The Sun.
London, England, 1861-07-03 00:00:00

THE SUN.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 1881.

The age in which Diplomacy has formally em-
blazoned upon its banner the mystic word—

"NON-INTERVENTION"
is hardly the age in which to look confidently, or
even hopefully, for help being accorded to Poland
by the British Government. Yet—if not Help
(such is the argument, or rather the supplicative
expostulation last evening of Mr. P.OPE HEN-
NESSY, and after him of Mr. MON CETON MILNES)
—if not Help, at least Sympathy ! To this appeal
the noble lord the Foreign Secretary, and after
him the noble viscount the First Lord of the Trea-
sury, at once responded. Sympathy? cries Lord
JOHN RUSSELL : Sympathy ? cries Lord PALMER-
STON—Yes; without doubt, by all means, cordially,
earnestly, we accord to Poland and the
Poles our Sympathy, the Sympathy, the heart-
felt Sympathy of Her Britannic MAJESTY'S
Government ! But—to look for anything beyond
that—to dream of anything more than verbal
sympathy being vouchsafed—were nothing less
than idle, absurd, preposterous. For, in one word,
What, we should like to ask—we, the chief ad-
visers of the Crown—we, the Prime Minister and
the Foreign Secretary—What, we should uncom-
monly like to ask in just one word, is the diplo-
matic characteristic of the age in which we live,
if it be not the significant and, in fact, distinguish-
ing characteristic of—Non-Intervention? Behind
that symbol of our policy we hide ourselves.
Beyond mere fine-sounding expressions of
sympathy we cannot go. We will consent
to the production of certain papers, if you
particularly wish to turn them over, but we tell
you frankly that they are in themselves little better
than mere waste-paper, and that the perusal of
them will lead infallibly to little else than so much
wilful waste of time. Still as you apparently do
wish tohave these papers, to turn over the leaves of
this corespondence, they are at your service, we con-
aent to their production.
So that Mr. HENNESSY'S motion, after being dis-
cussed pro and con very entertainingly by himself
atd by his accomplished seconder the hon. member
for Pontefract and by the two noble lords repre-
senting the whole weight of her MA-
.JESTY'S Government—is agreed to. The young
Irish malcontent can hug himself with a satisfac-
tory consciousness of having just for once succeeded.
And Mr POPE HENNESSY can exult all the more,
because, while gaining his object in extorting the
papers he asked for, from the reluctant grasp of the
Administration—he has, at a momentous epoch in
the history of Polish suffering, ventilated afresh
the whole subject of Polish wrongs in the British
House of Commons ; eliciting anew the opinions
cherished at heart in regard to Poland and in
regard to the Poles by Lord JOHN RUSSELL, and
by that noble lord's distinguished Chief, Viscount
PALMERSTON.

It is an old regret that expressed
last evening by her MAJESTY'S Foreign Se-
cretary, when he remarked--" One might have
thought that the first NAPOLEON, who disturbed so
many countries, who gave away so many provinces
and crowns, might have thought it an object of
ambition worthy of his great powers and extended
fame to restore the national existence of Poland."
And we may rest perfectly well satisfied that it is
not our regret alone that the Great NAPOLEON did
not crown all his other wonderful achievements by
the re-establishment of Polish independence ! It
must have been his own regret too, especially,
-.and most bitterly, in his island-prison of St.
Helena. That achievement—it is notorious as
an historical fact —he designed and medi-
tated. When settleg forth on his as-
tounding expedition into Russia the most
gigantic ea:ploit ever adventured upon by an im-
perial conqueror, a leader of more men than
XERXES, a Lord Paramount over more kings than
SESOSTRIS—when setting forth upon his Russian
Expedition, NAPOLEON the Great is known to
have formally resolved upon re-establishing the
Kingdom And the Nationality of Poland. Only—
instead of making that (as it ought to have
been) a preliminary to his campaign in Russia,
he set it aside (unhappily) as a sequel, as a
r accomplish.
supplerne:;tary exploit for afte