The Sun. — 1860-07-10 (London, England)

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE. THIS Day.—Morning, 6h. 12m.—Afternoon, 6h. 31m. To-monnow.-Morning, 6h. 51m.—Afternoon, 7h. 12m,  ~\(.DUI•MA J• a ~ ~ I -`sx\a ..~  , ,cto  • ,<o  r'7 hirofr'  1,51' •  i~~< ,~  y-{w~  THE SUN". LONDON', TUESDAY, JULY 10, 18(3_0.  A terrible massacre of the Christians in Syria has been commenced by the fanatical Druses of the Lebanon. Unless England and France interfere betimes between the Maronites and their murderers, the whole of the believers in CHRIST in those regions will have been ruthlessly destroyed, their cities sacked, and the intervening'country laid waste and barbarously devastated. The butchery indeed has already, as we have said, begun in dreadful earnest. Insomuch is the position of the unfortunate Christian population of Syria recognised to be perillous by the Allied Governments of Western Europe, that while our own rulers have without an instant's hesitation caused two British men-of-war to proceed to Beyrouth instanter--the French Minister for Foreign Affairs (M. DE THOUVENEL) has forwarded instructions to the Imperial ambassador at Constantinople (the Marquis DE LAVALLETTE) " directing him," says REUTER'S Telegram, " that France from feelings of humanity as well as in consequence of former conventions to inform the Porte concluded with Turkey, is bound to put a  stop to these horrible massacres !" Nay, it is added explicitly in these instructions that the Turkish authorities not being capable of defending the Sultan's own subjects, France will concert, with the other Powers, the most efficacious means for preventing the continuation or recurrence of the sanguinary deeds being enacted in Syria between the range of the Lebanon and the shores of the Mediterranean. How much more urgently is not this intervention of the chief Powers of Christendom required, if it can be proved that far beyond any mere lack of capacity on their part to defend the SULTAN'S own subject, those Turkish authorities have actually been implicated with the Druses in the massacre of the Christians in Syria! Such, in point of fact, is understood already to have been absolutely the case. It is notorious, we believe, from one extremity of the Levant to the other, that the heathenish Druses oftheLebanon have found not only connivance, but direct encouragement among more than one of the Mussalman officials of the Turkish Government. Time and again there are indications not less clear in regard to Turkey than in regard to Austria that the whole fabric of the State is crumbling away from its very foundation. The sick man is even now once more sickening. The time is obviously approaching when he must be sick unto death. Ever since the Turk took Constantinople—he has had one foot in the grave. T conquering foot of his planted haughtily upon the soil of Europe ! Theorists tell us that every Child born into the -world has the seed of the particular disease that'must triumph at last (unless anticipated by accident) latent in its new-born constitution. It has been so throughout all these four centuries past during which the Mahommetans have held dominion in Europe among the nations of Christendom. Inthat very crowning triumph, in that aTparent culmination osewohf othceanstarreaodf the Turk there was manifest to i history aright, to• those who are endowed t the source with any clearness of politi prevision, inevitable defeat, the ger= of inexorable decline and dissolution. If the slope of Russia is towards the East as the poetic and philosophic historian of France has remarked—thee gravitation of Turkey is as undoubtedly back ag rain into Asia Minor. The European rule of the:. Turk has been all along an anomaly. It has never been accepted by Christendom, it has only been tolerated. The beginning of the end of that .same anomalous rule may, with