The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-17 00:00:00

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.

Tina DAY.—Morning, sh. 42m.—Afternoon, sh. 59m
To-MORROW.-Morning, 6h. 16m.—Afternoon, 6h. 34m

THE WEATHER.—SUN OFPICE, JAN. 17, 1861
THERMOMETER, IN THII SHADE.
35—highest since noon yesterday.
26—lowest this morning and during the night.
36—this day at noon.

BAROMETER-30.28.
WIND—North-Easterly—rather fresh; with a gentle
thaw—preceded by a fall of snow—but still cold.

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4YV e 11,",,
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THE SUN.
LONDON, THURSDAY, JAN. 17, 1881.

At length the Moniteur speaks out in explana-
tion of the mystery at Gaeta. A Monarch who had
proclaimed to the world, to England especially,
that he fully accepted the principle of non-inter-
♦ention in Italy, has been, unless all Europe be
wrong, intervening most effectually in behalf of the
rejected against the elected King of ITALY—and
what after all is the explanation ? "To give a
mark of sympathy to a Prince cruelly tried by des-
tiny." Why for that purpose, a single French
vessel sent avowedly to be• at his command to con-
vey him whither he wished would have been sym-
pathy enough in all conscience.

"The EMPEROR never intended to take any part
in the conflict"—shall we call this audacity or men*
dacity P—Both. It is an audacious lie. Driving
away the man and the ships which had made LA-
MORICERE haul down his flag at Ancona, and forcing
CIALDINI to spend half the winter constructing
siege works to little purpose in rocky ground, was
taking no part in the conflict! It is taking no part
in a street fight between two men for a stronger
bystander to seize and hold the right hand of one
of them ! But "prolonging this demonstration"
would be intervention; of course it would—pro-
longation of existing intervention.
The secret of all this is what we pointed out the
other day. The Italian elections are at hand, and
patient as the poor Italians have been under the
caprices of their professed Liberator, they would
have been roused by his perfidy at Gaeta to return
more anti-French representatives than the EMPEROR
would like. But more than that, the Parliament in
which the affairs of Italy will be freely debated must
soon meet. Questions must soon be put to our
Ministers on the subject of France and Gaeta, an-
swers must be given, and speeches would certainly
be made, by the KINGSLAKES, HORSMANS, ROE-
BUCKS, PEELS, and others, which the Intervener at
Gaeta would little relish.

We may then venture to hope that this monstrous
piece of vanity—cruel vanity too—is at an end;
and that we may thank the sth of February for it.
We shall be too glad to see this impudent
imperial freak over to say much about the
wretched excuses for it. Let us hope that
the rejected Monarch, left to his late subjects and
the Monarch they have chosen, will soon find his
late-born courage evaporate, and that the batteries
of the Piedmontese will not have to be used after
the 19th. It would be but wanton cruelty if any
more lives were sacrificed to the pride of the Young
Bourbon.

A little more than a fortnight—and Parliament
will have assembled. The Ministry and the Oppo-
sition will then confront each other for another
session—the tactics of each depending, we may

rest perfectly well assured of this, upon a variety
of as yet but dimly foreshadowed contingencies.

The discussions, both in the Lords and rhe Com-
mons, during many years past have been soimtirely
guided by the interests of party that it is most
earnestly to be hoped and prayed for, in the new
struggle preparing for us within the walls. of the
Legislature, that the interests of the country may,
by way of novelty, he taken this year now and
then, however incidentally, into consideration:

To this end, more, if possible, will be dependent
upon the magnanimity of the Opposition than upon
the energetic civism and patriotic ardour of the
Government. It is essential, however, that the
Cabinet should afford the requisite opportunity for
the display of this magnanimity to the leaders of
her MAJESTY'S Opposition. As how ? is it
asked, in the slang idiom of the day. The
answer is obvious—By the adoption of a bold
and manly, a clear and comprehensible course,
in regard to all the topics of vital import that will
have to be taken into account, sooner or later,
before the approaching session shall have termi-
nated. If only her MAJESTY'S Ministers will dare
to adopt a resolute and consistent policy during
this session, they will strengthen their already
powerful position before the country and before
Christendom ; and, in spite even of the financial
difficulties which will have to be tided through
somehow, while Mr. GLADSTONE'S rash hand is
upon the helm in the midst of very perillous and
intricate navigation, they may at once, by this
simple device of adopting a bold and manly policy,
secure simultaneously the advantage of the commu-
nity at large, and their own triumph for yet
another Year over a powerful and united .Opposi-
tion.

Besides which—as already implied—a policy of
the nature indicated will put to the test the gene-
rosity and patriotism not merely of the leaders but
of the rank and file of the Opposition. It will
render manifest at a glance the slightest tendency
among them to anything like mere, factious anta-
gonism.

The Government of Lord PALMERSTON has,
under ordinary circumstances, the command of a
good clear majority of the House of Commons.
That fact has been proved again and again both
during the whole of last session and during thelatter
half of its predecessors. It is only when the course
adopted by the members of this Coalition Government
becomes hesitating and equivocal, that the inde-
pendent Liberals begin to fail in their allegiance
—escape from within reach of the lash of the
whipper-in—sometimes even (the more impracti-
cable or adventurous of the number) cross over to
swell the ranks of their habitual antagonists by
trooping into the lobby with the Conservative
throng from the side of the Opposition.
It was is this way that affairs went badly last year
with the Liberals upon the subject of the Reform of
Parliament. The Cabinet was so little in earnest
upon the matter, that its outside supporters got
disheartened and disgusted. They prepared a
scarcely calculable swarm of amendments
nearly one hundred amendments altogether—
rods in pickle, kept in readiness (if the time should
ever come for using them, which time it is but too
well known never did come after all !), kept there in
readiness for the flagellation of that poor Little
Bill in committee. The truth being obviously that
upon the question involved in that rough draft of
an intended (?) enactment the strong Coalition
was a " house divided against itself." There,
in truth, is the ACHILLES-heel of the
Government. There is the clue through the laby-
rinth of their sometim es inexplicable inconsistency

—in mooting measures at the beginning of a session
with a flourish of trumpets, and then allowing
them to die out quietly and:not even to have the
benefit of a decent sepulture. So it was with the
Reform Question. So it was with the Question
relating to the remodelling of the Laws on Bank-
ruptcy. So it was in reference to so very many other
subjects of supreme, and some of them of really
urgent importance. Until the ordinary quiet little
ceremony of the Bill-Battue at the approach of
Autumn was lengthened into a seemingly inter-
minable Massacre of Innocents—lnnocents most of
them brought into existence with a view solely to
their ulterior destruction. Instead of battling
manfully and resolutely for the triumph of prin-
ciples, Ministers were, in this way, upon too many
themes of exceeding interest to the community at
large in themselves, only carrying on a grand Sham
Fight discreditable in every way to their individual
and collective reputations.
It is quite impossible that the same line of con-
duct can be pursued again with impunity. It rests
with themselves, therefore, whether the session of
1861, like the session of 1860, shall be one of mere
Debate, in which case it must, this time, inevitably
be also one of Defeat, into the bargain—or
whether the future session, finlike the past
session, shall be one of active legislation, in which
contingency it must certainly be, it can alone
be one of triumph the most signal and reite-
rated over any and every opposition. We say this
because we believe it—and we do so with a vivid
remembrance, too, of the weak point in the panoply
of the Coalition, namely, its financial policy under
that most rash and experimental of all our finan-
ciers, the right hon. member for the University of
Oxford. In spite of which—such is our apprecia-
tion of the abilities of our administrators and of the
numerical preponderance of their supporters in the
House of Commons, and such, moreover, is our
sense of the nobler sentiments of civism and of
magnanimity latent in the hearts of the leaders of
the great party of the Conservatives, and in the
hearts also of the majority of those Conservatives li
themselves—we are firmly convinced that it requires
only a bold and straightforward policy on the part
of the present Government effectually, and in every
sense of the phrase, to disarm the Opposition.

Mr. BUCHANAN, like FRANCIS 11. means to die
game, Haviag fled before the Southern bullies,
as the King did before the redoubtable Garibal-
dians, the PRESIDENT seems now inclined to
fight it out. Reproaches have doubtless come so
thickly upon him from all the most respectable men
of the Democratic as well as the Republican party,
that he perceived he must either screw up his•cou-
rage to breast the storm, or retire from office the
most unhonoured, if not dishonoured of his country's
Presidents. What an epitaph to leave to posterity
—" Here lies JAMES BUCHANAN, whose timidity
broke up the American Union." The worthy old
gentleman, tortured to death doubtless between
his innate love of negro slavery and his •fear, at
last bethinks himself that a coward's grave is an
intolerable fate, and determines to enforce the
Federal laws and rights.

He appears, indeed though rather late in the
day, to be imitating General JACKSON. The
General, however, at first, as soon as only nulli-
fication was threatened, sent a vessel of war to
collect the Customs, which soon settled the busi-
ness. Mr. BUCHANAN waits till the Custom House
Arsenal and other Federal buildings are seized,
the Federal Revenue Collectors converted into
State Collectors, the vote of secession, not of nullifi-
cation merely, confirmed by the most daring acts,
and then at last, we read, that instructions have
been sent to the Commander of the steam frigate