The Press. — London, England, 1858-01-23 00:00:00

w. 74 ment have been utterly disproportioned to the magnitude of the crisis they had to meet. They have been trifling with a rebellion which they ought to have seen in the first instance to be one that would require all the exertions of England to crush. They have spent month after month in conflict with the mutineers, when they ought to have seat lbrth thole armies with the, utmost rapidity, and in such masses as no force of rebels eoltid have Ten. tured to face. Instead of the few regiments Sir Court has with him, composed of dribblets arriving weary and footsore, in numbers not enough hardly to fill the gaps that disease and the bullet make, he ought to have, at least, 40,000 Europeans in his camp, and even that number would be rather under than over the mark. Instead of cavalry without horses, and artillery with a parcel of brutes to drag the guns that in other days committees would have rejected with contempt, he ought to be supplied with the best horses sufficient for every arm, and there should be a remount at Calcutta large enough to replace on the instant all that are disabled and killed. Seasoned harness he cannot of course expect ; but with a proper field establishment there would soon be found a remedy for the chafing which is rendering his few artillery* horses almost useless now. Then, too, his means of transport ought to be abundant ; for it is futile to send an army into the field without the amplest means of moving on any point which the general commanding may think it advisable to attack or to defend. It would not be more absurd to mount a regi ment of cavalry on foundered horses, than it is to send a general to subdue a country without the fullest means of changing his position as strategy may direct. If, then, t ngland is determined to crush this rebellion, it had better set itself in earnest to the task. It .is neither saying men nor money by the delay ; on the contrary, the longer the rebellion lasts the more men and the more money its suppression will cost. This, if the country would have but listened to the Conservative Leaders, it might have known long ago. However, it is of no use talking now of what it might have done, for it more concerns it to know what it now must do. More men, then, must be sent to India; battalion after battalion must go there, until Sir CoLIN shall have at his disposal a force at least double that which the highest estimate of the existing number of European troops in Bengal or en route there gives. And a flow of recruits must be kept up sufficient to replace every casualty that war can make. Horses must be supplied in abundance, and means of transport, no matter whence they are obtained or what they cost. The nation is in the midst of a great war—the most dangerous, if not the greatest, in which she has for centuries been engaged—and she must come out of it with honour if she is to come out of it at all. It is idle to discuss the question of where the money is to be raised ; it must be raised, and it must be expended by millions if the war is to be carried on with effeet. The country cannot allow the army to languish for want of means while the men respectively responsible for the misgovernment of India are disputing who is to have the patronage and who is to blame for the past. England's honour is at stake on the issue, as Lord ELLINBOROUGH long since told the public, and its existence too. Either the rebellion must be subdued, and subdued effec tually, or our place among the Powers of Europe will be lost. The tranquillity of India must at all hazards be reconquered, and there will be the greatest hazard if it be not recon quered soon. We have made what the Govern ment calls great efforts, but we must make infinitely greater if they are to have any real result. We have spent much money, but we must spend millions more if we would achieve success. Every day the rebellion remains unsubdued the more difficult it will be to subdue and it only can be subdued effec tually by the Cabinet's casting off the dis• guises and concealments which it has hitherto adopted to divert the wrath of the public from itself. It must admit fully and frankly the monstrous difficulty in which its errors have involved us, and proceed to do all it can do at this, the eleventh hour, to remedy them, even though the issue he the total loss of popularity and place. The Whigs are ever prating of THE PRESS, JANUARY 23, 1858. patriotism and the self-sacrifices it involves ; are they ready to prove by their acts their belief in the doctrines they so sedulously put forth? We anapeet, for our own parts, that they will end es they began, and that if India le to be saved it will not be by their hands.hande to whjob the country owes all the dishonour 11 has been subjected to, all tho pangs has mitered, and all the losses it h* d eplered• ELECTORAL FAOTS ON THE BALANCE OF PARTY. Is reference to the recant disturbances of the earth at Naples, philosophical authority has lamented that there " no progress has been " made in the treatment of earthquakes." In English convulsions, and in social movements heralding dangerous events, it is otherwise. Experience has destroyed the illusions created by the announcement of vast changes, and hope and fear have to a great extent ceased to act wits the,energy of former periods on the larger portions of our English community. No one can deny that the whole question of " Re. form" is thought about and studied with a scientific calmness that it would be vain to have expected in the early years of the reign of Wittistt IV. Continental Europe was then in a universal ferment. France had the ricketty throne of the barricades, and Onus tea like those at the funeral of General La MARQUIC were almost quarterly events at Paris. Belgium had been divorced from Holland, Poland was again struggling for a national existence, and the South of Europe was involved in even more excitements than in our days. In such times it was not wonderful that a Reform Bill for England, and the agitation attendant there upon, partook mast seriously of the nature of a great revolution, with all its dangerous symptoms and serious consequences to the public+ peace. As the times in which we live are entirely different from those days, so the prospect of a new Reform Bill is attended with only mode rate anxiety. Twenty Sears since the Whig party invoked the aid of the masses, but it is plain that the same party now, while using a democratic cry with an artful hypocrisy, has really a constitutional dread of a thoroughly popular system. The difficulty of the Govern ment is to produce a Reform Bill which will not virtually abolish the Whig party, with its political oligarchy, its interlacing of cousin hoods, and its possessions of family boroughs like Caine, Peterborough, Tavistock, and many other places. How the Cabinet will deal with that difficulty is a subject of no small curiosity to Parliamentary politicians. It has been affirmed that the whole question of Parliamentary Reform attracts attention only in Parliamentary quarters. To a great extent that opinion is true, but it certainly does obtain the most serious attention of many reflecting members of the House of Commons. It is felt that what we have called the "balance of party" is seriously in volved in the consideration of this question, and Conservatives well know that in the poli tical adjustment of that balance they have been most unfairly treated. It will be well not to lose sight of how the balance has been made to bear against them. If we are to judge by the pamphlets and dissertations that have already appeared in relation to the new Reform Bill, there is danger lest that portion of the public which feels an interest in this question should be misled into pedantic dis cussions and antiquarian arguments. We must not on any account lose sight of the practical issues which should be familiarised to our political eyes. There has been much irrelevant learning employed on the questions incident to the ancient constitutional right of the franchise, and ultra-democratic theorists have disinterred old authorities to make a case of legality and quasi-precedent for an immensely extended suffrage. But we are living in times when so many great social changes have occurred, that the technically legal rights of former periods would not be accepted by the Legislature as proofs for the expediency of conferring political power in our times. Our Parliamentary system, with .ionary peculiar elaborate busi than Whigs com pecu- of cau years. first Lord O LARENDo s proves, in hie immortal history, that the two parties virtually existed in the Long Parliament. The question, in our times, about any new Reform Bill, or method of " regulating the " laws relating to the franchise," will turn very much on social and practical considerations. The English public does not wish to be plunged into a great political revolution, and it will jealously scrutinise any new scheme of Reform, and see how it would be likely to assimilate with our existing Parliamentary system. It will be necessary that some great leading facts about the electoral system as it now stands should be thoroughly familiarised to the public mind, because in the diffusion of such knowledge lies the best security against any dextrous legerdemain which may be attempted by the present Cabinet. 1. The broad features of our electoral system, as it now stands, may be stated thus: In England the county representation has 144 members, representing 472,700 electors; and the boroughs (reckoning the 4 seats that belonged to St. Alban's and Sudbury) have 321 members, representing 399,200 electors. In Wales the counties have lb members to 38,400 electors, and the Welsh boroughs have 14 members to 11,800 electors. That is to say, England and Wales together have 159 county members to 509,100 electors, and 335 borough members to 411,000 electors. 2. In Scotland the counties have 30 repre sentatives to 50,800 electors, and the boroughs have 23 members to 81,000 electors. 3. In Ireland the counties have 64 members to 126,200 electors, and the boroughs have 41 members to 30,000 electors. 4. The total population of the counties of the United Empire is 18,095,000, and for the boroughs 9,897,000 persons, according to the census of 1851. So that the electoral system of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland rests upon . this basis :—The counties of the empire have 253 members to 686,200 electors, and the towns and boroughs have 399 members to 522 electors. In order to attain the number of 658 members for the House of Commons it , will be necessary to add the 4 members for Oxford and Cambridge Universities and the 2 members for the University of Dublin. We have carefully examined the foregoing figures, and they seem to us perfectly correct. They have been compiled by that accomplished statistician, Mr. IsIKWKAaOII, from various Par liamentary documents, and the materials on which he has based all his calculations (which have no relation to " party ") are taken from authentic sources. But figures of arithmetic, no more than figures of rhetoric, cannot absolutely govern political conclusions. It requires au expe rienced eye to detect the inferences from rows of statistical calculations, and some of our readers will ask how the figures above may be interpreted and understood. Without at present drawing any ultimate conclusions from the foregoing statement of the electoral proportions of the empire, we must ask them to observe closely some of its most striking features. Let them remark the great disproportions which at present exist between the number of representatives allotted to our English counties as contrasted with the number given to the boroughs. These latter have 321 members, and only 144 members (far less than half) are given to our English counties, although the electors in the counties are 472,000 against 399,200 in the boroughs; and furtherm.me, our English county mem bers represent an aggregate population of 9,769,000, while our English borough members represent a population of 7,147,000. This die. its intricate arrangements, its traditions methods, its organised parties, its pectin routine for buemees, sad all its most elabori machinery fur the des pa tch of public bu fleas, Ia s far more modern institution tb arc o f 'cal poligskans : yould admit. Whi i and To t , with tow *pure of truths c o mod to h peril an Of prejudices pec liar h, with. conflicting views poll , and their eveluped habits, c ii t r scarce be traced beyond two hundred yea Their names as such were heard for the fi time in the days of CHARLES IL, but Lc 4