The Sun.
London, England, 1860-07-17 00:00:00

N. !

-. s .

Chester would have said to the country—" We told

you how it would be ;" and the war would have
probably have become much more unpopular than
Manchester and Mr. GLADSTONE.

All are agreed on one point, that whatever a
Alinister can extract from the frequenters of the
gin-palace he is heartily welcome to. If he could
raise the required amount of revenue by an excise
duty which should close the doors of half of them,
all would be but too thankful. Of course the
smuggler stands in his way, and in reference to

the small advance he has made, Mr. GLADSTONE
was very properly at pains to ascertain• that
illicit distillation would not at the same time rob
the revenue of its duty, and demoralise as much as

the public sale of gin and whisky at a lower price
His reasons appear satisfactory, and will, we hope,
prove to be correct ; there seems indeed no reason
to doubt it. Anyhow, one breathes more freely,
when the result, at present, of the China war is that
gin drinkers must drink less or pay more, and that
the most unequal and therefore unjust of taxes is
not to be augmented to a shilling in the pound.
One lesson we shall certainly learn—that this
time we really must make a lasting settlement
with China. It will not do to allow it to
become like an ever-recurring Kaffir war. We
are determined to trade with the people of China,
who, on their part, are quite ready to trade with
us. The Mandarins do not like it ; if they could,
they and the Government would shut us out alto-
gether. We, however, are resolved not to be shut
out ; let us then, as we have made up our minds to
have the trade open, do the thing effectually. We
do not believe there is need for much expenditure
of life, though obviously we must spend some money.
Chinamen, very wisely, do not think it prudent
to stand in the way of cannon-balls ; they hold it
no disgrace to shirk facing a shower of grape, or to
place themselves in the way of bomb-shells. We
agree with those who think that a march on
Pekin will now be our cheapest, as it will be our
only effectual policy ; and, having achieved this,
we had better assuredly confine our diplomatists to
the sea coast. Visits to Pekin should be held out
only in terrorem to keep a people of matchless
cunning to the letter and spirit of their treaties.

Anything that yields the faintest promise of
throwing new light upon the exact windings of
the Nice and Savoy boundary line is peculiarly
welcome in anticipation of the approaching Paris
Conference. It is a sense of satisfaction to us, there-
fore, that the House of Lords agreed yesterday to
the Marquis of CLANRICARDE'S motion for certain
additional papers connected with the treaty of 1815
—papers having particular reference to that im-
portant line of demarcation. The noble lord's sug-
gestion, at the time of his bringing on this motion,
according to promise, last evening, his intercallary

proposal to her MAJESTY'S Ministers, that upon the
occasion of the forthcoming Conference, they should
seek some assurance from France that this prin-

ciple (?) of annexation should not be persisted in
along her other (let us suppose, for example, her
more northern) frontiers, we regard as— quite
another thing. It certainly does appear to us that
the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in reply-

.
ing to this ingenious proposition, exercised very
wise discretion when he pronounced himself as
of opinion that it would be "inexpedient"
to seek any assurance upon this subject from the
French Government. The Marquis of CLANRICARDE
must be a -very sanguine and a very credulous man,
indeed, if he attaches any, even the very smallest,
value whatever to assurances upon the subject of

annexation coming to us from the French Govern•
ment. Had we not the most solemn assurance
from that Government that nothing at all of this
kind was even in contemplation in regard to Savoy
and Nice—at the very time that the annexation of
Savoy and Nice to the French Empire was being
secretly and deliberately accomplished ? Who
would attach any importance or value of the most
infinitesimal kind to any future answer that might
be extorted from, or volunteered by, the French
Government in the matter of annexation ? No
one, we suppose--saving and excepting, perhaps,
(and of this we cannot but remain doubtful—in
spite of the noble lord's suggestion of last evening)
—the Marquis of CLANRICARDE.
The general feeling, we believe, is one of pro-
found suspicion in regard to the proposed Confe-
rence at Paris a Conference designed to
reconcile the ninety - second article of the
Treaty of Vienna with that Treaty of Turin
which, hardly less than the Treaty of Zurich, may
be said to have grown out of the armistice of Villa-
franca. The mere proposal to reconcile or harmo-
nize that 92d article of the Treaty of Vienna
with the whole of the gist or gravamen of the
Treaty of Turin is so directly reminiscent of
the monstrous duplicity with which Savoy and
Nice were absorbed within the elastic boundary-
line of France after that ostentatious avowal
by the EMPEROR of the disinterestedness with
which, like a great Political QUIXOTE, he under-
took to liberate the Italian Peninsula! The Con.
ference, in fact (upon that subject), is a reminder
that (upon that subject) we were deceived. Wha,
enhanced—if anything were required to enhance it
—the baseness and turpitude of the whole of this
nefarious proceeding, on the part of the French
Government, was the fact that, simultaneously
with the reiteration of the most solemn assurances
that no such acts of annexation were ever medi-
dated, the Government of NAPOLEON 111. were ela-
borating a commercial treaty of the most specious
kind with the Government of her Britannic MA-
JESTY, So that at the very time the French Govern-
ment were slyly, and secretly, and most dishonestly
arranging the actual accomplishment of these acts
of annexation, it was doing all it possibly could to
entrap the English Government in the meshes of a
newly-woven network Hof Reciprocity ! Can any
one in his senses believe, for an instant, that it was
by a mere coincidence that the fact of the transfer
of Savoy and Nice from Sardinia to France was
made public immediately after the great Financial
Statement, in which our Chancellor of the Exche-
quer revealed the complexities of the Com-
mercial Treaty, to which England had then for-
mally pledged herself to the French Government?
An unscrupulous and astute ru!er like the reigning
Emperor of the French does not trust events of
such magnitude, we may rest perfectly well assured,
to anything like mere accidental coincidences.
Publicity was therefore, we may also rest assured,
reserved designedly to the annexation of Savoy until
the morrow of Mr. GLADSTONE'S announcement of
the French Commercial Treaty in the House of
Commons. England only learnt that Savoy was
annexed to France—(in contradiction of all promises
to the effect that France would absorb nothing in
return for the liberation of Lombardy)—
England, we say, only learnt that when
she had already learnt that she herself was
entangled in the mazes of the reciprocal commercial
Treaty negotiated with the annexing Government
The whole complicated and duplex problem as
to the extent, on the one hand, of the criminality
of the Savoy annexation, and, upon the other hand,
as to the advisability or inadvisability of the pro-
posed Paris Conference, will be found discussed in
another column in a truly philosophic spirit, through
a -very able article, a considerable portion of which