The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-27 00:00:00

,FIR EDWARD B V LWER L "117'0.N.

(From the Times.)
The speakers at most of the agricultural meet-
ings are placed in a position of considerable diffi-
culty, especially when they happen to be members
of Parliament, not unreasonably anxious to make a
favourable impression upon their constituents. The
common sense of mankind has at last informed them
that the mere possession of an estate by no means
implies the possession of the amount of knowledge
requisite to deliver to men whose whole lives are
occupied in the cultivation of the soil practical lec-
tures on agriculture. These things were tolerated
in the glorious days of Protection, but one of the
many advantages of Free Trade has been to deliver
farmers from this kind of ridiculous patronage, and
to make each member of the great landed interest
more justly estimate his own position and appreciate
the amount of his knowledge. But if the unhappy
member,no longer permitted to discourse of bullocks,
takes refuge in the more congenial field of politics,
he is apt to find that he has only emerged from
Scylla to fall into the jaws of Charybdis; that is,
that he has avoided being impertinent only to be-
come offensive. Still, people, and especially mem-
bers of Parliament, must talk about something. It
is not every man that has the gift of social science,
or of discoursing of " family ;" and therefore, not-
withstanding the melancholy example of Mr.
Weguelin at the South Staffordshire Agricultural
Meeting, a sort of internal necessity drives member
after member forward to enter on the forbidden
field of politics. Some men there are so richly gifted
with the flowers of rhetoric that one subject to them
is just as good as another; they tread lightly on
the verge of everything which they treat, and view
it not the least in its practical bearing, but entirely
as .a subject for rhetorical art.
Such an orator is Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.
It matters not what the topic may be, Sir Edward
always has at his command sounding words and
epigrammatic sentences, and can impart pleasure, if
he does not always give instruction. Such an orator
is invaluable at an Agricultural Meeting
of the present day, and is pretty sure of
success, his very imperfections saving him
from the possibility of failure. Whatever in-
terests the civilised races of mankind interests Eng-
land ; whatever interests England interests the far-
mers of Hertfordshire. So long, then, as he steers
clear of the affairs of barbarians Sir Edward Bul-
wer Lytton cannot fail to receive the flattering
attention of any assembly of Englishmen. Italy is
first called up, in order that a few good things may
be said about her :—" The tyrant is gone, and let
us hope that the assassin is disarmed." " Italy is
like the Sleeping Beauty in the wood, restored by
the trumpet of her destined deliverer to the bloom,
but also to the struggles and passions of youth."
With this pretty simile Italy is dismissed to work
out her regeneration as she may. We have, then,
a definition of the foreign policy of England :
England, as a free State, sympathises with the free;
as a commercial State, she has a strong affinity
with the prosperous. Now, freedom and prosperity
are only combined in a constitutional government
such as England herself possesses, and therefore
the foreign policy of England consists in opposi-
tion to-revolution and tyranny, and the support of
constitutional government. We are sadly afraid
that the matter is not quite so simple. The policy
of England is not principally, but only very excep-
tionally, directed to interference with the internal
affairs of other nations. England, nevertheless,
has a foreign policy, which we fear does not admit'
of being described in quite so few words as Sir
Edward Bulwer Lytton deems sufficient for the far-
mers of Hertfordshire.. England has a traditional
policy founded on settled and well understood
maxims, the principal of which have reference to
the preservation of the balance of power. To sup-
port the weaker States against the stronger, and to
prevent any one Power from becoming so strong as
to absorb the rest, to seek no accession of territory,
for herself, and as far as possible to preserve good-
will to wards all mankind—these are, we believe,
more truly the principles of our foreign policy than
an endless intermeddling with the affairs of other
countries. We next come to Austria with her new
King, Lords, and Commons—a Power deserving
our support from her utility in preserving the
balance of Europe, a principle of foreign policy
which Sir Edward had forgotten to mention in his
account of the principles of English statesmanship.
But about Austria there is nothing particularly
good to be said, so we pass on to America—a more
promising theme for rhetoric. Sir Edward Bulwer
Lytton is quite prepared for the disruption of the
Union ; nay, he expects before very long to see it
separated illto three or four _parts—a nrosncet gt
but because he is convinced that the change will be
for the benefit of America herself. Having ascer-

tatamed,_ we know not where or how, that the
United States contain a fourth part of the globe,
he declares such a mass to be too large for a single
Government. The Empires of the East perished,
it appears, not, as some superficial writers have
thought, from external violence, but because they
were too large. We suppose if Persia had been

smaller Alexander would not have overrun it, and

that when the Roman Empire was split in half it
doubled its strength, and ought, according to all
sound rules of calculation, to have repulsed in this
divided state, the attacks of the barbarians who

were more than a match for it when united. The

monarchy of Charlemagne fell to pieces because the
barbarism of the times and the discordancy of races
never permitted it to be thoroughly organised. But
America has been organised into a whole. She
speaks the same language, she obeys the same laws.
Vast as is her extent, communication over the whole
of it is instantaneous by the electric telegraph, and
fewer days suffice to traverse it from North to
South and from East to West than were required

—._ .. ..
by the Romans to travel from the Capitol to the
foot of the Alps or the extremity of Calabria. Mere
size is no cause of destruction, as we see by the

durability of the Russian Empire ; and we cannot,
therefore, acquiesce in the consolation offered to
the Americans, that a .disruption which a little
forbearance and a little prudence might have
averted was an inevitable result of the nature of
things. There is truth :in the remark that
America divided into a small number of States
will probably be urged by their rivalry to a
higher point of intellectual progress, and that
she will be obliged to seek for more vigilant
statesmen and abler commanders [than she has
required during the time of peace which she has
just so abruptly and so wantonly closed. But it is
not certainly consolatory to her, nor does it well
agree with what Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton says
of the fragility of large empires, to be told that if
America could have remained under one form of
government she would have hung over Europe like
a gathering and destructive thundercloud. This is
precisely what she would like to do, and it must be
mortifying indeed to be told, on the authority of
Lord Derby's Colonial Minister, that if the people
of the United States could have refrained a little
longer from mutual destruction they would have
become the terror of the world. We are no be-
lievers in this thundercloud theory. Nothing has
occurred in the course of the civil war to show that
the United States were or could be put into a posi-
tion to carry on with success a war against a first-
rate Power at the distance of 3,000 miles. America
has lost much in this unhappy quarrel, but we have
no reason to believe that she has thrown away the
position of arbiter over the destinies of Europe.
After a short excursion to France, where the
Emperor is described as standing with one hand so
resting on the gates of war that they open and close
at his touch—a metaphor which is no improvement
on Lord Palmerston 's speech at Dover—we are
wafted back to America again, in order to speak of
the new colony of Brirish Columbia, the monument
of Sir Edward Lytton's administration of the Colo-
nies, and though, alas! now far from paying its
own expenses, destined, he assures us, one day to
be the wealthiest dependency of the British Crown.
This is what we have gained by having Sir Edward
for our Colonial Minister; what we have lost by
losing him is a chain of dependencies stretching
right across the American continent, which, had he
continued in office two years longer, he assures us
he should have already founded, notwithstanding
the trivial obstacles presented by a Siberian climate
and a country all but inaccessible. Seldom has an
audience travelled further in one speech, but we
fear the journey is not so profitable as it is long.

omtlsteirMßourniwinegr Lytton on
We congratulate
on the com-
plete restoration of his health, and the farmers of
F'r
Hertfordshire on his presence at their agricultural
meeting at Hitchin. To the country at large, not
less than to his neighbours and constituents, the
health of the right hon. baronet is precious, and his
statesmanlike speech of Wednesday shows how pre-
cious. Even the Times, we should fancy, would
overcome its dislike of agricultural societies if they
could always attract such speakers, and be the
means
of eliciting such comprehensive views on the
politics of the day ; even faction might hide its
head on hearing a great Conservative leader enun-
ciating principles and truths that find an echo in
the heart of every thinking Englishman. Sir