The Sun.
London, England, 1856-08-27 00:00:00

HIGFI WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THIS DAT—Morn. 0 min. aft. o—Evening 56 min. aft. 11
To-Mosnow—Morn.26 min. aft.l2 —Evening 54 min. aft.l2

THE WEATHER—SUN OFFICE, AUGUST 27.
THER3fO3fETZB, IN THZ SHADS.
69 —highest since noon yesterday.
62 —lowest this morning and during the sight.
73 —this day at noon.

BA aowrrzß, 29.88.
Wrtn—Variable from S.W. to W.N.W. ; rather fresh,
with fine sunshiny and cloudy weather.

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3113T0

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1856.

If asked to name the distinguishing quality of

the genuine despot, we should say it was malig-
nant brutality. Not the brutality of the drunken
husband or the rude savage, but the brutality of
a mind which relishes the torture and degrada-
tion it inflicts. There have been men who were

despots by accident, like a NEnvA or a TRAJAN ;
but they could have been happy enough with
1 halted power, and could rather have submitted
to lose somewhat of it than to revel in the tor-
tures of their fellow-creatures. There have been
others like- CROMWELL, who, though merciful at
heart, could make all yield to their energetic
wills, from an enlightened consciousness that
they were serving the commonwealth in a na-
tional crisis, but who would rather have cut off
their own right hand than sign the order to tor-
ture another. Severely just they could be-
2ruel they could not be. But the true despot is
consciously a guilty being ; he is a political
Satan ; his very nature is enmity to political good

—he can but hate civil and religious liberty,

while he can neither blind his eyes to the excel-
lence of what he hates, and the nobleness of
its advocates, nor to the selfish baseness of his
own despotic nature. He therefore hates patriots
as ABEL hate 1 CAIN ; he malignantly envies the
approbation they enjoy, because it not only
thwarts, if possible, his tyranny, but mirrors to
himself as well as to the world the odiousness of
his own disposition. Hence, from the times of
the tyrants immortalised by Greek history, or
even by the Sacred records, to this hour, these
curses of humanity have been distinguished, at
some period of their lives, by the malignant
propensity to torture or degrade, or both, the
noble patriots who could not forget their own
rights and those of their fellow-citizens.
Our readers will excuse us if a glance at the
world just now has betrayed us into a kind of
philosophising strain. The illustrations of our
remarks from things as they are are so glaring
that any one may be pardoned for letting them
fall. Two European Rulers, in particular,
are now thrust upon our attention by their resist-
ance to the counsels of England especially, as un-
disguised tyrants, and the insane cruelty of
their conduct is raising a universal groan of dis-
gust with them, and sympathy with their victims.
Naples keeping Austria in countenance, and
Austria repaying by uph&ding the southern Mo-
narch against his subjects. It must be confessed
that the dark inspirations of Jesuitism have long
co-operated with the hereditary cruelty of the
Bourbon and Hapsburg races. Superstition
and bigotry, its offspring, have always delighted
in torturing those whose superior light they
could not extinguish, or whom they could not

compel to hypocrisy ; and when the cruelty of
religions fanaticism and that of enraged tyranny
combine, of course they convert the human being
almost into a fiend. It is also a deplorable ag.

gravation of the evil that the despot, as the
enemy of the human race, is essentially suspiciou-,,
that he cannot imagine himself safe without a
host of spies and informers, and a bribed military
guard, and that hence thousands, innocent of any-
thing but the common hatred of oppression, are