The Sun.
London, England, 1856-10-31 00:00:00

TEE PRECIOUS PEACE.

(From the Times.)
The reputation of Russia has gone through three
several phases during the last four years. At first
she appeared highly politic and highly formidable,
ready alike with force or fraud, bullying the weak
and overreaching the strong with one inflexible
purpose always in view, to which every other
thought and consideration was sternly subordinat-
ed. That she might domineer over Germany,
threaten Turkey, and terrify Persia, Russia was
content to cling to an obsolete commercial system,
to keep her people in slavery and indigence, and
to sacrifice the plough, the loom, and the hammer
to the nu-disputed supremacy of the sword.
War came, and showed the Russian character
under nobler and more elevating influences. In-
stead of the spirit of aggression, we have the
spirit of patriotism, instead of foreign invasion the
defence of home, and we beheld, not without re-
spectful admiration, a great nation struggling des-
perately against the almost insuperable obstacles
which her own defective organisation had raised
against her, and almost supplying by prodigious
efforts and sacrifices the want of the appliances of
modern science, and of those aids which the arts
of peace must lend to the arts of war. Russia has
now entered into a third and totally novel phase
of development,—
" The bustling vigour and rough frown of war
Is cold inanity and painted peace."
She has been forced to yield because her means
of transport were exhausted, because her armies
perished in interminable marches, and all the re-
sources that she had stored up for the destruction
of a barbarous enemy proved inefficient against the
hostility of nations better organised and better civi-
lised. The genius of barbarism looked civilisation
in the face, and was rebuked before her.
It might have been expected that a loss which had
been sustained without disgrace would have been
borne with dignity, and that Ruisia, yielding to an
inevitable destiny, would have turned her whole at-
tention to the arts of peace, and left the victors
in the conflict to play undisturbed the most promi-
nent part on the public stage. But those who ex-
pected this knew little of the character of the Rus-
sian Government,. A profound dissimulation bears
no inconsiderable part in the policy of this semi-
oriental people. Having been defeated the first and
dominant idea of Russia seems to have been to pre-
tend that she has not. Like persons in society
who take liberties which everybody feels but no-
body is exactly inclined to resent, Russia is labour-
ing hard to present before Europe and the world
the character of a Power that has come out of the
war on a perfect equality with the other belliger-
ents. In her anxiety to avoid the renewal of hos-
tilities she persuaded the allies to leave certain ques-
tions to be dealt with after the signature of peace.
Others were necessarily in that condition from the
impossibility of executing them at that moment.
No attitude can be less creditable than that which
Russia has assumed with regard to these questions.
She has seized, without a colour of right or justice,
upon the Isle of Serpents, and has only been coun-
teracted in her attempts by an occupation by the
Turks in greater force than her own. She was
bound to deliver up to the allies the fortresses of
Kilia, Ismail, and Kars. , The conditions were
performed by dismantling and destroying the forti-
fications and delivering over the ruins to the allies.
Russia was pressed to rectify the frontier of Beasa- r
rabia. By the production of maps wilfully
falsified she entirely misled the Congress of
Paris, and induced them to assent to a frontier
impossible and inexplicable. _ The six months

fixed by the treaty have expired, and most of the
conditions imposed upon Russia are as yet unper-
formed. In addition to this, she has issued an

insolent and even threatening manifesto, in which
she warns the allies to desist from their attempts
to improve the condition of Naples, and even hints

at a recourse to ulterior measures if her remon-
strance be not attended to. As if all this were not

enough in the way of paltry vexation and safe
bravado, Russia is now about to send a squadron
to the Bosphorus, iu order to take advantage of
the wrong she has already committed to perpetrate
a fresh wrong. Because she has not performed.
the conditions imposed upon her by the treaty
the allies have been compelled, much against
their will, to keep their fleets in the Black Sea ;
and because their fleets remain in the Black Sea,
owing to her default, Russia is, we are informed,
about to demand from Turkey that her fleet should
also be allowed to enter those neutral waters. Let

nobody suppose, nevertheless, that Russia has not -
been defeated in the late war, or that she is in any
condition to resume it. Were this really the case,
were these the provocations of an enemy only
seeking to renew the conflict from which he has been

forcedfor awhile to to tire,theymight alar m but could
not disgrace us. But nothing is further from the
intention of Russia at this moment than to provoke

a second war. As they begin to say of the Emperor,
she has the wish, but not the will. All these acts

or actings are intended for the benefit of the
minor Courts of Europe, to give them an excuse
for believing, or still pretending to believe, that
Russia is still unconquered, still able to protect
them against their subjects, still competent to ex-
tend their lease of tyranny and misrule. All that
can be done short of affording to the allies an ex-
cuse which would justify them in the eyes of their
subjects in renewing the war will be played off by
this histrionic and unscrupulous Power. "We
only regret" the moderation which led us to con-

clude the struggle as soon as we had gained the
exact amount of advantage,necessary for our ob-
ject, instead of protracting it until our superiority
was not only obtained, but so notorious as to be in.
capable of misrepresentation.