The Sun. — 1861-01-02 (London, England)

NAPOLEON 111. And  while so speaking—with a very admirable consistency the Imperial ruler of France, with these words of Peace upon his lips, has the whele land  under his sway bristling with bayonets, has every  ----dockyard and arsenal in his empire ringing still  with the note of preparation.  Nothing should hide from us the fact—not even :he benignant words uttered yesterday by the  supreme master of 36,000,000 Frenchmen, the sovereign commander of an army of 600,000 warriors in the highest state of discipline, and of a maritime force second only to that of Great Britain —nothing, not even, we repeat, those blandly encouraging assurances from our Imperial Ally across the Channel, should close our eyes to the recognition of the wholly indisputable truth that 1861 opens ominously with all kinds of sinister  portents of War in Europe. It is not that these  evil auguries are drawn, according to the popular 1 phrase from a little cloud no bigger than a man's hand, emerging dimly from one particular point of the horizon. The whole political atmosphere is charged with electricity, and sombrely darkening to the view as we look abroad at the commencement of this present January, north, south, east, and west, over Christendom. Whatever the French  Emperor may say now in words of such honeyed suavity—his acts throughout have spoken, they still speak a language, in regard to the future, altogether differently. " Wiser in his generation' than those amiable sentences addressed by him yesterday to the European Envoys would, if alone taken into account, seem to indicate—his Imperial Majesty regulates his military, his maritime, and his diplomatic departments upon the probability, or, at any rate, upon the possibility, of a general war in Christendom. Hence it is that—with this dire contingency kept continually within her ♦iew— France, under the auspices of the Moderator of Revolution and the Regulator of Europe, retains yet an army firmly planted still, after a twelve years' occupation, in Central Italy, planted there at Rome, in greater force than ever, upon the covetted 7TOV OTCO of the looked-for Italian kingdom, whether it be GARIBALDI, or MAZZINI, or CAVOUR, or VICTOR EMMANUEL that the Italians themselves may select for their Archimedes ! Hence is it, also, that France, under the like guidance of NAPOLEON'S duplex Policy—a Policy of Peace in Words and of War in Action—has contrived to plant another army firmly upon the borders of Asia Minor, upon the pretext of avenging upon the Druses of the Lebanon the murder of the Maronites—but manifestly, in truth, to be there at hand whenever the occasion shall at length arise for interference upon another emergency, for prompt and vigorous interposition upon another and a far grander catastrophe. The occupation of Syria by French soldiers, the occupation of Rome by French soldiers—behold two facts there indicated, two simple facts that speak far more trumpet-tongued in regard to the immediate Future, in regard to the prospects of 1861, than any words addressed yesterday to the Envoys of Europe by the Imperial Master of those notable armaments. It is in respect to the Italian question—it is in reference to the imminent disruption of the Turkish Power in Europe—that 1861 appears to he so ominous of War among the nations of Christendom. The sick man at Constantinople threatening now to prove, very speedily, sick even unto death. Physicians have long been in vain in his instance—those political physicians whose diplomas have been gained in Diplomacy ! Even the San Grados who have kept him so long in hot -water, and have let blood so freely, in obedience to the dictates of their implicit faith in the exceeding efficacy of their skill as phlebotomists, even they are one and all based in their desperate endeavours to ward off the fast-coming dissolution. Before much longer the last hour of the sick man must, in the order of nature, have struck : and after the death will come the division of the property. With a view to all which probabilities