The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-21 00:00:00

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE

THIS DAY.—Morning, llh. 4m,—Afternoon, llh. 33m
To-moßßow.-Morning, Oh. Om.—Afternoon, 12h. 5m

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TII E SUN.
LONDON, MONDAY, NOV. 21, 1859.

The critical situation of the Austrian empire is
sufficiently well indicated through the eagerness
evinced by the Cabinet of Vienna to grant conces-
sions to the Hungarians. It is intimated, more-
over, in the midst all this hubbub about an Italian
Confederation that—among the possibilities of the
hour—there (in the last surviving remnants of the
fair Italian provinces subject so long and so disas-
trously- to the House of Hapsburg) there, even in
Venetia, Austria is prepared to inaugurate at last a
purely constitutional form of Government. Never
was that old schoolboy morsel of classic latinity
more frightfully appropriate—nrieo Danaos et
cetera ! So frightfully appropriate, indeed, that
we might almost be tempted to give it in its thread-
bare completeness, but that the words have been
long since—ages ago—repeated in " damnable ite
ration," reiterated here, there, and everywhere,
usque ad nauseam. It must be allowed, however,
that of this peculiar thought, the policy now being
pursued or rather promised (for it is as yet only, in
truth—a policy projected) is distressingly sugges-
tive. Well may every Venetian, every Croat, every
Hungarian, exclaim Tinteo Danaos ! For never
has a Prince of the House of Hapsburg pledged
himself in this way to his unhappy subjects but his
evil promises have led eventually and inevitably to
a deliberate perjury. Divine lips have said, " Do you
gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles ?"
We quote the holy words-- with all imaginable
reverence ; but, in doing so, we venture to ask ifthe
Viennese Councils do not admit of their application
to the fruits again and again expected, and the
fruits again and again dropped or gathered, from
the Upas of the Austrian Government ? Constitu-
tional reforms, political concessions, acts of imperial
liberality squandered by the ruler of the great
Austrian empire upon Italians, upon Croatians,
upon Hungarians ? The performance in the mere
mention of it is about as preposterous as that pro-
mised.by BILLY BOTTOM—namelv, to "roarlike any
sucking dove!" Scarcely has the programme of
imperi-L1 benefactions in store been perused to the
end,in any single instance, but what the idiatcy of any
senor 3 belief in.it has been pointed by the bayonet
carved by the thong, and thundered by the artil•
lery of the Kaiser. The history of that cruel
desi,Nosni is the epitome of all human wickedness
in government. The whole fabric of the Austrian
Empire is built out of robbery and spoliation under
the diE lomatic phrase of absorption, in realisation
of the. fine sounding ambition of a power bent (as
the &Lai liar words run) upon territorial aggrandise-
ment. _RUDOLPII of Harsburgh rightly regarded
has pitm ed in this way to be simply the heroic pro-
genitor of a race of crowned buccaneers, or, as the
Amer jeans term the successors ofthe old buccaneers,
filibust era. It has been now a -Province, now a
kingdom, now a principality that has been in Iwo
admit; it) most vulgar but (we insist upon its being

also) most expressive parlance—taken in and done
for ! In the most flagrant of all these meanly fla-
grant and deplorable instances Austria was the
accomplice of the Russian and Prussian Govern- 1
ments. Yet, heinous though the guilt of both those
pillaging Governments unquestionably was in the
perpetration of the great crime of the
Partition of Poland, it was immeasurably
surpassed in the depth of its atrocity
by the monstrous ingratitude with which the Aus-
trians thus repayed the very land whose heroic sons
had, under JOHN SOBIESKI, been the Saviours of
Vienna from the Turkish barbarians ! The ingra-
titude thus evidenced in truth involves as by a
logical necessity—no matter how tardily—inevi-
tably, inexorably, an overwhelming retribution.
And not only is that retributive day of reckoning
fast approaching now for the Polish nationality,
but for other despised, but in secret dauntless and
unforgetting nationalities—for the Venetians, for
the Croatians, for the Bohemians, for the Tyrolese,
for the Hungarians. One of the most fertile and
beautiful among all the many stolen provinces of
Austria has but within the brief compass of a very
few months past been forcibly torn from the grasp
of the Viennese Government. That is the beginning
of the end of this unnatural power formed out of
the incongruous blending of so many deceived and
alien nationalities. The emancipation from that
prolonged and dire thraldom bat recently achieved
for Lombardy by the Franco-Sardinian armies will
be the signal (we may be assured of this) for the
timely rising of the long-expectant Venetians,
and Croatians, and Hungarians. As an additional
and conclusive augury of the same approaching
, rupture of the Austrian Empire, we regard the af-
, fected willingness of its Government to make poli-
tical concessions, to plan here an Utopia, there an
Arcadia—to build up, in fact, in Hungary and else-
where all kinds of bran-new Constitutions.

None can wish less than we do to depreciate our

Postal service. There is probably not another in
the world which can compare with it. It has
pointed out the way to other countries, who have
all followed more or less the example set them, and,
so far as we at the moment remember, are better or
worse in proportion as they assimilate their manage-
ment to that of the institution which Mr. ROWLAND
HILL has created. We say Mr. HILL, because he
is the creator of the modern Post-office. The insti-
tution is as different now from what it was before
the days of penny postage as is travelling by rail-
way from travelling by coach. Not only in virtue
of the powers of the locomotive and the rail, do
letters reach our breakfast-table, which used to
arrive late in the afternoon, or even next day, but