The Sun.
London, England, 1856-02-01 00:00:00

siderations. It would no doubt have been greatly
to Mr. ROEBUCK'S personal advantage if he could
conscientiously have maintained silence, and ac-
quiesced in the arrangements now on the tapis.
But he honestly judged and nobly discharged his
duty as a high-minded Englishman. He proved
beyond the possibility of doubt that we obtain no
real guarantee from Russia ; and that the lives
of our gallant countrymen, and enormous sums of
money, have been uselessly sacrificed. He asked
what the country also requires to be informed on.
He said—" I want to know if we had another
campaign, if we drove Russia out of the
Crimea, and if, discarding that pretended liberality
which says that we are not going to take any ter-
ritory from Russia, we were to take the Crimea
from her, and erect the Principalities, including
Bessarabia, into a kingdom—l ask, if we did
that, should we not then have some protection
against Russia I" These spirited interrogatories
will reierberate throughout the length and
breadth of the land—will be repeated in the
palaces of the wealthy, the commodious dwellings
of the middle classes, and in the cottages of
the great body of the people. They will
judge, with JOHN ARTHUR ROEBUCK, that the
War has been brought, or rather has been at-
tempted to be brought, to a most lame and im-
potent conclusion, and will visit with just con-
demnation the parties responsible for the national
disgrace.

One of our contemporaries has thought proper
to make a sharp attack on Mr. ROEBUCK for that
which merited the highest applause. We cannot
forget the Well-merited praise that appeared in
the columns of the Times, last year, of Mr. ROE-
BUY'S efficient and disinterested exertions. He
is now the bete noir whom it is striving to
crush. But it will fail in the attempt. Wherever
high-minded independence and undeviating
consistency is respected, the name of JOIIN AR-
THUR. ROEBUCK will be honoured as one of which
England may well be proud. Had we but a
dozen such men in Parliament, we should expect
to see Red-tapeism speedily and completely over-
thrown, and the nation placed in the position with
respect to foreign powers which she has a right to,
but does not occupy.

We are obviously expected to make peace with
Russia, if Russia will only benignantly permit us
so to make peace—upon the conditions following.
Firstly—remember that !—upon condition, not
that the enemy shall indemnify the Allies for the
enormous expenditure consequent upon the CZAR'S
lawless aggression upon the Principalities, but
actually upon condition that the Black Sea shall
be "neutralised !" As though Muscovite ambi-
tion were a sort of political acid in the European
system to be neutralised by certain diplomatic
alkalies ! Or as though the triumph of the neu-
trals so far deserved celebration upon the very
head and front of the proposed compromise as to
authorise the coining of a phrase for its more
signal perpetuation ! Secondly, we are ex-
pected to make peace with Russia if Russia
will only magnanimously permit us upon
condition, not that the Crimea shall be re-
stored to Turkey, not that the Danubian
Provinces shall be ereoted into a kingdom,
not that a broader barrier than ever shall
be reared against the possibility of further en-
croachments of barbarism from beyond the fron-
tiers of Bessarabia, but positively—remember
this too :—upon condition that a fleet now rotting
ingloriously at the leottora of the Euxine shall not
be reconstructed for the desolation of another
Siuope, and that the shores of the same waters
shall never again bristle with the guns of a refor-
tided robber-stronghold like Sebastopol ! Aud so
forth—and so forth—the "material guarantees"
to be insisted upon by the Western Powers, under
the auspices of the guidance, of Austrian diplomacy
dwindling away, "point " by " point," by nega-
tive upon negative ! Is this all ? Literally, is

his all ? Is nothing else than this to be really
gained (when everything is said and done) as the
result of the grand contest raging for two years
between the barbaric might of Russia and the war-
like supremacy looked for as the inevitable con-
sequence of the glorious and heroic alliance ce-
mented between the presumed arbitrers of the
world the British and Gallic Governments ?
Positively we ask again—is this all ? Has the
terrible winter campaign of 1854-55 to have no
more consolatory pendant than a trump3d-up
compromise ? Are the tattered banners of France
and England, smoke blackened and bloodstained,
riddled by ball and bayonet, and emblazoned with
the memories of Alma, and Inkernaan, and the
Redan, and the Malakhoff, to be smoothed into a
patchwork tablecloth for the elbows of plenipo-
tentiaries, or, still worse, to be spread open as a
carpet for the feet of neutral' Sovereigns Actu-
ally, this, and nothing better than this, is fore-
shadowed at the present moment by more than one
sinister prognostication. By the peddling prelimi-
naries of a discreditable pacification! By the diluted
platitudes of what Lord DERBY facetiously desig
nated a kind of " water-gruel " Speech from the
Throne ! By a first-night's debate in the House
of Commons, for the most part so timorous in
tone, so subdued in spirit, so hushed, and stut-
tering, and shamefaced, and blushing, and flus-
tered, that it might perhaps, after all, be most
accurately defined, as the great Scotch critic
once upon a time defined the Wilfred of
Sir WALTER'S " eby, "in a memorable review
iu the Edinburgh, namely, as—" that tame
rabbit boiled to rags !" Elsewhere, however, we
take occasion in our impression of this evening to
carve, deliberately and piecemeal, " that tame
rabbit boiled to rags," the WILFRED of the session
of 1856, yesterday's discussion in the popular
branch of the Legislative Chambers at West-
minster. The immediate design of these
present remarks of ours being almost
exclusively devoted to the enforcement of what
we conceive to be the paramount duty at this mo-
mentous crisis in the affairs, not merely of Britain
herself, but of Europe generally, the paramount
duty and indefeasible right of every patriot Eng-
lishman ! That of observing, vigilantly observing,
every variable and even may be momentary phase in
these now rapidly-approaching negotiations. The
duty and the right, be it remarked, not simply of
watching, but also of discussing these same negotia-
tions, as befits the freecitizens of a State exquisitely
alive to the exigencies of a time like the present,
au age of transition as well as an epoch of achieve,'
rnent. Otherwise than by the exercise of some
such perfectly justifiable watchfulness England
may find herself, when too late, involved' in the
toils of those wily tricksters, a who would
treaty,i)alter
her honour for the bribe of
and sully her reputation by the infamy of a
ba
les
shameless compromise. So surely, how
Peace were built up upon any such
unstable
foundations, foundations, so surely would the present struggle
prove in the end to have been but the precursor
of one in every way more sanguinary, more disas-
trous, and more appalling. Over the smouldering
ashes of the War thus hastily buried under the
lowering mound of a precipitate pacification
might be inscribed in one word its most appro.
priate
epitaph—Resurgara !

MISS EMMA. STANLEY.—"The Seven Ages of Woman"
increases nightly in popularity. Miss Emma Stanley
has been honoured by a numerous attendance of the
highest classes. Her entertainment verifies the old say-
ing, " What everybody says must be true," and her per-
formance has been pronounced by all as the most unique
ani clever ever offered to the public.