The Sun.
London, England, 1860-06-18 00:00:00

THE WEATHER.-Sux OFFICE, JUNE 17, 1860.

THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
Cl —highest since noon yesterday.
51—lowest this morning and during the night.
52—this day at noon.

BAROMETER-29.60.
WlND—North-Easterly ; fresh, with dirty rainy weather.
It rained all night, and still continues. It rained 26 hours,
from midnight on Saturday till about 2 o'clock ox Monday
morning.

JUNE 18.
TREE.MOMETNR, IN TRE (MAIM
51—highest since noon yesterday.
50—lowest this morning and during the night.
63—this day at noon.
BAROMETER-29.87. ; a rise of a quarter of an inch since
yesterday.
WlND—Westerly; light, with flue sunshiny weather.

H [Gil WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tills DAY.—Morning, 12h. 53rn.—Afternoon, lh. 16m.
Y)-monnovv.-Morning, Ih. 38m.—Afternoon, 2h. Om.

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THE SUN.
L )NDON, MONDAY, JUNE 18, 1860.

LOUTS NAPOLEON was born in the year 1808 ;
and what he does he must do quickly. He can
hardly, with common prudence, have laid plans
requiring very energetic personal action, or even
severe personal attention, for more than the next
ten years ; but Europe must feel, unless bereft of
reason, that those ten years will be for her years of
the most watchful solicitude. We really have no
wish whatever to be needless alarmists ; no wish to
incur the denunciations of the Manchester School,
several of whom are men of pre-eminent abilities,
as well as unquestionahle integrity, though like
other men liable to be one-sided in their views ;
nor have we the slightest wish to say a word need-
lessly irritating to our neighbours across the water,
or to their very clever tiller. But we must claim
for ourselves the right to discuss the bearings of
notorious facts, and assert for our country the neces-
sity and duty of not being behind the hour.
We have had very practical lessons lately. The
cost of our army and navy trebled ; our taxation
rising to more than the really unimaginable sum
of £70,000,000; our Income Tax raised to ten-
pence, with the intimation that next year it may
be a round five per cent, on tke labour of our
hands or our brains. A report of a defence com-
mission, which, although leaving the heart of the
country undefended, may run us up a bill of
£12,000,000,--these are some of the lessons which
the dullest can understand, and which remind us
that there is, somewhere, a cause for all this.
That cause is FRANCE ; France, especially under
the present regime. We do not pretend that the
EMPEROR is the sole cause; the Prince DE JOIN-
VILLE, under the rule of the Citizen King, also
M. THEIRS, under the same Monarch, and even
M. GUI:4OT, though in a more diplomatic and dirty
way, all showed that the delight of France is to
outwit England ; and the two former that it was
her delight to be able to defy her by bayonets and
broadsides. Louis NAPOLEON has but succeeded
to an inheritance, of which/the general condition
is, that France should hold the whole Continent in
suzerainty, and the special one that England
should be humbled for the deeds of NELSON and ,
of WELLINGTON.

LOUIS NAPOLEON i<
parisen the
most
able,,
tir,ewne.:o'er, be and all com-
most determined of Frenchmenst cunning, and the
as
the policy of
with whom wehave have had t.) do as the promoters
French ag,grandizcnient. It m
y :
a necessity to
“ military tenur? of the throne; but the fact is
undoubted. Till the days of JOINVILLE TnEins,
and QuizoT, we had. no calm!. whatever of alarm;
and even for them Nve hardly put ourselves out of
the way. But, with the seizure of the Empire by
the refugee from our shores, our rulers of every
party soon Mt that their course must be changed.
Amidst all their cordial professions and words they
felt that their deeds must he changed ; and so ec.
tirely did the country sympathise with them, that

ri'al political parties made their feats in shipbuild-
ing part of their boasts on the hustings at the last
election. The vast size of his army, far beyond
anything requisite for defence, had been long
known ; but, soon after the Crimean war, a naval
commission revealed the fact that his navy had
been steadily increased also. Its magnitude was
equal to our own, with no need for it whatever, for
honest purposes; and it became quite clear, that
he had not only mustered an army from which he
could spare any day 100,000 men, against whom
we could not bring 30,000; but that he had pro-
vided the means for placing them on our shores at
a few hours' notice. Soldiers, railways, steam-
ships, a naval conscription were all in readiness,
certainly not to defend France, whom none threat-
ened, but in sufficient strength to attack England at
pleasure.

Some of the French journals, and some confiding
men at home, laugh at our periodical panics. But
it has not been merely a periodical thing. A pru-
dent untrembling fear has grown with the reason-
able causes for it. If the EMPEROR chooses to keep
a uselessly large fleet, but only an army from which
he could not spare men for an invasion ; or if, on
on the other hand, with an army big enough to
overrun Europe, he would limit his means of trans-
port,—in either case no immediate danger would
threaten England. He does the very reverse ! He
creates a combined naval and military force avail-
able at a day's notice, and specially adapted for an
attack on England. Russia is the only Power, be-
sides ourselves, which could even pretend to dispute
the mastery of the seas with him ;• and of her, as a
naval Power, locked up now in the Baltic, and
frozen in there for six months in the year, he could
have no fear, He has created his vast fleet, a fleet
manned in four-and-twenty hours by his conscrip-
tion,—he has created it against England, either to
overawe her while he lords it elsewhere, or to invade
her, or both. It were childish not to see this ;it
were folly to despise the fact. We must look it in
the face. We must be able to present a counter
fact. What shall that be ?

Mr. COBDEN himself, a determined peace man
surely, but yet one who retains his English com-
mon sense, has acknowledged that with our
colonies so widely scattered all over the world,
we need three ships to every two of the
EMPEROR'S. Even he, too, has said, that he
would as readily vote a hundred millions
as fifty, for insurance against a probable attack.
The question is, then, are we to go on for ever in-
creasing our navy and coast fortifications, at an
enormous cost, because our neighbour chooses to
make himself every year more dangerous to us ?
An armed peace is becoming to us, and indeed
to all Europe, more costly than war, by its intoler-
able annual drain on our revenue. There is not a
household in England, above the class of working
men, which is not heavily mulcted this year, to
pay a yet 'heavier penalty next year, be-
cause Louis NAPOLEON is become the danger
to all. If we do not fear him, it is because we
tax ourselves, and deprive ourselves of domestic
comforts, that we may feel safe. From ten to
fifteen millions at least of our taxes are but in-
surance against the army, the navy, and the worth-
lessness of the professions of NAPOLEON 111.
Can we wonder at the question we hear so
often gravely asked will not open war be
cheaper? If Louis NAPOLEON will not consent
to a navy two-thirds only the size of ours—if he
will not reduce it at once to that amount—if he
will not allow us to take suitable guarantees for
the observance of that proportion—so long as he
keeps an army disposable for invasion of his
neighbours—then will it not be cheaper, dreadful
as the alternative may be to destroy Cherbourg
at once, and convei t it into a Sebastopol, and to
destroy also one half of his present navy ? We
will not now answer this frequent interrogatory,
but we warn the Emperor of the French that it
is uttered in England with increasing frequency.
Either he must reduce his navy, or it will become
necessary to reduce it for him.

Who will not wish a happy and prosperous voy-
age to the Great Eastern ? The Leviathan steam-
ship having slipped her moorings in the Southamps
ton waters at 8 a.m. yesterday (Sunday the 17th
June, 1860), and having, as we have all learnt
with interest, threaded in safety " the narrow
and tortuous channel" down the Solent and
through the Needles, is now, by this time,
fairly on her first ocean voyage. With wind
fair, and everything promising a good passage,
we will hope for the very best for her; the
quickest passage on record, let us trust ; the
smoothest; and, to complete all, a comfortable
anchorage at length within the bar at New York,
in the United States. Until the voyage has
actually been accomplished we can expect
only the most fragmentary jottings by the
way in regard to the great ship's doings and
whereabouts. Where she was sighted, for example,
the speed she was going at, and so forth. Even
before she had well got away from our shores we
read with interest the telegraphic intimations given
to us thus fragmentarily. Yesterday evening, let us
say, at ten minutes after seven, when the great
ship was sighted from the Camera on the
Hoe ; or, again, a little later, say at twenty
minutes after eight, when she was apparently
in a line with the Eddystone lighthouse. At
about which time and place the telegram says
tersely—" Wind southerly ; very light : four or
more funnels smoking : paddle and screw going : no
canvas set "—every scrap of which news has its
interest. After all her trials, and delays, and acci-
dents, then, the Great Eastern, it is consolatory to
think, ' now is at length actually " off"
on her first deep - sea voyage. Not a
man or woman amongst us but will wish her
heartily Godspeed to the end. She is freighted well
with these good wishes from home; and we cannot
doubt for an instant but that her welcome, on her
apps oath to the shores of America, will be propor-
tioned in cordiality and enthusiasm to
the magnitude of the whole enter prize.
Her first gallant Captain, her great and gifted
Engineer, have neither of them, unhappily, sur-
vived to witness the consummation of their hopes
But their intentions are at length in her regard
being carried eat with admirable precision.
Nothing appears to have been overlooked in the
way of cautious preparation. Everything seems
to have been scrupulously done that could be done
with the utmost degree of forethought. The Boat d
of Trade has given its assistance in the way of
advice, and that advice has been carefully attended
to without any mistaken hesitations about the in-
crease of expenditure. If ever an enterprise de-
served to succeed, this bold and unparalleled enter-
prise of the Great Eastern has deserved it unques-
tionably. Money, skill, industry, patience, genius,
courage, ingenuity—have all been lavished upon it.
Every one who has had anything to do with it,
from the highest to the lowest, has nobly done his
duty. Let us now rest confident in our earnest
hope that all these immense and protracted labours
are about to be recompenced, and that the history
of the Great Eastern, hitherto made up of anxious,
or painful, or disappointing incidents, will hence-
forth be one long record of voyages, safe and
swift: and largely remunerative.