The Sun. — 1859-07-09 (London, England)

STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE. The astounding incident of the Armistice concluded so very suddenly and unexpectedly on Thursday between the Emperors of France and Austria furnished the noble lord with an all-sufficient reason for the postponement, sine die, of the intended discussion upon the delicate subject of the late diplomatic negotiations. The ventilation of this elaborate and voluminous correspondence in Parliament might unquestionably—would most probably—be in the very last degree inopportune. Every one recognised. this upon the instant directly the news was received yesterday of this startling, and, so far as the conqueror is concerned, most magnanimous Armistice. Lord STRATFORD, we may rest assured, WAS the very first to appreciate the advisability of passing his promised motion by sub silentio. In the interests of peace, in the hope of its eventual if not speedy realisation—this Parliamentary reticence was in every respect the course among all courses the most judicious and advisable under existing 'circumstances. There cannot be an instant's doubt that perhaps the most experienced and gifted diplomatist of our generation needed no prompting whatever to lead him to the recognition and adoption of the wisest policy of all, that of total silence for the time being, upon the very theme upon which he himself (and with him many an ardent sympathiser in his views) was burning to expatiate. Let not those factious politicians, however, who have wriggled themselves into power, and place, and patronage, so dishonestly by a party trick, as mean, and paltry, and utterly despicable as ever yet has been witnessed in the struggles of placemen and partisans to get from the cold shade of opposition to the sunshine of administrative authority —let not the present occupants of the Treasury bench console themselves for one moment with a serious belief that the threatened exposure of their malevolence and untruthfulness in regard to Lord MALMESBURY, and his policy throughout the whole of these difficult and delicate diplomatic negotiations, has been now at once got rid of altogether. That eclaircissement has only been delayed. The time must come, sooner or later, when, both in the Lords and the Commons, the Blue-book now hushed up and hustled out of the way, out of motives the most pure and the most honourable, because simply, as we have said, both prudent and patriotic—the time must arrive, we say, when the whole of these transactions will, in the inevitable course of events, be dragged forth into the broad light of debate in both branches of the imperial Legislature. And Parliament will be then constrained in honest truthfulness to reverse its precipitate and most mistaken judgment, in reference to the foreign policy of the late DERBYITE Administration. Upon that policy the recent Administration was notoriously defeated— or, ratter it should be said, not upon the policy itself, but upon its perverse and wilful misrepresentation. That misrepresentation, however, it must be remembered, was only possible when the new Parliament was assembled—for the one simple reason that the negotiations were allowed to remain for the most part simply conjectural from the diplomatic Correspondence not being then [as it clearly ought to have been] collected together betimes, and promptly and most opportunely published. The non-publication of this vitally important correspondence simultaneously with, if not anterior to, the assembling together of the newly-elected Parliament, was—these are the only words for it—a deliberate act of Ministerial suicide on the part of the late Administration. It was not until after the adverse decision of the House of Commons had been arrived at—a decision grounded principally if not entirely upon a misapprehension or misrepresentation of the nature of the policy pursued by Lord MALMESBURY, in the course of the negotiations—it was not until then (when it was altogether too late) that the Italian Bluebalk was passed through the hands of the Parliamentary printers and laid by order of her MAJESTY before both Houses of the Legi3latnre. The erroneous verdict had then not merely been pronounced, but the unjust sentence had been carried summarily and precipitately into execution. It is only then, when the victim of this shamaless manceuvre on the one part, and of this perven se and incomprehensible blunder on the other —has been long since dead and buried, that the false NI -itness, the venal advocates, the unscrupulous and p artisan judges, and the remorseless executioners are proved as clearly as anything can be proved to have acted wholly in error, and to have done s( with suspiciously eager precipitation ! The question still remains, of course, to puzzle  us to the last—Why, in the name of common sense, this tardily-published Blue-book, giving the whole of the correspondence in regard to the Italian Question, and constituting the succinct and incontrovertible vindication of the policy of Lord MALMES BURY, was not published, and laid upon the tables of both houses, at the very time of the assembling of the new Parliament down at Westminster ? That Blue-book not being so printed, not being so laid upon those tables, was an act of cruel injustice to the Earl of MALMESBURY ; it was, we repeat, an act of political suicide on the part of the whole DERBY Government. It was worse than a crime in Ministerial tactics—it was a mistake : and a mistake so easily avoided, a betise so readily prevented, that, for not avoiding it, for not preventing it—the Cabinet really deserved to be de-1 feated (as they were) upon the first division. If the printing of that Blue-book had required that a hundred printers should have been at work night and day for a fortnight, any exertion, every exertion ought in reason and justice to have been made with a view to its timely publication. Had this exertion been so made, had the Bluebook appeared simultaneously with the commencement of the first session of the new Parliament, the late Ministers of the Crown would not yet by possibility have been defeated at all, they would still have remained in power, strong in the integrity, and the consistency, and the truthfulness of their Foreign policy, as the inaugurators of the principle of neutrality on the part of England in the midst of this sanguinary outbreak of war in one of the most central points of  Christendom. Reference at this present moment, however, to the contents of that unfortunately and blunderingly retarded Blue-book is regarded on all sides as unadvisable (as yet), because clearly inopportune. So inopportune is the moment, in truth, for anything like explicit discussion in regard to diplomatic correspondence, that even the greatest master of irony in the House of Commons, the right hon. gentleman the leader of her MAJEsTY's Opposition, can only for the moment— ,4 hint a fault and hesitate dislike,"  when he has occasion, as he had last evening, to allude incidentally to the half rash, half timorous, wholly blundering foreign policy of Lord