The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-10 00:00:00

league, and disposing of military and material
forces far more formidable than any that are
wielded by these terrible Italians ?" It is a sug-
gestive problem, very clearly put—and the working
of it out to a solution we here commend to our
more sagacious readers' powers of computation!

The present position of things on the Continent
is one which none of us can contemplate with satis-
faction. There is perhaps no obvious fact indicative
of any great impending commotion, much less of a
war in which this country will be required to take a
part—yet nowhere is there ease. Russia, notwith-
standing her difficult task of emancipation of the
serfs, is least unsettled. Even Turkey has
elements of disquiet in her still intolerable financial
administration, and the growing demands of the
Christian population for civil equality with the
Mahomedans.

But central, southern, and western Europe is
not an extinct volcano. As on Mount Etna, there
are numerous small apertures through which the
subterranean fires emit the signs of what is work-
ing below—of what may, almost suddenly, become
an irruption, and pour forth streams of desolating
lava over what seemed all so fair before. We do
not wish, or need to exaggerate ; no doubt the
despots and their mercenaries will, for a time at
least, effectually repress any partial risings or
manifestations of discontent. But can they be
expected always to do so. Is not another great
convulsive revolution in some of the countries
quite a possibility ; and if it be successful, who can
tell how many lesser or greater Monarchs will have
to book themselves again as JOHN SMITHS
by a Brighton packet? Who would take any
serious wager that France itself, the ever-changing,
will not soon require insular lodgings for the great
Revolutionist whom she now accommodates at the
Tuileries.

In the extreme south we see Sicily, although oc-
cupied by Royal garrisons, yet unable, in her agony,
to look merely at prudential considerations, aid
making attempts at freedom—Sicily which England
so unquestionably surrendered to despotism, that
the instincts of rumour assign to us the instiga-
tion of the present insurrection. We do not
wonder at it. It must be universally felt, that if
we avowed repentance for the national acts of our
predecessors, and now demanded constitutional
government for Sicily, we should be doing but jus-
tice to the Sicilians. Naples is but a hotbed of
Royal provocations and popular indignation fer-
menting under a repression which suffers no signs
to appear of what is stirring the very depths of ten
thousand hearts. The young KING seems if possible to
surpass the old one in suspicion and illegal cruel-
ties. But yesterday we had a list of fifty-seven
persons, all imprisoned on suspicion merely, not
one of them brought to trial, and by the mere will
of the young tyrant and his police deprived of
liberty and of the means of livelihood. Others are
banished from their homes on suspicion merely.

As to Rome we all know the sentiments of the
inhabitants of the remaining Papal territories, and of
the majority of the Romans themselves. But what
means this visit of General LAMORICIERE to Rome;
his inspection of the native Papal troops; his
opinion that he can make a decent army of them;
his obtaining leave to command them for himself,
and leave to officer them with half-pay French officers.
Are the French troops to withdraw, and soldiers of
the Perugian class, led by a French officer to keep
the POPE on his throne ?

Then how unsettled is Germany. Austria, now
that the time is come, is afraid to force her
" patent" on the Protestants in Hungary ; she
cannot even get six respectable Hungarians to
represent that country in her proposed council, and
she is of course paralysed by bankruptcy. Prussia,
her envious antagonist, is not comfortable. She
cannot help looking uneasily at the Rhine when
she hears of Savoy, notwithstanding all M. THOU-
YENEL'S assurances. But Switzerland and Savoy
—at least, Chablais and Faucigny—are real per.
plexities. Switzerland may well be alarmed. One
third of her Cantons speak French, and speaking
the French language was one of the reasons why
Savoy must join the French empire; why at least
it was natural she should do so.

As to France and her Ruler, it is needless to speak.
It is painfully notorious that we are paying our
Income-tax, at least, to meet his naval and military
preparations. Had he not been labouring hard to
gain the mastery of the seas, and thus to lay us bare
to the attacks of a French army several times
over larger than our own, we might at this mo-
ment have met all our expenses by Mr. GLAD-
STONE'S present budget, deducting the income tax,
How long a peace will last which one party makes
the other pay £10,000,000 per annum for, none can
tell. In course of time, every income-tax payer
will draw out his purse with the not Tory peace-
making reflection—Louis NAPOLEON demands this.

An excellent speech was last evening delivered
in the Egyptian-hall, at the Mansion-house, by
H.R.H. the Duke of CAMBRIDGE, the General
Commanding-in-Chief. Without affecting for one
instant to be in any way rhetorical, the remarks
of his Royal Highness won their way to the hearts
of his hearers by the simple and natural eloquence
resulting from the union of sound good sense
with patriotic earnestness. Better, immeasureably
better, an honest, manly, fervent speech like this,
the utterance of one viewing things and events
quite clearly and dispassionately, of one loving with
his whsle heart the integrity and independence of
the old fatherland—than all the impassioned rho-
domontade with which Mr. BRIGHT has so long
been endeavouring to cram down our throats, the
suicidal policy. alone to be deduced from his absurd
peace-at-any-price principles. The Duke of
CAMBRIDGE, as a man of common sense, indulged
his audience last evening with
no such n
aftlantastic
delusions. He was addressing himself
assem-
blage, the majority of which was composed of mem-
bers of the very class who might be regarded as
about the fittest representatives of the great body
of the taxpayers—representatives, that is, of the
mercantile wealth and middle class industry of the
empire—representatives of those out of whose
pockets principally comes the chief part of our
annual income of .C 70,000,000. Instead of deluding
these men with the utterly ludicrous notion that we
have only to stretch forth our hand, and utter the
fiat that henceforth all the swords in the world are
to be beaten into ploughshares, and all the lance
heads or bayonets bent into reaping-hooks ! Instead
of babbling about the green fields of Arcadia, in
which some of our cotton-spinning dreamers of
Peace (' Peace, where there is no Peace") already
behold in imagination the children of the next gene-
ration toying unharmed between the lion and the basi-
lisk, together with other unmistakeable indications
of the commencement (say in another year or two)
of the era of the Millennium! Instead of talking
arrant nonsense like so many infatuated individuals
who believe, as Mr. BRIGHT believes, and as Mr.
COBDEN believes, that War may henceforth give
place permanently to Arbitration, the Commander-
in-Chief of her MAJESTY'S forces uttered opinions
diametrically the reverse in the course of his obser-
vations last evening, in the Mansion-house of the
City of London.

The Duke of CAMBRIDGE remembered per-