The Sun.
London, England, 1858-04-09 00:00:00

allow India to be sacrificed, we may be assured, to
mere patty tactics. There are ways and means
enough for party to fight the battle for office, if it
will, in Parliament, without periling the interests
of such an empire as India. We should think it
would exercise a most salutary influence on the
debates, if Mr. DISRAELI should announce pretty
early, that under no circumstances would the Go-
vernment resign on the question of India—that
they were quite prepared to carry out honestly
the best plan which the united wisdom of the two
Houses could furnish.

It can scarcely be otherwise than a source of
universal satisfaction, the knowledge that the
protracted struggle against misfortune, maintained
now for ten years with unwearied assiduity by
M. DE LAMARTINE is at length about to be brought
to a happy conclusion. Between 1848 and 1858
the contest with impending ruin has been main-
tained by him, single-handed, in the midst of an
all but overwhelming accumulation of diffi-
culties. After saving France and Europe from
the horror of Anarchy—effecting this, moreover,
at the imminent hazard of his life—the Hero of
February, though by nature a poet, though by
genius a dreamer, though by an instinctive pre-
ference, all his life long, a man of letters rather
than a man of action, consented, nevertheless, for
three months, in the midst of an appalling crisis,
to assume the then by no means tempting responsi-
bility of supreme Government. It is not an exagge-
ration of his importance, to say this of LASIARTINE.
For he, among all his colleagues, was indisputably
and notoriously the genius of the Provisional Go-
vernment. DUPONT DE L'Eunn, it is true, occu-
pied the chair of presidency at the council board
—but he did so simply in . recognition of his age,
and of his probity. GOUDOTIA.UX held the port-
folio of Finance, MARIE that of Public Works,
LEDRU ROLLIN that of the Interior, CRENIEUX that
of Justice, CARNOT that of Public Instruction,
ARAGO that of Marine, BETSMONT that of Com-
merce, and General SUBERTIE that of War—but
they were dominant, these men, each simply and
exclusively in his own department. With LA-
MARTINE it was otherwise. He was far more than
simply Minister for Foreign Affairs. He was
pre-eminently the mouthpiece, the spokesman,

the representative of the entire Government. His
famous manifesto was the document to which all
looked for the revelation of the intentions, the
principles and the aspirations of the Republic
born of the Revolution. When that Republic,
scarcely yet brought into existence, was imperilled•

by the mob—he was the one who stood forward
as its champion in front of the Hotel de Ville.
When the organs of 'various parties and sections,
and even, be it said, creeds and races, had to be met
and reasoned into a patient submission to the course

of events—he it was who personally gave audience,
one after another, to the imperious and imprac-
doable deputations. For three months he toiled
at his perilous post, with unflagging assiduity and
determination, and, in the end, only withdrew
from holding within his generous and heroic grasp

the reins of the democratic Government—because
the tocsin of civil war had sounded in the streets
of Paris the absolute and instant neces3ity of
gathering those reins up yet more tightly, and
placing them collectively in the iron grip of a
tnilitary Dictator. At the advent of the soldier
CATAIGNAC, LAXIARTINE, the poet, descended
again, first of all among the ranks of the national
representatives, and ultimately to the comparative
retirement of a studious cultivation of the various
fields of literature. The dignity of this
retirement he hinaielf has eloquently
vindicated but vary rocautly iu cue of the 11,t
instalments of one of the most popular of all his
serial publications. It is in the preambuie of the
25th, emtretien of his Cours Familier de Litbtra-
tare, that in an address t 3 his readers, M. DE
LAMARTINg has condescended to repel the shame-
less issinuations cast against him by certain men-
dacious opponents. " How cruelly insequential,"
he says, "it is to say to a man, You owe debts,
and if you do not pay what you owe you are dis-

honoured ; and to say to himin the same breath,
Yet, if you continue to work to pay what you owe,
you are still dishonoured." Nevertheless, this
is precisely what has been said of and to
this great man by his fl Lgitious and illogical
assailants. Embarrassed in his circumstances at
the period of the last revolution—he ascends to
the dizzy altitude of the virtual chieftainship of
the French Government. Empty-handed, after
doing his part to the last nobly and con-
scientiously, he descends from that unwonted
elevation to assume anew his labours as an author.
What is his reply now to his malignant deprecia-
tors ? It is a reply worthy of LAMARTINE. `cVous
pouvez m'6touffer," he cries out, " oui, main vous
ne me dishonnerez pas; jo travaillerai jusqa'a
anon dernier soupir, e. si j 3 suceombe, ce ne sera
pas ma faute; ce sera cello de mO3 ennemis."
" Yes, you may strangle me," ho says, " but you
cannot dishonour me. I will work on to mylatest
breath, and if I fail in my efforts the fault
will not be mine ; it will rather be that of my
detractm.s." But France at this moment has
decreed otherwise. For ten years this unequal
contest has been continued uninterruptedly. At
last it is to cease. The gratitude of the Great
Nation to one of the noblest, and truest, and most
gifted of all her sons can no longer be restrained.
A national subscription is to liquidate the liabili-
ties of the man who is at onco—Hero, Poet, His•
torian, Orator, Romancist, Legislator, Admini-
strator. The estates so long in jeopardy at Ma-
con are to be redeemed from mortgages and secured
intact to the owner from whose possession they
possibility- of redemp-
tion.
bat
h e yesterdayyend tt to
the possibility
passing away rapidly
and
The home of the poet of Jocelyn, is still to
be his and no other's. The vineyards familiar to
the feet of the young day-dreamer of _Raphael are
to be yet trodden by him now that he is aged
into the historian of. the airondins. The BYRON
of France is still to have his Newstead. The
Scorr of France is still to retain his southern
Abbotsford. France has said it. Frenchmen of
a ranks and classes are swelling the lists of sub-
scription for this splendid and touching testimo-
nial. It is well. Had the struggle with adverse
fortune ended in this instance differently, it would
have been a disgrace for France no less than it
would have been a grief to LAMARTINE. There.
fore, repeat, it is well—and not the less so
thraet, wethe movement which is at length being parti-
cipated in by a whole people is now formally
authorised and inaugurated by the Government.

There was no part of the Ministerial arrange-
ments on which the thick and thin adherents of
Lord PALMERSTON expatiated s)
pathetically as
on the dangers likely to arise from the substitu-
tion of Lord MALMESBURY for Lird CLARENDON
at the Foreign Office. The safety, however, and
welfare of the country would bo endangered if the
portfolio passed from the vigorous hands of the

f inner Minister to one so weak and inefficient as
his successor, especially at a time when such im-
pmtant questions
were pending with
the French and Neapolitan Governments.
Such was the tenor of the sundry Jeremiads by

Close who wished to constitute Lord PA LYERSTON
prpetual dictator, encouraging him to treat with