The Press. — London, England, 1857-08-15 00:00:00

THE PRESS, AUGUST 15, 1857. THE WEEK. Tnx intelligence from India is such as the good sense of the country very generally anticipated. Delhi has not fallen ; the sorties of the mutineers have been numerous, desperate, and repulsed with heavy loss on both sides. General BARNARD, though according to the accounts with 13,000 men, waits further reinforcements before he hazards an assault. As the Gallant General when he first arrived before Delhi had scarcely 4,000 men, and the capture of Delhi was then confidently predicted, we are now jplaced in this unpleasant dilemma,—either that Delhi is so much stronger and better defended than we ever anticipated that 13,000 men are considered insufficient to attempt so hazardous an undertaking, or that the return given of General BARNARD'S force is false. We are disposed altogether to doubt the return; and as further reinforcements to any extent cannot reach the Gallant General for some time, we can scarcely venture to antici pate the news of the fall of Delhi by the next mail, and if not by the next mail, from the peculiarities of climate, it is not easy to predict the precise month in which the city will be captured. For the rest the Ministerial papers assure us that " the worst" is over, that there aro no more regiments to mutiny, and that Bombay and Madras are sound. Now, is this attempt to lull the excitement in England either honest or politic ? Is there one single fact in the intel- ligence brought by this mail which convoys to us a sense of consola tion or of security? Tho mutiny has extended to eight fresh stations. Communication between Calcutta and the Upper Provinces is com pletely cut off. Madras is seriously unsettled, and the public feeling is Bombay is the reverse of perfect confidence in the native troops. The Rajah of BHITOOR has risen, and barbarously massacred 132 Europeans flying for their lives ; bands of marauders and brigands infest the whole of Bengal, and rob and plunder upon all sides. The revolt is general along the Saugor and Nerbudda districts. At Cawnpore GeneralWri EELER was shut up in barracks with a handful of men. Sir llaNity LAWRENCE at Lucknow was in a similar position. Far up at Peshawur the native regiments had been disarmed, and our situation was most precarious. Meanwhile, down in the south, at the important stations of Indore and Mhow, the rebellion was slowly but surely extending, and the Maho inedans everywhere preaching the extermination of the Feringhes. There is surely nothing here to afford us cause for self-gratulation. If we venture to underrate the vast dangers which continue to threaten our rule in India, the most fatal consequences will ensue to this country. The rebellion, we may rely upon it, is far from exhausted— it is not yet developed to its full extent; and, instead of depreciating our danger, or permitting ourselves to be betrayed into supineness, let us prepare boldly to meet it with our national fortitude, and, by per severance and firmness, endeavour to master it with effect and success, so as to transmit intact to our posterity the inheritance our ancestors so gloriously won. It is for want of common sense and foresight that this great calamity has occurred. Let us endeavour to repair the faults of the Government, and take good care that India is not, like Minorca seventy years since, lost for want of "four battalions." The force pro posed to subdue this gigantic rebellion of near 100,000 armed men, not centred in one spot, but spread over a vast country in detail, consists of a few scattered regiments in India, and of some 17,000 or 18,000 men from home who will be decimated by the climate before they can be brought into the field. This force is utterly inadequate to the occasion. From the statements of Ministers, they would seem to be balancing between a rebellion they ought to have foreseen, and the demands of a crisis they fail to appre hend. Their conduct throughout has been inconsistent, unintelligible, and impolitic. The country cannot too seriously reflect that in the con test in which we are now engaged is staked the existence of the British empire. It is a contest which must be prosecuted at every risk. If we fail we fall, and if greater and more vigorous exertions are not made to bring this disastrous war to a speedy and a successful termination, a perplexed Sovereign and an alarmed country no longer trusting to the guidance of men who in every single step of this critical contest have exhibited a tardiness of action and a vacillation of policy indicative of disaster, will seek for a loftier spirit and a firmer energy to extricate the empire from its complicated peril. The explanations her Majesty's Ministers have offered in both Houses in reparation of their recent conduct in the Danubian Prin• cipalities are marked in detail by a singular obscurity. Neither of the Noble Lords can understand how it is that the elections in Moldavia were permitted to be carried out illegally. It was all the electric telegraph, they say. We have not the least doubt of it. Between the telegraph and Mr. PHOTIADES we can readily understand how it was that tho patriotic VOGORIDES was enabled to put an original interpre tation upon the firman of his master the Sultan, and by the aid of Austria and England to carry out his own personal views in the elections. The document referred to by Lord PALMERSTON in expla nation of the firman, and prescribing freedom and regularity for the conduct of the elections, but which never reached the Kaimakan, was posted in Constantinople by Mr. PHOTIADES ill the Austrian post, and—missed its destination ! Mr. PHOTIADES, we may remark, is the bosom friend of the Baron PROKESCH and Lord STRATFORD. The truth is the British Government has made an immense mistake in identifying itself with VOGORIDES. A more able and temperate man would have kept within bounds, and have done the bidding of his superior with effect; but the brawling young Phanariot has broken through all decorum, has insulted the clergy, offended the old Boyards, and will be found to have ruined his own cause. Had the British Government acted as Sir H. BULWER desired, by avoiding all these disreputable intrigues against the Union—had they given the two parties fair play to fight out the question themselves—England would have now held a higher and more dignified position. As it is, we have been degraded before Europe, and every attempt to explain the matter places us only in a more contemptible light. For this wo have to thank Lord PAudEasrox, and we have no doubt the Noble Lord enjoys every gratification such a pleasant position must afford. It will hardly be credited by our readers that the Indian news which appeared in the daily papers of yesterday was at the time of its appearance unknown both in Downing street and at the India-house. The Bombay Times, the journal from which the intelligence was derived, is obtained at the cost of a few shillings extra twenty-four hours earlier by way of Trieste than by way of Marseilles. Private enterprise at once saw the advantage to be gained, and seized it. But the Govern ment, as usual, leaves all to routine, and is in deliberation on these momentous matters some hours after all the Queen's subjects have read and digested the news. The death of the law Right Honourable Jouw WILSON CRoxEa has come without surprise. For the last few years Mr. CROKER laboured under a singular complication of bodily infirmities, and it was a wonder he lived so long. Born at Galway in 1780, Mr. CROKFIR early came before the public, and in activity of work' he was second to none amongst the literary men of his generation. About the value of his writings, and upon the estimate of his character, opinions (even amongst Conservatives) are various and opposite, and it would be ex tremely difficult, in the presence of his unburied remains, to offer a strict examination of Mr. CROKER'S stormy literary career. To use a favourite illustration of his own, Mr. CROKER was "the foul weather Jack" of periodical literature. He was bitter and boisterous in his galling derision of an adversary; rapid and unceremonious in attack, if a rejoinder were offered he always showed a determination to have the last word. He was more of a pamphleteer than of a public censor —more of a reviewer than of a critic or essayist—and more of a debater than an orator. There was a certain malign asperity of mind and fierce propensity to energetic disparagement of individuals in Mr. GROWER which raised him a swarm of enemies. He left upon numbers the impression that ho was one of the pamphleteers of the eighteenth century who came into the world fifty years too late. He had a vast stock of personal and defamatory gossip, more or less authentic ; ho had a prodigious command of damaging personal allusions ; he had an innate propensity to sarcasm, accompanied with literary finish in forging his truculent discharges ; he had fluent lips, a mordant tongue, and a front of brass. To " put him down" was out of the question ; he existed in being attacked ; he liked having a public quarrel on his hands; and he had justifiable confidence in his unfailing stock of vituperation, and corrosive virulence of reply. In literature his best performance was an admirably penned " Sketch of Ireland—Past and Present—(lBoB)," which was acute and clear in thinking, and curiously neat in its elaborate imitation of Tames. But we think his highest and worthiest mental efforts were in the debate on the Reform Bill in 1831 and 1832, when, after many years of comparative Parliamentary inactivity, he shone forth a brilliant debater, eloquent in statement, and ready in reply. It can be said with truth that neither his political friends nor foes anticipated the extent of Mr. CROKER 'S Parliamentary resources until he appeared in Opposition. During his long tenure of the Secretaryship of the Admiralty he had been looked upon as only one of the subalterns of the old Tory party, and as not being well fitted for playing a leading part in the House of Com mons. The question on which he had been used to speak in early years was " Catholic Emancipation," and it was said (we cannot say with what accuracy) that the Chief of the Tory party did not wish that Mr. GROWER should put himself forward too much in debate. In those times etiquette was stricter than now about official subordinates not often appearing "on their legs." Mr. CROKER was never a popular man at any time in his connection. He was too habitually censorious, and he did not comport himself with sufficient respect towards his rivals, or his allies. His conception of a critic was that of a literary lictor. Authors of the opposite party, occasionally of the weaker sex, were tied up by him ; and Mr. CROKER was never happier than when (figuratively) he broke his bundle of rods on the blistered backs of his tortured victims. He, himself, seemed callous to ridicule and reproof. If he was knocked down in argument, he got up again with the temperament of an Irishman at a fair, who thinks that bumps and blows aro only compliments to be returned. We fear that in "criticism " (as the literary pamphleteering of the quarterly organs was called) Mr. CROKER gave more needless pain to individuals than any reviewer that could be named. If ho had the pleasure, he had also the pains of a controversialist. As a political writer he was surpassed by some of his contem poraries. His style had a fatal mannerism, which was happily ridi culed in the remark that " his articles seemed drawn up from the " briefs of an Old Bailey attorney." On the " French Revolution' Mr. CROKER set up for being especially strong, but his mockery of the supposition that a Napoleon dynasty could ever stand, or be accepted 796