The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-27 00:00:00

Acting Manager—Mr. Wm. Smith.

ROYAL ST. JAMES'S THEATRE.
Lessee, Mr. T. B. Chatterion.
OPENS for the Season on Saturday next, Oct. I.
New comedy, THE WIDOW'S WEDDING, supported by
Messrs. Leigh Murray, Barrett, C. Young ; Mesdames Katha-
rine Hickson, Murray, Arden, Manders, &c.
New burlesque, by Leicester Buckingham, Esq., entitled
VIRGINIUS ; or the Trials of a Fond Papa, in which Messrs
Barrett, C. Young, Francis ; Mesdames Frank Matthews,
Clara St. Casse, Lydia Thompson, and a numerous Corps de
Ballet will appear.
To conclude with A DEAD SHOT.

In the course of the evening the National Anthem will be
sung.
Reduced Prices—Gallery, 6d ; Pit, ls. The Box-office opens
from 11 to 5 daily. Doors open at half—past six ; perform-
ance commences at 7.

ROYAL STRAND THEATRE
Lessee and Directress, Miss Swanborough
THIS EVENING, THE GOOSE WITH THE GOLDEN
EGGS.

After which, CAPTAIN CHARLOTTE.
And TRYING IT ON.
Followed by THE 'VERY LATEST EDITION OF THE
LADY OF LYONS.

Commence at 7 o'clock;

•
OA.NTERBUR Y HALL CONCERTS.—
EVERY EVENING.—The nusie of Verdi's Opera ol
MACBETH (now first made public in England at these Con-
verts), the extraor ,inary Violin Performances of the cele-
brated Infant DELEPIERRE FAMILY, and the usua]
♦ocal Concert.

Comic Vocalists -Messrs. George Hodson (the Irish Come.
Man and Mimic), W. T. Critellikid, and E. W. Mackney.
- •

.
Several interesting Pictures are 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
sights of the metropolis.
Will shortly be produced, a Grand Selection from Meyer-
.-beer's new opera of DINNORA.

THE WEATHER.—SITN OFFICE, SEPTEMBER 27.
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
66—highest since noon yesterday.
57—lowest this morning and during the night.
59—this day at noon.

BARoxrcree.---30.09.
Win. variable; North in the morning, now Southerly;
light, with dull weather. It rained heavily yesterday
afternoon for some hours, and again this morning early.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THIS DAY.—Morning, lh. 57m.—Afternoon,- 2h. 17m,
To-Moaßow-Morning, 2h. 37m.--Afternoon, 2h. 57m.

THE SUN.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1859.

Cabinet Councils have usually been very shy
birds at this sporting season of the year; and their
frequency of late seems to indicate either a coming
storm or making a clearance of the wreck of the
put. In either case we must be thankful that Mini-
sters are at their post, and duly comprehend the
"situation" of our affairs. No one will doubt the
extreme gravity of their meetings, all things con-
sidered.

The late make-believe decree in the Moniteur for
removing the shackles on the Press is now rescinded
in effect. We thought it too good to be true, and
so did the more cautious portion of the French
Press, for they abstained from saying anything
positive on the " avowedly" frank boon. The
reign of NAPOLEON the THIRD has not yet taken
sufficiently deep root to allow the sportive leaves of
mind to flutter in the breeze of liberty. He has
but half tried the experiment, and seems frightened
at the partial consequence. Without a free press
no nation can be considered free. The French feel
this too acutely to express the agony of
their soul. But the day of their redemp-
tion is near, for slavery and freedom can
no more co-exist than light and darkness. We
believe that the Emperor NAPOLEON would eman-
cipate the press if he thought himself safe in so
doing. But his fears prevent him. He feels
"perplexed in the extreme," and back recoils

" Even at the wrongs himself had made."
Now, this seems to be true poetical, if not political,
justice. He feels like the man hanging on the
verge of a precipice—to hold on much longer is
impossible, but to let go is death.
The news respecting the Congress or the Con-
ferences at Zurich are much the same as before.
Everything seems to be at a standstill. Austria,
• true to her destiny, will not budge a bit—nor give
up her darling Dukeslmt with her life. She will
even tempt iler fate in another and, we hepe, a final
struggle to uphold her despotism, and perish in the
rash adventure.

It remains to be seen bow far (if at all) British
interests may have been affected prejudicially in
Japan, by the tidings of the disastrous conflict upon
the Peiho river, when the prowess of the seamen of
England was compelled for once to succumb to the
furious onslaught of a Chinese ambuscade. The
instinctive feeling immediately upon the receipt
here of the intelligence of this murderous attack
was that the prestige of the Anglo-Saxons could
hardly fail to be militated against in Asia, and for
that matter it could hardly fail to be so equally
throughout the entire Archipelago. The commer-
cial treaty of peace secured by the Earl of ELGIN
and KINCARDINE, at Nagasaki—a treaty solemnly
signed by MIDZUO TSLKFOGONO KAMI, NAGAI
GEMBANO KAMI,• JNOUWYE SINANO No KAMI,
HORI ORIBENO KAMI, IWASE HIGONO KAMI,
ISUDA HAUZABRO, the Japanese Plenipotentiaries
--was completed only, it may be remembered, upon
that very morrow, so to speak, of that more memo-
rable day upon which seemingly the barriers were
at Jut broken down, which had hitherto separated
the' ,two great moieties of the human race—tho

Chinese to the number of about 400,000,000, and
the rest of the inhabitants of the globe to the num-

ber of about 500,000,000. It can hardly have failed
to reach the knowledge of the Japanese, before the

arrival of Lord ELGIN, that the Government of the
Celestial Empire had, immediately prior to the
coming towards themselves of that wester,n nego-
tiator, yielded to the blandishments of his diplomatic
advances. It is scarcely less beyond belief that the
knowledge of Lord ELGIN'S successful mission
to the Chinese materially tended to facilitate his

subiequent negotiations with the Japanese. Nor
can it be doubted that the tidings coming so soon
afterwards to Yeddo and Nagasaki—descriptive of
the ineffectual attack by the British gunboats upon
the Chinese fortifications—will be anything rather
than calculated to render the people and the rulers
of Japan ready to accord to the English a respectful
observance of Regulations, which the Japanese
people and Government may now for the moment
deem probably to have been only too precipitately
conceded. We can only conjecture the probabilities
of the Future by the light of actual knowledge
and positive experience gained in the past. Guided
thus in our conjectures in regard to the probable
development of our relations with the Japanese, it
should be borne in remembrance what were the
preconceived notions popularly entertained among
that people in reference to ourselves, almost imme-
diately prior to "...the diplomatic exploits achieved
now only a few months since, nearly simultaneously
in China and Japan, by the Earl of ELGIN and

KINCARDINE. One of the most intelligentof recent
English voyagers in those seas has afforded a

timely glimpse, as it happens, upon this precise
subject—enabling us to estimate directly what was
really, as it were, but the other day, the belief in
Japan as to the power of the British Empire and as
to the character, generally speaking, of Englishmen.
The information here referred to is that col-
lected by Mr TRONSON, of the Royal Navy, and
lately submitted by him to the English reading
public in a personal narrative of a voyage to
Japan, Kamschatcha, Siberia, Tartary, and various
parts of the Coast of China, in H.M.S. Barracouta.
The Barracouta was one of the vessels in Admiral
STIRLING'S squadron, cruising about in those re-
mote waters in 1854, during the very period when
the forces of the Allies and those of Russia were
contending under the walls of Sebastopol. Then it

was that we learn what were really the views en-
tertained in regard to England by the Japanese
population. Mr. TRONSON tells us upon this head
distinctly as- follows :—" A plain-spoken official
said, that he understood that England was a very
small country in the western seas, strong by sea,
and that the natives lived by plundering the ships
of peaceable nations, and compelling all to pay
tribute. We took considerable pains to enlighten
our ignorant friend, and to explain by maps the
outlines and resources of the British Empire ; enu-
merating the various peoples acknowledging the
sway of Queen VICTORIA ; and adding that Eng-
land's mission was to proclaim peace and good will
towards all, to defend theright and protect the weak,
to promote civilisation over the globe, and to relieve
the oppressed. He remarked that all we said was
very good, but why go to war with Russia ; Eng-
land 'and France against one power ? I said that
we did not wish for war with Russia, but that
Turkey being a weak power and an old ally, it
was necessary to protect her. He had heard of
England's work in the cause of the African slavcs,
and said that our QUEEN'S heart must be good and
large. He next inquired of France. I told
him of her vast military resources, people,
progress, laws, and of her energetic ruler. He
could not reconeile to his mind the fact of the
different languages of France and England,
when separated by such a narrow piece of
water." Those contemptuous views which were
previously entertained in regard to England by the
Japanese may now probably be reverted to as the
more accurate, justified, as they may seem to be, by
the accounts they will in all likelihood have received
by this time from the mainland of the Asiatic con-
tinent as to the sanguinary discomfiture of the
British armament upon the Peiho from the cannon-
balls and arrows and rifle-bullets showered upon
them from behind the despised Chinese fortifica-
tions. It may seem to the Japanese that England
is in truth that "very small country in the western
sea" which she was believed to be in 1854, even
by officials at Yeddo and Nagasaki—and that the
English sailor's counterstatements as to " the out-
lines and resources of the British Empire" were, after
all, nothing better than mere bounce, whatever may
be the equivalent for that phrase in the Japanese ;
for we make no doubt at all but that they have an
equivalent for it both at Yeddo and at Nagasaki.
Doubts will, moreover, in all probability, creep into
the Japanese mind as to whether England really is,
after all, as " strong by sea " as the Japanese, even
in their contemptuous view of England-and-the-
English, had conceived. It will be known as a
matter of certainty that the gunboats were driven
back from the forts on the Peiho, that two of them
were sunk or otherwise destroyed, that the killed and
wounded on the part of "the English" numbered
not far short of five hundred ! That the supposed
strong Government of France had only one vessel
there in the c'mflict—and a force on board of her
so small that after all the hours of firing there were
only fourteen hors de combat. It will probably be
bushed up, or, if known, it will be d'scredited that
double the number of the killed and wounded
among the allies afloat upon the waters, but more
particularly aground upon the dreadful Thud-banks
of the Pehio—that, in fact, 1,000 of the Chinese
had been wounded or destroyed, even behind the
shelter of their formidable fortifications. Every
reflection, indeed, combines to assure us of the
imperative necessity there is both for France and
for England—but more particularly for the latter,
bearing in mind the vastly superior magnitude of
our mercantile transactions and the immense stake
we have at hazard there in the East in our vast
empire of Mindostan—the absolute and imperative
necessity there is for counteracting the ill effects
which must inevitably have been wrought in-our
regard throughout the Asiatic races, wrought, we
mean, in a single day by that one sanguinary dis-
comfiture by the Chinese of the armed force of the
allies in attendance on the English and French
Ambassadors. A demonstration, it is obvious,
there now must be on the part of England and on
the part of France—a demonstration in the Chinese
waters such as shall far more than restore the
prestige of French and English in the whole eastern
part of this eastern hemisphere. A retribution
must forthwith be wreaked by the outraged majesty
of the two greatest nations of the world upon that
recreant, and insensate, and brutal, and barbarous
ecnovatirp:llleitkee, of
the Chinese—a retribution so swift, so
complete, and
h o
n so
11
tba astounding,
di nogf a
, thatpol
political
cshall
volcano,g l arefionr
the memory of both Chinese and Japathe, that it
shall flame henceforth like a lurid beacon of warn-
ing down the long perspective of the Asiatic
remembrance.

MILDNESS OF THE SEASON.—Mr. W. Nicholson,
of Gill, in Netherwasdale, has an apple tree which bore an
excellent crop of fruit this season, and was "pulled" about
a fortnight ago. The same tree has again budded, and is
now in full bloom, and very much admired by all who have
seen Patriot.

THE CAUSE OF CENTRAL ITALY.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

Stit„—We have received from Lord Shaftesbury
the eaelosed letter, which we beg you will insert in
the eolumns of your esteemed journal. How the
notion that Mr. Avesani and his colleagues were
asking anything of Englishmen, first suggested
itself to the Times, we are at a loss to imagine.
We did no more than receive the offers made by
several Englishmen in favour of Central Italy. It
is even saying too much that we received these
offers ; we only asked Lord Shaftesbury to take
the initiative in forming a committee to accept
them. _ _ _

Certainly, if even this creates a schism—if there
is no unanimity—we will not persist any longer.

We are, Sir, yours, &c.,
G. F. AVESANI. B. FABBRICOTTI.
JOHN B. ROCCA. L. SERENA.
G. DEVINCENZI.

ST. GILES' HOUSE, SEPT. 23.

Gentlemen,—Allow me to thank you for having
so received my advice, and acted in conformity
with it.

I cannot, I am sorry to say, yet think that the
people of England are disposed to show their sym-
pathy in the way suggested. That they have a
deep and earnest sympathy I cannot doubt, but I
have not ascertained the mode of expression they
would prefer.
To attempt to elicit their co-operation in a way
they do not like, would expose the effort to imme-
diate, and perhaps irremediable failure. This I
should deeply deplore—not for your sakes, because
your cause is so manifestly the interest of the
human race, that, under God's blessing, it will
prosper at last, with or without the Emperor of
the French, with or without the people of England
—but I should deplore it for the honour of my own
country, which would; undeservedly, be subjected
to much reproach; and I cannot bear that, even
for a moment, she should be supposed to be indif
ferent.

Though the arguments urged against the move-
ment seem to be wanting in force, I see that the
time is not favourable. If these things are not
taken up at once and by acclamation, they cannot
succeed; they are more matters of feeling than of
logic.
I counsel you to wait awhile. Other events
may cause other views, and furnish you with a
larger choice of men to aid and direct you.
I am, Gentlemen, your sincere friend,
SHAFTESBURY.
Messrs. Avesani, Rocca, and others.

I 061.
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