The Sun.
London, England, 1856-04-12 00:00:00

for the consul,

tice of Omnipote,
lying and blaspht

CZAR of all the Rut,
thing worse than a sha

ending (with a view to t,

blood) with the Scriptural or..

speravi, non confundar in aternun,

at least, have not lost the recollection of

And now in the Imperial Manifesto given to the
world, not inappropriately on the Ist of this pre-
sent April, by the reigning Cza.r., we may recog-
nise the pendant of that lying and impious Pro-
clamation of his Imperial predecessor. As to
the " lying" department—what is its very pre-
amble ? Why, it impudently and audaciously
asserts, in the name of the Russian EMPEROR,
in regard to this late horrible War—what does it
assert ? Why, it actually declares, in so many
words, in regard to this war—" It was not
Russia that commenced it !" While—as to the
" impious" department what do we find daringly
articulated a little further on ?—nothing less
actually than this : " A stranger" [the CZAR is
speaking of his father, the late Emperor NICHO-
LAS]—" A stranger to all interested views, he
never expected that his just complaints would
have resulted in the scourge of war ; and con-
sidering its calamities with a deep feeling of sorrow
as a Christian, and as the father of a
people entrusted by PROVIDENCE to his care, he
did not cease manifesting his inclination in favour
of peace !" How ? By the passage of the Pruth ?
By the ravaging of Moldavia and Wallachia ?
By the butcheries in Jassy and Bucharest? By the
massacre at Sinope and the cold-blooded assassi-
nations at Hango Ud ? By the enormous and
hitherto unparalleled accumulation of the deadly
munitions of war at Odessa, at Nicolaieff, at
Kinburn, but above all in the great robber-den
cf Sebastopol—munitions obviously so collected
together with no merely pacific intentions ! The
" inclination for peace" attributed to the Czar
NICHOLAS by the Cz it ALEXANDER, was, of course;
further manifesto 1 by the conciliatory and
in no way insolent mission to Constantinople
cf the very amiable Prince MENSCHIKOFF !
It was funher evidenced, moreover, from first to
last, by the readiness shown, again and again, by
he diplomatic agents of Russia to come to term;
with the Plenipotentiaries of the Western C._ali-
. ion ! So truthful and so religious--so very far
removed from lying and impiety, have been the
Imperial Manifestoes successively of the Emperor
NICHOLAS I. and the Emperor ALEXANDER 11. I
And are we to speak of these audacious Procla-
mations with "'bated breath" and " whispered
humbleness " as befits the serfs of the Ural moun-
tains, toili rg for the acqubi'ion of yet more gold
and malachite ? Not so ! Rather for us. the
denouncement of such criminal and shameless
dna ments, as best befits all free-born and out-
spoken Englishmen.

Oar columns record at the same time the edu-
cational debate in the House of Commons and
the proceedings of the military inquiry at Chelsea.
They inly appear to have little connection, yet to
us the latter is the beacon which warns us of the
dangers not at first sight visible in the former.
The report of C.)l. TIILLOCEI and Sir J. M`NEIL,
backed by the utter failure of Lord LUCAN hitherto
to shake its testimony, and also by the disclosures
cf last year's Sebastopol Committee, must have
one result at least—to destroy all confidence in
the adaptedness of our aristocracy to training men
for any service whatever. The entire blame of
the loss, waste, and mismansgement of the Crimea
rests on the heads of Eagland's aristocracy. The
day of trial came, and it was found at once that
they had prepared the army for nothing but the
shock of battle. With the continental armies
for forty long years before them, they
yet had not learned from them the most
necessary lessons ; with men absolutely at
their disposal to make what they liked of
them, they had m9.de them but brave fighters,
and left them wholly uneducated in the
arts of camp life, while they themselves—the offi-
cers—never appeared to understand the rudiments
of the essential art of keeping men and horses
alive and well.

It is needless to say that, long after our day,
the aristocracy will cling tenaciously to office--
they will be the leading administrators of the
country's business. Can we then trust in such
hands—hands which brought our army to the
very verge of ruin—the control of our national
education? The great moral taught by the Cri-
mean inquiry is, that the more we do of our own
work the better. If, in the army, where, accord-
ing to general opinion, the soldier is just what
he is made--if, even here, aristocracy fails
so signally, what is to bo looked for if it
take in hand to train the whole commu-
nity ? It was not, moreover, in the senti-
ment of courage, nor yet in military drill,
that our soldiers chiefly failed, but just in that
department of knowledge which general education
most needs to give ; they had no power to shift
for themselves beyond the routine of barrack life,
and their commanders no power to aid them.
Food, clothing, and shelter for men and horses—
the great necessities for which mortals must look
out—were just the things the want of which hur-
ried thousands of our men and their animals to an
untimely grave. The appalling military facts of
the Crimea produce in our minds the impression
that the hazard is infinite of permitting our
governors to mould to their fancy the education
of the people.
Our readers will bear us witness that we have
felt as deeply as any the deficiency of our educa-
tion as a nation, and gratified indeed should we
be to see that any plan could be devised which
could claim the name of a remedy ; but scheme
after scheme, as it is brought forward by the great
leaders iu the House, only impresses us with the
conviction of the hopelessness of the cause. All
have their favourite crotchets, but all tend to
throw the moulding of the teaching more and more
into hands where we should be reluctant to place
it. The education of the army for its work is a
simple task compared with the education of the
people for the varied phases of civil life ; and
those who could not educate for one thing must
fail miserably in the attempt to educate for so
many. It may appear somewhat gloomy to give
up the hope of national education ; but .our read-
ers mu.-,t, bear in mind that national education,
and national education by active Government in-
tervention, are two very different things. We
have made these remarks previous to a review of
the Education debate, and intending to consider
carefulry the main arguments on both sides.

The description of. NATHANIEL cannot be said
to be Iron than half applicable to the Sabbatarian
Party ; for however well-disposed their opponents
may be to pronounce them " Israelites indeed,"
their best friends would blush to characterise them
as "without • ouile " Affecting ultra-conscien-
o

tiousness, they afford to dispense with toleration ;
and, stiff-necked in their domination over the
weak, they are sufficiently supple to know when
to connive at and when to rebuke the Sabbatic de-

linquenoies of the ro ug. Who ever heard of
a Sabbatarian taking the Duke of WELLING-