The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-11 00:00:00

alive the spirit of civil and religious freedom as that
of Hungary. England has advanced far, indeed,
beyond her in literature, arts, and science, but in
regard to struggles for freedom, we can hardly
claim ipre-eminence.

Already the pride of the HaPsnrrita is beginning-I
to bow to necessity. The Council of his own
nomination has presented him with a draft
scheme of separate administration of Hungary,
and of' all the other provinces, to which, with some
modification, he seems constrained to give his
assent. The exact.particulars are not yet before
the world ; and in dealing with a Jesuit-ridden
monarch, these are of so much importance that it is
unsafe to speak with decision. But the grand
point we should think the Hungarians not likely
to be turned from ; they demand, not an octroyed
constitution, one which, bestowed by an Emperor,
can be revoked at his pleasure; hence their stern
refusal of the otherwise pretty liberal "patent" for
the Protestants of last September; they insist on
a return to the illegally abrogated constitution as
it stood in 1846; they demand their Matorical
rights, and, as a part of them, that the EM-
PEROR, if he desires to be their sovereign,
should submit to be crowned King of HUNGARY,
and take the legal oath to the constitution. No-
thing can be more certain than that FRANCIS
JOSEPri reigns in Hungary only as a revolutionisto
or as a conqueror by Russian bayonets ; and he
probably shrinks from acknowledging his past
errors, almost as much as from restoring to Hun-
gary the rights of which he has robbed her.
The new Russian move is, therefore, plainly in-
tended to secure him better terms from his uncon-
querable subjects; neither he nor the Czar, we ima-
gine, can think that this country and Europe would
tolerate a repetition of Russian intervention in
Hungary. PASKIEWITCH can have no successor.
That intervention to restore Austrian despotism over
a self-emancipated country has cost this country
dear, Not only have we lost a splendid commerce,
which free Hungary was opening up to us; but the
Russian attack on Hungary emboldened the suc-
cessful CZAR to his attempts on Turkish liberties,
and thus led on to the Crimean war. Russia cannot
save Austria; dare not if she could. The Hapsburg
has now before him the fate of the Bourbon. He
sees, as in a mirror, the effect of too late repentance.
His own hours are becoming very circumscribed.
Frank acknowledgement of the rights he has
violated may yet save the loyalty of the Hunga-
rians, but he must be prompt: Swamped with
enormous deficits in his Exchequer, and likely to
have more than work enough in Venetia, very soon
may the crisis come which would deprive the
largest concessions of all their grace. If FRANCIS
JosErn means to conciliate Hungary, it would
seem to be now or never. May it be now !

We are sanguine now of. better days for the
letter-carriers. Lord STANLEY of ALDERLEY, the
newly-appointed Postmaster-General, can hardly
fail to recognise as first and foremost among the
changes-for-the-better required at his hands the
improvement of the condition of that most nume-
rous, laborious, and hitherto-neglected class of
officials in his department. The letter-carriers
throughout the United Kingdom, but especially
the letter-carriers of the metropolis, are notoriously
the most hardly-worked and the most poorly-paid
of the public servants connected with the Post-office
establishment. Their position in reality is one of
very peculiar hardship. They are exposed to all
weathers indiscriminately, clement and inclement,
hail, rain, and sunshine. They carry about with
them perpetually temptation, enhanced in force by
its opportunities. Their occupation is one of par
ticular responsibility. Yet, with all this universally
admitted, in effect altogether undeniable, their pay
is in reality the meanest little pittance.
Heartened to a renewal of their agitation for
relief, by the appointment of Lord STANLEY as the
Earl of ELGIN's successor, the letter-carriers of
London, we were rejoiced to note, held a meeting
on Wednesday, the result of which has about it,
we cannot but think, a considerable degree of signi-
ficance. The resolutions passed at this meeting were
indicative of a determination having been at length
arrived at by the advocates of this most reasonable
movement to appeal directly to the sense of justice
and of humanity in the British House of Commons
—in the event of their plea for redress to the new
Postmaster General proving void (like all previous
pleas of the kind) of any beneficial consequences
whatsoever. That the application now addressed to
Lord STANLEY will prove thus inoperative of all
good to his petitioners we do not for one instant
anticipate. Neither Lord STANLEY'S character nor
his administrative career justify for one moment
any such anticipation. The generous temperament
of the noble lord, nay, every act of his throughout
his public life, authorise us to assert at once with
perfect confidence that the failure of the urgent
appeal now made in this instance to his judgment
and to his beneficence, to his common sense and pis
right feeling, is not to be looked for as in any way
probable. But—in the event of that dim contingency
—the matter will (it has at last been resolved)
come point blank next session before theiConim—ons
House of Parliament.
In testimony of the really grievous manner in
which the letter-carriers of the metropolis are un-
der-paid and over-worked, it was proved by reliable
statistics, on Wednesday last, at the meeting al-
ready referred to, a meeting holden in the City-
road, at the Royal British Institution—it
was demonstrated beyond all denial, by facts
and figures admitting in no way of contradiction,
that there has been now for a long while past a
considerably more than average amount of illness
in this particular class of this particular depart-
ment ! Illness described in so many words as
" weakness produced by want"—the principal reme-
dies prescribed by the departmental medical atten-
dants being [in proof of this] cod liver oil and
quinine, tonics, as it is well known, the most power-

ful and concentrated. What has rendered this con-
tinued neglect of the letter carriers all the more
poignantly felt by the sufferers themselves, has

been the circumstance that, while their grievances

have been altogether and most obdurately over-

ooked, the salaries of the higher officials,

such, for example, as the assistant secretaries,

have been simultaneously increased. Those salaries

having been previously in no flagrant, or even

recognisable, degree insufficient.

Whereas the

pos4io'n of the unfortunate letter-carrier has gen
such, for a long while, that it could be spoken of,

as it- was actually spoken of on Wednesday
last, :without any extravagance, as "one of

poverty, misery, and degradation." To enhance
the cruelty of this treatment of the miserably

under paid and ungenerously over-worked letter-

carriers of the metropoli, ; to brim up
the cup of their mingled poverty, misery, and
(above all) degradation, the authorities have been
recently (as the police reports have repeatedly

shown of late) laying traps for the temptation
of some of these unhappy men into larcenies neces-
sitating the completion of their wretchedness by
the infliction of the felon's punishment. The in-
justice and cruelty of all this is in a manner beyond
the reach of exaggeration. It is like starving a

child and then jaying baits in its way of sweet-
meats and sugar plums. An unfortunate letter