The Sun. — 1859-09-27 (London, England)

THE SUN. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1859.  Cabinet Councils have usually been very shy birds at this sporting season of the year; and their frequency of late seems to indicate either a coming storm or making a clearance of the wreck of the put. In either case we must be thankful that Ministers are at their post, and duly comprehend the "situation" of our affairs. No one will doubt the extreme gravity of their meetings, all things considered.  The late make-believe decree in the Moniteur for removing the shackles on the Press is now rescinded in effect. We thought it too good to be true, and so did the more cautious portion of the French Press, for they abstained from saying anything positive on the " avowedly" frank boon. The reign of NAPOLEON the THIRD has not yet taken sufficiently deep root to allow the sportive leaves of mind to flutter in the breeze of liberty. He has but half tried the experiment, and seems frightened at the partial consequence. Without a free press no nation can be considered free. The French feel this too acutely to express the agony of their soul. But the day of their redemption is near, for slavery and freedom can no more co-exist than light and darkness. We believe that the Emperor NAPOLEON would emancipate the press if he thought himself safe in so doing. But his fears prevent him. He feels "perplexed in the extreme," and back recoils  " Even at the wrongs himself had made." Now, this seems to be true poetical, if not political, justice. He feels like the man hanging on the verge of a precipice—to hold on much longer is impossible, but to let go is death. The news respecting the Congress or the Conferences at Zurich are much the same as before. Everything seems to be at a standstill. Austria, • true to her destiny, will not budge a bit—nor give up her darling Dukeslmt with her life. She will even tempt iler fate in another and, we hepe, a final struggle to uphold her despotism, and perish in the rash adventure.  It remains to be seen bow far (if at all) British interests may have been affected prejudicially in Japan, by the tidings of the disastrous conflict upon the Peiho river, when the prowess of the seamen of England was compelled for once to succumb to the furious onslaught of a Chinese ambuscade. The instinctive feeling immediately upon the receipt here of the intelligence of this murderous attack was that the prestige of the Anglo-Saxons could hardly fail to be militated against in Asia, and for that matter it could hardly fail to be so equally throughout the entire Archipelago. The commercial treaty of peace secured by the Earl of ELGIN and KINCARDINE, at Nagasaki—a treaty solemnly signed by MIDZUO TSLKFOGONO KAMI, NAGAI GEMBANO KAMI,• JNOUWYE SINANO No KAMI, HORI ORIBENO KAMI, IWASE HIGONO KAMI, ISUDA HAUZABRO, the Japanese Plenipotentiaries --was completed only, it may be remembered, upon that very morrow, so to speak, of that more memorable day upon which seemingly the barriers were at Jut broken down, which had hitherto separated the' ,two great moieties of the human race—tho  Chinese to the number of about 400,000,000, and the rest of the inhabitants of the globe to the num ber of about 500,000,000. It can hardly have failed to reach the knowledge of the Japanese, before the  arrival of Lord ELGIN, that the Government of the Celestial Empire had, immediately prior to the coming towards themselves of that wester,n negotiator, yielded to the blandishments of his diplomatic advances. It is scarcely less beyond belief that the knowledge of Lord ELGIN'S successful mission to the Chinese materially tended to facilitate his  subiequent negotiations with the Japanese. Nor can it be doubted that the tidings coming so soon afterwards to Yeddo and Nagasaki—descriptive of the ineffectual attack by the British gunboats upon the Chinese fortifications—will be anything rather than calculated to render the people and the rulers of Japan ready to accord to the English a respectful observance of Regulations, which the Japanese people and Government may now for the moment deem probably to have been only too precipitately conceded. We can only conjecture the probabilities of the Future by the light of actual knowledge and positive experience gained in the past. Guided thus in our conjectures in regard to the probable development of our relations with the Japanese, it should be borne in remembrance what were the preconceived notions popularly entertained among that people in reference to ourselves, almost immediately prior to "...the diplomatic exploits achieved now only a few months since, nearly simultaneously in China and Japan, by the Earl of ELGIN and