The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-02 00:00:00

tic people, Soldier and Champion of Germany, his
breastplate shining in the sun, his right hand
bearing aloft the tricoloured banner of Germany's
glorious Fatherland !

The EMPEROR'S policy—he tells the world—is
Peace. It was the formal intimation made yester-

day upon the Jour de l' An—an intimation addressed
by his MAJESTY to the assembled Ambassadors, It
is the wish of France says NAPOLEON 111. And

while so speaking—with a very admirable con-
sistency the Imperial ruler of France, with these
words of Peace upon his lips, has the whele land

under his sway bristling with bayonets, has every

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dockyard and arsenal in his empire ringing still

with the note of preparation.

Nothing should hide from us the fact—not even
:he benignant words uttered yesterday by the

supreme master of 36,000,000 Frenchmen, the
sovereign commander of an army of 600,000 war-
riors in the highest state of discipline, and of a
maritime force second only to that of Great Britain
—nothing, not even, we repeat, those blandly
encouraging assurances from our Imperial Ally
across the Channel, should close our eyes to the
recognition of the wholly indisputable truth that
1861 opens ominously with all kinds of sinister

portents of War in Europe. It is not that these

evil auguries are drawn, according to the popular 1
phrase from a little cloud no bigger than a man's
hand, emerging dimly from one particular point
of the horizon. The whole political atmosphere is
charged with electricity, and sombrely darkening to
the view as we look abroad at the commencement of
this present January, north, south, east,
and west, over Christendom. Whatever the French

Emperor may say now in words of such honeyed
suavity—his acts throughout have spoken, they still
speak a language, in regard to the future, altogether
differently. " Wiser in his generation' than those
amiable sentences addressed by him yesterday to
the European Envoys would, if alone taken into
account, seem to indicate—his Imperial Majesty
regulates his military, his maritime, and his diplo-
matic departments upon the probability, or, at any
rate, upon the possibility, of a general war in
Christendom. Hence it is that—with this dire
contingency kept continually within her ♦iew—
France, under the auspices of the Moderator of
Revolution and the Regulator of Europe, retains
yet an army firmly planted still, after a twelve
years' occupation, in Central Italy, planted there at
Rome, in greater force than ever, upon the covetted
7TOV OTCO of the looked-for Italian kingdom, whether
it be GARIBALDI, or MAZZINI, or CAVOUR, or
VICTOR EMMANUEL that the Italians themselves
may select for their Archimedes ! Hence is it, also,
that France, under the like guidance of NAPO-
LEON'S duplex Policy—a Policy of Peace in Words
and of War in Action—has contrived to plant
another army firmly upon the borders of Asia
Minor, upon the pretext of avenging upon the
Druses of the Lebanon the murder of the Maro-
nites—but manifestly, in truth, to be there at hand
whenever the occasion shall at length arise for
interference upon another emergency, for prompt
and vigorous interposition upon another and
a far grander catastrophe. The occupation
of Syria by French soldiers, the occupation of
Rome by French soldiers—behold two facts there
indicated, two simple facts that speak far more
trumpet-tongued in regard to the immediate Future,
in regard to the prospects of 1861, than any words
addressed yesterday to the Envoys of Europe by
the Imperial Master of those notable armaments.
It is in respect to the Italian question—it is
in reference to the imminent disruption of the
Turkish Power in Europe—that 1861 appears to he
so ominous of War among the nations of Christen-
dom. The sick man at Constantinople threaten-
ing now to prove, very speedily, sick even
unto death. Physicians have long been in
vain in his instance—those political physicians
whose diplomas have been gained in Diplomacy !
Even the San Grados who have kept him so
long in hot -water, and have let blood so freely,
in obedience to the dictates of their implicit
faith in the exceeding efficacy of their skill
as phlebotomists, even they are one and all
based in their desperate endeavours to ward off
the fast-coming dissolution. Before much longer
the last hour of the sick man must, in the order of
nature, have struck : and after the death will come
the division of the property. With a view to all
which probabilities NAPOLEON 111. has adroitly
contrived for his soldiers this convenient Maronite
plea, for a' Syrian occupation. His Imperial MAJESTY
with equal forethought having persisted in the
occupation of the Eternal City itself until this
present moment—keeping there that standing
ground in the midst of the Peninsular arena that
may again become the battle field between the
Austrian armies and the Italian population. Recol-
lecting merely those two isolated incidents, the
Roman occupation and the Syrian occupation by
the armies of NAPOLEON 111. we are disposed to
attach but a very moderate significance to the
pacific assurance addressed yesterdayby the lips of his
Imperial MAJESTY to the assembled ambassadors of
Christendom. More particulrrly are we led so to
do, when through the words of Peace spoken by
the French EMPEROR, come resounding to us the
sullen tread of his armies still moving to and fro
upon the soil of France, to the end that they may
yet sustain and even increase their already high
state of efficiency—and when, through that sullen
tread of the warlike legions of this most Pacific
Sovereign, there still comes also echoed to us
from the shores of his empire, that yet more
ominous sound already referred to, the ringing,
from all the dockyards and arsenals of France, of
the busy note of preparation !

The Head of the Roman Catholic Church is in
deep affliction. The good man, for the man all
who have had any opportunity of knowing him
pronounce to be good, is suffering the greatest
trials goodness can endure. As a private Christian
he might grieve to see another, of a very different
stamp to himself, so hustled by the temporal
powers in respect of the temporalities of the pope-
dom, which, by the most unaccountable logic or
blindness to facts, he believes to be a gift of Heaven
to the Bishop of Rome. But to be, himself, the
Bishop, and to feel his kingdom of this morld
dropping away by inches—rather, as he would say,
torn away by unclean dogs, polluted with Pro-
testant notions on this particular subject—must be
anguish indeed. %V have every reason to think
Pio Nexo less ambitious than most of his prede-
cessors, but for that very reason what with them
was matter of pure ambition, with him is matter of
religious faith and love. All the stories of the
odiousness and badness of clerical government he
either totally disbelieves, or believes them to be
the corrupt notions of corrupted sheep, whom even
the proximity of the Chief Shepherd has not
tuaandgiihteatThe enlbyl eNsTsin
Viceroyalty.
0 of
ya livingty. u
What nde r h
Protestants te ifallible
smile at, as they write or read it, is with him
matter of as unquestioning a faith as that of the
first disciples in an entirely unearthly kingdom.
But with the good old monk, elevated to the
Arch-Pastorate of Roman Catholicism, all of us
terminate our respect for the Government of
‘Rome, His Prime Minister and his other servants