The Press. — London, England, 1855-10-27 00:00:00

OCTOBER 27, 1855. LORD ELLESMERE ON THE WAR. IaRD ELLESMERE delivered a lengthened lecture on t re war at the Literary Institution of WORSLEY, near Manchester, on Monday last,. It was attended by several of the noble earl's own family, and by many of the influential residents in the neighbourhood. For the benefit ot the institution, Is. each was charged far admission. The noble earl commenced by Binding to the attention he had paid to the subject, sad then passed on to the war in its origin:— I must, however, to some extent touch upon the political question in respect to the origin of the war, and express ply belief that there never was a wur more essentially national. There have been many i ware in this bad world of ours which have depended ou the will of kings, of individual statesmen, or perhaps kings' favourites and kings' mistresses. The time has been when a woman of b id character at Versailles could set the world in arms by i itrigues with the Ministers of the Crown ; and I have lived in times myself when a man, by the vast power that he had attained by the lustre of his former achievements and his great talents, could, contrary to the advice of all who surrounded him, contrary to the advice of his most faithful and wore competent counsellors, launch the whole power of France and half the rest of Europe in an enter prise which proved the destruction of that power. I am eluding to Napoleon's former enterprise against Russia, undertaken at the individual will of Napoleon, after all his best advisers had counselled him against it. Now this has been, in my opinion, emphatically a war of the people. Next he glanced at the reasons which had rendered the war so popular : It is very usual when people are unanimous in favour of great sacrifices and great struggles that they should be influenced either by fear or by revenge. By the expression " fear," I mean the anticipation of urgent and great danger if they do not themselves strike a blow that shall prevent the necessity of a more serious war hereafter. By " re venge," I mean retaliation for former insults and former injuries. Now, certainly neither of these influences had any great effect in bringing about the present struggle. The oldest inhabitant of this country could not recollect any great or flagrant injury received from Russia, and I think there was no fear of immediate or urgent danger from Russia to any of us. lam old enough to remember a time, soon after I was born, when, in 1803, Bonaparte WAS daily expected to arrive in this country, and invade on. coasts. There was then—l won't say fear, because we prepared to meet him with 500,000 bayonets—but there wis an apprehension of immediate peril which roused the whole country to arms, and I believe the nursery-maids, with whom I was then in near connection at the time, ex. pected Bonaparte and his staff some day to walk up three pairs of stairs into the nursery. (Cheers and laughter.) That has not been the case with this war. I believe in the early stages of the present war, if you had polled the town of Manchester, for instance, the artisans to a man would have been in favour of its maintenance, but they did not e cpect, certainly, any immediate appearance of the Cossacks in this neighbourhood. (Laughter.) Now, what is the mason of all this? In my opinion, it is a war partly of sentiment and partly of instinct of future danger; and I believe that sentiment is a sound one, and that instinct a wise one. He dwelt on this view at some length, and stated that this war would probably have broken out forty years ago, at the Congress of Vienna, but for the sudden return of Napoleon One of the most daring, dexterous, and rapid instances of diplomacy on record was th , t between Castlereagh, on his own authority, Prince Ta leyrand, and Prince Met ternich—between England, Fr ,nce, and Austria—against the power and designs of upon Poland, and, pro bably, upon Constantinople, which was interrupted by the return► of Bonaparte from Elba; and it is curious that Bonaparte found the record of it in the Foreign-office on his return, and his first endeavour to break Russia away from us was by making her acquainted with it. Russia, however, did not break off the alliance, but the Emperor retained his original enmity against Lord Castle reagh. Discriminating between the principle on which the war was undertaken, and the manner in which it was commenced, he approved the one, but condemned the other : I think we acted with deliberation and wisdom in enter ing upon the war, but I am bound to say that we entered upon it with considerable ignorance, some levity, and more b muffing than the circumstances altogether justified. Men, b )th in high and low places, talked of " a short and deoi ve war." Now, I think that those who anticipated a short and decisive struggle with Russia must have blinded themselves to very many features of the relative position of the Western powers and Russia. I think they were rerfectly right in not being alarmed by the numbers of the. Russian army as stated on paper. . . • • . think we were right in supposing Russia altogether weak for purposes of distant aggression; but I think we overlooked her notorious power of prolonging a strictly ditensive war, and the advantage she derives from her un smiailability, from the difficulty of striking a blow at the Inart—the difficulty experienced by Charles XII. and Napoleon, who made the greatest attempts to do so. He noticed the numerous fortresses erected by Russia in different parts of the world, but drew a distinction between the pacific nature of the Russian people, and the warlike character of the Russian Government : Russia Proper is not a warlike nation, and the Russians themselves hate not the turn for war. I am not now ■ )eaking of the Cossacks and Tartars—people who live on korsebeek, and may be included in her dominiatie; but THE PRESS. the inhabitants of the solid empire of Russia are very averse to military service, and 1 think, if left to them selves, by their own consent the Emperor would not gain a single military volunteer among them, if the system of enlistment were the same as in England. But a nation to be military need not be warlike in its own native ten dencies. If you were to ask me which wax the most war like nation in the world, I should say the United States of America. They have many thousand mike of frontier, and they have next to no army at all ; hut they have a large population, accustomed to the use of arms, and ready to volunteer in any military expedition ; and when the invasion of Mexico was projected—which was rather a buccaneering sort of an expedition—they advertised for men, and an army of 20.0(K) was forthcoming in a fort night. That is what I call a warlike nation. But if you advertised in Russia you would find no such eagerness ; the population there are pressed into the service, put in chains if necessary, made soldiers of, and in the course of two years' drilling they become the soldiers we have had to deal with at Sebastopol—very serious foes to encounter, obedient and docile to their officers, endowed with great passive courage, and ready to din at any time at the post which is assigned to them. The noble earl then noticed the chief features of the war—eulogised the gallantry of our troops and the devotion of our officers, deprecated the attacks which had been made on our commanders, and paid a high tribute to the merits of Lord Raglan, whose unpre tending habits led careless observers to suppose that he was less active than he was in reality. In " taking stock," he estimated the loss of the Russians at 300,000 men, and noticed the recent successes at the mouth of the Dnieper. In conclusion, he thought peace was not practicable at present:— The position of the Russian army I am unable to esti mate, but R must be one of serious peril ; but I should de ceive you if I said I believed that at present the losses of Russia are sufficient to induce her to accede to the terms of peace which ought to be agreed to by the allies ; and, until that consummation be attained, I trust this country will persevere, and not hold out any encouragement to Russia to prolong the contest by affording her the spectacle of divided councils at home. (Cheers.) I have no wish to see what is termed the humiliation of Russia. I think we are talking too loudly for our own position and pro- spects in asking the humiliation or degradation of Russia. I hope peace may be effected on terms of such perpetuity as human transactions admit of, but it may possibly only be achieved by the result of further considerable efforts in the field, and I look forward to those efforts in the hope that our cause, which I fully and firmly believe to be a righteous one, will prosper under the continuance of that blessing of Providence which, I think, we have experienced hitherto, and I conclude by saying, " St. George for Eng land, and God defend the right!" (Loud cheers.) The lecture occupied nearly two hours of rapid delivery. LORD 121 - amilY, at a friendly society at WORKSOP last. week, took occasion to notice what he justly termed the " absurd rumour" of a coalition lately propagated : The suggested coalition was'that of Lord J. Russell, Mr. Bright, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Disraeli. Now, he should be very sorry if Lord J. Russell had entered tnto the sort of coalition in question, though he was not in a position to answer for him, or for Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Bright, as a member of the peace society, might very fairly be supposed to desire that an end should be put to the war. For his friend, Mr. Disraeli, however, he thought he could answer more explicitly. As the leader of the Conservative party in this country, and as one who must, therefore, consult the feelings of those who acted with him, Mr. Disraeli — ho thought he could undertake to say they might depend upon it—would never consent to any terms of accommoda tion with Russia which would not be likely to lead to an honourable and a lasting peace. They all knew the " dodges" played by parties. This rumour of a coalition might be one, but he believed such a coalition to be utterly impossible. He thought they would find this opinion fully confirmed by the result. He believed they would find that, for the sake of place and power, Mr. Disraeli would never endeavour to lead his party contrary to what he believed to be the feel ings of the people"of England at the present moment. At the same time they must recollect they had not gone to war to annihilate Russia—for who would think of going to war to annihilate an enormous empire like that ? They went to war to protect a weak power against a strong one ; and depend upon it they had read a severe lesson to Russia. At STOKE EDITH, Lord WILLIAM GRAHAM ex, pressed his fear that another campaign must be gone through before peace would be practicable:— With respect to the scarcity of labourers, of which so many complaints had been made, he reminded them of the drain made by the war, observing that it was the ►tout hearts and strong arms of our peasantry which conquered at Alma and Inkerrnann, and finally triumphed over the power of Russia at Sebastopol. (Cheers.) He feared fora time this drain would continue, for, although we had captured this stronghold of Russia, and had destroyed her az sensis and fleets, another campaign would probably ensue bat) re peace could be established. He was one of those who thought that the war might have been prevented at the outset, but was now of opinion that it should be prose• cute I with the utmost energy, so that the world might are *tether Russian despotism or British freedom was to guide the destinies of Europe. THE BISHOP OF LONDON has been severely inchs poled during the week. His lordship is confined to his mu at Fulham Palace. 1021 AGRICULTURAL MEETINGS. AT the HEREFORDSHIRE Agricultural Dinner, on the 19th inst., the question was incidentally mooted whether the existing high price of agricultural pro duce was attributable Lk. the war. The company in. eluded several of the pnncipal persons in the county; Mr. Kevill Davies presided. Mr. Brookes, M.P., was absent through a domestic bereavement• Captain HantsußY, alluding to the present position of affairs, said : There was no doubt that the manner in which the groat question of peace or war was treated at these meetings must have some weight with the Minister of the day. He might (although politics were excluded from their meet ings) be allowed to refer to the gratifying position of the agricultural interest, and to remark that the prices which farmers were obtaining were some etunpensation for the struggles iu which they had been for a long time engaged, and for the difficulties which they had had to encounter. He believed the main cause of the present high prices to be the war. He anticipated that in the next session of Parliament the war would bring many important tines. tions under discussion. There would be the questions of what was to be done with tho Crimea, of the position of Turkey, of the course which Austria and Prussia would take, and the kingdom of Naples might probably form a subject of discussion. Relying, however, on the alliance with France. he thought there was no cause for despon dency as to the future. Colonel CLIFFOILD thought the introduction of politics at their meetings unfortunate, and felt sure that the war was not popular with the agricultural community because connected with high prices : Re did not quite agree with ell that bad fallen from Captain Hanbury as to the price of corn. Captain Danbury attributed the present high price to the war. lle would not attempt to slur over the fact, for it could not be owe. trovert• d, but he should be very sorry to think that the undoubted prosperity of the agricultural interest was mainly owing to the war, because if such were the case farmers might be accused of attempting to keep up a warlike spirit iu the country, than which he was sure nothing was further from their thoughts or desires. Ile believed tl:e cause of the present high price of wheat to be owing to the deficiency of the harvest on the Continent, and to the fact that France was buying largely for her own consumption. The chairman, Mr. DAVIES, thought that the existing prices were too high to be regarded 118 a benefit:— As to the prices of agricultural produce, whether they resulted from the oar or not he could not buy, but be could not congratulate them upon those prices, because hq considered them too high for the oonsurner—( Hear, hear)—and he would rather see prices at such a rate al would benefit the consumer as well as the producer. At the same time the farmers had great reason to be thank. ful for an abundant harvest, housed in glorious weather, for a better crop of hops than they had had tier many years, and for a splendid winter crop, which at one time looked very bad. At the cattle show previous to the dinner some excellent Hereford cattle were exhibited, and four yearling bullocks were bought for Prince Albert at the extraordinary price of 130/. The annual dinner of the CHF:JITNEY Agricultural Association on the 10th was distinguished by the pm. sidency of Mr. H. DRUMMOND, M.l'., who, far fro= thinking the occasion unlit for politics, made some pointed political allusions on giving the chilli' toasts of the evening. in proposing " The Queen," be condemned what he eouridered a most unwarrantable interference with the privacy of the Royal Family : What would they say if, when any young person made love to the daughter of a farmer, some impertinent and meddling neighbour chose to turn round and tell them that it would be an improper marriage? Would they nut say, " Hold your tongue ; mind your own affairs; it is no business of yours; " and would not all their neighbours join with them in expressing their opinion that it was au impudent interference? The privacy of the Royal Family ought to be equally respected. In giving " The Army and' Navy," he spoke with severity of the attacks which had been made on Lord Raglan and General Simpson, and related an anec dote from his own experience of the delusion which prevailed relative to some points in the management of the war : He had been for three months in Germany, and be would tell them what passed one day when be was there. He was sitting at a large table d'hote, most of the company being Germans, and all, more or less, nnderstanding the English language, when an Englishman came in, whw tallied very loudly about the scandalous way in which the war was being eondueted ; and, among other things, said that Mr. Sidney Herbert had sent out orders that Odessa should not be bombarded because he had private property there. He (Mr. Drummond) allowed him to go ou for a little while, and then said, " How happy, sir. you must be to hear so gnats a calumny contradicted. Now, I have seen with my own eyes a despatch written from Admiral Dundee to Admiral Hamelin, begging to be allowed to bombard Odessa. Admiral Hamelin sent that despatch to General Canrobert, and I saw General Csnrobert's refusal to Ist them do so." Mr. S. Herbert had eo more to do with it than the present emapany had, and the statement that be did nut nibb Odessa to be bombarded is order to save his own private property was a gross calumny. General biropl ion ; also, bid been subjootert to similar calumnies. I