The Press. — London, England, 1854-12-23 00:00:00

DECEMBER 23, 1854. with a contrast between the superior way in which the French are treated, and the miser able mode in which our gallant heroes are neglected. But the French have no Duke of NEWCASTLE. All their preparations were made, writes the same authority, •` forecasting the future ;" and, in alluding to the wholesale blunders of our officials, after describing " the deplorable state " of the transport-ships," he says :—" There has " been a want of systematic provision for the " actual casualties of warfare which it seems " impossible to explain away or extenuate." And with this melancholy mass of circum stantial evidence, we must not be satisfied with merely accepting the pathetic epitaph suggested for the starved and neglected troops. Now is the time to know whether Ministerial responsibility be a substance or a shadow. Can the Peelites alone, in our history, be held exempt from the consequences of terrible calamities, precipitated by "neglect, " incompetence, and indecision " ? THE RESIGNATION THREAT. " Ma. MANTILINI poisons himself for the seventh time." There is no parallel for such a per formance but the old resignation threat enacted by Lord JOHN RUSSELL; to wit, he resigns for the seven-and-twentieth time if so-and-so, &c., so and-so being, in the present case, about the most insulting measure to a great people ever introduced by any leader of any party in a British Parliament. For once the Cabinet could keep a sect et—for once they contrived to steal a march upon the public and the Parlia ment, but neither was quite so somnolent as the Coalition imagined, and a more spirited opposition, more brilliant oratory, than this Foreign Enlistment Bill has elicited we never remember. The various speeches of Sir E. BULWER LYrrON, Mr. DISRAELI, Lord STANLEY, and Mr. WHITESIDE were worthy of our best days of `Parliamentary eloquence. But our object at this moment is only to protest against the perpetual threat of resignation as the whip whereby unwilling supporters are to be driven at the tail of their leaders. Let the public be easy in their minds—the Coalition don't go out so easily. We know Lord JOHN of old—so long as we remember anything of him he has been always on the eve of resigning, if this and that wasn't done, though ever sticking fast t U his place. Nay, more, when he was actuall beaten on his own Bill by Lord PALMERSroN and the Conservatives in February, 1852, he was so struck with amaze ment at the idea of having to resign, that for some moments he could not arrange what to say till Sir B. HALL, who has always had a taste for being in at the death of all Adminis• trations, finished the business by requesting to know if Lord JOHN was really out or not? This was an unkind cut, indeed, but then, to be sure, Sir BENJAMIN had been expecting office from the Whigs for nearly six years, and never had got anything, though always ready for everything. Even then Lord JOHN did not like to commit himself, but Sir BENJAMIN would Rot let him off, so poor Lord JOHN could only say that, To the virtues of his exalted station He added this one yet of—resignation. To whom is the threat addressed ? It is not to be supposed it can have much influence with a constitutional Opposition. Whatever effect it has, must be on the minds of men who have lived on certain shadowy hopes raised by Mr. HATTER, which they feel it likely enough (judging from sad past expe rience) he may not realise, but which his suc cessor will assuredly quickly disperse; and thus that active little gentleman, who seems, as a whipper-in, to have been, as the French would say, " nes expres pour ca," deludes his victims on till it suits Mr. Mantilini to poison himself for the eighth time. This trick, by its constant repetition, is an insult to the country to which it is addressed. For a Government, on the introduction of an important measure, to state, " This is a Cabinet question, a vital " measure, upon which we stake our existence " as an Administration; due notice of it has THE PRESS. " been given long since to the country ; we " believe it to be much required, and likely to " be eminently beneficial in its results to that " country ; and by it we will stand or fall, for " it will show the confidence, or otherwise, of " the country in us,"—this, we say, used to be the practice of former days—it is the fair and constitutional practice of all days, and it was the practice employed by Sir R. PEEL in 1846, and also the practice adopted by Lord DERBY'S Ad ministration in 1852, when the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER, having propounded his able financial schemes, announced that by them the Government were prepared to stand or fall. But by neither Sir R. PEEL nor Mr. DISRAELI was this scheme to entrap votes perpetually resorted to as we now see it. Each made use of it ONCE, on a vital, on the vital question of their respective Governments, and never otherwise, and in such case the question in regard to which the pledge was given was for days and even weeks before the country, which, therefore, had time to decide on the merits of the Administration, and to count the cost if it were displaced. But what is the course now pursued in this respect? One time it is, if a temporary bill is refused, " the Mi nistry will resign ;" then if that vote is not agreed to the same dire calamity is to befall the nation ; next time we hear if an autumnal session (a thing they could not think of, but they adopt for all that in the end) is insisted on by the Opposition, " the Ministry will consider it their duty to resign and now we are told for the fourth time, or thereabouts, within this year, that if a bill of the most insulting and obnoxious character to the nation at large is not forth with passed, we shall incur the awful mis fortune of losing the Mosaic-work Administra tion which it has pleased Lord ABERDEEN to confer on the country. If the Ministry are determined to go, better, far better, we say, with Mr. Kam, let them go, than let this Bill pass. " The Ministry say " they will resign if beaten on this bill," says Lieutenant-General Sir WILLIAM NAPIER in his admirable letter. "Be it so," he adds, and so do we, and strangely mistaken are we if beyond their own immediate clique and the Irish Brigade one murmur of regret for their fall would be heard in the length and breadth of this great empire. THE COURT OF PROPRIETORS EAST INDIA STOCK. OF THE attention of the country is at present so deeply fixed on the proceedings of Parliament that little notice is likely to be accorded to what, under any circumstances, has become so contemptible a farce as the recent meeting of the Quarterly Court of the Proprietors of East India Stock ; but it may not be impos sible to extract a moral suited to the present crisis from so unpromising a subject as this is. The Court of Proprietors, it is needless to say, is the Parliament of the East India Com pany. By the Proprietors the Directors are elected, and to the Proprietors they are by the constitution of their body responsible. Until the last Government of India Renewal Act the Proprietors had, when dissatisfied with the conduct of the Directors, the power of remov ing them, and they have still the power of criticising their conduct, and of passing such censures ou their proceedings, as if the power were ever exercised could hardly fail to have an important influence on the direction of Indian affairs. In ancient times this power was exercised ; but, not being men generally actuated by the highest motives, the indepen dence of the Proprietors was of short dura tion. The patronage in the hands of the Di rectors was freely used for the purpose of cor rupting the more active of them, and the apa thetic were content to acquiesce in a system of tacit connivance at all that was done, as long as their own pecuniary interests were untouched. The Directors thus originally no minated for four years only became, in fact, Directors for life, their re-elections assuming all the certainty of a re-election for a pocket borough ; while [the Proprietors sank into a state of complete political insignificance, from which they have never even attempted to emerge. With an active and efficient presi dent of the India Board at the other end of the governmental machine, this corrupt acqui escence in all the Directors' acts by the Court of Proprietors might, to be sure, be a matter of less importance than it is ; but with all con trol over the former, whether from above or below, virtually abandoned, there remains no thing but an irresponsible body, unlikely to pursue any good object, and whose faculties appear, in fact, absorbed in the business of making the most profitable use of their pool ' Lion, and turning it into a means of systematic nepotism, jobbery, and corruption. The question, then, for the public to consider is, whether it is fitting or desirable to have a re venue almost as large as the unmortgaged revenues of England, and an army almost equal to the whole disposable armies of Rus sia, any longer in the hands of a virtually irresponsible clique in Leadenhall street for such purposes as those, when in the hands of the Crown they might be made so largely to aid our necessities, both of men and money, for the prosecution of the present war. It does seem to us that, for the nation to allow the half of its legitimate war resources to be thus paralysed, and that for the gratifi cation of the basest personal ends, could be only equalled by the imbecility of the Emperor of Russia, if he should determine to carry on the war with only the men and revenues of Russia proper, ignoring altogether his recruits of various races and his subsidies from all those vast provinces which he and his prede cessors have been conquering, while we were making ourselves masters of British India. The sole arguments that have ever been used in favour of the double government, are the supposed peculiar acquaintance of the Directors with Indian affairs, and the diffi culty arising from giving the patronage of India to the Crown. But it would be absurd to suppose that there are not in England plenty of retired Indian officers and statesmen who would be happy to act as advisers to the President of the India Board, and who would bring an amount of practical knowledge of India to the Crown's service far exceeding that for the most part possessed by the Directors of the East India Company; while, as to patronage, the patronage of the Civil Service and of assistant-surgencies has now been cut off from the Directors, and the mili tary patronage might easily be bestowed with out Ministerial intervention, partly in prizes to our public schools and military colleges, and partly through the Horse Guards, as a reward to the sons of deserving officers, and especially of those—we fear a long list—who have sacrificed their lives for their country in the Crimea, but have left their unfortunate children destitute. Why bid these look for relief to the charity doled out by a Patriotic Fund, when there stands a rich and most ap propriate fund for their relief ready created to the hands of Parliament in the military patronage of India? The first use Lord ELLENBOROUOH made of his patronage when named President of the India Board was to give a cadetship to a lad whose father he had never seen, and who had nothing but his father's war services to recommend him. Why, then, should the Legislature hesitate to exercise the powers it possesses, and devote the patronage which it sees to be abused, but which it knows not how to dispose of, to the relief in a similar manner of those whose fathers have bled or died in the service of their country. HOSPITAL ARRANGEMENTS. THERE has lately appeared in the printsellers' win. dows an engraving entitled " Woman's Mission most of our readers are probably acquainted with the print to which we allude. The subject is that of a wounded soldier, lying upon a rough but comfortable bed, well covered with warm bedclothes, in a roomy chamber of the hospital, and tended by two of our lady nurses ; one kneeling at the bedside is bathing the poor sufferer's head, who looks towards her with eyes beaming with gratitude, while the other is busying herself about the room. The story is well told, the incident touching, and the effect impressive,