
interests of Bullionists, Cotton-spinners, and
Peelites ! Worse than all—a German, nay, an
Austrian Peace ! Hapsburgs the chief gainers
by it ! Every yoke on freedom more firmly
fixed than ever by the despot executioners !
Austria and Prussia, glutted with the gains we
on'y have fought for ; Turkey left impoverished,
and not one rouble demanded from the burglar ;
Warsaw remaining, as Lord PALMERSTON himself
said, " a standing menace to Germany ;" England
and France to pay all, and to be repaid nothing ; and
the breaker of peace to proclaim that he finished
the campaign by starving the army which had
beaten him ;—the thoughts of such a peace chilled
the hearts yesterday of all however much they
wished for peace itself.
We question, indeed, its possible stability. Not
only on the score of the restlessness of Russian
ambition, but of English disappointment also. It
has been said that France would never rest till the
memory of Waterloo was effaced. That is now
done. The great military power has obtained
ample satisfaction. NAPOLEON 111. has had his
revenge on the most brutal enemy of NAPOLEON I.
in 1814. But England has achieved nothing
worthy of her rank as a naval power. Should
peace be the result of this diplomatic coup de Rat,
this transparent piece of dramatic anger and
threats on the part of Austria, Englishmen will
never feel at ease till they have regained their cha-
racter. A growing sentiment, that our aristocracy
and our German connexions sold us ignomini-
ously to Russia, will watch for an occasion,
and a future Government will be compelled, at a
vastly greater cost, to begin again, and to do in
earnest what we have done chiefly in pretence.
Trumpery German dynasties will not then be
allowed to impregnate our Courts and Cabinets
with slavish and despotic preferences ; nations
will count for something, and the recollection of
1848 abroad, and of 1855-6 here, will recoil on
the heads of perfidy, half-heartedness, and incom-
petency.

The general impression, however, is probably
the correct one. We have repeatedly pointed out
not only the insufficiency of the Proposals in our
view, but their vagueness in any point of view.
It does not require the skill of a GORTSCHAKOFF
to use these bases as a means of paralysing war-
like preparations and movements, and then to
throw them up, when Russia had meantime been
doing her utmost. The questions of ship; arsenals,
Circa,ssia and Asia, in the Black Sea merely,
would furnish six months' debates to Russia if she
wished it. For our part, we are thoroughly
satisfied that nothing good can come from Vienna,
nor any peace be made worth having till we have
compelled Russia to sue for it.

The Report of the Minister, M. MAGNE, to the
EMPEROR on the general financial situation of the
French Empire, which appeared in our impression
of yesterday—at all times a document of vast im-
portance—assumes peculiar significance under
existing circumstances, It is analogous to the
budget of our own Chancellor of the Exchequer,
pointing out the nature of the demands that must
be provided for, and the prObable revenue that
may be expected, or, to use the English term,
" the ways and means" for their liquidation. It
is, in fact, the foundation for the fiscal and finan-
cial legislation of the session, which indicates the
power of our illustrious Ally to meet the enor-
mous charges required for the ♦igorous and ener-
getic maintenance of the War, and compelling our
adversary to yield to the irresistible force that
may be brought against him by the combined and
honourable efforts of united France and England.
It is almost needless to say that the Report was
framed before there was any reasonable ground
for supposing that Russia wenlithave accepted the
Austrian Propositions, even as a basis for negotia-
tion, or that had that acceptance been promul-
gated it could have made any difference, inas-
much as until the terms had been finally and defi-
nitively arranged, no preparation, financial or
otherwise, could be in any degree relaxed. We
have, however, already treated on the prospects
of peace, and the all-important subject is further
developed in another column of The Sun, of this
day. We shall, therefore, here no further allude
to that part of the case, but deal with the matter
as if the contest should be waged to the uttermost
extremity, and that " a war to the knife" should
be carried on.

The Report under notice deals very clearly with
" the past, the present, and the future" of
French finance, with the produce of the new
duties already authorised, and the large augmen-
tation of the sources of revenue previously in
operation. It also shows the conditions of the
loans already effected, the amounts received
on account thereof, and the balances avail-
able for future operations ; and, moreover,
shows, that while the exigencies of the War have
been fully and liberally provided for, domestic
improvements have gone on without intermission
—nay, with even greater activity and efficiency
than at any previous period in the national his-
tory. The sacrifices of the State, combined with
a provident and far-seeing policy, have been so
judiciously
managed, that we find, on the autho-
rity of an unexceptionable witness, sustained, too,
by an array of figures, about which there can be
no dispute, that " the sources of national wealth
are far from having been diminished, and that,
particularly in 1855, commerce and industry
have attained a degree of development such as
no one could have ventured to foresee oven at the
moat prosperous periods."

This must be highly gratifying to the EMPE-
ROR and his people.. It is the natural result of
the sagacious policy; which clearly perceived that
new and unexpected charges were not to be pro-
vided for by choking up the channels of supply.
If industry had heavier burdens to sustain than
at any recent period—if every tax-payer was ex-
pected to contribute his quota to the extraordi-
nary expenditure, it could only be by affording
him increased facilities for exercising his skill,
by supplying in abundance "the straw from which
the bricks were to be constructed." How different
was the course pursued by the ABERDEEN peace-
at-any-price financier. His object was apparently
to disgust the nation with war, by enforcing its
burdens with stringent severity, and compelling I
the industrious classes to meet greatly enhanced !

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