The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-07 00:00:00

STATE OF RUSSIA.

Private letters from St. Petersburg represent
the two parties which. divide the Court and the
Empire as more animated in their antagonism since
the death of the Empress-Mother, whose strong
and salutary authority over all her sons was exer-
cised to prevent them from extreme or violent
modes of expressing their opinion. " They are
but children," she would say, according to Hum-
boldt, " and I must live to keep them in order."
The death of the aged and revered Empress has
brought great alleviation to the treasury; her ex-
penseq, very considerable at all times, used to
amount to fabulous sums when she journeyed to
Nice or Switzerland. But no cost could now re-
place the Empress-Mother as the peacemaker of
the Imperial family.

Parties in Russia are at bottom very much what
they used to be; those of the old noblesse, and
those of new ideas. It does not in all respects
follow that one is retrograde, the other liberal, in
an enlightened sense of the word, though in the
great domestic question of the time—the emanci-
pation of the serfs—the Emperor is bent and de-
termined upon an important act of progress, which
the noblesse would disturb or interrupt were it in
their power. This, however, is not the difference
of opinion which most interests us. What is much
more important is, that now, as it has always hap-
pened at critical epochs of the history of Russia,
some of its rulers and statesmen are inclined to
put faith in, and form alliance with France and
its ruler, whilst others look upon Louis Napoleon
and his schemes with suspicion, and would more
willingly have recourse to the friendship of Eng-
land, as the only truly conservative power of
Europe.

In this country we shrewdly suspect that France
and Russia are in close understanding, and think
that this bodes no good either in East or West. In
Russia, however, there is not only a powerful party
which regards the entire policy of Napoleon as
hostile, but even those at St. Petersburg who are
peculiarly French in their leanings, are not a little
jealous and suspicious of the assiduity with which the
French Emperor courts England, presenting it with
a boon or a compliment almost every successive
month. The Russians are not sufficiently expe-
rienced in the ways of highly developed and free
countries to perceive that there may be such a thing
as paying court to a people at the expense of its
Government ; and that, despairing of giving satis-
faction or inspiring confidence to the breasts of
English statesmen, a foreign Emperor may conceive
the plan of making friends of the commercial, the.
industrial, and middle classes. If the Emperor
entertained any important schemes of territorial
ambition, all he would require of England is suffer-
ance and neutrality. And this he might think to
obtain by nourishing feelings in the people averse
to war with him for trifling or distant causes.
Whilst ithe Gallo-Russ regard the French ad-
vances to the English as the results of irresolu-
tion and over diplomacy, the Anti-Gallican Rus-
sians regard them as the natural and necessary
policy of the Bonapartes, who must tranquillise
England whilst proceeding to revolutionise the East
of Europe ; for such they consider French aims to
be, and they suspect France of the immediate design
of attacking Austria through theltalians, and at the
same time of abetting the insurrection of Hungary.
Freedom and nationality having been once secured
to the Hungarians, similar process must be carried
on in Poland. When Austria has been annihilated
by the severance of Hungary, Russia and Prussia
paralysed by the successful or even semi-successful
insurrection of Poland, France will have no Power
to oppose its designs upon the Low Countries save
England ; and England isolated is powerless.
We give these as the views entertained of Napo-
leon the Third's intentions by certain parties and
personages in the East of Europe. We are far from
affirming or endorsing them. We dare say that if
any of us could pry into the secrets of the Imperial
breast, it would be found to entertain no certain or
settled project whatever—its designs for the future
being in a cloudy, dreamlike state, to be developed
and shaped by circumstances rather than according
to any determined or prescient policy. But no one
entertains this belief. All endue him .with dark
and deep designs and well weighed foresight. His
wayward policy has made him the bugbear of
Europe; and each Court shapes that bugbear as it
pleases, and attributes to it those designs which
are most inimical and treacherous to itself.

The general opinion expressed by the press of
Europe with respect to the Warsaw Conference
was that it was a complete failure. The Emperor
of Russia there declared that he did not believe
what his brother Sovereigns affirmed to be their
conviction—that France would aid or contribute
to either the Italian invasion of Venetia or the
insurrection of Hungary. If French statesmen
could be convicted of any such connivance, the
Emperor Alexander is said to have declared his
readiness to abandon his neutrality and his passive
alliance with France. The efforts of France have
certainly been directed towards the refutation and
removal of such a suspicion ; and the restoration of
Count Walewski to office was perhaps not alien to
this purpose.—haily News.