The Sun.
London, England, 1860-12-17 00:00:00

we had so long desiderated, the opportunity of
looking well about us from that high 'vantage
ground, both in a military and p-_,stitical point of
view, and of taking our own time before closing with
our enemies the definitive terms of pacification !
Pausing thus, of course, only to the end that when
Peace should eventually be arranged, it might prove,
more probably than any peace previously negotiated
with the Chinese had done, one calculated to be
long maintained. While we are all in the midst of
these somewhat vague speculations, however, in
regard to the future—while her MAJESTY'S Minis.
ters are positively engaged in the formal discus-
sion (in Cabinet Council assembled) of the whole
problem of this Chinese War, with a view if pos-
sible to the discovery of the likeliest means

of helping Lord ELGIN towards its even-
tual solution comes suddenly into the
midst of the Cabinet the astounding and
glorious tidings that the War is at an end, and that
the negotiators of the peace have even gone so far

as to exchange the ratifications !
This important intelligence it will be perceived
through the brief notification of it, dated on Satur-
day evening from the Foreign Office, dame thither,
but an hour or so previously vta St. Petersburg. It
brings the news from Pekin down to 9th of Novem-
ber. And according to these tidings—r.uspiciously
starting homeward through Russia on the anni-
versary of the birth of the Heir Apparent to the
Crown of England—Peace had been formally con-
cluded on the 26th of October between the diplo-
matic representatives of the Western Powers of
Europe, and the diplomatic representatives acting
,in the name of the fugitive Chinese EMPEROR and
his all-but-ex-MAJESTY'S Government. Very
shortly after that now most remarkable date, the
ratifications had been exchanged, and on the sth of
.November. Pekin was evacuated by the Allied
Forces—those Forces that scarcely a fortnight pre-
viously had entered the gates of the hitherto
inscrutable city as its conquerors. So amazingly
have the Tables Turned between the late belli-
gerents from War to Peace, from turmoil to tran-
quillity, that his Celestial MAJESTY—Who had been
driven to the necessity but a few days previously
of taking so very terrestrial a journey into Man-
chouria—was confidently expected to return to his
capital almost immediately.
Our satisfaction at the receipt of this most wel-
come intelligence would be complete and unalloyed
but for the knowledge simultaneously brought to us
of the frightful cruelties perpetrated by the Chinese
upon our captured fellow-countrymen. It is impos-
sible to glance down the record of these atrocities,that
have come to us from the seat of war from reliable
sources, without a shudder of mingled grief and in-
dignation. And the horror with which the par-
ticulars of this treatment by the Chinese of the
French and English prisoners cannot but be read
at every hearth in France and England, will be
painfully intensified at this time upon the reflection
that while we know for certain that two of these
barbarously tormented prisoners (both of them
Englishmen) have died under the hands, we might
rather say the claws, of their tormentors, eleven
others, no fewer than eleven others, remained to
this hour unaccounted for ! Whether these eleven
also have succumbed to the horrors of their im-
prisonment we know not; we are baffled even in
our conjectures as to their fate. We can only wait,
and yearn, and pray for their return in safety to
the camp of the Allies, to the consolation of their
terror-stricken relatives. We do know, however,
in regard to the execrable treatment of their com-
panions—not merely of the two who have actually
perished, but of those comrades who have been
restored to us, headed by Mr. PARKES, her
MAJESTY'S Consul, and by Mr. LOCH, the
English Ambassador's Secretary—enough to make
one's blood run cold merely to think of.
Indignities the most disgraceful, mutilations the
most malignant and devilish, hunger and thirst
even to the verge of death by literal starvation,
cords tying their wrists round with the agonising
tightness of a tournequette, chains fastening their
bodies down to the floors of dark and loathsome dun-
geons—these are among the atrocities perpetrated by
the Chinese,or rather it should be said, in justice to
the Chinese race, by the Tartars, upon our unfor-
tunate fellow-countrymen. And all this infernal
cruelty has been authorised, has been ordered and
encouraged by the military and diplomatic chiefs
of the Chinese Government—by the EMPEROR'S
own brother, the Prince of KUNG, the high Imperial
Plenipotentiary—by the ruffian Tartar Generalis-
simo, the often defeated, and therefore, no doubt,
to this frightful extent—the implacable and infu-
riated SAN-KO-LIN-SIN.
It is our painful knowledge of these refined bar-
barities that leads us, however confidently, to the
conclusion that the Peace so abruptly, and other-
wise to all appearance so hastily and prematurely
concluded, will prove nevertheless, when the terms
of it come to be known, fully and entirely satisfac-
tory. It is quite impossible,under the circumstances,
that either Lord ELGIN or Baron GROS could have
concluded any Peace with the Chinese Government
that was not in the completest sense of the word
satisfactory. With the EMPEROR driven away
ignominiously as a fugitive into Tartary—with
Pekin itself, the mighty and mysterious capital
of the Chinese Empire, in the hands of the Allied
Forces—with the swarms of the Tartar Cavalry
again and again routed by (comparatively) the merest
handful of Europeans—above all, with the dread-
ful knowledge of the fiendish cruelties inflicted upon
our fellow-countrymen by order of the Prince of
KING and the Tartar Commander-in-Chief SAN-KO-
- with this half maddening knowledge, but
just then freshly branded upon the recollection of
the Ambassadors, burning and smarting into their
memory—a Peace concluded by Lord ELGIN and
Baron GROS, under such a combination of circum-
stanees, could not by any possibility, we may rest
perfectly well assured, be based upon anything but
a Treaty fully and completely satisfactory. That
unction, at least, we may lay to the soul of the
nation—now that we are yearning to give the balm
of good news to those hearts in the few scattered
home-groups who are now mourning in the midst
of this happy season over the two dead and the
eleven lost Prisoners.

One sentence of this day's telegrams will sur-
prise most readers almost as much as the news
from China. The 3foniteur says :—" The EMPE-
Rolt has decided that from January next, and by
Way of reciprocity, Englishmen coming to France
shall be permitted to enter and travel through
the country without passports." We confess we
should have thought any achievements in China,
as, for instance, the installation of the Taepings at.
Pekin, or a chase after lIIEN-FoNo to Moukden,
more likely than the one -which the Emperor of
the FRENCEI proffers us as a New Year's gift. And
then it is done s,o,
bgracyweafuylloyf—rietciipsromciatdye;,n, owefanvaovuer
Frenchmen without a ticket
of,
ef,eint
fiisrst iin ,granted
admitting
or certificate of trust w orthiniss, and the EMPEROP
will return the compliment. "BY way of Reci.
r
Yes, certainly. Louis NAPOLEON him-
ielf, time when it passports had any-utility
0; l
a tyt .
a"
tie
might have found it hard to get onaen,
(ISteppedl
ioct
officer troubled him for a passport.
the chores of England more thanonce,
And his Ex-