The Sun.
London, England, 1859-01-21 00:00:00

had not the shadow of constitutional protection
against the tyranny to which they were exposed
on the slightest or most trivial suspicion. The
slightest spark would have enkindled a flame
which would not only have prodaced a serious
conflagration in Naples and Sicily, but also in
the States of the Church, in Lombardo-Venetia,
Tuscany, and other petty principalities which
ought forthwith to be mediatised. We need not
say what would be the consequences. The speeches
of the Ist and of the 10th of January supply the
response. VICTOR EMMANUEL is burning for the
opportunity, to obtain which he has sacrificed his
child, while NAPOLEON bides his time, watching
the suitable occasion, and ready to strike
sharply and suddenly whenever the scale of per-
sonal advantage, either at home or abroad, shall
incline the hundredth part of an inch in favour of
hostilities. Europe is at this moment placed on a
volcano, the lava being composed of earnest enthu-
siasm and selfish and unscrupulous cunning. The
accession of the Crown Prince may make a change.
There may be some hope from him,while FERDINAND
11. was utterly beyond even the most sanguine
anticipations of improvement. The last drop
of PANDORA'S box appeared to have been poured
forth in his case, and despair was the lot of his
unfortunate subjects.

A very brief period will suffice to show the
spirit in which the new King intends to govern
the beautiful territories to which he has just suc-
ceeded. A straw thrown up will indicate the
direction of the wind; and a slight demonstration
on the side of mercy will gratify the people, and
make the King a popular monarch, particu-
larly if he displays any indications of
a resolution to introduce a better regime. It is an
important moment for him—the hinge on which
his future happiness and that of his subjects rests.
Let him strive to win their affections—to bestow
on them good institutions—to satisfy every reason-
able demand, and he will be loved and respected.
Let him follow in the path pursued by his father,
and he will be hated and despised. The death of
King FERDINAND is one of the points that affords
additional security for the peace of Europe, and
which will probably prevent any interruption of
its tranquillity, should his successor be influenced
by wise and prudent counsels.

The Hudson's Bay Company have found an un-
discriminating champion and eulogist in one of the
contributors to the current number of the _Edin-
burgh. Several years back, when criticising the
writings of the late reverend author of " Woman,"
" Satan," and the " Omnipresence," Lord (then Mr.)
MACAULAY designated the last-mentioned effusion
as a specimen of what might be aptly termed " the
Turkey carpet style of poetry." Speaking of the
political plea here advanced in behalf of the fur
traders of North America, we might define it no
less aptly, we conceive, as a sample of the true
Kidderminster style of argument. The key in
which the whole strain of this argument is pitched
is unquestionably—low. It is penned by an adept
in that peculiar line of advocacy expressed by the
familiar axiom inculcating the advice that, if a
counsel be in any doubt as to the precise course to
be pursued, he should at once resolutely begin by
abusing the opposing attorney. Altogether, the
construction of this particular " article" in the Whig
quarterly hears a very striking similitude to that often
expressing "the very age and body of the Times"
—and characterising the " form and pressure" of
certain of the political lucubrations in the chief
among our morning contemporaries. For example
—as a direct indication in point—the Edinburgh
Reviewer sets out, as his alter nos elsewhere, with
an affectation of dealing only in the most unim-
passioned generalities. The very article which,
before its close, rises from the first sad monotone
of despondency to a wild shriek of despair as to
the probable fate of the Hudson's Bay Company,
begins—how upon earth does the reader suppose it
begins ? It begins as PLUTARCH'S biographies end
—with a contrast and a comparison—a parallel and
an antithesis. But such a contrast, such a com-
parison! The Reviewer sets forth in his argument
with a recognition of what he is pleased to regard
as the extraordinary resemblance discernible be-
tween North Asia and North America! A resem-
blance in reality about as wonderful in its way as
there might be found between any two men as
dissimilar as possible, save in their being equally
free from anything like actual deformity. The
likeness consisting entirely in the astounding cir-
cumstance of their both possessing the usual number
of limbs and features—seeing with their eyes,
hearing with their ears, walking upon their feet,
and so forth. Having exhausted a really senile
wonder upon the astonishing facts—that North
Asia and North America alike consist of land, alike
are washed on either side by the waters of the
ocean, alike possess mountains and rivers, together
with other geographical peculiarities no less calcu-
lated to excite our surprise and admiration—as, for
instance, that truly amazing circumstance, that, as
each extends northwards beyond the boundary line
of the arctic circle, so each, in the most incompre-
hensible -way imaginable, enters the regions of
eternal ice, where the cold stands at ever so many
degrees below zero of Fahrenheit—the latent advo-
cate wriggles at last, snakewise, from under all
these blooming flowers of rhetoric; is discovered at
length, with uplifted crest, in his true character—
hissing, deadly, poisonous ! A single sweep, how-
ever, of the trenchant brand of Truth and that
formidable " head—and front of its offending,"
might be lopped off as readily as the bloom of a
thistle at the switch of a rattan.

The whole of this elaborated argument of the
Edinburgh Reviewer, indeed, carries with it its
own refutation. The writer acknowledges, at the
very outset, that the Hudson's Bay Territory—his
theme—is, to say the very least of it, jeopardised.
According to his own showing, there is no rational
hope left of the retention of power by its present
rulers. " Canada," he observes (p. 123), "is pressing
towards them on the south-east frontier—the United
States are approaching them on the south from
Minnesota ; while the recent gold discoveries on
the Fraser and Thompson rivers have emptied half
California into a region unknown and untrodden,
till within the last year or two, by any except a
few tribes of Indians and the servants of the Hud-
son's Bay Company." Yet it is this moribund
company, now confessedly in the midst of its death
agonies, that the Reviewer would see rehabilitated
as the heart and soul, and head (a very caput
mortuum) of our North American governments. And
by a singular distortion of the straight and obvious
rule of justice—deflected by the current of the
writer's prejudice, as a rod when steeped in water
—the very statesman who has had the courage and
the genius, in the midst of all these anomalies, and
at this supreme moment of emergency, to under-
take the solution of the complicated problem of our
North American difficulties, is, for so doing, ren-
dered the object of the bitterest reprehension, and
of the most malevolent misrepresentation. There
is, happily, in all this one obviously satisfactory
consideration ; namely, that most agreeable and
encouraging reflection, that while the Whig apolo-
gist and champion of the Hudson's Bay Company
is spitefully, but, ;at the same time, most innocu-
ously vilifying the man in whom we rejoice to be