The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-26 00:00:00

views of the Republicans may be unexceptionable,
but the means by which they endeavour to attain
them appear to be destructive of the scheme of Go-
vernment designed by
The Government of the United
is not a representative Gove
not a deliberative body. Th
the authorsof the Federation.
States at this hour
rnment ,Congress is
ose are acts of obser-
vation, and to insist upon them no more implies a criticism of the Republican policy than to say that
uslsnilapeisriaaul torecgraimtiec. inßvoulvtesthea
• condemnation
e n
ot
fofthße
failure of Congress as a deliberative body and of the
representative institutions of the States is a fact of
the highest importance, and it may be questioned
whether any ends can be worth such a cost.
We have been accustomed to believe free govern-
ment to be of more value than any perfection of
administration, and to think it the peculiar glory of
Parliament or Congress that every opinion could
find an utterance in it, every class could secure•a
representative and a hearing. America is in danger
of losing, if it has not lost, this inheritance. Its
Congress is engrossing power to itself on all side;
and yet it is not Congress that is supreme, but a
power behind Congress— secret, irresponsible, al-
most unknown. The decrees of this self-elected
Council, matured in private, are launched upon the
Legislature, which accepts them without discussion,
and the destinies of the nation are committed to the
keeping of a few unseen men, who direct the ma-
chine of legislation. To what lengths the trans-
formation t e trans-
formation of the American Government
may be carried we know not ; individual members
of Congress are powerless to resist it, and the only
hope of arresting its progress lies in
a recoil of
national opinion such as has landed the Repub-
lican party in its present triumphant position.
POST.—If there is, as Mr.' Newdegate seems to
think, " something very inconvenient in old Tory
notions," many people who read the speech which
he delivered at Birmingham the other day, in the
light and heat thrown out by a Christmas log, may
be of opinion that, so far from 1,-,:a(s either inoon-
venient.or inopportune It ;:,,,'1 ,- a'-seaVimable stimu-
lant. The plain thitliV"that the question wilds
Mr. Newdegate expatiated upon never has been,
and we trust never will be, a mere question of party.
Indeed, seeing that he insisted on the European
status of this country, and humorously protested
against the British Parliament meeting in Calcutta,
his tent may be said to be pitched on neutral ground.
Isolated it certainly is not, for the flag which covers
it still inspires respectful consideration in every
quarter of the world, but national principles stand
alone in the sense that their proper position is high
over the heads of parties. However, Mr. New-
degate's remarks on the events of the year which
is now fast drawing to its close, together
with the augury which they have suggested,
claim attention from another point of view.
Some of those events have been explained and im-
pressed on the public mind by the prescient states-
man who shaped their course ; and it is noticeable,
in the first place, that the effect of Mr. Newdegate's
exclamation, " Alas ! for the prophecies of peace,"
is to a certain extent neutralised by Count von
Bismarck's declaration that Prussia halted in her
victorious career and modified her high-handed
policy to avoid a war the end of which could not
possibly be foreseen. This statement, which appears
to have been made somewhat :gratuitously, should
surprise no one; but it proves— if proof were want-
ing--that there are limits to the abuse of interna-
tional forbearance, and Mr. Newdegate can, if he
is so minded, give it a more comprehensive inter,
pretation. For our part, we are content to take
note of the fact, as the Prussian Minister has done,
and to hope that it affords the security for peace
which Mr. Newdegate despairs of finding. He says
the treaties of Vienna have been torn into shreds,
which is perfectly true in so far as there was any-
thing left to tear up in the tattered threadbare rem-
nant of the European settlement which they esta-
blished. It is, too, matter of history that the great
Powers parties to those treaties created or resuscitated
certain small States for the purpose of strengtheninc,
the guarantee which they desired to obtain; but Mr.'
Newdegate omitted to mention how they departed
from the rule by compelling. Austria to bear again
the burden of her former Italian dependencies, and
how, in effect, that mistake eventually opened up the
opportunity which Prussia improved. The treaties
of Vienna apparently gave Europe peace for over
30 years, and yet, inasmuch as during that period
their i rovisions were repeatedly violated, it may be
thought that, practically, they contributed to bring
about what has since come to pass, and therefore,
which if really the matter to be considered, that
their destruction may lead to a better state of
things. At present it is impossible not to perceive
that the situation is dangerously complicated by the
very measures which it exacts. All the Powers of
Europe are reconstructing their armaments, and, as
Mr. Newdegate puts it, in homely phraseology, " if
everybody is afraid, somebody must think that
somebody means to break somebody else's head."
No doubt that is the case. Count von Bismarck
admits as muck, anv.!-it..ir.:lnanifest. that liberty of
action represented by lirtitidable arAies allows of
no other constructioas What took place immedia-
tely after the battle of Sadow.h, when " negotiations
were impracticable," leads, however, directly to the
conclusion that such an understanding, abnormal ma
it is, may be effective and worth its cost. Of course,
in any emergency of the kind a great deal would
depend on the nature of the ultimatum. If condi-
tions of peace are imposed, the power so exercis, d
should be suscepale of no misgiving. Whatever
negotiations may be possible under the circumstances
ought to be positive and intelligible, and sustained
by a force which could be brought to bear in-
stantly. Such, then, is the requirement, and Mr.
Newdegate argues, as from an accomplished fact,
that what France and Russia are doing we must do.
But the point, after all, is whether when a country
its
has done everything that is prescribed—when
second and third lines of defence are organised —it
will be suffered to live in peace with its neighbours,
and, if not, what is to become of Powers that can-
not compete with France and Russia ? This ques-
tion, however, suggests another, for if the change to
which it relates is not for the better, it does not fol-
low that it is for the worse. Mr. Newdegate rea-
sonably enough concludes that the prospects of peace
are precarious, but is there actually more uncer-
tainty
than prevailed at
invasion of Denmark ?
this time last year,
or at any time since the
The independent German States were then in
existence, and the Bund was nominally intact.
We cannot but think, therefore, that too much
importance
is attached to the suppression of the .
..,
r,
treaties of 1810. They are confessedly obsolete,
even in Germany, and no one is bound by them,
because no one cared to enforce them. From first
to last England alole, among the contracting
Powers, observed their provisions. It is true that
they were, as Count von Bismarck says, intended
to protect the Continent against France, but ho
seems to forget that they were discredited at the
outset by the formation of the Holy Alliance, very
much as Mr. Newdegate fails to recollect that the
first step to what is called our policy of non-inter-
vention was taken by the Tory Government, which
declined to do more than formally dissent from the
principles acted upon at Troppau and Laybach.
Rightly or wrongly, Lord Castlereagh laid the foun-
dation of the policy which, although sensibly modi-
fied by Mr. Canning and Lord Palni.rston, was re-
cently carried out to the advantage and instruction
of Prussia. Count von Bismarck saw his way from
Duppel to Sadowa, and, as he himself expresses it,
Prussia stopped there rather than jeopardise her
success. The statement speaks for itself. It is not
for us to appraise an admission on the part of Prus-
sia that France was competent to arbitrate in the
late war ; but, taking it at Count von Bismarck's
valuation, we can conceive that it might be made
the basis of an arrangement from which the aggran-
disement of the Prussian monarchy, or the restora-
tion of the German empire, could be regarded with
equanimity. Treaties which were ignored with im-
punity may only b© described as a . delusion and a
snare, and it remains be ascertained if the substi-
tuted to
security, which is at any rate substantial, can
be realised as the assets of their failure.

NEW THEORY ON THE ORIGIN OF COAL AND COAL
OlL.—The origin of coal and petroleum has awakened
much discussion. A writer in the New York Tri-
belle takes a decidedly original view of the case, and
argues that there is no other possible way to ac-
count for the deposit of coal, in the situations where
it is now found, than to suppose that an impure
liquid carbon—what is petroleum or asphaltum but
that ?—was ejected from the interior of the earth in
such quantities that it overwhelmed small districts,
and in some instances districts where au immense
growth of vegetables already existed. Some very
few of these floated upon the surface of the liquid
macs, where they were afterwards embedded in the
shower of ashes, which afterwards became slate,
supposepreviouslyThaodtrees, vines,
thatand
and retained the imprint of these vegetable forms.
tlia tbee coaln embeddedwas for
herbaceous plants like ferns, or of mosses of such as
med
ino out of
form the peat beds, will bring us constantly in con-
tact with such stubborn facts as this. The coal-
fields of Pennsylvania, like those of all other coun-
tries, are made up of a succession of seams, one
above another, separated by intervening strata, sand-
stone, iron ore, and other mineral substances, to the
depth, perhaps, of 800 feet. Were these veins of
coal formed of successive growths of peat or other
vegetables which must in turn have been covered
with earth to produce new deposits of vegetable
carbon until the whole superstructure was built up
to its present height ?—Pittsburgh Mining Journal.