The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-05 00:00:00

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.

Tiirs DA Y.—Morning. 7h. 48m.—Afternoon. Bh. 20m.
To-moßnow.-Morning, Bh. 56m.—Afternoon. 9h. 30m.

THE WEATHEll,—Svar:Opyicrs. JAN. 5, 11461,
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
3.5—highest since soon yesterday.
32—lowest this morning and during the night.
32 —this day at noon.

_
BAROMETER-30.04.
WIND—North-Easterly—light ; with dull hazy weather,
and slight snow.

10,11, ,
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'vitt 44

THE SUN.

LONDON, SATURDAY, JAN. 5, 1861.

The political " situation" all over Europe is every
day becoming more and more significant. Every-
thing gives indication of a coming collision. The
thunder clouds are still quietly but ominously in
movement—hither and thither, right and left, here,
there, everywhere, in more and more inextricable
confusion. From what point the lightning bolt
will first flash as the signal for the inevitable storm
of war is yet left vaguely to our conjecture. But
that 1861 will not pass over without that looked-
for tempest breaking over the nations of Christen-
dom is fast beco min the universal conviction. All
that NAPOLEON 111. has said at the dawn of the
year is that he " wishes" for Peace. He acknow-
ledges while so speaking that he can recognise no
better or more reliable assurance of its continuance
than the friendly relations subsisting at this
moment among the various Governments. Building
upon which is certainly building upon a most sandy
foundation. Yet in this amiable understanding we
are alone to look for a guarantee of the maintenance
during 1861 of European tranquillity. The Regu-
lator of Europe, the Moderator of the
Revolution,
has said it. And in so saying, he has said truly
though in a different sense than that in which he
would fain have his words understood. Designed,
doubtless, by his Imperial MAJESTY upon the jour
de ran to be enigmatically auspicious, they are,
when looked at closely, only most ominously sig-
nificant. The Peace of Europe does rest—not a
doubt of it—upon this hollow amity, this affected
friendship among the different powers of the
European Continent. Upon nothing else ! It rests
alone upon that shifting quicksand. It has no
more stable basis than that specious and variable,
that simply assumed and pretended good under-
standing between the Governments.
How much of the electricity of war there is a+,
this moment in the political atmosphere, we may
very readily perceive through a multitude of very
comprehensible indications. Looking abroad over
Europe, it is as impossible not to recognise the warn-
ings of the storm as it would be impossible not to
recognise a like advent in the physical world,
were the magnetic needle to fluctuate under our

gaze and the quicksilver to fall and fall in the

:übe of the barometer.

It is not alone in Europe either th at those'
startling signs of the times ara visible. It
was only yesterday that the citizens of the
great North American Republic were, in an-
swer to the summons of their PRESIDENT, plead-
ing to Heaven, as it were, in sackcloth and ashes,
with fasting and prayer, with all the evidences
of patriotic solicitude and national humiliation, for
some Divine intervention in their behalf—to ward
from them so many impending, and formidable, and
otherwise apparently inevitable perils—pleading
thus for the beneficent interposition in their
favour of an ever-watchful and all-merciful Pro-

vidence.
From the opposite extremities of the earth tad,
from the eastern borders of China come the sounds
of the recent struggle between the Tartar hordes
and the Anglo-French Expedition under the walls
of Pekin—a strife nominally resulting in a rapid
negotiation of Peace between the recent
belligerents, but—through the tidings of which—
come to us at the same time, audibly
enough, the resounding intimations of the
downfall of the old Tartar Government, and of the
rising and spreading wider and wider over that
immense empire of the great TAEPING Revolution.

Reverting to Europe, however, looking exclu-
sively for a time over the broad expanse of our own
quarter of the globe, what are the truths we there
chiefly recognise ? They are truths so visible, so
glaring, that in the familiar words of Holy Writ,
" those who ran may read." Everywhere it is the
same—everywhere there is perceptible a calm but
resolute preparation. It is not alone, however, that
this note of preparation is sounded in the arsenals
and in the dockyards. It is observable also here
and there throughout Europe in the inner changes
making themselves manifest in the various adminis-
trations. It was only the other day that in France
hereelf the whole ministerial organisation was trans-
formed. Among ourselves, still more recently, while
the Cabinet remains unaltered, there has yet been
introduced into it within the last few hours a modi-
fication of some significance. The Secretary of
State for War—with a view to his disembarrass-
ment from the arduous labours devolving upon a
Ministerial leader of a great department who has
his seat in the House of Commons—the Secretary
of State For War (to this end) is removed
to the Upper House, so that his energies may
be directed uninterruptedly and undisturbed to the
more energetic direction and governance of his all-
important and solemnly responsible department.
As a consequence of which eminently judicious
and manifestly most significant elevation of Mr.
SIDNEY HERBERT to the House of Peers, that right
hon. gentleman's (or, as we shall soon be able to
call him, that noble lord's) present Under-Secretary
in the War Department, to wit, Lord DE GRET,
will have to give place to a successor occupying a
seat in the lower branch of the Legislature. By
that successor of Lord DE GREY'S in the Under
Secretaryship of State for the War Department
the business of the Department in relation to the
Commons will now be of course entirely transacted
—leaving the chief of the Department, the new
Peer, to devote, as we have said, his undivided
attention, his wholly undisturbed energies, to the
conduct during this year of grace, 1861, of the affairs
of the War Department. High and low, it is the
same, looking all over Europe, looking either to
the more important or the less important of
the States of Christendom. Nay, even without
the pale of Christendom, though still within the
boundaries of Europe, these charges, by way of
preparation, are apparent. From Constantinople,
under date the 29th of December, arrive tidings of
the abrupt dismissal of SAAFETI PACHA, President
of the Council of State. Even looking to the cen-
tral point of Europe, to the core of the Italian ques-
tion, to that Gordian Knot, for the severance of
which so many are now awaiting the sword-sweep
of some new ALEXANDER, even looking to that
State, which, among all the States of Europe, has
become, in a novel way, so especially remarkable,
namely, bv collapsing from a territory to little better
than a town—even turning to Rome—what is
the last news we read of thence, of a purely political
character ? Why, oddly enough, no other tidings
than that the retirement of Monsignor MIRODE
was then, when the last despatches left, being
hourly looked for, and that his successor
there as Minister of War was confidently
expected to be (by a ludicrous coincidence of
names) no other than Monsignor BELLl—shall we
say " BELLX, horrida BELLA P" It is not, how-
ever, from deductions drawn from more or less
notable changes, or from more or less significant
tokens all over the European Continent of
unostentatious, but steady and rapid pre-
paration, that we derive the conviction now
fast becoming universal that war in 1861, is all
but unavoidable. War has been promised in ex-
press words, by the man of all men living who has
shown himself qualified to speak trumpet-tongued
to the Europeans ? GARIBALDI has said it. He
has promised to emerge in the early spring from his
island-farm at Caprera, and to summon a million
soldiers to his banners—for what achievement ? For
the realisation—if ever that is to be—of the golden
day-dream of his life, the dream of Italian
Unity ! For the wresting from <' the grasp
of Austria of the last of her beautiful Italian
Provinces ! For the establishment of the
Italian Kingdom, " one and indivisible," from
the Alps to the Adriatic, from the foot of the Car-
pathian range to the southernmost spur of Cape
Spartivento. That, if the signal comes not sooner,will
be the clarion sounding the Charge, crying " Havoc
and letting slip the Dogs of War for 1861, over
the nations of Christendom. Italy may then rise and
take her place among the great Powers of Europe !
Austria may then fall, dissolve, and disappear !
Turkey, on this side the Bosphorus, at least, may
then lapse at length, after an anomalous existence
of four hundred years, may then lapse at length,
and permanently, from the power of the SULTAN
CALIPH of the Mussulmans !

Paddy and Popery are such persistent com-
plainers that even their just complaints are likely
to be overlooked. They are always wronged—out-
rageously wronged. Now the Sassenach, now the
Protestant, or more commonly the malevolent com-
bination of the two, are for ever persecuting and
afflicting Paddy and his priest. The great work-
house grievance, the great
the
great eviction
grievance—thete
great Cabinet and Ministry grievance of Irishmen
not being adequately valued by every new Premier;
the great Italian
grievance, especially that of
Spoleto—the grievances are really so innumerable
and so perennial that we have come to look upon
them as a matter of course. We turn to the Irish
columns or paragraphs in the newspapers, in-
wardly saying, what grievance now r We look
for some account of toes trodden on till they are
crushed, expecting to find, after a few mails, that
they were but accidentally touched, as the suf-
ferer squeezed along in the crowd. If, therefore,
poor Paddy sometimes complains, with reason, that
he is not attended to when he ought to be, he must I
really thank himself for it.

Bishop PLIIIiKET'S evictions are now the