The Sun.
London, England, 1859-10-18 00:00:00

Commence at 7.

ROYAL PRINCESS'S THEATRE.—
Lessee, Mr. A. Farris.
THIS EVENING, the performances will commence with
LOVE'S TELEGRAPH.
To be followed by a dramatic tableau in -Watteau colours,
by J. R. Planche, Esq., entitled LOVE AND FORTUNE.
To conclude with THE TWO POLTS.

NEWW THEATRE - ROYAL, ADELPHI.
THIEATR - ROYAL, ADELPHI.
Sole Proprietor and Manager, Mr. Benj. Webster.
Open for the Winter Season.
THIS EVENING will be performed ICI ON PARLE
FRANCAIS. Messrs. J. L. Toole, Chas Selby, and Miss
Relit.
After which. THE WILLOW COPSE. Luke, Mr. Ben.
Webster ; Hulks, Mr. David Fisher ; Augustus, Mr. J. L.
Toole ; Staggers, Mr. Paul Bedford.
Followed by LOVE AND HUNGER. Mr. David Fisher,
Mr. Paul Bedford, C. Selby, C. J. Smith, Miss K. Kelly, Miss
Laidlaw.

Doors open at half-past six—C,onunence at seven. Box-
Onice open from 10 to 5. No charge for securing seats,
nor for bills of performance. All fees to servants of this
establishment are strictly prohibited.
Acting Manager—Mr. Wm. Smith.

ROYAL ST. JAMES'S THEATRE,
King-street, St. James's. Lessee, Mr. T. B. Chatter-
fon. The nearest Theatre to Chelsea, Pimlico, and West-
minster, the Park being open to carriages and foot passen-
gers all hours of the night.
THIS EVENING, PA WEN rs AND GUARDIANS.
After which the successful Ballet Farce, by John Oxen-
ord, Esq., entitled MAGIC TOYS, supported by Miss Lydia
Thompson, Miss Clara St. Casse, and a numerous Corps de
Ballet.
To conclude with the New and Original Burlesque, by L.
Buckingham, Esq., of VIRGINIUS ; or the Trials of a Fond
Papa.
Reduced Prices—Gallery, 6d ; Pit, Is. The Box-office open
from 11 to 5 daily. Doors open at half past six ; perform-
ance commences at 7.

ROYAL STRAND THEATRE.
Lessee and Directress, Misa Swanborongh
THIS EVENING, THE GOOSE WITH THE GOLDEN
EGGS.
After which THE GREAT RUSSIAN BEAR; or, An-
other Retreat from Moscow.
And CAUGHT BY THE EARS.
Followed by THE VERY LATEST EDITION OF THE
LADY OF LYONS. . _ .

Coirunenoe at 7 o'clock.

CANTERBURY HALL CONCERTS.-
EVERY EVENING.—The Music of Verdi's Opera o:
3IACBETH (now first made public in England at these Com
certs).

In a few days will be produced a Selection from Meyer•
beer's new opera of DLNORAH.

Comic Vocalists —Messrs. George !Tolson (the Irish Come.
dian and Mimic), W. T. Critchfleld, and E. W. Mackney.

„ .
Several Interesting Pictures arc added to the Fine Arts
Gallery. The suite of Halls have been re-decorated and
beautified. and constitute one of the most unique and brilliant
nights of the metropolis.

TBB WEATHER.—Sux Or'totem, OCTOBER 18.
TIIIIRMOICETER, IN TIIR SHADS.
65—highest since neon yesterday.
51—lowest this morning and during the night.
57—this day at noon.

BAROMETER-29.98.
WnTD, Easterly; light. with dull weather.

HIGH WATER, AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tins DAY.—Morning, sh. 27m.—Afternoon, sh. 52m.
To-MORROW-Morning, 6h. 21m.—Afternoon, 6h. 55m.

, A
•
2 , •
„m o s

THE. SUN.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 18t9.

Another Cabinet Council, it will be seen, was
held yesterday. Ministers are beginning to bestir
themselves. They numbered " nine " at the close
of last week, and now, at the beginning of this
week, " eleven " out of the Sixteen assembled to-
gether round the council board. The last stragglers
are dropping in, just as the QUEEN and her Court
are reaching Windsor Castle. Michaelmas has
passed, though the term of that ilk has not yet
commenced. The lawyers may yet, for the most
part, be scattered, for we are still but in the midst
of October—but the Ministers of the Crown, the
great State drudges in this community, the normal
state of which really appears to be drudgery, are
already girding up their loins for the work before
them, or at any rate (which is so far a concession on
their part), affect to be doing so. Several, of course,
out of the Sixteen have been flitting to and
fro, at intervals, about the purlieus of Downing-
street during the lapse of the two months which
have already elapsed since the prorogation of Par-
liament. The business of the country does not
admit of any long vacation (save in name) for those
intrusted nominally by the Crown, but virtually by
the Legislature, with the responsibilities of Admini-
stration. The Prime Minister, particularly when
it happens, as it does at the present moment, that
he has no less than fifteen colleagues to look after
and to keep in harmony one with another in spite
of the notorious fact of the vast majority of their
opinions being diametrically antagonistic—the
Prime Minister, for one, can obviously never by any
chance whatever have what is called an easy time
of it. Go whithersoever he may—the silver tissue
papers of those plaguey telegrams flock after him
pertinaciously. His messengers are continually
on the move with those radiant green morocco
boxes, or those dingy brown leather bags like for-
gotten valises dropped by travellers of the last cen-
tury—all of them (bags and boxes) stuffed to reple-
tion with papers old and new, despatches and
memoranda, looked at (which is bad enough), or
(which is worse) still to be looked at. At any age,
" never-ending still-beginning," toil like this
would be extraordinary to think of—but,
at seventy-five ! Why a Premier of seventy-
five, even though he be inspirited by the
constitutional vivacity of Lord PALMERSTON,
can have left to him, in the thick of his Ministerial
responsibilities, but small space for even a momen-
tary idea of leisure.

Remembering, again, the more direct responsibi-
lities devolving upon each of the fifteen colleagues
and snperbordinates of the First Lord of the
Treasury, and bearing in mind how it is that the
duties are distributed among those fifteen heads of
the separate departments, we can readily appre-
ciate how few among them can have oppor-
tunities, however sparsely scattered, for anything
like real repose from the anxieties and drudgeries
of administration. The Chancellor of the Exche-
quer, for example, is more or less incessantly kept
with his faculties upon the strain, by reason of the
most ingenious among his numerous fiscal and
financial arrangements being, by the nature of
things, perpetually liable, we might almost say
perpetually certain, to become complicated. The
Foreign Secretary has to keep well in hand the
delicate and continually shifting threads of diplo-
macy, and to keep them one and all if possible
—and this in the midst of the whirl of the world's
events—alike from snapping and from entangle-
ment. The First Lord of the Admiralty has to
remain ever vigilantly upon the watch, with his
weather eye open, upon all the fleets and squadrons,

upon all the dockyards, upon all the naval stations,
upon all the seas, upon all quarters of the globe,
looking well to the national defences not only along
our iron-bound coasts, but along those also of
all our vast and remote colonies, while at the
same time conscious that his means must be econo-
mised as well as may be in this rigorous age of re-
trenchment. As for the Colonial Secretary, even
with the aid of the Post-office programme, giving

him a rough outline of the days when the various
mails are expeeted,he (luckless Minister) knows not
upon any evening what may be in store for him
upon the morrow, what storm of docu-

ments may pour upon his devoted head from

those dreadful letter-bags landed at inter-
vals of frightful uncertainty, sometimes alter-
nately, sometimes simultaneously at Liverpool
or at Southampton. Now a douch of papers from
British Columbia—now an avalanche from Hong
Kong—now a cataract from Corfu and Cephalonia.
His position is more breathless and embarrassing
in this particular than the ordinary recipient of a
shower-bath he holds not the string him-
self ! In effect, the string "is multiple—not
" one " but " fifty " and all the fifty held
in hands invisible, ever ready to pull fitfully
by turns, or, as the accident may be, together. So
of the rest respectively at the heads of their diverse
departments—but few, indeed, of those having
offices in any way exceptionally coming under the
category of mere sinecures ! Offices, for instance,
like those now held by Sir GEORGE GREY and
Mr. CARDWELL —the former in his official character
as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster taking
high rank among the more inscrutable mysteries
of the age—the latter in his conspicuous position
as Chief Secretary for Ireland having such an
infinitesimally small quantity of work to do in
return. for his salary—that one of his more
sensitively conscientious and outspoken pre-
decessors in the office, Mr. HORSMAN, to
wit, threw up the post in disgust at the
sheer frivolity of it, almost, we might say (re-
membering his manly and candid explanation to

the House of Commons), with feelings of shame
and indignation. The :administrative toil, in
fact, there is hardly any doubt of this, is very
unequally distributed : so unequally distributed
that, as we all of us very well remember, it was
only two or three short years ago since the Colonial
Department in Downing-street, by one bold stroke
of Administrative Reform, was split into two

Secretaryships—those of War and the Colonies—
yet leaving to each, but especially to the latter,
more work to get through habitually than
would suffice to exhaust the ordinary run of
continental statesmen and administrators. So
much, in fact, requires to be done month after
Month, week after week, day after day, in the way
of mere administrative drudgery that Ministers
find ready excuse for evading upon that one plea,
the long obvious and even glaringly urgent neces-
sities for Reforms in the organisation of our whole
system of Government—reforms of all kinds,
legal, financial, sanitary, educational, and Par-
liamentary. Hence, in point of fact, Ministers
of the Crown have •acquired, as it were; an incor-
rigible habit of meeting in Cabinet Council osten-
sibly for the purpose of preparing their measures,
but, in reality, to shirk—there is no other word for
it—ab olutely to shirk the very questions most loudly
demanding their consideration. Hitherto the nation
has had no remedy for the evil of this systematic
evasion and postponement—and this simply because
of the prolonged disorganization of parties within
the walls of the Legislature. Again, however, we
possess now the old security that evasions of this
kind cannot so easily be persevered in by Minis-
ters—and that grand security is, it need hardly
be added, results from the strength, the energy,
and the discipline of her MAJESTY'S Opposition.

In the political game now playing ou the chess- !
board of Italy there are two parties who know Cs-
tinctly what they want, who have, therefore, no
occasion for mystery or for hesitation. The four
united provinces of Central Italy say to VICTOR
EmmarruEL, and to all Europe, We wish to be
united with each other and with Sardinia ; and
England replies—lt is your unquestionable right ;
do it then and prosper ! But what a complexity of
counsels and plannings north of the Alps, and south
of the Duchies too. The poor petty PONTlFF—petty
as a temporal ruler—is worried to death with his
ungrateful subjects, who, despite all Mr. BOWYER'S
proofs that they are the most blessed people in
Europe, persist in spurning the secular rule of the
very man whose spiritual office they superstitiously
venerate ; and, while Pius utters bitter denuncia-
tions against the King of SARDINIA, and sends his
Ambassador his passports, the Romans would, if
the French would let them, make St. Peter's itself
resound with the viras for VICTOR EMMANUEL ;
and, because no demonstration is allowed, they
quietly pile ten thousand cards on the departing
Ambassador's table, and make silent signs of recog-
nition as he leaves the city which desires his mas-
ter as its Sovereign ! South of Rome there is he of
Naples longing to put down the Romagnese, but
fearing to be put down himself ; and north-east are
the Romagnese and GARIBALDI waiting with
anxiety to see whether the POPE'S Perugians will
venture to renew, if they can, their holy atroeities
at Bologna. May GARIBALDI reward them ac
cording to their deeds if they do !
And then, again, north of the Alps, what would the
two arch-plotters be at ? Austria, poor, frightened,
bankrupt Austria, she must, of course, talk big—
and act pertinaciously; but how to secure what she
would like to get, but has no hope of gaining, she
cannot tell—though hopeless, she seems as if she
would try to the last. Zurich, however, seems to
be a failure, for all, at least, that the world is per-
mitted to know of it ; and if it did hatch anything
from the Villafranca preliminaries we should soon
know it. But it is to the oracle at Biarritz that
all the world 'is looking. His own press try to
draw him out, though almost in vain. Inch by
inch his will is allowed to appear, and the semi-
official Constitutionnel, and the authorised Moniteur,
inform us that the EMPEROR will not allow resto-
ration of runaway Sovereigns by arms ; or that
PLoN-PLom was never intended to be hoisted to
Royalty on the backs of the poor Italians. Still
nothing positive can be learned. A Cardinal-
Archbishop and his clergy attempted to get
a response from the oracle • only last
week, and they, indeed, got one, but it was the old
Aio to 2Eacida Romanos vincere posse. They re-
minded him how he had said years ago, when en-
gaged in murdering the liberties of republican
Rome, that the "temporal sovereignty of the vener-
able head of the Church is intimately connected
with the fame of Catholicism and the liberty and
independence of Italy." "Yes," replied the Bor-
deaux APOLLO, " a new era of glory will arise for
the Church on the day when the whole world will
share my conviction that the temporal power of
the Holy Father is not opposed to the liberty and
independence of Italy." When did the PYTHONESS
beat that ? Is the world to repent and believe
in the temporal power of the PorE as it stands ; or,
is his Holiness to repent and modify the exercise
of his power till his little domains become a model
of civil and religious liberty for the world ? A
hint indeed in this latter direction follows, for the
ecclesiastics aro told that Europe expects the
speedy withdrawal of French soldiers (who never
had any business there) ; and then " what will
they leave behind—anarchy, terror, or peace?"

And now, amidst all these frights and selfish
schemes and diplomatic perplexities, what should

hinder the two parties who have a clear and honest

cause from carrying their point ? Italy is wholly in
the right, England openly declares through her

Foreign Minister, who on this point is entirely of
one mind with the Premier, that she is so. Cannot
England and Italy insist upon the simplest inter-
national justice against all the world ? There never
could be less need for war. There can be no dis-
pute respecting the facts of the case. The Villa-
franca preliminaries did not include force for
Central Italy, and even if they had done so it
would have been bare-faced wrong to an indepen-
dent people, of which either party was at liberty to
repeat and bound to repeat. The oracle, however,
has assured us that Dukes are not to be forced on
Duchies, even if the latter have unwisely cast them
off. The only open point, then, is whether the
Duchies have a right to join themselves to Sardinia,
and Sardinia a right to accept the offer of union.
And why not ? Are royal marriages, or con-
quests, or robberies, like the partition of Po-
land, to be the only means of uniting nations,
even when language, habits, religion, neigh-
bourhood, unite them already ? Must all
unions of peoples be inaugurated, not by the un-
sought spontaneous votes of the people themselves,
but by their rulers ? It seems impossible to conceive
a better mode or better object of union than that
now sought by the four States of Central Italy.
We hope, therefore, Lord JOHN RUSSELL will
abide immoveably by his Aberdeen declarations.
They were meant, not for the Scotch city only, but
for Italy and Europe. They were intended, we
trust, to encourage Louis NAPOLEON in a policy he
had already been persuaded to adopt, and to warn
Austria that no settlement should she obtain which
England would ratify, unless she consented toleave
the Duchies the independence she demands for her-
self. Russia seems likely to lean to Sardinii and
Italian independence. Prussia cannot well thwart
our counsels and espouse those of her rival. Louis
NAPOLEON must wish, now he can gain nothing
else, to gain the honour of having done something
worth his battles for Italy. Never, as it would
seem, had statesman a better opportunity to serve
the cause of continental freedom than. Lord JOHN
now has. Without a congress the potentates can-
not get through ; England has but to insist on her
conditions—of recognising the will of the Duchies
as its basis—and the thing is tone. A congress
without England would not be a European settle-
ment ; with her it would be the liberation of Cen-
tral Italy. We believe Lord JOHN to hold the very
opinions he ought on this question—let him but be
as obstinate for right as he can be for wrong in
other matters, the ballot, for instance, and he will
restore amongst the peoples of Europe the faith
that England not only is free herself, but wishes
other nations to be free also.