The Sun.
London, England, 1860-11-08 00:00:00

in Tuscany and th4,„,gthor Skates—by passive re-
sistanc= t tile right thing themselves, and
leavi s -Imperial MAJESTY the odium of attacking
them for so doing. Admiral PERSANO could not

have acted more wisely. His orders were to co.
operate with the Piedmontese by effecting a land.
ing at the mouth of the Garigliano, and thus, as
the event proved, greatly embarrassing the move-
ments of the Royalist troops. A few days previ-
ously six Sardinian ships employed in the attempt
had been compelled by the French to withdraw.
On the 30th Admiral PERSANO himself returned
with ten ships for the same object, and in the face
of threatening preparation by the French refused
to desist. He told the French Admiral that his
orders were positive, that he must execute them ;
that if the French attacked him he should not
resist, but should hold the French Admiral
responsible for what he considered to be an
lillegal intervention. The result was that
Admiral DE TINAN was afraid to commit his
master to an attack on Sardinia, and Admiral
PERSANO efficiently completed the task entrusted
to him.

We cannot see why PERSANO should not pursue
the same course at Gaeta. An attack on the sea
side of the fortress will not prevent the escape of
the KING, if he have but the good sense and feel-
ing to yield in a now perfectly hopeless contest.
He must well know that no one desires to make a
prisoner of him ; that indeed the only anxiety is
not to have him in that capacity. He may follow
his future soldiers by land if he like into the Papal
States, and all the Piedmontese sentries and videttes
would be found instructed not to know him. He
might embark in any Spanish, French, or Austrian,
or, for that matter, in any English ship ; for PER-
SAN() would not think of interfering with such an
embarkation, and would be only too happy to
know that it was going on. The French
Admiral has no more just pretext for interference
at Gaeta than he had at the Garigliano. He has,
however, the best of reasons for sot interfering. If
the Sardinian fleet be allowed free scope there, it
will certainly expedite the flight of FRANCIS 11.,
and that, even his friends, under present circum-
stances, must feel to be the most desirable of events.
No aid can be hoped for from Warsaw ; none from
Austria; none from France, after all. Louis
NAPOLEON himself cannot intend to help him back
to his kingdom ; and how to account for the un-
meaning and important freak of the French
Admiral sorely puzzles even the writers who are in
the service of the EMPEROR himself. The game is
really up, Europe is merely awaiting the last
formal moves, and the Emperor of the FRENCH.
can incur nothing but ridicule for helping the
beaten player to lose under his guidance.

Towards the close of Lord BYRON'S comparatively
brief but resplendent career, his publisher and
friend, JOUN MURRAY, of Albemarle-street, was

threatened with a very singular alternative, an
alternative submitted to him (in consequence of
certain political jealousies) by the Government. It
was intimated to Mr. MURRAY that he must make

his own choice as to whether he should thenceforth

continue to publish the great poet's writings—
writings particularly obnoxious to the powers that
then were—or whether he should hold his official

appointment as the publisher, from year to year,
of the "Nautical Almanack." Especially irritated
as the ruling powers were at the period when this
extraordinary intimation was made to Mr. MURRAY,
peculiarly and painfully irritated as the Ministers
of the Crown then were with the caustic, and biting,
and formidable satirist, whose pen of scorn had but
so very recently written in gall the "Age of
Bronze" and the " Vision of Judgment"—they
adopted this spiteful means of retaliating vicariously
(through his friend and publi.shor) nn that, tiLcu
twofold phenomenon, a man of superb genius,
who was actually at the same time a peer, and a!
peer who was at the 'same time ;in ultra Liberal
Lord BYRON being the very antithesis, in these
two respects, of the Tory mediocrities then holding
in their combined grasp the reins of Administration.
The alternative was never happily forced coute
qui coute upon the meditated (and, upon the very
face of it, sinless) victim of this most petty and
paltry object of persecution. JOHN MURRAY still
continued to purchase those copyrights of Lord
BYRON'S poems, the last remnants-of which copy-
rights are still held by his son and successor. JOHN
MURRAY still continued to print and publish, as his
son still continues to print and publish the " Nauti-
cal Almanack," previously issued under the autho-

rity of the Crown and of the Crown's MiListers, from
that first class and (saving only in one solitary ex-
ception—the glory of the Row—the great house of
the LONGMANS) that wholly unrivalled publishing
establishment. Even the administrators who could
originally entertain the notion of a scheme of ven-
geance so singularly small and despicable, shrunk
when it came to the point from the mingled auda-
city and ignominy of carrying out a project in every
way so disgraceful.

The generous.hearted and magnanimous object
of this Ministerial animosity—as might have been
expected from him under such circumstances—im-
mediately, upon learning the nature of the alterna-

tine threatened to be thrust thus nefariously upon
his own guiltless publisher, of course (inevitably
and obviously) to the latter's pecuniary loss and
embarrassment—at once, and without an instant's
hesitation, urged his friend to resign the merely
temporary and precarious post of publisher to him-
self (Lord BYRoN), and to retain rather the perma-

nent, and consequently (in the end, at least, if no•

in the beginning) far more lucrative, post of officia

publisher of the " Nautical Almanack," with the
sanction and under the authority of the KING'S

Government.

Recalling thus cursorily and incidentally to u-
collection thpgp singular incidents in the career of
Lord BYRON, is it not quite manifest now in this
retrospect that the whole of the threatened pro•

ceedings on the part of the then Cabinet

was, from first to last, a most flagi-
tious threatening of a violation of the

sacred principle of the Liberty of the Press
Is it not now quite transparent that the outrage

;hus meditated, supposing it for one moment to

have been actually accomplished, would really and
truly have amounted to nothing less than " leze
_ _

Majeste," to what has been emphatically termed
th© Fourth Estate of the Realm—in other words a

monstrous infraction of that boasted, and not unna-
turally boasted, right of the perfect freedom of writ-
ing,which is among the most cherished and treasured
privileges secured to each and all of the free
citizens of this great empire under the iEgis of our
Constitutional Government ? It was the sense of
this, doubtless, at the last moment, even through the
dulled consciences and the blunted sensibilities of
the purblind Tory administrators, from whom the
threat had emanated in a moment of grievous and
irrepressible exacerbation, it was the tardy recog-
nition of this, by them, we say, at the very last
moment that saved the Ministers of the Crown of
theat perilday of fromt the disgrace and, possibly, even then,
h
hus interfering with the liberty of
t

,he press by this clarirg interference between Lord