The Sun.
London, England, 1858-11-10 00:00:00

engaged with his colleagues in considering and
maturing the details of those moasu'res of legal
social, financial, and political improvement, which
he hopes by the commencement of. n xt session to
be enabled to submit to the impart. 11 judgment of
Parliament, and'which, as he subsequently stated,
will " be conceded in a spirit of not endeavouring to
serve either this or that section of the community,
but the whole people not to legislate for
the high or the low, for the rich or
for the poor, but for the well-understood
benefit and advantage of all classes."
This is the true principle, and if Lord DERBY
faithfully observes the principles he has so ably
laid down ; if he acts, not for party but for the
community at large, the true-hearted Liberals,
in whose hands the decision of the important ques-
tion at issue between the Governments of Lords
DERBY and PALMERSTON is placed, will give an
honest and just judgment, in accordance with the
principles which will prove alike beneficial and
acceptable to the public.

If our knowledge of the globe denies us the
hope of any more regions to discover, we are cer-

thinly opening up to view much that has hitherto
remained impenetrable in many a remote island and
continent. No future navigator, however gifted or

adventurous, can set forth in unknown seas, like

CoLumuus, in quest of a new world, bitherto un-
dreamt of by geographers. No aspiring sea cap-
tain can any longer speculate upon the possibility

of emulating JAMES CooK, in finding what the
historian of Europe, by a marvellous Scotch bull,
has called (vol. I, cont. p. 9), a " fifth hemisphere."
Our globe has again and again been circum-

navigated. -Sailing, vessels and steam vessels

paddle wheels and screw propellers have put a
girdle round the earth as completely, though per-
haps not so swiftly, as PUCK the lyric Mercury.
Fairyland has been banished from the earth by
the researches of the hydrographer. PRESTER
JOHN has been banished from his dominion. El
Dorado has resolved itself into a gold digging. We
have lost at once the Ultima Thule and Atalantis.

There are only a few icy regions still remaining to
be penetrated in the Arctic and. Antarctic circles.

Even the North-West passage has been traversed,
thanks to Sir ROBERT INPCLunE. Not another '
undiscovered island remains anywhere upon which
a second SELKIRK could be shipwrecked—to be
monarch of all he surveyed, to cloth himself in
skins, be startled by savage footprints, to pursue par- .
rots, and eventually have some new DEFOE for his
biographer. A glance at one of the latest editions
of MERCATOR'S Chart will show that hardly any-
where on it are any longer discernible those
vague spots, left dubiously to conjecture, in
which poets might place the fabled regions of
Tempe, Arcadia; and the Hesperides—or the wilder
haunts of the Cyclops, the Centaurs and the
Anthropophagi. Besides the eternal wintry
scenes already alluded to, here at the North Pole,
there at the South Pole—there are still, it is true,
parts of two or three of the Great Continents. But
even these are being fast penetrated. Central
Africa is being laid open by the daring researches
of Dr. LIVINGSTONE. Central North America has
promise for, as of not only being traversed, but
colonised and cultivated by means of the inter-
course soon inevitable between Canada and Co-
lumbia. So, too, will it be at our antipodes, over
the -whole 'of the interior of that vast island, or
rather continent, of Australasia, by means of the
intercourse to be ultimately established between
points as remote from each other as Port Philip
and the Gulf of Carpentaria, as Shark Bay and
Port Macquarie. A spirit of commercial enter-
prise is at length abroad, such as will, in the
natural course of things, render our traders as
familiar with the centre of Papua and of Borneo as
they must soon become with the heart of the two
great islands of New Zealand—Eahei Nomane,
and Tavai Poenamoo. Let it be recalled to mind
for a moment what have actually been the achieve-
ments in this way effected by Anglo-Saxon enter-
prise within the brief intervals of this last twelve-
month. Scarcely had the satisfactory close of our
last rapid and successful war with Persia given us
the security for more friendly intercourse with the
inhabitants of Teheran and Ispahan, of Bagdad
and Bassora, than the triumphal termination of
our second great conflict with Chin has obtained
for us a substantial guarantee that our civilising,
influences may now be enabled to advance beyond
the frontiers of the Celestial Empire, from the
Yellow Sea to Mongolia, from the Gulf of Ton--
quin to Thibet. And no sooner have glad tidings
to this effect reached our shores than they are fast
followed by what is almost more startling, and in
some respects scarcely less satisfactory intelligence
—news, that is to say, of the pacific treaty recently
entered into by Lord ELGIN with the Japanese.

Hitherto it has been familiar, even to that

woneerfully accomplished ignoramus (supposed to
know- nothing, expected to know everything)—the
Schoolboy—that Japan, during all these past cen-
turies, has remained almost more exclusively than
even China itself under a sort of taboo to the rest
of the civilised world. Advisedly we say the
civilised world ; for the Japanese, though cut off
from intercourse with their fellow creatures, have,
during many past generations, been very far re-
moved from a state of barbarism. It would be
ridiculous to doubt the fact of their being. in a
manner highly civilised—to entertain a like doubt
in regard to the long-vanished Etrurians. And
now, for the first time in the history of thedwo_
countries, there is to be a . permanent, recognised,
organised intercourse between England and Japan.
Diplomatic agents are to be exchanged between
them. A Japanese ambassador is to reside at
London, an English Ambassador at Jeddo. There
is to be perpetual peace and amity between her
Britannic MAJESTY and the TYCOON of the Japanese.
The principal ports of Japan are to be opened to
British commerce Hakodadi, lianagaw a, and
Nagasaki on the Ist of July, 1859; Nipon on the
Ist of January, 1860 ; Hiogo on the Ist of January,
1860. Both in Japan and China Christianity is
henceforth to be recognised and respected. This
remarkable treaty between the English and the
Japanese—a treatry comprising within it many
other important articles—was signed on the 26th
of August, 1858. It is written in English, in
Dutch, and in Japanese. The version in Dutch is
to be regarded as the original, from which the two
others arc translations. It is to be ratified within
one year from the date of its signature by the
contracting plenipotentiaries. It will take rank
assuredly among the word's most notable docu-
ments. It is the latest and not by any means the
benotn
least significant evidence of Anglo-Saxon energy,
and
beneficent hte
a swift
lm
i ftandlva advance hither
influenceshitherandthnifthEeurrop
of
European
1