The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-15 00:00:00

not, however, to be thus bamboozled, and
he accordingly- declared that unless the
fort was given up in the course of the

day, he would proceed to immediate extremities.
We have already heard the result o this decisive

and energetic proceeding.

The forts of Rampore, and Simree or Jamree,
had been captured, the former,, we regret to say,
with the loss of 70 or 80 men, the latter of only
two killed and three or four wounded. TANTIA
TOPEE is still eluding his pursuers by rapid
flight. He is certainly not allowed much rest by
those eager in the chase. It is said that he is in
possession of ample funds ; a matter that may
easily be credited when we consider the enormous
plunder which he obtained on several occasions.
He, however, lacks that which is even of greater
importance to a person in his position, viz., guns
and ammunition ; so much so, indeed, that
orders have been given to avoid everything in the
shape of fighting that might lead to any expendi-
ture of that which they so urgently require.
The NAWAB of Banda has separated himself from
the rebels, and gone to General. MICHEL'S camp,
claiming the amnesty tendered by the Proclama-
tion. And it is stated from Samun Twarrec, under
the date of the 23d of November, that " the remain-
ing rebel leaders have given themselves up to the
Government. This of course only refers to the in-
surgents in that district, but it proves that the
work of peace is going on briskly ; and when those
who are anxious to gain our favour commence
harrassing the enemy, the termination of the contest
may be speedily anticipated. The British power
in India will be strengthened and consolidated, and
placed on a firmer foundation than it has been since
our first arrival in the country. The natives will
soon understand the difference between the mild
rule of Great Britain, and the tyranny and extor-
tion to which they have hitherto been exposed,
under grasping and covetous chiefs, who, provided
they got money, were little solicitous as to the
means by which it might be obtained.

It can hardly be objected that Ministers are in
any way premature in designing to bring the
affairs of the lonian Islands to some satisfactory
settlement. The difficulties there remaining to be
vanquished have forced themselves more or less
vexatiously upon the recognition of each successive

Government in this country ever since the Congress
at Vienna, in 1815, confided that troublesome
archipwlago to the British Protectorate. During

all these three-and•forty years last past the sounds
coming to us from those regions have been the same
old discordant song—with variations. Intrigues
and heart-burnings among the lonians—impatience
of our authority—a yearning for the revived

licence that would accrue from the junction with
the Morea and Hellas, with the Greek kingdom, in
fact of Corfu, and St. Ahura, Zante, Cerigo, and

Cephalonia. The political situation in those islands

was actually, to all intents and purposes, the same
when the son of that wealthy merchant of Liverpool,

Sir JOHN GLADSTONE, was a little boy of six—never

dreaming, among toys and fairy tales, of his ever
becoming such a fabulous personage as a Lord
High Commissioner Extraordinary. The political
situation out in those eastern waters of the Medi-
terranean was certainly, in all essential particulars,

identical in 1822 with what it is nowadays—in 1822

when Sir THOMAS MAITLAND was supreme at

Corfu, as Lord High Commissioner, and when the
late Sir CHARLES JAMES NAPIER was settled as

military resident at Cephalonia. It is preposterous
therefore, to argue that in undertaking now,if pos-
sible, to unravel the tangled web of lonian politics,
her MAJESTY'S Ministers are acting in any respect

whatever prematurely or precipitately. The pear
is not only ripe, it is rotten. It wants
shaking down from the branch on which it is at
once an eyesore and an incumbrance. And if it

were advisable, before the untoward publication of
Sir JOHN 'YOUNG'S secret despatch, that a states.
man of such rare sagacity and intelligence as Mr
GLADSTONE should be sent out to the lonian
Islands, for the purpose of making direct personal
inquiries into the wishes and requirements of their
inhabitants, and into the actual organisation of
their existing institutions—since that despatch has
been accidently disclosed, the advisability of that
extraordinary commission has certainly become
doubly manifest and undeniable.
The truth is, that the re-arrangement of the lonian
Government has at length become absolutely in-
evitable. Matters cannot continue any longer in
that normal state of confusion which has latterly
and notoriously become worse confounded. Some-
thing must at last be done with a view to the re-
conciliation of conflicting opinions, to the settlement
at once, and, if possible, permanently, of the old long
standing differences—to the reconstruction, upon a
broader basis than hitherto, and upon a surer
foundation, of this particularly problematic exem-
plar of what is so often little better than a vexa-
tious anomaly—a British Protectorate. There can
be very little doubt, we should think, that, in the
generality of cases, a Protectorate cannot seriously
be regarded as anything more than a transition
state. It is the political chrysalis from which the
winged, and radiant, and perfected colony bursts
forth eventually. It may be even that the matured
colony itself ought, strictly speaking, to be regarded
in its turn as naturally, in all human probability, a
more advanced stage of transition—destined to
develope ultimately into the glory and dignity of
an independent nationality. Ex. gr., of course,
those trans-Atlantic colonies of Great Britain
which became, not a hundred years ago, transformed
into the United States' Republic at the moment
of the declaration of American Independence. That,
however, is another and a grander question alto-
gether. What we have to consider, in reference to
the lonian problem, is the more ordinary question
of the state of progress and developement marked
by the promise of the future colony, dormant or
latent, in what is designated a British Protectorate.
The cat was unexpectedly and prematurely let out
of the bag—there cannot reasonably be any doubt
of that—in the instance of the lonian Islands, by
the purloining' of Sir JOHN YOUNG'S despatch,
and its exremely inopportune publication. The
circumstance has tended, no doubt, still
further to complicate what was already suf-
ficiently entangled. There can be no help
for the casualty now, however. It must be
accepted as a dire necessity and made the most of.
Nevertheless, viewing the problem that still remains
upon our bands for solution—viewing it by the
new and most unexpected light thrown upon it by
the sudden and fortuitous glare of this surreptitious
disclosure—we cannot in reason but acknowledge
that the course actually pursued by Ministers at
the outset of their efforts to restore tranquillity
and to secure future contentment in the lonian
islands under British domination (or, in diplomatic
phraseology, under British protection) is, all things
considered, the very wisest that could have been
hit upon. In Mr. GLADSTONE at Corfu, as Lord
High Commissioner Extraordinary—we have " the
right man in the right place." His excellency is
there in the name and as the representative of the
SOVEREIGN, to examine dispassionately into the
actual state of things in the various islands,
to learn directly from themselves the hopes
and wishes of their population, to see