The Press. — London, England, 1854-12-16 00:00:00

- - - ' , '' , '-' l-411 10WIW's w "siilialMinagiall00.10101111011.1110110 04 - *% l fre cc-00 rt Al -_ No. 85.—VoL. 11. LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1854. PRICE SIXPENCE. Ett Vress. They will furnish no more recruits. We are I parting with our reserve, the safest and best reserve we possibly could have; and whatever emergencies may arise, the country when these regiments are departed, will be left perfectly defenceless, and without even the nucleus of a military force. And as for the Germans and Switzers, how long with their foreign habits and foreign tongues will it take to form them into British regiments? If we have no other resources than such as these measures indicate, our state must be desperate indeed. The country demands, with a unanimity scarcely ever exhibited before, that the war shall be energetically conducted, and these bills are the answer returned to it. They directly raise the question of confidence or no confidence in the Government. The Ministers have had warning, they have had time, they have had trust. The nation, as one man, has pressed upon them powers, supplies, resources of all kinds,—it has overwhelmed them with voluntary offerings even,—it has besought them to take more money and more men,—to do all that the Government of a mighty em pire could to secure our army in the Crimea, to bring the contest there to a glorious issue, and to wage the war on a scale which should save England and the world from the hor rors of a protracted contest. Day by day the voice of public opinion has been thun dered in its ears. It has listened, it has promised, and we have now its acts before fie. There is a limit to forbearance, and that limit has been past. The Cabinet or the country must fall. Which shall it be? sought to disarm their antagonists? That we are taking no advantage of their artful affecta tion of candour, their over-prompt penitence, their eagerness to assure Parliament that there had been numerous blunders of detail, for which the delinquents were sorry, but which should not, and indeed could not occur again ? This contrivance, intended to lead, by infer ence, to the conclusion that Ministers had confessed all that there was to confess, and that in other respects they had done their duty, was too transparent to deceive, and may be contemptuously pardoned. It was natural that they should endeavour to avail themselves of every artifice of debate, and it is not in members of the Coalition Cabinet that we were LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1854. PARLIAMENT has met, and the measures of the Ministry are now before the country. What they purpose to do is known to us with as much certainty as what they have done. The new Austrian treaty has been laid before the Legislature by the Minister who inadvertently gave so accurate a description of it on the entitled to look for the large and noble tem perament which, in presence of a grand ques tion, forgets the petty manoeuvring of factions. Those who had conducted a great war in the spirit of pedantry were likely to conduct a great debate in the tone of pettifogging. It is not to the sham plea of guilty on the smaller counts that we allude in recording that the Coalition stood self-condemned before Parliament. The Ministry did not need Sir JOHN Pismo- Toles assurance that it was not upon points of detail that the Conservative Opposition would assail the Government. The Administration well knew that generous English gentlemen confronted it, and that they world acorn to take advantage of the innumerable small errors and shortcomings incident to every novel undertaking. But it was no doubt deemed a double master-stroke of policy to offer defence where there had been no attack, and to confess to small faults in order to escape from the question of great ones. Such are the tactics of our high-minded Government. But the charges which the War Secretaries on the part of Lord ABERDIEN'S Ministry, listened to in each House, and admitted either in terms, or by the not less significant omission of reply, were these :—That they had sent out, for the invasion of a vast and powerful mili tary empire, an army utterly inadequate to the gigantic work assigned to it. That not only had an insufficient force been despatched, but that no reserve had been prepared for the reinforcements which it was evident would be required after the very first grapple with the foe. And that at this very moment, with a diminished and debilitated army wasting away before Sebastopol, all that can be done for it is to send out succours by driblets, while the enemy is massing his thousands around the menaced stronghold. Those three charges, of the gravity of which it is impossible to speak in phrase too solemn) were brought forward against the Aberdeen Cabinet on Tuesday, and their truth was ad mitted. Nay, the wise rule observed in a court of justice, where, when a capital charge is made, the judge will not receive the accused person's admissions, but demands proof step by step, was followed out. In a series of masterly speeches, we allude more especially to those of Lord DERBY, Mr. LATARD, Sir John PAZINOTON, and Mr. DISRAELI, the whole melan choly case was traced out, and proved with a logical coherence of evidence that made reply hopeless, and evasion a not less fatal if a more cowardly course than confession So far, therefore, the work is done for which it was so desirable that Parliament should meet. It has sat as a court of justice, has witnessed accusation and attempt at escape, and is spared the necessity of a formal verdict first night of the session. A bill has been in troduced to render the Militia regiments available for garrison duty abroad ; and another bill is proposed to augment the army by 16,000 foreign mercenaries, to be recruited in Switzerland and Germany. These are the measures which the Coalition Cabinet, unani• mous for once, considers equal to the necessi ties of that tremendous war to which it has committed us. The Emperor of RUSSIA, it is reported, has resolved on a levy throughout his dominions of sixteen men to every thou sand inhabitants, which would give him an army of a million of soldiers, and Lord ASERD/CEN'S Cabinet answers the defiance by this scheme for enlisting sixteen thousand Germans and Switzers. The debates in both Houses of Parliament last night show the marvellous change which has taken place in the public mind since Tuesday last. On the first night of the ses sion the past conduct of the Ministry was freely arraigned, but, relying on the assurance of the Royal Speech, that " the great war in " which we are engaged" would be " pro " secuted with the utmost vigour and effect," there was a general disposition to concur in any measures which it seemed probable that the Government would propose. The recom mendation that " bygones should be bygones " had some weight, and it was imagined that, after the discussions of the opening night, the few days of the sitting before Christmas would be devoted to routine business. Never, we will venture to say, did an Opposition meet in Parliament with less intention to oppose or obstruct measures which the Government might think it expedient to propose ; and the sudden change in the temper of both Houses can only be referred to the strong conviction entertained that the country is no longer safe in the hands of the men who now rule the State. It is this sentiment, sincerely and solemnly held, which has gathered against them the Opposition that threatens, as we write, their existence as a Ministry. It is not only that the measures themselves are in the highest degree objectionable—that the new Militia Bill will destroy the principle of the system established—and that the foreign enlistment scheme will tend to make the army unpopular, and to check recruiting at home--but it is the manifest inadequacy of these measures, supposing them ever so suc cassful to the requirements of our state, that has appalled all reflecting men. If the nation can do no more than this, how is the war to be carried on? The Militia regiments once gone, will be entirely lost to the country. DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS. THE Legislature has been addressed by our gracious Sovereign in a speech which the Ministers who'composed it seem to have studied to render feeble and utterly unworthy of the grand crisis at which it was delivered ; and then those Ministers were required to explain why the army and the honour of England have been placed in deadly peril by the Coalition Administration. The reluctant answers have been a mixture of offensive bluster and of petty detail. Setting all party feeling aside, nothing could be more painful than the spectacle presented in the two Houses during the debate on the Address, if that may be called a debate in which the frank and straightforward demands of states men were met by the niggling and shifty pe dantry of officials. It was humiliating to feel that the destinies of a nation, at one of the most momentous conjunctures of European history, could be lett in feeble hands that shake with the responsibility. What little prestige yet lingered in the name of a Govern went, what little faith any man had managed to base upon the eternally and solemnly re iterated assurances of the Ministerial ogans that Government had really done its duty, were fatally dispelled ou Tuesday night. The whole of the charges they are brief snd stern—which the Opposition, speaking the mind of the nation. has been compelled to bring against those who have had the miscon duct of the war, were fully and suicidally ad mi.ted by the accused. Need we say that we do but refer to the small and tricky device by which the Ministers , r