The Sun.
London, England, 1860-10-16 00:00:00

rim SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, OCTOBeII 16, 1860,

author is decidedly opposed, and his reasons, both
financial and military, are, it will be admitted by
all, good. The expense of any works at all efficient
for, the object he shows to have been most strangely
under-estimated, and that it would amount to such
a sum as no Parliament would ever be induced to
vote. The fortifications must extend over a circuit
of at least 30 miles;. and, when completed, would
completely absorb the whole army left disposable
after supplying garrisons to the arsenals and sea-
ports. The forts must be at such a distance also
that unless they were fortresses rather than forts,
they would be no support to each other, and a large
part of the army would thus be neutralised. If Lon-
don were thus defended, its capture would decide the
war; there would be no alternative. Altogether
different would it be with an efficient army in the
field—but we quote our author's own words

"That the occupation or capture of the metropolis of a
highly-civilised, prosperous, commercial, and manufactur- ,
jug country must produce very baneful effects upon all the
great interests which centre there, is true; but that these
may be prevented by investing all our military resources in
the defence of the capital, and so stake the safety of the
country on the issue of that one throw, the author denies.
In that case, indeed, an enemy in possession of the capital
might dictate his own terms, and England would have no
alternative but to submit. Not so would it be if London
should be occupied, or even captured, whilst a well-consti-
stituted, well-commanded, active army of troops of the
line and militia of 100,000 men, 200 field guns, 10,000
cavalry, and 60,000 of our rifle volunteers--already an
army of at least 120,000 excellent light infantry—remained
unconquered in the field. With such a force the coun-
try is safe, even though the capital might be temporarily
, occupied."

He shows that were such an army strongly in-
trenched in any of the positions which might be
selected as suitable for covering the metropolis,
the enemy must look at it, as MASSENA did at the
lines of Torres Vedras, decline to attack it, retreat,
followed by the army, over a devastated and
broken-up country ; and assailed on every side by
the levy en masse, and the result would be that
all who were not destroyed or captured would
be driven into the sea. That such would even
now be the fate of any marauders, who came here
for spoil and glory, we have not the shadow of a
doubt.

Politically speaking, England has latterly—
during the chief part of the last quarter—been
occupying the position of a disinterested spectator.
Englishmen have been looking abroad with what
equanimity they might find themselves enabled still
to preserve in the midst of movements all over the
continent, calculated in a remarkable degree to
rouse their suspicion or to excite their enthusiasm.
Among the Northern Powers there has been noted,
of course with a certain solicitude not very surpris-
ing under the circumstances, the curiously oppor-
tune Arrangement of this interview between the
rulers of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, at the an-
cient capital of that glorious but ill-fated
Kingdom of Poland—the flagitious and atrocious
partition of which by the ancestors of those these
men during the last century is still painfully re-
membered among the nations of the world as, per-
haps, the blackest and the basest national crime
ever inscribed in characters of blood upon the
annals of Christendom. The arrangement of this
interview between the Russian CZAR, the Austrian
KAISER, and the PRINCE REGENT of PRUSSIA, we
have here spoken of advisedly as one, to our think-
ing, curiously opportune. It is opportune, we
aver, in a very remarkable way in the interests of
the Roman peninsula. It is opportune in those
sacred interests, both when. viewed in relation to
the particular locality (Warsaw), and the particu-
lar personages there assembled (the rulers of
Russia, Austria, Prussia)—the hereditary repre-
sentatives of the three accomplices in the Partition
of Poland! Conceive for a moment the mere ab-
surdity of any movement inimical to the liberation
of the Italians, to the consolidation of a constitu-
tional Italian sovereignty—conceive but for a
moment, we say, the mere absurdity of any such
movement emanating from Warsaw, being dated
from the ancient capital of Poland, by the imperial
and royal descendants of the three lawless destroyers
of the Polish nationality ! Any protest against the
completion of the great work of the political
emancipation of Italy—any protest against that
dated from Warsaw, and signed by the rulers of
Russia, Austria, and Prussia, would be one of the
most fatal blunders ever adventured upon by those
allied chiefs and champions of despotic govern.
ment. It would be the hurling down by them
of the gage of battle at the feet of the Liberal
party all over the European Continent. It would
be the direct incentive to the simultaneous rising
of the subjugated and down-trodden races of
Christendom. Let but such An act be decided
upon by the CZAR, the KAISER, and the PRINCE
REGENT in solemn conclave assembled, and in that
act such a tocsin will have been rung from War-
saw, as those three Powers but little dream of. It
would sound too at a period, of all periods in
modern history, the most propitious for the
cause of the more rational, and liberal, and
moderate revolutionists. The Northern despots
would tempt their own fate at a ruinous disadvan-
tage. The revolutionists, to whom they would
find themselves at once opposed, would, on the con-
trary, begin from the height of the lofty vantage
ground they have latterly won their way to in the
Roman Peninsula ! Those, indeed, who would
seriously tempt the rulers of the North to bid the
great surge of Italian liberation go "thus far and
no further"—say to the borders of Venetia, say to
the frontier line of the Quadrilateral—would be
following only in the fatuous course already
taken, now long centuries back, by the
courtiers of CANUTE to the derision of all subsequent
generations, The mandate would go forth, more-
over, from Warsaw, of all cities in Europe, with a
most sinister significance. It would be suggestive,
we may rest assured, of the precipitation of that
vengeance which must, under any circumstances,
descend sooner or later upon the three rulers
by whose ever-infamous complicity the nation-
ality of Poland was thrice doomed to be parti-
tioned. From the hour upon which any such in-
sensate mandate as the one we have now spoken of
should have the signatures of the Czar of -Russia, of
the Kaiser of Austria, of the Prince Regent of
Prussia, affixed at Warsaw—from that hour would
date not only the triumphant completion of the
Italian War of Independence, but the commence-
ment of the Resurrection of Poland and of the final
emancipation from their long thraldom of ten
million Hungarians !

ARCIIDEACONItY OF BATIL—The Archdeaconry
of Bath is rendered vacant by the death of the Yen. Wm.
Gunning, which took place on Thursday last at Weston-
super-mare. The deceased dignitary, who had for some
time been in a precarious state of health, was much re-
spected by all parties for the strictly impartial and conscien-
tious discharge of the duties of his sacred office. He was
appointed to the archdeaconry on the death of the late
Archdeacon Brymer. The living of Buckland Newton,
Dorset, in the gift of the Dean and Chapter of Wells, be-
comes vacant by the death of Mr. Gunning. The deceased
was for many years one of the most energetic members of
the Bath and Wells Diocesan Association, the treasurership
of which he held till his death.
MILL, Oct. 13.—Messrs. W. Brown, Atkinson,
and Co., have to .day received a telegram from Dundee,
announcing the arrival there of the screw steamer "Wildfire,
wshtita;CetrawpDto.i:fnisarh:tvill and 14 of the crew of the stemucr Chase,
of Hull, totally lost at the Davis' Straits fishery. All the
crew were fortunately saved. She further reports the screw
of
The
el
fishingwi th twohad fishbee
u;
pooran d tuhpe t
theo elu
ds,aotof
of her leaving. The Chase was fully insured.