The Sun.
London, England, 1857-05-28 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, MAY 28, 1857.

The Sovereign Princes of Europe are wander-
ing about from Court to Court exchanging civi-
lities with each other most industriouily. And
the Sovereign Peoples of Europe—are they not,
for the most part, all the while at a dead stand-
still I Not a whisper now about Poland being
Restored ! About Hungary being Emancipated I
About the revival or reorganisation of German
Unity ! Or about the vindication of Italian In-
dependence ! Italy, in fact, is still deemed, as
METTERNICH deemed it, "a ;mere geographical
expression." Poland is still considered t)be a I
kingdom that has not merely been destroyed and
buried, but as one that has actually mouldered I

away into nothingness. Hungary is still to the
last the despair of KOSSUTH and of all such poli-
tical day-dreamers, and one of the many baubles

loosely set in the Hapsburg diadem. Germany—
well, even Germany, is it not still, to all intents
and purposes, the most heterogeneous conglomera-
tion of big and little independencies t Looking like

Forty States rolled into one ! Having a national
song ever on the lips of its motley population,

with a doleful burden like the refrain of UHLAND,

asking, by iteration upon iteration, without the
smallest apparent chance of ever eliciting a satis-
factory reply—" Which is the German's Father
land ? A lethargy hanging over continental Eu-
rope the while—a lethargy not by any means
restricted in its influence to the countries border-

ing upon the Rhine—to the fair land of Pesth
and Peterwaradin —to the dead realm whose
noblest heroes were SOBIESECI and KOSCIUSKO—
and, last but not least in the mournful catalogue,
to the once powerful and still beautiful Roman

Peninsula. It droops appreciably elsewhere far
and wide over Europe. It stagnates in Sweden
and Norway. It paralyses the action of the
Danish Government. It palsies every nerve and
sinew of the constitutional monarchies of Spain
and Portugal. And while the peoples of Europe
are thus deplorably and obviously at a standstill,
the Sovereign Princes, we say, we see, we hear,
we read, everywhere, are wandering about indus•
triously from Court to Court, in the midst of all

sorts of old-world ceremonials.
It is a magnificent farce, all this, from first to
last. It possesses a fantastic resemblance, we can•
not but think somehow, to the whirl of pomp
and frippery at Paris immediately anterior to the
outburst of the first great Revolution. For we
cannot believe for an instant that this all but
universal lethargy can be of any very long dura-
tion. It really appears but the merest mockery,
now that continental Europe is under the leaden
weight of it, to find the Grand Events of the hour
chronicled somewhat to this effect :—That his
Imperial Highness the Archduke CONSTANTINE is
slowly making the best of his way from Fontain-
bleau to Osborne—He having been until very
recently the deadliest foe of France and England!
That her Majesty the Empress Dowager of
RUSSIA. is the recipient of the most uproarious
welcome at Turin--Her dead spouse having,
comparatively speaking, but a very few months
back by his outrageous violation of treaties
caused the sword of the Sardinian King, weak
and powerless though he was by contrast, to leap
from its scabbard in scorn and indignation !
That the King of BAVARIA has gone to Paris !
That Prince NAPOLEON has returned thither
from Potsdam and from Dresden ! That the
Duke and Duchess of MONTPENSIER are coming
to England ! That this High Mightiness,
that High Mightiness, and the other, are going
just in fact anywhere but precisely where we
should vastly like to send some of them—namely,
either to Coventry or to Jericho ! And these are
the Grand Events of 185'7—the Grand European
Events of a Public Character !
Looking even at home in a strictly political
sense, the year now fast flitting away seems to be
awfully barren of incidents of a satisfactory de-
scription. It was thought by many that the
Leader of Her MAJESTY'S Opposition was going a
" little" too far in his address to the Electors of
Buckinghamshire, when he described the object
of Lord PALMERSTON in dissolving the last Par-
tiament, and appealing to the country to create a
new one, to be literally this "To waste
A year 1" Yet is it not so, obviously, not -
riously, undeniably in the strictest sense of
he words ? Is not the year being wasted
systematically, deliberately, and with malice pre-
pense ? Have we not the clearest possible prospect
before us of its being wasted politically down to
rhe thirty-first day of December inclusively ?
Everything in the way of Reform is postponed till
"next session."

"Man never is but always to be blest."

This general rule holds good even in the present
particularity of its application. " The Good
Time Coming" turns out, after all, to be a very
long while coming—and it proves but sorry coin-
Fort, in sooth, for the delay, when we are told by
way of encouragement to wait yet—" a little
!onger." Next Session !—lt is our political To-
norrow ! And if we wait for it always in
his way we shall very much indeed resemble
chat old Classic Lubber, " familiar to every
schoolboy" that, we believe, is the correct
phrase " familiar to every schoolboy"—the miser-
tble rusticus who sits down by the river side, in
chat hackneyed couplet of dog's-eared latinity,
carrying on his journey until the stream shall have
passed by I Candidly let us say—while these
royal and imperial visitors are going their rounds,
md while our present parliamentary session is being
Idly frittered away to no purpose, and with
scarcely a murmur hoard at the melancholy fact
that it is so—We all seem to have grown wonder-
fully phlegmatic I

In our impression of yesterday we gave in ex-
tense the bill recently introduced by the Attorney-
General " for the punishment of frauds committed
by trustees, bankers, and other persons entrusted
with property," on which we offered some obser-
vations in our leading columns on Friday last. It
is simplex munditiis, going directly to the point
without that circumlocution or tautology too fre-
quently contained in similar enactments. It seems
to have achieved the happy medium by which it
will be difficult, if not impossible, for parties
guilty of wilful and deliberate fraud to escap e
the penal consequence of their offences, while, at
the same time, parties who have not intended to
do wrong, and have only been guilty of an error
lof judgment, will be protected by the saving
12th clause, which provides that no proceeding
or prosecution for any offence included in the Ist
section shall be commenced without the previous
sanction of some judge of one of the superior
courts of common law or equity, or of her
MAJESTY'S Attorney-General, or (should that
office be vacant) of the Solicitor-General ;
and also, if civil proceedings should have
been taken, of the Court or Judge before
whom such proceedings had been instituted. It
is likewise, by the 13th section, very properly
provided, that the receiver, with a know-
ledge of the fraud, shall be liable to the
same punishment as the principal, and that
whether the latter shall or shall not have been
previously convicted, or shall or shall not be
amenable to justice. This is as it should be,
and, as we have already said, entitles Sir R.
BETHELL to the thanks and gratitude of the coin-

m unity.
The first section relates to the cases of trustees,
properly so called, those who have been placed in
a fiduciary character towards others. It includes
not only those holding property, for the benefit
of others, under any deed of settlement, but also
their heirs and personal representatives ; and also
all executors and administrators, and all assignees
in, bankruptcy and insolvency, bailers of goods,
and every person holding, or having the disposi-
tion of any property for the benefit of another—
while the word "property" has an equally ex,ensive
signification, inasmuch as shall include every de-
scription of real and personal property, money,