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

Stage Manager. Mr. R. Phillips

CANTERBURY' HALL CONCERTS.-
EVERY EVENING.—The Music of Verdi's Opera 01
MACBETII (now first made public in England at these Con.
certs).

And a Grand Se!ection from Heyerbeer's new opera of
DINORAII.

Comic Vocalists --Messrs. (leorTe !Jolson (the Trish Come.
dian and Mimic), W. r. Critchtield, and E. W. Mackney.

Several interestim: Pictures are added to the Fine Arts
Gallery. The suite of Halls have been re-decorated and
beautified, and constitute one of the most unique and brilliant
slzhts of the metropolis.

ROSA. BONHEUR'S celehrat,tl PICTURE of the HORSE
F_ .LR. is now added to the alreadv tniv2li6cont Collection of
Painthws in the Canterbury Hall Fine Arts Gallery. The
gallery is open trom 9 a.m. till 12 p.m. Admission, Six-
pence.

WEA'CLIER.—Sum 0 FFICit. NOVEMBER 29.
THERMOMETER, TN THE SHADE.
47—highest since noon yesterday.
42 —lowest this morning and during the night.
• 47—this day at noon.

BAROMP.TRTt-29.83.
WIND, Westerly; light, with dull cold weather.

lIIGII WATER AT LONDON -BRIDGE.
Tins, DAY.—Mornin7„ 4h. 33m.—Afternoon, 4h. 52m
To-monnow.-Morning, sh. 12m.—Afternoon, sh. 33m,

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THE SUN.

LONDON, TUESDAY, NOV. 29, 1859.

Congress or no Congress—is the question of the
hour ; and we must confess we do not envy those on
whom the decision of that question lies. If Eng-
land refuses to join in one, it is quite possible that
none will be held ; but it is equally possible that
one may be held without her. If without her, her
voice could have little effect on its proceedings,
because she would be no party to the consultations.
How could she presume to pronounce judgment
when she had not heard the pleadings ? If Eng-
land, on the other hand, were present, she and
Sardinia would be in a minority of two, against
what majority would depend on the number
of smaller States which might be invited. If
only the Four Great Powers—the Dii majores
of Continental despotism—were permitted to
vote, she might well expect to be on every
question of national liberties and independence in a
minority of one. Which of all these positions would
best comport with her dignity or with efficient
action on behalf of these rights which English-
men wish others to enjoy as well as them-
selves, it is not easy to say. Cold and un-
sympathising as we may be t!.ought by con-
tinentals, there is no toast which we all drink with
more zest, than that of " civil and religious liberty
all over the world." There is no nation upon earth,
certainly not the United States, with its four mil-
lions of slaves, which so nobly exemplifies that sen-
timent.

But what can, or rather will, a Congress do for
the rights of nations. Hitherto they have been
nothing better than the gatherings of the Robbers
and Thieves of Liberty, to divide the spoil of popu-
lar rights amongst themselves. We do not remem-
ber that the consent of the people, not even in the
most formal way, was ever asked to any of the ar-
rangements made ;—Poland, Venetia, Lombardy,
Naples, the Rhenish Provinces, Belgium, Geneva,
—what small Duchy, or larger state, was asked in
1813 how it wished to be governed, whether it
preferred to govern itself, or whom it would have as
its sovereign ? The marriages of territories to this
or that sovereign's domains were made as irrespec-
tively of their wishes as if they had been so many
Political brides sold to the harems of the polyp-
:mist tyrants of the day. There is, we believe,
floating in the political atmosphere just new a certain
opinion that nationalities and their leanings cannot
be quite so safely ignored as they were in 1815.
'But we more than question, except on the part of
.England, wl'ethcr the opinion is not a most unwel-
come one. The grand object of the crowned heads
will be how to cajole and overpower it. They will
prefer to trick public European opinion if they
can ; if not, strrnies of half a million each will he
,arguments tlYtt public opinion Cannot easily
master. England could give give utterance
to the thou,7.7.its of the nations, but her courtly
plenipotenti z.r:.es are too aristocratic themselves
to do this. Sardinia if there might speak her mind,
but she must do so in the presence of the man who
accepted Aust., -ianihandcuffi at Villafranea, and
who seems no, lir bent on proving them to be wrist
'ornaments in I.rely. A Congress is incurably a
confederation of despots. Liberty can hope no-
thing from it. Even an Englishman at one breathes

an infected atmosphere. A CASTLEREAGH or. a
CLARENDON is alike bewitched for the hour. We
fear a RussELL would be so,',too—Vienna!
To keep Lord Sous 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 home 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 he 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 ri3mand with
perfectly clean hands. We simply ask that the
inhabitants of Tuscany, of Parma, of Moaena, of
Bologna, shall do what they will with their ow-a.
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 garlic of Loris 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 bowicknife—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,
all 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 1800 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 P
How 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 across
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 Gnited States wantinc;to absorb Cuba,
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 fax
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-