The Press. — London, England, 1853-11-05 00:00:00

WPM PO 'WC — --; W. plkdr•• • • . -- 50 -i• . -,.... .--• • 4, - C ,A , ~ 4a . . . . #e - - " 0 ----. •0 € - e. - , t ,4i . _ 1 LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1853. PRICE SIXPENCE. No. 27.—VoL. I. tilt rtss. LONDON. BAT URDAY, Xol'E3f DER 5, 1853. We are not required to announce, with ineerti tude and trepidation, that hostilities have com menced simultaneously in two quarters of the globe. As we have never shrunk from acknow ledging war to be war from the moment of its commencement by the passage of the Pruth, to convince us of its reality we have no occasion to be listening for the roar of hostile cannon from the banks of the Danube. To whatever destiny OMER PACHA has been " impelled, " as the phrase is—and whether the intervening river has been crossed by 5,000 or 50,000 Ottoman soldiers—we can de scribe it but as (mother incident in the cam paign. The beleaguered garrison of one of the gates of Europe, mistrusting the issue of a parley which has lasted from Midsummer to November, and which leaves the enemy in possession of the approaches they occupied at its commencement, have made a sortie, and, like the phlegmatic schemer who has affected meanwhile to negotiate in their behalf, have trusted a part of the desired result to fortune. We can await the consequences with a con sciousness that they are but the proem of an Iliad which will be written hereafter, and of which tae commencement thus depends on suspected courage, competence, and good faith. Other generations and other " Great Powers " may assist at its conclusion which is beyond the reach of conjecture. We only can scan within permitted limits the disgrace which attends and the mystery which shrouds, its origin. What, indeed, is our certainty of any fact at any stage of these portentous transactions? Omitting retrospect, what do we know at this moment of the relative chances of the immediate combatants ? Has Prince Gown- CHAXOYv less than 50,000 or more than 150,000 troops in the invaded provinces ? Is the army of OVER PACHA H. disciplined host or a unco hering herd ? Are the Russians wasting with cholera and typhus, and yet is it rash in the PACHA to attack them? Is it their object to gain time, for the army of °matt to melt away as their own increases, and yet is it folly in him to prevent its attainment ? What is the truth of these conflicting representations, and why do we hear two voices in the explanations of the Cabinet? If the Cabinet are not agreed as to existing facts, we may feel less surprise at the failure of their vatieinations. On Tuesday morning the leading Ministerial organ proclaimed the collision of the two armies "an unlikely result." On Tuesday afternoon its Ministerial associate announced the passage of the Danube at IKalafat. "We believe," said the Times, emphatically, that this day, instead of wit- " nessing the commencement of a struggle " full of perils, will find negotiations approach " iug to a successful close. Two days late' it admitted to the public that " the negotia " dons for peace had been ruddy interrupted "by operations of war." A day later we were told that these interruptions were gone rally disregarded. Thus the conjurors of the Cabinet dispose of events and play alternately upon our hopes or apprehensions. The conditional armistice agreed on at, Con stantinople on the 21st should have been known to OMER PAcHA on the 27th, when the passage of the Danube is stated to have taken place. Are the accredited organs able and willing to inform us whether this movement of 011101 DACHA was matte in ignorance or iu open defiance of communications from the Porte ? If, as is hinted, he acted in trans gression of orders, was the net voluntary or involuntary, a concession to his soldiers, or an independent impulse ? If voluntary, what is the meaning of a mysterious hint that there is no " insincerity on the part of the Turkish Government" ! Is there insincerity elsewhere? May we expect a second Gxoaoxy, or a second Varna, and will complicity obtain its end by ONIER's victory or defeat? Is a victor yto be submitted to as an opportune excuse that the Czar cannot recede with disgrace to his arms, coupled with the dishonour to which ho is in vited by negotiations ? These suspicions are not ours, nor do we endorse them. We have heard them else- where, and their floating existence adds to the vague impression that this Russian ques tion, to the extent to which it is opened already, presents unsounded depths in which Ministers are apprehensively seeking a safe footing, but, failing toolitain it, are too wary to give the public the assurance which *t all events they profess to have in private. If, indeed, they do not themselves share the un certainty they communicate, the contradictory representations of their organs are a fraud, of which, on the other hand, the Ministers are absolved if their dubious communications cor respond with their doubts, and are only an exact transcript of their perplexities. It is a natural incident of this labyrinth that it should conduct us again and again to a point we have rested at before. In this Euro pear antagonism England is hampered by a Cabinet of compromise, and she vacillates at every step. In physical resources the Czar may be our inferior, but, though he points so many homilies, he has the advantage in moral efficiency. An inherited plan, and the combined purpose of generations, more than his strong will and the concurrence of his subjects, stIM• thin him against a Cabinet which could wield greater powers, but which, from the nature of its constitution, is condemned to a palsied action. If the evil genius of England had been eharged to select a Minister to debilitate still further even this weakness, and inerease the odds against his country, she could not have improved upon Lord ABERDVEN as Premier. His antecedents and intrigues have been spoken of elsewhere; but, apart from his Kremlin sympathies, he has a less obtrusive Oahu to preside at the obse►luies of his Country's honour and historical greatness. An ex-President of the Anti►luaries, superannuated even by that society of ancient virtuosos, be cause he was too lethargic for their grave and gentle parties, he is pitted agaiust the vigour of that. North Eastern barbarism which has been from the remotest ages the scourge and terror of civilisation. Can we wonder that in his hands the balance trembles, and that to-day we have no sure and safe augury of the morrow ? ELECTORAL REFORM. WE do not conceive that it can be necessary in discussing the various plans put forward, for the amendment of the English franchise, to resume our criticism of that shadowy scheme whereby " education," in the abstract, was to be represented in the House of Com mons by the substantial presence of not less than ninety members. Suffice it to say of that project that it frames an electoral body supposed to possess something like a monopoly of enlightenment which, in all human probabi lity, would exclude three times as much talent as it let in. To the quack doctor—to the half crazed and wholly ignorant field preacher—to the raw youth from college, whom dire neces ' sity and the exertions of his " coach " have barely saved front plucking—to the priest, whose whole life is professedly a renunciation of private thought and independent action—it says, " You are of the enlightened : enter freely; exercise the right of suffrage, for which you, comparatively so few, have been chosen out from the whole people of this country." But the artist, though gifted with talents which make his reputation familiar, not only to England, but to Europe—whose name is proverbial for skill in one of the most. refined and humanising of professions—whose works, cheaply reproduced, are to be found In the cottage as well as the palace—is not ad mitted to this select body. The author who, like many of those most distinguished in the present day, has not gone through the routine of a university education, but whose publica tions command a sale, in the Old and the New World, not of thousands, but of hundreds of thousands, finds here no place. The editor and reviewer, whose office of public instructor is now recognised, not by the people alone, but by Courts and Cabinet's, has no part in this exclusive oligarchy of intellectual preten sions. These objections are obvious : others might be added of a more indirect and inferen tial nature, but founded, as it seems to us, on grounds of reason equally strong. Knowledge, of all tangible or intangible things, is that which least requires adventitious aid to de velop it into power. It can make its own way. In the majority of instances where it exists it confers on its possessor the material means whereby to become possessed of the franchise, even were that franchise much more restricted than it is. Of course there must be exceptions. Doubtless there are learned and wise men living in England who, I , v peculiar combination of cireumatnt res, ar o ranked among non-"lectern. But tise same may be said in regard of wealth. No one corn plains, so far as we know, that property, eve.