The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-29 00:00:00

an infected atmosphere. A CASTLEREAGH or a
CLARENDON is alike bewitched for the hour. We
fear a RUSSELL would be so,"too—Vicnna !

To keep Lord JOHN RUSSELL right on Liberal-
ism we must keep him in Opposition, and to keep
him right on Foreign affairs we must keep him at
home. Take him out of a bracing atmosphere and
he is not the same man. Here, surrounded by the
opinions of his countrymen, he can speak brave
words, and feel what he says, too. But
he cannot, we fear, practise the English dogged-
ness of adherence to his notions, which he
can show enough of at hoine when he is in daily
Conference with the smooth-tongued continental
diplomatists. They would wind round him, or
shake him. His never very powerful faculties
would begin to work in a maze ; he would be be-
wildered. He might be sorry when he got back,
and had breathed afresh in the free air of his own
country, but the mischief would have been done—
irretrievably done.
If, however, our Foreign Minister is not to
go, who is. Our Prime Minister could hardly
go himself. Yet, if we could have him clear
of court influence, we should after all trust him
much more as a plenipotentiary. He is not so easily
got over. If he did wrong it would be with full
consciousness of what he did. He would walk into
congressional roguery with his eyes open—he may
like to please as well as others ; but, he would
think himself, not only the man of most experience
but as good a man at seventy-five as the youngest
of them ; and ha would like to show it too. Out-
witting is his delight ; and we should like to see
him, if any man must, try his unfettered
powers of outwitting on the diplomatic sharpers
that will do their best at political thimble-rigging.
Suppose however we keep away—it will be be-
cause of the demands which England is pledged to
make. It will be because England will admit no
arguing the case of the independent rights of the
States of Central Italy. This is now, prominently,
her question. It has always been her fixed opinion
ever since the nefarious partitions of the Holy Al-
liance and their consequences, opened her eyes. It
is not a doctrine manufactured for the occasion. We
have acted upon it, in South America first, and in
Belgium, in Greece, and more than once, France,
in the changes through which she has passed ; in the
last change above all. We make our demand with
perfectly clean hands. We simply ask that the
inhabitants of Tuscany, of Parma, of Modena, of
Bologna, shall do what they will with their own.

We are told in a letter to-day from Milan, that
Austria is now quite sincere in her acceptanoe of
peace ; that she begins to find herself relieved from
incumbrances which weakened rather than
strengthened her. It is even asserted that the oft-
repeated suggestion of the sale of Venetia and all
its embarrassments is not likely to be unacceptable
to her. If so, the work of England will be easy.
The game of Lot Tis NAPOLEON in Central Italy is
evidently up. He cannot intervene. And if, after all,
Austria should become compliant when anything
but compliance is useless, all may go off smoothly
enough. We only wish for our Whig Ministers
the honour, for the sake of Italy, of carrying out
either with a Congress, or without it, the policy to
which they have bound the honour of the country.
Let them assert successfully the rights of Central
Italy to act as it pleases, and it matters little whe-
ther we join the Congress or not.

It is a very edifying spectacle, no doubt, that
presented to view by the rapid growth of the United
States' territory. Particular attention has been
drawn recently to this swift expansion by a variety
of peculiarly illustrative circumstances. Incidents
have come to light—explanatory of the secret of
this expansion—upon several distinct points re-
motely situated from each other along the frontier
line of the American Republic ; incidents thus
springing to view almost simultaneously. Every-
where the same system has become apparent.
Everywhere we have been reminded of the singular
truth and aptness of that whimsical notion
once expressed by poor LEIGH HUNT,
when he remarked somewhere, in one
of those delightful essays of his (if we recollect cor-
rectly) reprinted in the two volumes of his Men,
Women, and Books—to wit, that the United States
always gave him the notion of a long counter con-
fronting us upon the opposite shores of the Atlantic,
with Brother JONATHAN bowing to us from the
other side of it ! Only the witty Essayist should
have pictured also, thrust into the girdle of that
queer tobacco-chewing, expectorating shopman,
tucked under his apron, bulging it up on either
side—here, the keen bowieknifc—there, the
smooth-clicking revolver ! The characteristic na-
tional temperament yonder is that of the huckster
grafted on the buccaneer—the callous resolution of
the cutpurse blending with the sordid calculations
of the mere mercenary speculator. A variety of
extraneous circumstances have tended, of course,
ail the while, to aid in multiplying, beyond all pre-
cedent in the world's history, the marvellously de-
veloped aggregate of the United States' popu-
lation. Insomuch, that the increase during
the first half of this nineteenth century,
namely, from MOO to 1850, shows an increase
within that half century of just 17,885,000! The
census of 1800 giving to the United States no more
than 5,306,000 inhabitants ! The census of 1850,
according to them no less than 23,191,000! Immi-
gration from foreign countries may be recognised
at once, of course, as the chief source of this mar-
vellous rapidity in the increase of the population.
But the simultaneous growth of the territories ?
Ho w may that be accounted for—without the pos-
session of conquering armies, without the hope of the
mere possibility of being able to raise forces,
armed, skilled and disciplined for the purposes of
spoliation, and of territorial aggrandisement ?
Without armies, without the hope of armies, with-
out, we may say, the possibility of armies—the
dominions of the great North American Republic
have so spread meanwhile that they now comprise,
as we know, no fewer than thirty-six sovereign
States, besides three embryo States—territories
which will be converted into States so soon as each
shall comprise within it 60,000 souls as the minimum
of its population! The enormous area of these
dominions being such, that it embraces an extent
of territory numbering in. square miles no fewer
than 3,260,000 ! Without conquering armies—how
has the United States' Government contrived to
win such wondrous accessions of territory? By
means simply of dealing with shrewdness acroes
that gigantic counter, with a judicious employment
ever and anon of the twin weapons under the apron,
the bowie knife and revolver aforesaid ! The huck-
stering process we saw last tried in vain by the North
American Republic in the instance of the island of
Cuba. The United States wanting to absorb Cubs,
offered to buy it from the Spaniards for so much
hard gold paid down upon the nail in dollars!
The filibustering process—meaning the system of
territorial absorption effected by an adroit use of
the knife and pistol before mentioned—we have
ourselves more recently witnessed in the process of
its accomplishment upon a smaller scale, but far
more successfully, in the seizure and occupation of
the little island of San Juan, midway between
British Columbia and Vancouver ! These, how-
ever, are, comparatively speaking, but little insu-