The Sun.
London, England, 1860-07-10 00:00:00

CONCERTS

CANTERBURY HALL
THIS EVENING,
C. H. GOUNOD'S OPERA.
FAUST.
first Time in this Country.
Faust Mr. Henry Herbert.
Mephistopheles Mr. C. Bernard.
Siobel Mrs. Anderson.
Marguerite
Conductor Mr. Jonghmans.
And selections from
Dinorah, Trovatore, Macbeth, and numerous other
Entertainments.
Balcony, is, Hall. 6d.
Comic Vocalists —Messrs. George Hodson (the Irish Come
dian and Mimic). and C. Marshall.
The ETHIOPIANS, consisting of 17 performers (organised
expressly for this Establishment), for the performance of
Vocal and Instrumental Music, Comic and Sentimental, with
Negro delineations, anecdotes, ac., in addition to the usual
entertainments.
The zallery is open from 5 till 11 on Sunday Evening.

THE WEATHER.—SuN OFFICE, JULY 10, 160,
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
65—highest since noon yesterday.
49—lowest this morning and during the night.
62—this day at noon.

BAROMETER-30.12,
WIND—E, to E.S.E ; moderate, with dull weather.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THIN DAY.—Morning, 6h. 12m.—Afternoon, 6h. 31m.
To-moßßow.-Morning, 6h. 51m.—Afternoon, 7h. 12m.

A terrible massacre of the Christians in Syria
has been commenced by the fanatical Druses of the
Lebanon. Unless England and France interfere
betimes between the Maronites and their mur-
ierers, the whole of the believers in CHRIST in
those regions will have been ruthlessly destroyed,
their cities sacked, and the intervening'country laid
waste and barbarously devastated. The butchery
indeed has already, as we have said, begun in
dreadful earnest. Insomuch is the position of the
unfortunate Christian population of Syria recog-
nised to be perillous by the Allied Governments of
Western Europe, that while our own rulers have
without an instant's hesitation caused two British
men-of-war to proceed to Beyrouth instanter—the
French Minister for Foreign Affairs (M. DE THOU-
VENEL) has forwarded instructions to the Imperial
ambassador at Constantinople (the Marquis DE
LAVALLETTE) " directing him," says REUTER'S
Telegram, " that France from feelings of
humanity as well as in consequence of
former conventions to inform the Porte
concluded with Turkey, is bound to put a
stop to these horrible massacres !" Nay,
it is added explicitly in these instructions that the
Turkish authorities not being capable of defending
the Sultan's own subjects, France will concert, with
the other Powers, the most efficacious means for
preventing the continuation or recurrence of the
sanguinary deeds being enacted in Syria between
the range of the Lebanon and the shores of the
Mediterranean. How much more urgently is not
this intervention of the chief Powers of Christen-
dom required, if it can be proved that far beyond
any mere lack of capacity on their part to defend
the SULTAN'S own subject, those Turkish autho-
rities have actually been implicated with the
Druses in the massacre of the Christians in Syria !
Such, in point of fact, is understood already to have
been absolutely the case. It is notorious, we believe,
from one extremity of the Levant to the other, that
the heathenish Druses of the Lebanon have found not
only connivance, but direct encouragement among

more than one of the Mussalman officials of the Tur-
kish Government.

Time and again there are indications not
less clear in regard to Turkey than in regard
to Austria that the whole fabric of the State is
crumbling away from its very foundation. The
sick man is even now once more sickening. The
time is obviously approaching when he must be
sick unto death. Ever since the Turk took Con-
stantinople—he has had one foot in the grave.
That conquering foot of his planted haughtily upon
the soil of Europe l Theorists tell us that every
Child born into the world has the seed of the particu-
lar disease that must triumph at last (unless anti-
cipated by accident) latent in its new-born consti-
-Aution. It has been so throughout all these four
centuries past during which the Mahommetans
have held dominion in Europe among the
nations of Christendom,
triumph, in that ln that very crowning
apparenteuhnination of the star of
the Turk there was manifest to those who can read
history aright, to those who are endowed with any
clearness of politial prevision, the sourcev of inevita-
ble defeat, the germ of inexorable decline
tahnedEdai
East
t-
solution. If the slope of Russia is towardsi
as the poetic and philosophic historian of France
has remarked—the gravitation of Turkey is as un-
doubtedly back again into Asia Minor. The Eu-
ropean rule of the Turk has been all along an
anomaly. It has -never been accepted by Christen-
dom, it has only been tolerated. The beginning
of the end of that *same anomalous rule may, with

the strictest accuracy, therefore, be said to date
from the hour of its original foundation. Re-
peatedly, 'during the lapse of the last four
hundred years, there have been indications that
so soon as the Christian Powers cared to cast aside
their conflicting jealousies, to abandon each its
selfish ambition, to combine their influence and
their interests harmoniously together, the doom of
the Mussulman authority in Europe would upon
that instant have been pronounced. That combi-
nation has often been impending over the Moslem's
Ottoman like another sword of DAMOCLES. Nor can
we conceive that the Sultan-Caliph could by any pos-
sibility have retained authority over his European do-
minions until now, but that Europe had called down
upon : itself the 'perpetuation of this unnatural
and anomalous power upon the southern borders of
Christendom, by participation in, or connivance at
a Crime crying aloud to Heaven for vengeance in
the form of some such deadly retribution. History
has not forgotten to record in luminous characters—
in characters the glory of which can never fade—that
Vienna, that northern and western Europe were
saved from the horrors of devastation and possible
conquest by the armies of the Mahometans through
the ever memorable intervention of the heroic Poles
under the glorious SOBIESKI. Nor has history for-
gotten to relate since then in characters of
blood how that matchless service done by
Poland to the whole Christian race was re-
compensed, not yet a century back, by the
ever infamous and dastardly partition of
the land of SOBIESKI, of KOSCIUSKO, and of STANIS-
LAUS. In the retribution called for by that detest-
able act we may recognise the source of the
continuance even until now of the Turkish sway
in Europe—a prolongation of power by a State so
effete and worn-out (surviving thus among all the
vigorous races of our modern Christian civilisa-
tion t) otherwise we may say altogether is
explicable. Again and again the Mahometan
rulers at Constantinople have found their real
support in the contentions of the rival
Powers of Chistendom. Until at length only
six short years ago we all remember
how the allied armies of France and England
fought and bled and died under the walls of Sebas-
topol
to save from the lawless and ambitious grasp
of the Russian Autocrat the fair and beautiful city
of Constantinople. Happily for the Turks, how-
ever, they have had now for the best part of the
last half century upon the Imperial throne of the
Sultan-Caliph, a prince sufficiently enlightened to
strengthen his expiring power by the creation of
something like the eidolon of the soul of liberality
under those ribs of death the:framework of the old
Turkish Government. Such has been advantage
secured to the power of the Sublime Porte during
the reign of the present Sultan, ABDUL MEDJ ID, in
pursuance of the policy previously inaugurated by
his great and gifted father and predecessor.
Notwithstanding which sagacious policy,
however, the doom of Turkey is " coming
out to view " day by day more and more
legibly, as one may see, upon the wall of the.
Sultan's Palace upon the shores of the Bosphorus.
It comes flashing to us again in these announce-
ments of the electric telegraph—those tidings of the
butchery of our fellow Christians in Syria by the
Druses of the Lebanon, pagan fanatic hearken on
in their terrible work of murder and desolation,
first by the secret sympathies, afterwards by the
open encouragement of the Mussulman officials
representing the authority of the Turkish Govern.
ment. The massacres in Syria threaten in
point of fact to open up yet again,
it may be at last for once and for
all, that problem, the solution of which has
been so often postponed, that problem, long since
world-famous under its different phases as the
Eastern Question. The crimes of the Druses, the
complicity in those crimes of the Mussulmans, now
seem to require that that Question shall at length
be definitively answered by some united action on
he part of the dominant Powers of Christendom.

Poor Lord NORMANBY seems to be haunted by a
spirit from Italy, which neither Lord WODEHOUSE
nor Lord BROUGHAM can lay, and which allows
him no repose. Since his model Italian Court has
had to go on tramp, all at Florence has gone
wrong. The arch-sinner MAZZINI has had more
influence than ever. The Provisional Government
has been far more tyrannical than the Lieutenant
of Austria. His letters, of course from parties
perfectly disinterested, assure him that all is
tyranny and misrule ; doubtless the postcripts add
that the Florentines sigh for the glorious days of
Ducal freedom. Then, steaming in fancy across to
Sicily, he sees GARIBALDI, if not personally cruel
and barbarous, tolerating barbarities in others; and
seeing that, against the laws of nations, he has at the
voice of a nation assumed the Dictatorship, he

is held responsible for all the misdeeds of the in-
furiated Sicilians. Unlucky man ! Neapolitan
soldiers and police have provoked the natives to
retaliate for imprisoning and torturing patriots
and innocent citizens, and even for crucifying them
on the walls of their prisons ; and GARIBALDI is to
answer for the blows struck by the hands he has
untied!

Lords BROUGHAM and WODEHOUSE—rather hard

though, two against one—won't give up either the
Provisional Government or the noble Italian Gene-
ral. All Lord BROUGHAM can say to the first
charge is, that he too has letters from Florence,
but they happen to be of a diametrically opposite
character to those of Lord NORMANBY. What
can we say to it ? " Who keeps fat oxen must him-
self be fat;'' and we suppose " who correspond
with noble lords must themselves be noble." It is
plain, therefore, that nobles, like other folk, must
agree to differ. On one point, however, we imagine
there is very little difference of feeling in England,
and probably Lord NORMANBY is in a minority of
one in this country, although he could muster a
respectable show of ducal partisans at Florence.
All England saw the DUKE run off to the Austrian
camp with pleasure, and is exceedingly well
pleased that he should keep where he is. Judginc,
from all appearances, the vast majority of the
DUKE'S old subjects, and of Italians generally,
down to the very heel and toe of the boat, share
our pleasure. It is no doubt from our partialities
in favour of Italian freedom, that we all feel dis-
posed to put more faith in Lord BROUGHAM'S than
in Lord NORMANBY'S correspondents.
And then for General GARIBALDI, certainly Lord
NORMANBY had better have let him alone. He
can neither change the general feeling of Europe
and the whole civilised world, nor alter facts. And
the notorious fact is that GARIBALDI, a self-taught
man, is one of the most remarkable combinations
of amiableness, firmness, and military and ad-
ministrative skill that perhaps ever appeared
With the - heart of a child to weep
tears of tender joy, as the hostage
prisoners were given up by the last of the Austrians
who quitted Palermo, he is yet the rigid disci-
plinarian who will, like our CROMWELL, " stand no
nonsense," and who would shoot with his own hand
a follower who mutinied against his orders, or com-
mitted violence and degradation. The admiration
of British admirals and sailors-is not bestowed on a
Captain of cut-throats. It does appear, and we may
regret it, though who amongst us can wonder at it,

that the willing agents of Neapolitan tyranny
who were foolish enough to remain at Palermo
are often the victims of popular vengeance,—

"These miserable agents of the old Bourbon tyranny,"
writes a correspondent of the Morning Post, " who
are popularly termed rats,' are now expiating
fearfully the long series of cowardly cruelties
which they wreaked on the Sicilian people. To
the cry of A rat ! a rat ! ' you will see as many
as five or six thousand persons furiously chasing
their victim ; and each man in the crowd seems
anxious to strike his own separate blow. These
acts of ferocity ill become a people engaged in a
straggle for the most precious of all possessions—a
secure and well-founded liberty. When, in the
earliest of my letters, I wrote that the dominant
feeling in this population was not love of Italian in-
dependence, but hatred of Neapolitan tyranny, I
was not at all mistaken."

There is no proof whatever that GARIBALDI con-
nives at all this ; his own nature is above it. Our
Government has positive information that he takes
the strongest measures he can to prevent it. He is
not the man to like the biggest villain on earth to
be hunted to death by five or six thousand of his
former victims. It were more creditable to him to
punish the wretch by due course of law—or, if he
were the tool of others who but used his base nature
for their atrocious purposes, to leave him to the
penalty of universal abhorrence and of his own re-
morse. As Lord WODEHOUSE observed, " There
could be no doubt that General GARIBALDI deserved
the highest credit for the general spirit of modera-
tion he had shown since the commencement of these
transactions—and it must not be forgotten
that if, in the excitement of the revolution, some
outrages were committed by the people of Sicily,
outrages had also been committed by the royal
troops which were perfectly well known to the
world, and which certainly had not been surpassed
by anything done by the people of Sicily." And
most truly did Lord BROUGHAM retort—" I believe
there has been no cause known in the world which
has met more universal acceptance than the cause
of Sicily, with Gen. GARIBALDI at its head, against
the tyrant of Naples and his emissaries, whether
in the form of sbirri, policemen, or soldiers—and
those soldiers, I firmly believe, only for a season
remaining under allegiance to that King. I am
told there is a constitution imposed upon Naples
by a certain high authority elsewhere. That will
be a complete failure, in my firm belief ; and in
my entire and hearty hope and prayer it will
fail entirely to save that detestable tyrant." We
need hardly add that to the last prayer of his
lordship we most heartily say—AMEN.

Voluntaryism is the glory of Englishmen. All
their greatest works are the works of Volunteers.
Our unrivalled manufactures, our railroads and
telegraphs, our vast commercial navy—nay, though
we have an establishment, half our religious
teaching also —are the work of volunteers.
We are a people who do nothing so well as what
we do by our own impulse. Protection was ever
really alien to our nature, bonuses much more so.
Untie our hands, give us a clear stage and no
favour, and we ask no more, is the language of our
commercial men ; and the spirit is in our artizans
and workmen too. They do not relish having
everything done for them—" a fair day's wages for
a fair day's work," is with them the summum
bonum. Duo, panem et circenses, the cry to which
not distant neighbours tend, is not that of the
Englishman—we trust never will be.
All in keeping with our character, then, is the
glorious movement which received yester-
day at the Crystal Palace its crowning
acknowledgment of Royal and public favour.
" 7he citizens their own defenders"—is the toast
which should always complete that of " our Volun-
teer Riflemen." " Defence, not defiance," is the
motto which was conspicuous yesterday. We
will not be over critical, but we should rather say
defence and defiance too—for if we are really de-
fended we defy all who may be disposed to attack
us; and if there be none whom we need to defy,
there are none against whom we need take defen-
sive precautions. " Defence, not aggression," is
what our Riflemen mean ; and they mean it, be-
cause there are a people who can sing by thousands
in our Crystal Palace, who can with the most un-

feigned sincerity and cordiality appreciate our
peaceful feelings when they come to see us, but
who are yet so volatile and fickle—as they were
even in the days of JULIUS C.ESAR—and, moreover,
so fond of military glory, that we can nevzr feel
sure what they will do. Left to themselves
they might be merry and good tempered enough
with us. But in the hands of a successful usurper
who must keep his seat by diverting their thoughts
from domestic despotism; who obtained it by the

aid of 600,000 pretorians every now and then eager

for some martial exploit; who builds a vast
fleet, simply and solely to vie with us on the ocean,
and to place himself in a position to intimidate us ;
they are not safe neighbours, and it is indigpen sable
that we should be able to defy him to do his worst.
Thanks to our Volunteers, we can now defy all
who may ever cogitate evil against us, and defy
them in our own way. A continental standing army,
in point of numbers, we never can have. Indeed,
at the cost per man of our army Mr. GLADSTONE
must not only be thankful for paper duties, but re-
impose all he has abolished, if we were to have an
army like that of France. But volunteers we are
by nature, and as volunteers we can do our work.
Happily, nothing has occurred to mar the national
celebration of the past few days—fine weather, not
too hot or too cold; the absence of painful accident,
and unabated enthusiasm from the day of Review
to the day of the presentation of the prizes at the
Crystal Palace, have rendered the entire fete of nine
days all that could be wished. In some minor
matters practice will make perfect ; but as a whole
the Review and the meeting of the Rifle Associa-
tion has been all that could be wished.

We need not advert at length to the yesterday's
meeting. The account of it will be read with in-
terest all over England, and it speaks for itself.
POMPEY thanked CICEItO for preserving him a
capital where he could celebrate his triumph, and
it is no more than justice to thank the Crystal
Palace Company for providing a building and
grounds where our Rifle Volunteers could receive
their prizes among the thousands who desired to do
hem honour on the day. Pleasant was the addi-
on of Swiss competitors and Swiss winners of
Switzerland shares with us our in

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THE SUN.
LONDON, TUESDAY, JULY 10, 1880.