The Sun.
London, England, 1856-08-08 00:00:00

—.l----- BEORGANISATTerN OP T
, PRINCIPALITIES.
1

The Commissioners of the seven Powers charged
with the reorganisation of the Principalities are
now assembling at Bucharest, much in the charac-
ter of ingenious political architects, who attempt
to raise a superstructure before they have laid a
basis. The Austrian and Russian Governments
appear to have hit upon a most happy scheme, di-
rectly calculated to nullify the labours of the Cons-
missioners, and totally to checkmate the Treaty of
Pars,
seem s. Under
er a guise of the most vital distrust,
marked b the
they to have entered into an arrangement
y most friendly confidence. The in-
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to their most cherished territorial arrogations on
the Danube, but to their fanatical crusades against
freedom on the confines of their sway. The Com-
missioners—or the five more liberal
Governments
whom the five more liberal Commissioners repre-
sent—now challenge the Courts of Vienna and St.
Petersburg to give effect to their promise of eva-
cuation. The Austrian Government appears to
reply that so long as, in direct violation of the
Treaty of Paris, the ussians postpone the cession
of Southern Bessarabia they must prolong the oc.
cupation of the Principalities. The Western
Powers then turn to St. Petersburg ; and they
there appear to be told that so long as, in direct
violation of the Treaty of Paris, the Austrians post-
pone the evacuation of the Principalities they
must defer the cession of Bessarabia. There is
something ludicrous in this reciprocity of causation
which reminds us of our resultless siege of Antwerp
in 1809, in which the martial ardour of the general
was said to have been held in check by the delay of
the admiral, and the impatient vehemence of the
admiral to have been neutralised by the 'unaccount-
able procrastination of the general. The practical
result, at any rate, is that the Austrian and
Russian commanders, entertaining no doubt the
most diabolical suspicions of each other, rule in
placid tranquillity on either side of the Pruth ; and
the international commission, ike a species of poli-
tical Mahomet's coffin, is suspended in the airs
midway between Bucharest and the clouds of
heaven.
The blunder thus committed by the negotiators
at Paris, iu failing to fix peremptorily a period be-
yond which the military occupation should not be
maintained, is but the analogue of the original
blunder which introduced into the Principalities
the forces of Austria. It is obvious, from many
concurrent considerations, that an attempt to
frame an organisation for Moldavia and Wallachia
during the presence of the Austrian army, and for
the ceded territory of Bessarabia during the pre-
sence of the Russian, would be altogether abortive.
The Commissioners—according, at least, to the
theory of the Treaty of Peace—do not proceed to
the Wallachian capital with their own preconceived
views of government. The Sultan undertakes, by
the terms of the 24th Article, to convoke a Divan
in either Principality, with the most liberal and
comprehensive constitution ; and the Commission-
ers are charged with the formation of a scheme of
polity in consonance with the opinions expressed
by these Divans. Nothing, therefore, can be more
certain than that their popular organisation, which
is expressly set forth as the groundwork of the whole
policy of the Commission, would be totally defeated
by the continuance of an Austrian military occupa-
tion. While the Commissioners sit at Bucharest
under military sufferance of the most despotic mon-
archy in Europe, no will of theirs can stand for law.
Those who are acqvainted with the policy pursued
by Austria wherever her standard is planted, know
full well the manner in which she will tamper with
the representation which it is sought to obtain througis
the instrumentality of the Divans. The same ob-
servations apply to the occupation of the ceded
district of Bessarabia by the Russians, and it is cer-
tain that any representation obtained' during the
dominance of either army will only secure the as-
cendancy of that &Nous and rapacious oligarchy
which the Treaty of Paris had undertaken to depress
and destroy.
More than four months have already elapsed since
the conclusion of peace ; and the period appears to
have been marked by a corresponding inertness on
the part both of the Austrian and the Western Go-
vernments. No attempt, or at least no successful
endeavour, appears to have been made, either by
Lord Clarendon or by M. de Walewski, to dissipate
the frivolous sophistry on which Austria and Russia
attempt to justify their infraction of their own
terms. It is true that the Commissioners of the
Western Powers set out for the theatre of their
labours a considerable period ago. But a diplo-
matist charged with extraordinary duties such as
these, appears to be a political valetudinarian. who
is unequal to the Herculean labours of his position
until lie has consumed a period sufficient for ordi-
nary mortals to negotiate the fate of the world in
physical preparation at the West-German baths.
So complete is the mental and bodily exhaustion
occasioned, either by the mere acceptance of his
office or by the traditions of his previous trust,
that be sets off with laudable precipitation—not
indeed to the scene of his duties—but to Wiesba-
den, to Wildbad, or to Vichi. There he invariably
stops short, and after au incredible interval when
emerges
like whole freshness of his story is gone, 1*
like a giant refreshed, somewhat in the fashion of
our imposing naval array which congregated at
Petropaulovski after the Russians had sailed ! And
if it be said, on the one hand, that the intentional
procrastination of Austria and Russia has rendered
unimportant this corresponding delay, it may with
undoubted certainty be averred on the other that
it has offered a plausible pretext for that procras-
tination by those Governments.
Tne two cardinal aims, which, as we apprehend,
the Commission is required to hold in view, aro the
institution of a Government on principles of libe-
ralism antagonistic to the political encroachments
of Austria and Russia, and on a commercial basis
calculated to promote the material development of
the Principalities. We are ourselves altogether in-
different whether the union of the two States be
resolved on, or whether their disjunction be perma-
nently maintained. There is enough of social con-
formity in the manners and interests of either to
ensure their moral cohesion under any phasis of
their civil polity. The main object to which we
trust the attention of the Commission will, be even-
tually directed is the social and political exaltation
of the inferior classes, for the triple reason of ab-
stract justice, of national development, and of an
exclusion of Austro-Russiau intrigue. It is through
the instrumentality of the territorial proprietors,
both ecclesiastical and lay, that this battle of in-
trigue has been so long maintained by Russia ; and
it will be waged successfully until the two Princi-
palities possess a strong popular organisation. It
is in like manner owing to the eclipse of the popular
party, that we have been so long subdued by the
illusion that the Russian dominion stood upper-
most in the Moldo-Wallachiau mind. Under the
constitutions by which those States have been long
governed, a spirit of rapacious domination in the
higher classes has prevailed ; and this interest, de-
riving its mainspring from the support of Russia,
has ben affected to the Russian rule in proportion
as the instincts of the mass of the population
involuntarily recoiled from its tyrannous oppres-
sion.

In a commercial point of view, the Principalities
possess this enormous advantage over every other
State which trades upon the Danube, that their
territory lies immediately at its mouth ; while the
accession of the ceded territory to the Moldavian
soil will add to that advantage an interest in the
sea-board of the Exuma. If it will repay the Aus-
trian empire to transmit her exports to the Black
Sea through the thousand gyrations of that inter-
minable river, how much more remunerative will
be the commerce of the Euxine to the two Princi-
palities, with other facilities at least equal in pro-
portion ? Above all, be it remembered that the
results of the war have yet to be determined ; and
that their magnitude largely rests in the political
future of these States, which must conform to the
character of their organisation. And if the splendid
opportunity which now presents itself bo seized, we
shall have done much in lands that have bowed
beneath a traditionary oppression to promote the
cause of progress, and to illustrate the name of
England.—Daily News.

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