The Sun.
London, England, 1856-04-01 00:00:00

Spirit of the Public Journals.

(From the Morning Herald.)
"Why laughest thou, 0 Charon?"

Every admirer of Lucien will remember the ad-
dress of Mercury to the grim ferryman of the Styx,
whom he had encountered when out on a " day
rule," and taking a stroll through the streets of
Athens.

As soon as Charon could speak for laughter he
replied that he had just heard a man accept an in-
vitation to dinner and that instantly a tile fell
from the roof and killed him—" so I laughed."
If there be any beings now walking the earth
with feelings akin to those of the grisly boatman—
of combined contempt and loathing for the human
race and for their ghastly wars, or still more ghastly
pacifications, what a glorious laugh must they
have had in contemplating the proceedings of the
" Peace Conferences" at Paris, where a conclave of
statesmen—"sly slow things, with circumspective
eyes"—gravely performed an operation akin to that
of the sluttish housewife, who sweeps the dirt under
a corner of the carpet, and thinks, or feigns to
think, because it is hidden it is removed.
" Oh, cmca mens hominum." If this is the re-
sult, are not the rulers of England guilty before
Heaven of all the useless bloodshed, and worse,
which has made desolate so. many households in the
east and west of Europe ? Well may the satirist say
of those administrators—

" Not one looks backward—onward still he goes;
Nor e'er looks forward further tkan his nose."
Not one of them perceives that the sore is only
cicatrised, and that the "foul corruption mining
411 within" must sooner or later break out, when
perhaps the patient may be too exhausted to en-
dure the drain.

One hundred and one guns broke the silence of
Sunday night with the announcement of a peace of
such a nature that a second like unto it would be
more ruinous to the nation than the most destruc-
tive war in which these realms have ever been en-
gaged.

- As the Conferences were conducted in secrecy the
announcement was appropriately conveyed in the
darkness of the night. Well might it be so ; they
who conducted them love the darkness rather than
the light, because their deeds are evil. Let us now
consider what we have gained and what wo have
lost ; whom we have aided ; whom we have be-
trayed ; and for what purpose we have sacrificed
lives innumerable, and millions yet uncounted and
yet unpaid, during the sanguinary burlesque of
the last two years.
We went to war nominally because Russia
had laid her grasp upon the territories of her neigh-
bour. We were determined—so at least we said—
to uphold the independence of the Sultan and the
integrity of the Turkish empire. The confiding
Turk whose word has always been his bond, be-
lieved and trusted in our professions. Be allowed
our fleets to enter his harbours ; he put his for-
tresses in possession of our armies ; he placed the
greatest general in Europe and a fine army at our
disposal ; and fearfully have we betrayed this con-
fidence. Take first the original cause of the war
—the Principalities. We are ready to make any
change, any alteration in their constitution except
that which plain common sense and plain common
honesty would point out as the true one. We would
divide them, if such a division would weaken them,
for Russia or Austria; we would bind them together
if it would strengthen them against the Porte. We
were ready to have deprived the Sultan of them
alogether, although we knew that their cession
would be a breach of hospitality upon his part which
his religion forbids him to commit ; we would, in
fact, have done everything and anything except
place them in the position which Servia has occu-
pied to her own advantage for so many years, lying
under the suzerainty of the Porte, with her fron-
tier fortresses occupied by Turkish troops for their
defence against foreign aggres,ion. Obstacles,
moral or physical, were as nothing to us ; ancient
allegiance we broke down ; but we have since
raised a range of mountains in Bessarabia which
have vanished to make way for a commission of in-
quiry. Will not the example of the treaty of
Gulistan, in which we pledged the honour of Eng-
land for the faith of Russia, who, in the natural
course of events, laughed in the face of England,
and kept the lands which she was pledged to see
restored to Persia—will not this, we say, open their
eyes to what the faith of Russia is worth 1' Alas,
it will not. Eyes have they, and see not ; ears
have they, and hear not. Scientific diplomatists !
they can discern the face of the sky, but cannot
understand the signs of the times.
Thus have we contrived to sacrifice, in one point,
both the independence and integrity of that ally
in support of whom we called God to witness we
took up arms in good faith.
We shall return again to other instances of our
bad faith to Turkey, and to that future punish-
ment which that bad faith must bring upon our
heads, merely promising that what we have alluded
to above is neither the last nor the worst. That
such is the case will be shown by the unanswerable
proof which it is in our power to give, that the
treaty of the Bth of May, 1854—now to be abro-
gated by a most scandalous breach of faith—was
absolutely entered into at a moment when mea-
sures had been taken and despatches written which
would render the forfeiture of our pledged faith an
absolute and inevitable necessity.