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

1210 resource that can be suggested. This plea will not bear the light. Even the vigour of a Newcastle must know some limit. Should there be a rush of foreign recruits to our standard, the recruiting among our own population must slaoken, for we are told that already recruits come in faster than they can be drilled, and if barrack-room cannot be found for our Militia, how can it be provided for these mercenaries? Whatever heir IN*? ber, it will not, as represented, be an addition to our total force, but a substitution of foreign for British troops. MONK LEWIS wrote his ballad of the " Cloud King," to teach young ladies the value of grammatical accuracy in expression. When the fiend has the damsel in his power, he swears to grant any two requests she may make,—" Let me see here the truest of lovers, " she cries, and her faithful page is at her feet. " Now show me a truer than he," she exclaims, and the baffled fiend flies off with a clap of thunder. The War Office has more recruits than it can drill, and the Ministers say, let us enlist foreign recruits that wo may drill them too. The introduction of the bill has revealed the full extent of Ministerial mismanagement. The army, says the Secretary-at-War, is 20,000 men short of the complement voted by Parlia ment last session ! The admission is astound ing. We have now, while maintaining the invasion of a mighty empire, twenty thou sand men less than Parliament last session, when the war had hardly commenced, before a blow had been struck, authorised the Go vernment to raise. As the result of the defi ciency, when Lord RAGLAN urgently demanded reinforcements lads of eighteen were sent him, unfit for the service they had to perform. When pressed ou any point connected with the war, the Ministers are compelled to admit error or mistake. "We were wrong, I admit," Mr. HERBERT exclaims, as if absolution must, ilffi a matter of course, follow confession,—" We were wrong to send out these boys as rein forcements." If asked why he did not, by fad.ucing the standard, advancing the age, and ggereasiug the bounty, secure more serviceable *pops, he replies—" We have reduced the iiustandard, we have advanced the age , we have increased the bounty ;" but he forgets jp add that he has only done so quite recently, and that, as a result, the number of recruits 'has increased sevenfold. The fact is beyond dispute that, while our army was 20,000 men or more below the number sanctioned by Par liament, and Lel° iv the number the country supposed, the Ministry made no adequate effort to recruit it. In the actual circum stances this neglect was more than an error, it was a crime. By embodying the Militia they might have obtained this number at once ; and now, to cover their culpable neglect, they bring in a Foreign Enlistment Bill, and make out a case for its necessity by the appalling mortality which has occurred among the lads of eighteen, whom in their panic, when the cry for reinforcements was raised, they hurried off to Balaklava. The country does not want men more than it wants money, or arms, or stores, but it wants a Government able to draw forth and manage its resources. The effect of this bill must, in any case, be mischievous. If it sue ceeds, these foreign troops must, from the necessity of the case—from their requirements of lodging, of pay, of transport, of supplies of every kind—be a subtraction from the British force which could otherwise be maintained ; and, if it fails, time and effort will be lost, and we shall humiliate ourselves in the eyes cf Europe by the express and public declare tion, through our Government, that our power of recruiting our army from our own popula tion is at an end, that we have more wealth than courage, and that wo freely open our coffers to purchase mercenary aid, but solicit it in vain. THE MILITIA. ATTENTION has not yet been suff►ciently directed to the extraordinary and unexplained delay which has taken place in the organisation of the Mlitia. With this force great things *night have been done. England and Wales have 80,000 militiamen, all more or less in- THE PRESS. strueted in the use of arms. Scotland is about to raise, and might long ago have raised, 10,000, 4nd leelaud might have been called on at 114 earlier period for her present qttnta 4 30,0110 men. The whole of this forte of MAO melt might have been embodied at the present suoment had the Government taken in tints the necessary steps, and we should then KU. had a magnificent army of reserve, sufficient to supply any number of men for the exigencies of the war. A reserve force ought to have been called out when the Eastern expedition was being organised in February last, and should on no account have been delayed beyond the decla ration of war in March. Yet April was allowed to pass without anything being done, and it was not until the 3rd of May that the first step was taken by the introduction of the Uilitia Bill. The passing of that bill gave Government the power of embodying the whole of the English and Welsh regiments, but in stead of calling out a large force, they declared their intention of embodying only 15,000. Had these 15,000 been called on at once and brought into a high state of discipline, some thing material would have been effected, and it would have been easy in the autumn to call out other regiments. But the embodiment proceeded very slowly. Three or four corps were embodied in May, a similar number in June, a like number in July, and some more in August; and it was not until the end of August or the beginning of September that eighteen regiments had been put on perma nent duty. The average strength of these regiments was about 750 men, so that the whole of the embodied force up to last month was only 13,500 men. The effect has been to prevent the enlist ment of a large body of trained soldiers into the line. It is found by experience that the regiments that have been longest embodied volunteer the most freely, and it is evident that their men are worth far more than those of more recently raised regiments. All the corps that were embodied in the spring have given their full quota of one-fourth of their numbers to regiments on active service. But one fourth of 13,500 is only 3,375, and this is the utmost number of volunteers that have been furnished at this crisis by the embodied Militia. Had the whole Militia of England and Wales been embodied we could have pro cured 20,000 volunteers, and had the whole Militia of the United Kingdom been embodied we might have obtained 30,000. In recent debates the Government have excused the smallness of the force sent to the East, by alleging the difficulty of procuring I men. 'the army, they say, was on a peace establishment. Recruits came in slowly during the summer months. We had not the men to send, and we could not obtain them more rapidly than we did. But these are idle excuses. The machinery for obtaining the best sort of recruits was in existence, but they would not make use of it. They were frightened by the expense. They thought a few regiments sufficient to guard Portsmouth and Dublin ; and forgot the necessity for a large army of reserve, to supply soldiers for the reduction of Sebastopol. Let no one say that the embodiment of the Militia was a thing of little importance. Its immediate im portance was small, but its ultimate importance was very great. Its neglect during so many months will exercise a material and most pernicious influence over the present cam paign. The Government have at last acknow ledged their error, and called up a large number of regiments, but scarcely so many as the urgency of the case requires, and even this tardy measure will for man, purposes be too late. In the forcible speech of Mr. WHITESIDE on Wednesday, he addressed himself particularly to the case of the Irish Militia. It was not until the 11th of August (though war had then been declared nearly rive months) that the Ministry introduced the Militia Bill for Ire land. Then there ras a long period of delay before the number of men to be raised by each county was fixed; and now, though directions have been issued to enrol, none have been given to embody, and the peasantry are reluc• taut to give in their names and incur the risk N SATURDAY, of discharge by their employers until they can be actually taken into the service and pay of the Government, so that the measure is to a great extent practically inoperative. It was in Ireland, No pay—no Militia," said Mr. WI ITSBIDIL Yot in the face of such incon testible evidences of neglect, the Ministers virtually declare Out they can procure no efficient recruits tit home, and that men are not to be found in the country to sustain the character of our arms. OFFICERS ABROAD AND OFFICIALS AT HOME. " These brave men perished from the neglect, in " competency, and indecision of an English " _Ministry." Such is the epitaph which, according to the eloquent member for Enniskillen, should be placed over the tombs of our starved and neglected soldiers in the Crimea. When he spoke those words their truth was painfully evident to several Honourable Members on both aides of the House, who loudly and vehe mently cheered them ; for many of the Com mons had by them letters from relatives still living (and some no more) with abundant evidence to justify Mr. WHITESIDE'S language. Strangely enough, the columns of a leading organ which gave a full report of Mr. Wein sines vigorous speech supplied also abundant facts to substantiate his accusations. Nor in this instance does the evidence come fromjournalists or" Our own Correspondents." The letters published from several officers on Thursday communicate a fresh stock of facts upon the miserable incapacity of our War Del,artment. Look how the case stands with respect to the ordinary clothing of the troops. We are not now alluding to winter clothing, but to the uniform usually worn by our soldiers. One of these officers, after giving a graphic picture of the dreadful sufferings of the men for hours in the trenches, describes their ragged con dition—" several of them with no soles to their " shoes—no socks—no shirts." Now, no country in the world can so rapidly supply clothes as England. The Duke of NEWCASTLE knew that the men were going on hard service, and an extensive extra stock of actual necessaries should have been prepared. But there was not the least prescience in the preparations of his Grace, though from the army being sta tionary at Balaklava, necessaries might, as Mr. DRCUOND observed, have been conveyed from ports in England to a port in the Crimea, as systematically us goods could be passed from one side of the House to another. No wonder that we read of how " impossible " it would be to recognise the careworn. ha/f -" starred skeletons," which left England only two months since; and we must observe, that what the officers have written respecting the " half starved " troops was previously advanced by the literary correspondents of our contempo raries. " With a scarcity of wood," the men . are told that " they may hut themse lves." Cholera and diarrhoea, more deadly than any Russian attack, strike down our countrymen by hundreds. We shall not horrify our readers with a minute description of what our troops have to endure. Mr. CoBDEN upon that point spoke the simple truth on Wednesday, when he said, " Our countrymen are rotting in the "Crimea in a state of unparalleled misery ! Let one fact describe, not only the horrors to our men, but the injury to the State, re sulting from the Duke of NEWCASTLE being the Ministerial manager of the war. Again, we appeal, not to " correspondents," but to British officers :—" The 48th Regiment (at the " time of writing) have lost ninety men, and the " 62nd seventy men." And these troops left us only a few weeks ago. The regiments despatched from Malta to the Crimea were actually sent without their winter clothing. But this is not the worst part of the case, as told by these officers, against the Ministry :. They write :—" Thelerench are getting on better. And here, again, they are corroborated by th manager of the " Sick and Wounded Fund;' who, in the same paper, occupies a column miwvad lift