The Sun.
London, England, 1856-01-02 00:00:00

Spirit of the Public Journals.

(From Me Times of this day.)

It is right at the commencement of a new year
plainly to net before our Statesmen, our Generals,
and our Admirals that which the country expects
from their hands, and without which the war may
be found quite as unfavourable to the powers that
rule in England as to the powers that rule in Rus-
sia. The British aristocracy have the conduct of
the war in all its branches. Success will confirm
the social and political position of our upper
classes, and strengthen the throne of a limited
monarchy, which can only exist when surrounded
by aristocratic institutions ; failure—such a failure
as would indelibly fix upon our governing classes
the stigma of incapacity, and of that obstinacy
which is incapable of remodelling what is obsolete
to meet what is new and urgent—would shake the
firmest institutions and bring doubt into the most
settled convictions. We must look to it, for good
and evil are alike before us.
The prospects of peace with which we have been
amused for the last month recede before us like the
lake that only exists in the mirage of the desert.
While we have been agreeing on conditions, the
foundations of which is the pacification of the
Black Sea, and tracing on the map the new fron-
tier which we are disposed to allow to our adver-
sary, the Court of Russia has had other dreams,
and announces far other grounds of pacification.
With unheard-of and intolerable insolence, Russia
announces in the same breath that she assents to
the third condition of the Conferences of Vienna,
—that is, to put an end to her preponderance in
the Black Sea,.—aid that, with the view of carry-
ing this condition into execution, she consents to
exclude the Western Powers from that sea alto-
gether, and to leave it to be navigated by so
many Russian ships of war as Turkey and
Russia may between themselves agree upon.
Such a proposition is not an overture,—it is an
insult. The offer of peace on such terms is a
new outrage--a fresh provocation to war. What
can be hoped from negotiation with a Power
which, after such a series of reverses as have fallen
upon Russia since the olose of the Vienna Con-
ferences—her armies defeated, her finances de-
ranged, her fleet destroyed, her coasts ravaged, her
rivers beset and blockaded—can find no terms
except such as she might impose had victory fol-
lowed her standards as pertinaciously as defeat ?
To exclude the Allies from the sea that they have
made their own, in order to give back the dominion
over it to a fleet that is buried beneath its waves,
to regulate the equipoise of power between herself
and Turkey by a convention to which the principal
belligerents are to be no parties, to leave the cause
of European independence to the keeping of the
treachery, the timidity, or the venality of the
Divan, are terms so disastrous and ignominious
that we must lose more fleets and armies than
Russia has lost before we can stoop so low—before
we can regard such terms as anything else than a
fresh outrage and a fresh provocation. We have
just offered fresh terms to Russia. If she accept
them it is well. If she do not accept them, but
seek to entangle us in negotiation, we only express
the earnest wish of the nation when we trust that
no such opportunity will be afforded her. She has
just given a convincing proof that her wild ambi-
tion is not yet tamed sufficiently to hear reason,
and that she must suffer more before she can be
awakened from her dreams of vanity and ambition.
Assuming, then, the war as all but certain, with
what weapons are we to carry it on ? The pride,
the safety of the nation, has hitherto been the
naval service. Never have our fleets been so
costly and so splendid. The substitution of steam
for sails, and the enormously increased value of
the commerce which the allied fleets have had to
protect, have induced and justified a scale of naval
expenditure unknown to the patriotism or the pro-
digality of former ages. In the late war the ships
of England went everywhere and did everything.
" Wherever wood can swim," said Napoleon,
" there is sure to be found au English cruiser."
With incredible daring and success, with only the
uncertain winds and treacherous wave.; to rely
on, they entered every harbour and scrutinised
every creek, and, provided they could get in,
never troubled themselves with the superfluous
consideration how they were to get out again. But
it seems that science, by increasing our powers, has
diminished our boldness. We are so careful of our
splendid steam-ships that we dare not use them,
and feats that Nelson, with his lumbering men-of-
war, would at last have attempted, our admirals
dare not even contemplate. The whole spirit of
the naval profession seems changed. From the
most daring it has become the most cautions—from
the most dangerous, the safest of professions. The
blood of our army has flowed like water, but short
and bloodless have been the annals of naval car-
nage. The man who fishes for whales or drives an
engine should have a stout neart ; but weak in-
deed must be the nerves that cannot face the pro-
spect of a Baltic naval campaign. Our steamers
can move at the rate of twelve miles an hour ; in
ten minutes they can be in action from a place of
perfect safety ; in ten minutes they can retire from
action again. War has as yet seen nothing like the
opportunity for dashes and surprises, for sudden
onslaughts and rapid retreats, for testing the
strength of an enemy and thoroughly recon-
noitring his position in the best possible way, by at-
tacking it, which the invention of steam affords,.
The most watchful enemy must often be surprised
by such tactics, and when not surprised must he
kept in constant state of restlessness and alarm.
But we seem terrified at the potency of our new
agent, and, instead of raising our minds to con-
ceptions worthy of the gigantic power we em-
ploy have succeeded in dwarfing it down to the
puny notions that passed current in the days of sails
and oars. We learn with satisfaction that
Admiral Dendas has been directed to haul down
his flag. Such a direction is no censure, but it
gives an opportunity for considering whether a
more efficient successor cannot be found, and breaks
the claim which is so apt to grow up out of the
command of one year to the command in the next.
The English navy has its laurels to win, and for
the English navy not to win those laurels in two
years is, in fact, to lose them.
We have left ourselves but little space to speak
of our army; but we are not without apprehensions
that, having suffered in 1851 from being too lean,
it may suffer in 1856 from being too fat. Then it
was starved, now it run some danger of being cod-
dled. The laudable desire to efface in the comforts
of the present the miseries of the past seems not
unlikely to deprive our troops altogether of the
power of locomotion. An army that cannot move
without 40,000 beasts of burden, 40,000 drivers,
mechanics, navvies, and we know not how many
other ancillary corps, is in great danger of never
moving at all. Our men aro in splendid condition,
and want nothing, we really believe, but example
and opportunity ; but it is hard to obtain these
under generals to whom everything is iinro
If we do move we shall carry with us
a camp better worth sacking than all the cities
of Russia put together, and may possibly find,
when too late, that we have offered irresistible
temptations to the depredators in the vast multi-
tude of all nations that swarm around us. A mid-
tary system that was not robust enough to bear
the trials of a siege is not likely to regain credit in
a campaign in the open field. But the attempt
must be made, and the nation will never endure
that the spring and summer of 1856 should be
wasted in the same inglorious inaction as the
autumn that has just passed away.

(From lice Morning Herald of this day.)

_ .
The Brussels organ of the Russian Government
has given to the world a circular issued from.the
Russian Chancery, and dated the 22d December.
It announces the terms on which the Emperor will
consent to the third of the four bases ; those terms
being—
"l. The principle of the closing of the Straits is
to be maintained.

"2. No flag of war shall be admitted into the
Black Sea,
except that of the naval forces which
Russia and Turkey may think it advisable to main-
tain there by common agreement.
"3. The amount of these forces will be fixed by
a direct agreement between Russia and Turkey,
without the ostensible participation of the °tint.
powers."
There is no doubt, we believe, of this announce-
ment of Le Nerd. And we need not say that such
provisions for the third point of guarantee ought
to be scouted by the Western Governments. They
furnish abundant evidence of this, that the Auto-
crat is resolved not to abate one iota of his original
pretensions, and that he is bent upon maintaining
that supremacy in the Black Sea of which it is one
chief object of the war to deprive Russia at once
and for ever.
In a recent article we had occasion to refer to
certain comments in the Ost Deutsche Post relative
to the Austrian
interpretation of the Propositions
r upon by the Western Powers, and
e
subsecently agreed
quently submitted to the Russian
interpre-
tation by the Austrian envoy. Now that
defines the English version of the proposi-
tions respecting the reduction of the Russian power
in the Euxine as a " continuation of the treaty
which provided for the closing of the Dardanelles
against foreign ships of war." That interpretation
agrees in a remarkable manner with the sense of
this circular of the Russian Government. It JS
clear as the light of day that the Cabinets of Vi-
enna and of St. Petersburg are agreed upon the
terms to be held out for, and it is equally manifest
that those terms are absurdly
the prime objeet of the war. incompatible with
But the Austrian interpretation in question is