The Sun.
London, England, 1856-05-05 00:00:00

To cenclude with

ENGLAND'S HARVEST HOME and NATIONAL STEEPLE-
C RASE (its last week).
B ,x-office open from Eleven till Four. Stage Manager, Mr. W.
West. Equestrian Director, Mr. W. Cooke, jun.

HIGH WATER. AT LONDON BRIDGE.

Tam DAY—Morn. 59 rain. aft. I—Evening 34 min. aft. 3
11,1-Moßßow—Morn. 43 min. aft. 2 —Evening 5 min. aft. 3

THE WEATHER—SUN OFFICE, MAY 4.
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
52—highest since noon yesterday.
44 —lowest this morning and during the night.
49 —this day at noon.
BAROMETER, 30'18.
WIND, N.N.E. Light, with fine, cold, sunshiny
weather.

MAY 5.
53—highest since noon yesterday.
44 —lowest this morning and during the night;
50 —this day at noon.

BAROMETER, 30.15.
WIND, N.—Light, with cold, cloudy weather, indicating
a change.

(f n
•
'
1+:
J.YW4.SW

LONDON, MONDAY, MAY 5, 1856.

THE SAD DAY
OF
THANKSGIVING.

Peace has been ratified, and a Day of Thanks-
giving been ordered. If we could say, with
the late DANIEL O'CONNELL, " Thank you for
nothing !" it were well. But we are called on to
return thanks for having entered into a War full
of just promise—only to be disappointed ; and
now to return thanks for gross—for wilful mis-
management of that War, and to thank Heaven
for the sad loss of many brave men and the
degradation of our country, purposely perpe-
trated by parties who cannot boast a drop of
English blood in their veins !

Yesterday was observed as a solemn Day of
of Thanksgiving in the United Kingdom ! Every
Christian congregation throughout the length and
breadth of the land was invited to express its
gratitude to the " ALMIGHTY " for having caused
War to cease, and restoring Peace to the People !
This day both Houses of Parliament will be called
on to declare that they " have learned with joy
and satisfaction, that her MAJESTY has been
enabled to re-establish Peace on conditions honour-
able to her MAJESTY'S Crown, and which so fully
accomplishes the great object for which the War
was undertaken I " With the thanksgiving to the
DEITY we have nothing to complain. Whether
it be His will to exalt or to chasten, we
must still humbly and submissively express
our thanks for the manifold blessings which, in
His infinite mercy, he has been pleased to accord.
To HIM our praise and gratitude are ever due
under any and every circumstance. But we con-
fess that we cannot quite approve of attempting
to convert that feeling of religion entertained by
the great body of the people into a political engine,
to be used for the purpose of influencing public
opinion before the terms of the Treaty have been
fully discussed, and before it is known whether
we should indeed congratulate ourselves on what
has taken place.
There are no restrictions, however, affecting
the consideration of Parliamentary thanks to the
Executive fur that which has been effected with-
out the knowledge or sanction of the hereditary
and representative branches of the Legislature. We
may therefore fairly and impartially consider the
question in all its details, and inquire what is
there to occasion that extrav:igant " joy and satis-
faction" which they are called on to express ?
What is there to lead them to suppose that Peace
has been re-established on conditions honourable to
her MAJESTY'S Crown ? or that the objects of the
War have been fully, or at all, accomplished ?
Is it because the lives of some seventy-five
thousand of the best and bravest of our brethren
have been fruitlessly sacrificed ? that their hon-
oured remains now lie mouldering in a distant
land ? and that their surviving relations still
mourn the irreparable losses they have sustained
Is it for the one hundred millions of
pounds sterling uselessly squandered ? for the
almost fabulous amount, equal to nearly two
years of the ordinary revenue of the nation,
wrung from' the hard hands of our over-burdened
tax-payers, without obtaining honour for the
past, security for the future, or even the promise
of a single shilling of indemnity for our profuse
and lavish expenditure ?
Is it for the formation of a new unholy alliance,
by which conspiring despots may be enabled to
paralyse the energies and defeat the efforts of the
aspirants for freedom, of any who endeavour to
cast off the yokes that have become intolerable,
and who are prepared to lay down even life itself
to preserve their wives and children from the de-
gradation they have themselves endured ?
Is it because the time-honoured constitution of
England may be subverted or altered to suit a
German model ? that the shadow behind the
Throne may be enabled to carry out his designs,
and to extend the influences already paramount
in the Cabinet, and the Horse Guards, to every
national institution ?

Is it because the functions of Parliament have
been abrogated ? because the assent of the legiti-
mate guardians of the public purse has been deli-
berately and systematically dispensed with, and
the prerogatives of the Crown have been enhanced,
so as to assimilate them to the times of the
TUDOR, dynasty, when Parliament had merely a
veto, but no separate power ?

Is it because unhappy and
deeply-injured
Poland has been treated with insolent ne,iliacnc.
e
and contemptuous indifference ? because her very
existence has been ignored—and her glorious and
magnanimous children are still permitted to linger
out their lives in poverty and exile, far from their
fatherland—the more loved and cherished for its
unmerited misfortunes ?

Is it because the chains have been more closely
rivetted on the gallant Magyars, and they are
bereft of the hope by which they have hitherto
been animated ? Because the forces of Russia,

"Laughter"—c CheersandLaughter"" Loud
Cheers and Laughter !" These were among the
interruptions of the speeeli delivered in the House
of Commons, on Thursday evening, by Lord PAL-
MERSTON. And no wonder : for it was so funny,
the subject under discussion—so funny !It was

about—the Fall of Kars ! It was about several
months of dreadful suffering in a beleaguered
city—suffering which, thanks be to GOD, has been
but seldom paralleled. It was about the torments
endured by a handful of heroic men— abandoned
by their friends, assailed by their enemies,
scourged by pestilence, desolated by famine. What
a capital joke ! It was about the miseries endured

by our own gallant WILLIAMS, and borne up
against so long, but alas ! in the end so unavail-
ingly, by his dauntless companions in misfortune.
How droll ! It was about the agonies of a garri-
son surrounded by a hostile army in the depth of
a Caucasian winter, without food, without cloth-
ing, without ammunition, without a hope of as-
sistance, without a chance of even the most tardy
extrication. Surely the very pith of the absurd,
the very marrow of tho comic, the very cream of
the ludicrous ! Kars is invested by the Russians
under MOURAVIEFF. It is held through frost,
through fever, through hunger 19y the Turkish
garrison under WILLIAms. It is at last stricken
down, not by its assailants, but by absolute star-
vation. The key of Asia is lost to the Allies. The
prestige of England is gone for many a long day
in Armenia. WILLIAMS is a Citptive—MOURAVIEFF
a conqueror. A glorious and historic defence is
crowned by a pitiable and irreparable Capitulation.
Viscount PALMERSTON cracks a sly joke or two upon
these peculiarly humorous occurrences, and the
House of Commons (listening to him on the broad
grin), at the close of each grotesque sentence, falls
straightway into convulsions of merriment 1
"Laughter"—" Cheers and Llughter"—" Loud
Cheers and Laughter !"

It was precisely the same a year or two ago,
when the hearts of all Englishmen outside the
Houses of Parliament were thrilling with anguish
over the sufferings of our brave army far away on
that miserable, muddy encampment before the
terrible earthworks of Sebastopol. It was known
then, far and wide, how our gallant soldiers were
falling by tens, and by scores, and by hundreds,
in platoons and battalions—not so much before
the shot and shells of the foe as under the deadly
influence of incompetent Generals and of a bung-
ling Commissariat. Everybody—even that absurd
fellow Boz, has lately held up so delightfully to
popular ridicule, the hypothetical "schoolboy "
who is supposed to know everythingeverybody,
we say, knew then with painful certainty how
rapidly and hopelessly our sons, and fathers, and
brothers were perishing by over-work and under-
feeding in the Crimea, by every species of fatal
disease and by all kinds of agonising wounds at
Scutari. We all knew it. Eagland knew it.
The House of Commons knew it. Viscount PaL-
MERSTON knew it. And yet what occurred at that
very time within the walls of the Legislature ?
Why—it cannot so soon bo forgotten—scarcely
could the Comic Premier rise from his seat on the
Treasury Bench, before kis supporters in the
background and below the gangway, to
the right and to the left, were sniggering
as the people in the pit of the Adelphi
or of the Haymarket begin sniggering whenever
Mr. KEELEY or Mr. BIICKSTONE steps with a
grave face before the footlights. Lord PALMER-
STON could hardly open his lips but what there
was laughter ! loud laughter ! renewed laughter !
prolonged
laughter ! As it was then—so it is
now. The Prime Minister of England was so
droll (the House of Commons thought) when the
British army Was perishing from the face of the