The Sun.
London, England, 1857-01-21 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1867

It would be amusing, were not the stakes at
issue so enormous, involving as they do, in all
human probability, so much blood and so much
treasure—to note the diametrically opposite views
taken of the Persian War by the organ of Lord
PALMERSTON and the organ of her MAJESTY'S
Opposition. According to the Post of this morn-
ing the approaching Session of Parliament is very

likely indeed to be inaugurated by the announce-

ment from the Treasury Bench not merely that
all our differences are at an end with the Russian
AUTOCRAT, and that the Neuchatel Difficulty has
been solved by mutual concessions on the part of
Prussia and of Switzerland, and that Peace gene-
rally reigns throughout the whole of Christendom
—but that (wonderful to relate !) our collision
with Persia has been happily warded off upon the
very " stroke of twelve" by certain fortuitous
circumstances, to be recounted probably by the
next mail from India, but of the precise
nature of which circumstances we are not in-

formed by our very sanguine contemporary.
According to the Herald of this morning, on the
contrary, matters could hardly look more black,
more ominous, or more threatening, than they do
at this moment, in convection with the expedi-

tionary army which has recently adyanced in the
direction of Herat, under the command of Bri

gadier CHAMBERLAYNE, through the rocky fast-
nesses of Affghanistan. Yet after all—in spite of
the glaring contrast presented by these two diame-
trically opposite opinions—there are actually re-
vealed through these very opinions the same iden-
tical facts, lit up, as we may express it, under
the same identical angle of the political prism.
ONLY—to the Post these same facts appear rose-
coloured, and to the Herald they appear blood-
coloured.

As to the halcyon anticipation, however, ex-
pressed to-day by Lord PALMERSTON'S organ, to
the effect that the next mail from Calcutta may
be seriously expected to bring with it tidings
of the sudden and all but miraculous close
of the Persian War—a struggle at this moment,
positively, hardly commenced—we cannot but
regard that as nothing else than the indulgence
of the most visionary and preposterous hallucina-
tion !

As to the sombre and almost despairing view
taken by the organ of her MAJESTY'S Opposition
of the ery same events and of the very same situa-
tion--we cannot, on the other hand, but regard
that view as scarcely one jot less extravagant.
The Oriental contest, upon which we have but
just now adventured by way of Cabul, is one
entangled in so many diplomatic complications, and
it is one, at the same time, which has originated in
events so infuriating to the belligerents, that it
would be the very extreme of folly to anticipate
any abrupt and bloodless close to our warlike
operations in the very first hour, as it were, of
their commencement.

England has embarked in this war only after

the most flagrant, the most prolonged, and the
most reiterated provocations. It was only as
recently as the Ist of November, 1856, that the
gage of battle was flung down in her name at
Calcutta. It was only on the 13th of the
same month that the British leet steamed
out of the Harbour of Bombay for service
in the Persian Gulf and along the southern
coasts of the empire of the SEAM, from their
eastern extremity at Soork to their Western, near
the mouths of the Tigris at Shatt-al-Arab. And
even then, be it remembered, that the sword was
drawn against Persia, simply because Persia bad
openly and flagrantly violated the solemn engage-
, ments she entered into with England at the
memorable Convention of January, 1853. Ab-
solutely and notoriously violating that Conven-
tion by marching an army against Herat, by
deliberately investing that city, and by ulti-
mately starving its Affghan garrison into a sur-
render on the 21st of last October. Then, and
then only, did England—conceiving the cup of her
Persian grievances to be at length filled to over-
flowing—proclaim her resolution to extort by force
of arms the reparation denied, for so many
wanton wrongs and insults, to the peaceful de-
mands of diplomacy. The incidents which had
gradually lead the Court of Teheran to the perpe-
tration
of this last and most unjustifiable outrage
the seizure of Herat are of too recent
occurrence to have altogether escaped the popular
recollection. Nevertheless, it may not be wholly
unadvisable to recall to mind the chief among these
curious and startling occurrences. It will be re-
membered by many, we doubt not, that about the
turn of the years 1855-1856 Herat was disturbed
by an insurrection. STUD MAIOMED was assassi-
nated. Yczoor Kira:kr, a scion of the ell dynasty,
being nephew of SEMI KAMRAN, was thereupon
appointed his successor. It was a very Asiatic
way of turning the tables—a Suddozye Prince
being substituted, not by a stroke of the pen,
but by a stroke of the dagger, for an Alekozye Sir-
dar ! Nothing in all this, calling, in any respect,
for foreign interference ! A merely ordinary
episode in the annals of Affghanistan—this
acceptance by the Heratees, immediately upon the
murder of &MD MAHOMED, of a new ruler in the
person of one of SHAH MAHMOUD'S lineal descen-
dants. An occurrence, however, which took
place almost simultaneously a little further away
from Teheran than the city of Herat, presented to
the Shah of MIRKA what proved at first a very
alluring opportunity, and at last a wholly irre-
sistible temptation I Don MAHOMED advanced
upon Candahar and took possession of it—lured
so to do by the opportune demise of KOHVN-DIL.
KHAN. Everybody, or at any rate a good many
people, expected then that the old Ammit would
be guided onwards to Herat by the lame of the
insurrectionary outbreak which had led to the
substitution of a Suddozye Prince for the Ale-
kozye Sirdar, who had just then "died the death,"
almost, it appeared, as opportunely as KOZI7N-
DM-IC-lAN. Contrary to expectation, however,
DOST MANOMRD stayed his course at Candahar.
The Snail being thereby deprived of the only
excuse, the one solitary pretext, that could
alone have been adduced by him to jus-
tify, even in " appearance, " the ad-
vance of a Persian Army against the Heratees.
Deprived of that excuse, deprived of that pretext,
the Persian Army advanced upon Herat neverthe-
less ! The Convention of January, 1853, to the
contrary, notwithstanding ! We all know the
results of that mendacious movement. The trea-
son of Yuzoor's Naib, or Lieutenant, ERSA. K.RAN
—sending the Prince, to whom he had sworn
allegiance, a prisoner into the Persian Camp,
accompanied by the intimation that he was a crea-
ture for whom Herat had no further use what-
ever Persia's offer to confirm EESA KHAN in
his rule over the Heratees upon the single
condition of his acknowledging the suzerainte
of the SHAl—an offer rejected by the He-
ratees themselves I The ultimate fall of
Herat into the hands of the Persians on
the 25th of October ! And, the consequent
declaration of war against the SHAH by Eng-
land on the Ist of November—followed up on
the 15th by the departure from Bombay of the
British Maritime Expedition I Such, briefly, is
the case as it stands—between Persia and Eng-
land. Such are some among the principal events
which have led to the present war—events which
will have in the course of the approaching session
to be duly sifted and scrutinised in both
Houses of the Imperial Parliament.

As to the simultaneous conduct of the cam-
paigns by sea and by land, as to the maritime
campaign in the Persian Gulf and the mili-
tary campaign in Affghanistan : It remains
to be seen, in the first place, whether
Bussorah can by any possibility be chosen by Eng-
land as the maritime basis of her operations
against Persia—Bussorah being, in point of fact, a
Turkish town within the Pachalic of Bagdad, and
friendly relations still subsisting all the while
between the SIIA.H and the SULTAN-CA.Lum ! And
secondly, it remains to be seen how far it is ad-
visable for England to select Candahar as the
basis of her military operations—that latest prize
of DeST MAHOMED, which, besides being an ad-
, vanced post in Affghanistan, is situated(as any map
will show) at the apex of the triangle command.
ing the two great routes to Hindostan by way of
Cabul and Shikapoor, by way, on the one hand,
of Kutch Gundava, and on the other of
Peshawur I

Last Monday and the preceding Monday a vast
concourse of men out of employ assembled on the
site of old Smithfield Market to discuss their
situation, or rathsr what they were to do in it.
They appear to have been chiefly persons con-
nected with building in all its departments ;
and it was stated at the former meeting
that not fewer than 25,000 hands were out
of employ in that branch of labour alone.
This is about an eightieth of the entire popula-

the families
oftimtlh of London,
todo nbe and,even
included, supposingwou l s still ll be a very
large proportion to belong to ore trade. If
adults, or persons capable of labour be meant, the
number seems to be out of all proportion. We
have, however, no means of testing the ac-
curacy of the statement. Probably most persons
out of employ have aggregated themselves to the
masons, &c., and unintentionally the majority
have been described as the whole.
The main fact cannot be doubted, notwith-
standing the tendency of any body of men, espe-
cially men in difficulties, to swell their numbers,
and to make their case more striking. Thousands
of builders, of all classes, are doubtless unemployed.
This, however, cannot be matter of surprise at this
season of the year; building cannot be carried on in
all weathers any more than ploughing
and sowing,
and it seems hardly reasonable for men whose work
must be chiefly performed in the longer and drier
and frostless days to complain that they now have
little or nothing to do. We are, however, in-
clined to think that speculation in building is at
a lower ebb this winter than most winters, nor is
this much to be wondered at when the state of
the Money Market, and the practice of so many
builders to erect new houses by obtaining ad-
vances on those last erected is taken into eonsi.