The Sun.
London, England, 1860-12-31 00:00:00

anee by the noble earl the honoured ch.ilef of her
MAJESTY'S Opposition. It was az incident espe-
cially worthy of commemoration, that assemblage
of the northern Volunteers at the ancestral home
of the Earl of DERBY—peculiarly and, especially
worthy of commemoration in this retrospect of the
Volunteer movement if only from the circumstance
of its evidencing in a remarkable manner
the unanimity with which all classes of politicians
have coincided, with a total forgetfulness of party
distinctions and party differences, in wishing God-
speed to the mustering of England's Riflemen !
Another particularly noticeable circumstance in
regard to this resplendent movement is the now
perfectly obvious fact that it has tended from first
, to last to bring frankly together, as man to man, the
yeious sections and classes of oar diversified com-
munity Insomuch is this. the case that the social
barriers tritberto dividing class from class may be
said, with a perfect regard to truth, to have been
broken down 4,nd trodden under foot, as hence-
forth contemned .qbstructions and encumbrances,
by the simple but .q.ll-sufficient force of this
• Rifle Volunteers.
very movement of out rich and
The manhood of these is'.
wand aristo-
poor, patrician and plebeian, shopkeeper •
crat, representatives of the working Millt:4 and
representatives of the Upper Ten Thousand, 0/7
manfully put shoulder to shoulder, they have all
assembled upon one common footing, brothers in
g
arms, clad in the same grey or green uniforms
common to the members of the various corps of our
Volunteer Riflemen. Again we say that if only
regarded in the light of this one noble movement,
the year 1860, now fast coming to its close, cannot
but be borne by us all in grateful recollection.
The old babble about invasion has now been
effectually scattered to the winds as little else
than ridiculous. Particularly bearing in mind that
simultaneously with this prompt creation and
permanent organisation of a National Guard of
Volunteer Riflemen, we have during this same
twelvemonth seen the wise regard paid by the
nation to the improvement and development of
both our great warlike services : insomuch that the
Royal Navy and the Royal Army are fast ap-
proaching a state of efficiency such as they have
never previously attained at any period of our
history. Consequently, if we have been expend-
ing in a year of peace, so-called, the enormous sum
of thirty round millions sterling, upon our mili-
tary and maritime armaments, we have at any
rate, in this their rapid approximation to a state
of complete efficiency, a result, we will venture to
say, in spite of all the peace-at-any-price econo-
mists of the Manchester school, amply compensa-
tive.

The inclemency of the weather in 1860 turns out
again upon the reliable evidence of the Registrar
General to be in its consequences absolutely matter
of 'congratulation. The mortality has actually
diminished, under the influence of this almost unex-
ampled humidity of the spring, summer, and
autumn seasons—the flooding rains having washed
clear of all impurities the drain-channels of our
towns and cities, and at the head of them all, with
conspicuous good results, the shores of our vast and
densely populated metropolis. It is a result, this,
eminently calculated to inspirit us all in the more
and more rapid development of our Sanitary Im-

provements.
If we cast a retrospective glance at 1860 in a
purely commercial point of view, our attention
becomes almost entirely absorbed in the still
problematic advantages promised to the cola,
try by the new Treaty of Commerce negotiated
vt all meat) lumtorriceu Vrauct, mina
England. A commercial Treaty, we are still
encouraged to believe by those who have faith in
it—negotiated nominally at least in the interest of
the great Free Trade Principles, though based
throughout upon the old and, we had imagined,
obsolete crotchet of the Monopolists the old bung-
ling and blundering crotchet of Reciprocity. It is
singularly inauspicious in regard to this still
dubious mercantile transaction between France and
England, that it is reprehended, root and branch,
body and soul, ;by no less authoritative and en-
lightened a Political Economist than Mr. Wen',
LOCH, the Author of the "Mercantile Dictionary."
Whatever benefits may eventually accrue to
England from the prudent effects of its
operation—there is not a doubt of this—
can only come to us, after long waiting !
During all which weary lapse of time we shall
have to make up the deficiencies of the revenue,
consequent upon the abolition of se many indi-
rect taxes (never complained of !) upon luxuries,
by the clumsy and cruel device of an indefinite
continuation of the direct Tax upon Incomes,
according to its present unjust and infamous
mode of assessment. Here in fact is the chief blot
of the year now dying out—a year of financial folly
and financial profligacy, of commercial blundering
and commercial experiment. It is Mr. GLADSTONR
who is the arch-offender. He of all our public men
is the one who has most blundered. He has secured
to himself the distrust of the great mass of his
fellow-countrymen—he has unhinged the whole

machinery of the mercantile system and of our

financial organisation. He has done this by a
series of elaborated and complex, of rash and
blundering Budgets—Budgets more erroneous in
themselves and more glaringly miscalculated than
even those notorious Budgets that bewildered the
the House of Commons a dos en years ago when
Sir CITARLES WOOD wore the gold robe of England's

Chancellor of the Eiehequer.
Turning our regard now to the various stages
of advancement noticeable in the social condition

of the community at large, it is parlicularly

gratifying to remark the perceptible rise in the

character of the education of the middle classes

from the infitience,• among other things, of the

scheme known as that of the Oxford Examinations.

The educational cause of nearly all classes of the

population indiscriminately, is still further ad-

vanced, from year to year, by the discussions pro-

yoked (this last twelvemonth it was through
the gathering at Glasgow) by the Social

Science Association. Nor are the interests

of popular education other than aided (more

particularly among the employees of the shop-
keepers) by the extension of the Saturday Half-

holiday and Early-closing movements.

If the general mortality has been happily dimi -
nished during 1860, we have yet, alas! reasons
enow to lament over the many illustrious

names numbered up in the Obituary of this last
twelvemonth. Among the Peers• of the realm,
have we not had grief in noticing the premature
disappearance from the scene of the good Duke of
NORFOLK and the gallant Duke of RICHMOND?
Have we not had to record the deaths of Lords
STRAFFORD, and RRYTESBITRY, and LONDES-
Have not two statesmen of historic
BOROUGH ?

repute passed away in the persons of the Earl of
ABERDEEN and the Marquis of DALHOUSIE ? Has

not another NELSON breathed his last, full
of years, it is true, but (shame to the
nation !) not full of honours, in the
instance of the late venerable and glorious

old Sailor Earl of DUNDON'ALD ? Locx;

the engineer, following fast his two renowned
contemporaries, BRUNEL and STEPHENSON-G.

Pt R. IL,IIEs the novelibt—Sir CIIABLES BARETt

-, '

the architect—Captain MACKONICHIE, the bene-
volent reformer of criminals—ALFßED CHALON
and Sir W. C. Ross, the Royal Academicians—
LANDELLS, the engraver—JELLlEN, the musical-
caterer for the million in this country, one whom
we cannot but bear in remembrance as having been
in that capacity conspicuous among the number of
our popular benefactors—ALßEßT SMITH, the
most delightful humourist among our public lec-
turers—Mrs. JAMESON, the charming art-critic—
SPENCE, the entomologist--together with many
other well known people too numerous, unhappily,
to be here particularised, have contributed their
long-familiar names to swell the interest of the
Obituary for the last twelvemonth.

The continental New Year's Eve is to most
Englishmen quite as interesting a topic as their
own. Indeed, our apologists for this year's abor-
tive session have boldly asserted that the amount
of talk on foreign affairs—those of Savoy and Italy
especial ly—represen ted fairly the far greater interest
felt in the cause of liberty abroad, than in that of
extending our franchises at home. Be that as it
may, never for this twelve years has England looked
so hopefully abroad. The United States themselves,
by a bold stroke for emancipation from Southern
domination, have made 1860 a year to be noted by
the sincere friends of human liberty and progress ;
-'441 even a petty Mahommedan power has felt the
a.
'.4.9 and of all powers whom we could have
impuiz.•
thought of, the Bey of TUNIS comes forward to
liberalise his- administration.
-eked, indeed, very darkly. Our
The year ope._
Great Ally comment,„
it by, we are sorry
,to
remind our readers of 1!".1 the shablnest piece of
policy of which he has ever Veen guilty. It is im-
possible, even at this distance o: time, to think of
the seizure of Savoy and Nice without indignation
against the perpetrator, aid profound pity' for the
SOVEREIGN, whose heart must ache with the recol-
lection of it till life departs. The bribe to England
was the Commercial Treaty. With singular
consistency in inconsistency, the same monarch
bribes us, as well as his own country, to put
up with the equally shabby intervention at
Gaeta, and the perpetration and extension of
his occupation of Italian territory at and around
Rome. The bribe is a liberal construction of the
tariff clauses of- the treaty, and the abolition of
passports for Englishmen ! Thus the Liberator of
Italy began the year, and has ended it, in the same
spirit. Should not the New Year announce the
withdrawal of the French fleet from Gaeta, we
shall begin to believe that the surrender is, as
reported, to be to the French, and that the Italians
are to be told that strategic reasons connected with
the occupation of Rime, itself a piece of fraud and
insolence, require the French to hold Gaeta! But
will our Cabinet tolerate such knavery ? What
should we say of such tricks if practised by
Chinamen ?

We confess it lessens our pleasure in the eman-
cipation of Italy, thus far, to see the bit of Louis
NA➢OLEON so rudely thrust into its mouth. Lord
JOHN RUSSELL published his lectures to Prussia,
and to Sardinia; we should 'like to see his lecture
to the great delinquent, or has he none for him ?
Nevertheless Italy breathes more freely in spite of
him. At the commencement of the year,
FRANCIS 11. was the hardened young REHOBOAM
of Naples and Sicily ; and at the end of it he is a
prisoner at Gaeta, the Emperor of the FINCH
holding his hands on the maritime door of the
prison. All the Peninsula, except the small por-
tions occupied by the Liberator of 1859, and the
oppressor of half a, century, being now its own
master. And, despite the dark machinations at
the Tuileries, we may hope that the New Tear
will shame even him out of his heartless and selfish

intervention.
Undoubtedly, however, the glory of the year has
been GARIBALDI and his deeds of daring. The
crooked policy of Emperors and Ministers will of
course find their place in the Annual Register; the
Kings and Ministers of the day are the necessary
pegs of history, but GARIBALDI will be the great
light of the year. His marvellous moral character,
in such bright contrast with the selfish Ambition
' aid cunning oft the crowned potentates, and his
military achievements, before which the battles of
1859 are but commonplace defeats and victories,
will fill the page to which our own children and
remote posterity will turn. The mere story of his
departure in late spring for Sicily ; the capture of
Palermo and Messina ; the battle of Melazzo ; the
landing on the mainland, conquering or capturing
all who opposed him ; his advance, even before his
own troops, to the Despot's capital ; his presetting
a kingdom to a constitutional King; his slights
from those who were not exactly ungrateful, but
who'yet set policy before gratitude ; his manly and
unrewarded retirement to his island farm—his
noble fidelity still to VICTOR EMMANUEL as the
honest Liberator of his country, and his threats
from his farm■house to the proud oppressor in
Venetia—yes, the story of GARIBALDI will be the
story of 1860. In remoter ages it will be told with
that of CINCINNATIJS and of WASHINGTON.

But what a year of perturbation has it been
north of the Alps. All Germany has been uneasy.
Meetings of Sovereigns at Baden, where the Dis-
quieter thrust himself in ; and at Warsaw, where
he did not dare to present himself uninvited, and
a manifesto in which he avenged himself by as-
suming the titles for himself alone, which they
thought belonged to them collectively—announc-
ing himself as the "Pacificator of Europe," and the
" Moderator of Revolutions,"—were among the
prominent displays of Royal fear. But the basis of
all this fear was not Louis NAPOLEON only. Him,

alone, they might have met. 1860 has been a year

of national rights asserting themselves, as they

have not done since 1848, but with this distin

guishing characteristic—that the battle with cen-
tralisation, bureaucracy, suppression, and oppression
of nationalities, and despotism, is waged without
tumult and by passive assertion of right. In Italy

even, where the sword of the free was necessarily
unsheathed at the demand of those who longed for

freedom, too, yet there was much of the firmness

of conscious right. It was this which based the

schemes of the Arch-plotter, in the Duchies, in

Naples and the Legations, and which compelled the
respect of Europe. But in Hungary, and in

other parts of the Austrian dominions, the struggle

has been one for law on the part of the

people, against persistency in Revolutionary Acts

on the part of the Government. This it is which
niw makes the movement so irrepressible. Every

demand of the Hungarians is strictly legal ; they

ask least for their own ; the Government can oppose
to it nothing but revolution. If kept down, or not

yielded to, for a time, it has a germ of vitality
which no Imperial decrees, in substitution for legal

rights, can destroy. If the EMPEROR will not
give way now, he leaves for himself trouble for his

gray hairs, should he survive his treachery to see

hem.

And the movement is general. All the other
provinces of Austria, emboldened by the example
of Hungary, laugh at every proposal, but that of
restoring what the Vienna statesmen have so long
striven to obliterate, their national mode of Govern-

doll* detcrmining,
meat and Administration. Singularly, also, they
the QUO of the smtill na-