The Sun.
London, England, 1856-02-14 00:00:00

prevent the introduction of " contraband of war
has become nearly useless through the quantities
introduced ! The reader will ask, perhaps, with
surprise, where are our cruisers ? We must re-
fer him to Sir Csas. Wool) for an answer, who
will perhaps remind him of the loss of the Poly-
phemus, and tell him that the Royal Navy is not
to venture for the honours or necessities of war,
where the merchant navy sails fearlessly for sordid
gain.

It may be, therefore, that Sweaborg, having
been made doubly strong now they have learned
its weak points—saltpetre, sulphur, and American
firearms having been largely disembogued from
traders who feared not a Baltic winter, and Po-
land having been strengthened in the military
sense, Russia may become hard at a bargain, and
too hard for Lord CLARENDON. Add to all
this the supplies she will certainly obtain should
she get more than a three weeks' armistice, or
even that, from the Allies. We have no doubt
that her secret agents are already making pur-
chases of supplies, and perhaps loading ships with
them, ready to sail for her ports the day the armis-
tice begins. Why does not Mr. ROEBUCK or Lord
LYNDHURST move an address to her MAJESTY on the
duration and necessary commercial restrictions of
an armistice ? Even Mr. BRIGHT ought to do it.
Nothing will so much endanger a resumption of
hostilities as a long and unrestricted armistice ;
or, if the negotiations result in peace, nothing
will so mar its turns as feeding our enemy.
MOURAVIEFF might as well have sent a convoy
with provisions for Kars, as we give to Russia a
long and unfettered armistice.
Our Negotiators must remember that this way
will, even if they do their very best, furnish but
a very discreditable chapter in English history.
The English will figure in it as hewers id wood
and drawers of water to the conquerors of the
Malakhoff. It will be recorded that the sheer
incompetency and indolence of aristocratic officers
destroyed .one-third of the men, and almost all
the horses, while an able railway contractor alone
saved them from destruction. It will be told that
the War-office garnished the returned incapables
with honours and promoted them in the service,
to huddle up the fatal blunders ; and that the
campaign closed by starving to capitulation
the General and garrison who had immortalised
themselves at Kars. We cannot wish to pen an
indictment against our country's fame, but we
cannot refuse to foresee the inevitable verdict of
posterity—and that will be that the War was
ignobly shrunk from, perfunctorily carried on, the
enemy spared, our own troops sacrificed, and the
odious Austria alone rewarded—that even our
navy, with the exception of the first attack on
Sebastopol, ventured next to nothing ! Nothing
but a peace better managed than the War can save
the Administrators of these three years from the
contempt of posterity.
Above all, posterity will condemn our governors
for paltry, peddling counsels when a great issue
lay before them. How ashamed are we now of
the men who tolerated the amalgamation of Poland
in 1831, and the invasion of Hungary in 1849.
We blush for such miserable successors to a
CROMWELL and his MILT3N, whose letters alone
could make continental despots let go the op-
pressed. We have now had before us an opportunity
to restore Poland to nationality and Germany to
freedom. We shall leave the former still ab-
sorbed, the latter still enslaved. Even the
Northern Bee says—" Spend twenty or thirty mil-
lions on railways, and thus prepare to move our
troops in five years more in any direction 1" The
most commercial Of Russian. journals still points
to future war. Conquest is the only and barba-
rous idea of the Russian Court. It wants to ex-
tend its Asiatic despotism and slavery to free
countries, not to teach its own people to be free.
The despots just now help one another. Th,y
will do so till the grand stzuggle in which one
or two shall eat up all the lesser ones, and all to
end, possibly, in a grand attempt at European
empire. The negotiators who are now engaged
in squaring among themselves a despot peace are
bequeathing this legacy to possibly a near po-
sterity.

The Russians have really behaved very badly
o our naval men both in the Baltic and the Black
Sea. The gallant fellows set out flushed with the
expectation of bringing the enemy's fleets in these
seas to action, and towing what was left of them
home ; instead of which, to their grievous disap-
pointment, they were compelled to play the part
of gaolers—the enemy, as from malice afore-
thought, declining to contribute to any such illus-
tration of British valour and enterprise ; nay,
going so far in the Black Sea as to read them the
most remarkable lesson of practical bathos pro-
bably ever administered, by deliberately sinking
her own ships before their very eyes ! Under
such circumstances, nothing was left them by way
of alternative but to sweep the Russian coasts,
take a turn at bombarding, and lend what aid
they could to the land forces of the Allies.
It certainly was too bad ; and we can therefore
heartily sympathise with such men as Admiral
LYONS in their disappointment. The nation,
however, is hardly less indebted to them than it
would have been if they had met with better for-
tune ; for, though defeated by no fault of theirs
in their chief aim, they did all they were
permitted to do, ig not all that re-
mained for them, and did it well,
demonstrating, beyond dispute, what the fate of
the enemy's fleets would havo been had they come
out and hazarded an engagement. Entertaining
these views, we have much pleasure in drawing
attention -t.o the report, which will be found else-
where, of the Grand Banquet given yesterday, in
the Mansion-house, to-"' Admiral Sir EDMUND
LYONS, the present commander of our Black Sea
Fleet. The Lord Mayor, it will be seen, did his
best to make the gallant admiral amends, waxing
positively eloquent in his description of the dis-
tinguished serviees of his guest, since the
commencement of the War, and of what might be
expected from him should it be continued. Elo-
quent, however, as he was, and warm as
were his eulogiums, he by no means over-
stepped the modesty of truth, and but few
will be found indisposed to agree with
him in thinking the gallant admiral de-
serving of the honours of citizenship, or to
entertain the hope to which his Lordship gave ex-
for many years
pression, that Sir EDMUND " may be preserved
to serve his country in that capa-
city for which be is so well fitted." It is not
every admiral who has given proof of equal capa-
city and daring.
The speech of the evening
was well worthy of
the occasion, being modest, hearty, and goneroL:s
—just the sort of speech, indeed, that might have
been expected from such an Admiral. Disfigured
by no braggadocio, it affords convincing testimony
to his anxiety for his country's welfare, and for
the due appreciation of the claims of others. The
gallant Admiral has a good word for Admiral
DUNDAS in the Baltic, and suffers his verynatural
pleasure at the present efficiency of her MAJESTY'S
fleet to be damped by the reflection that it should
not have had, nor be likelyto have,
the opportunity
of meeting the enemy face to face. "It is very
and who, reading his
sad, indeed," he says ;