The Press. — London, England, 1855-02-03 00:00:00

FEBRUARY 3, 1855. All accounts concur in representing the state of the army as deplorable. The Times correspondent, under date of January 10, writes : The 68rd Regiment had only seven men fit for duty yesterday. The 46th had only thirty men fit for duty at the same date. A strong company of the 90th has been reduced by the last week's severity to fourteen file in a few days, and that regiment, though considered very healthy, lost fifty men by death in a fortnight. The Scots Fusilier Guards, who have had out from beginning to end 1,562 men, now muster, including servants and corporals, 210 men on parade. Many other regiments have suffered in like proportion. Lieutenant Dent, of the 9th Regiment, who was in command of a fatigue party engaged in car rying up provisions to the camp, became so unwell on the way that he could not keep up with his men, and was found dead in the snow. The day before yesterday, as one of our officers was passing by a French camp, he was hailed by a captain into whose tent the body of an English officer had just been carried. It was frozen and cold. Another letter, in the Morning Post, says that in consequence of the reduced condition cf the 63rd they had been ordered down to Balaklava:— The 63rd Regiment cannot furnish sixty men under arms, so reduced are they by sickness. They have been ordered to move down to Balaklava, and the ltith Regiment, at present stationed there, is to replace them on the heights. The 63rd will do fatigue duties at Balakiava. As supplies of clothing and food are serving out, however, the spirits of the men revive, and on the 16th, the latest date, it was hoped that the condition of the remnant of our army was slightly improving. Under date of the 14th January we read : The issue of warm clothing to the troops is nearly com• plated. Every man will have clothing, and some will be left. The description of clothing seems to give general satisfaction. One instance of complaint, I hear, is in reference to some socks, but, generally, everything Inas given satisfaction. But under same date we read that there seemed little chance of the huts being got up until summer came on:— No great progress has been made in hutting the men. A few huts are landed, and some are on their way up to the front, but very slowly, owing to the want of transport. 1 am afraid it will be summer before the whole army gets properly housed. In the meantime the regiments are sadly exposed, the sick particularly. The medical officers say that it is impossible to effect cures here. The light division is very badly off. Tn some regiments nearly two hundred men, besides those at Scutari, are sick. The Robert Lowe had arrived with detachments, amounting to 700 men. At Balaklava everything continued in a lamentable state of confusion : When a vessel arrives with stores she is frequently ordered to sea again in all haste. The stores are crammed into lighters, and are shoved on the beach. Oftentimes they are partially lost, or are taken off by marauders, or find their way into divisional magazines where they are never heard of, unless by some lucky accident. Now, this is no exaggeration. I know of one case where an officer was sent down again and again to the coal depot, but could get no one to attend to his requisition ' • at last his men took the law into their own hands, and carried off forty sacks of coal, to keep themselves and their master alive. Many followed their example, and the coals went merrily. Again, a vessel—say the Golden Fleece—comes into the harbour with blankets, great-coats, and such arti cles for the army. She is ordered to discharge and pro ceed with all haste to sea again. Captain Heath sends lighters alongside, and the stores are put into them. The men in the lighters go away at dinner-time, and mean time the Golden Fleece obeys orders, and goes off to her destination. On ber return to lialaklava the captain de mands a receipt for the stores he has put into the lighters. " Wbat stores ? We know nothing at all about them. We never received them." A search is made, and some of the stores are found in one magazine, and others in an other, but part of them are not forthcoming. Hales of great-coats have been seen lying, I suppose under some such circumstances, under the rain in open lighters, for twenty four hours together at a stretch in the harbour.—Timee Correspondent, Sebastopol, Jan. 10. At Constantinople, as we hear by a letter dated thence, 18th inst., the confusion is equally great:— I went the other day to the Custom-house at Constan tinople to hunt for some things which I had ordered from Marseilles immediately after my arrival here, and which have only now come to hand. A spectacle of more hope less disorder than that establishment presented it is im possible to imagine. Amid mountains of packages I could distinguish many addressed to officers by their friends at home, which have been probably lying there for weeks, and which it is a chance if they will ever see. Some had been smashed either intentionally or through earlessness, and cases of preserved meats and other crea ture comforts had rolled out of them, and were going to pieces on the mud floor. The interior of the building being crammed, the surplus was left exposed on the wharf, where the snow had covered everything several inches deep. Ido not recollect ever to have witnessed such a scandalous waste of valuable property ; and what made the spectacle more annoying was to observe that a very con siderable proportion of the packages were for the Crimea or Scutari. The supplies for the caUlp seem abundant, if they could only be readily transferred from Balaklava : The quantities of provisions required and constimed by the army are almcst fabulous. This very week notices have been received by the commissariat of the following supplies being on their way to us :—Ship No. 1.- 100,0001 b. of salt pork, 178,0001 b. of salt beef, 170,0001 b. THE PRESS. of biscuit, and 9,000 gallons of rum. Ship No. 2.- 121,0001 b. of biscuit, 4,000 gallons of rum, 00,000 lb of salt meat, and 80,0001 b. of bay. Ship No. 3.-143,0001 b. of biscuit, 4,000 gallons of ium, 89,0001 b. of salt pork, 89,0001 b. of salt beef. and 88,0001 b. of hay. Ship No. 4.- 33,0001 b. of biscuit, 10,000 gallons of rum, and 108,000 lb. of hay Ship No. 5.-282,0001 b. of biscuit, 208,0001 b. of salt pork, and 210,0001 b. of salt beef. This looks very well in the way of supply, but consumption is enormous too. In one division which I know of 210 gallons of rum are drunk every day, and it is all required. The consumption of the whole army must be about 1,000 gallons daily. Waste is prevented as far as possible, but it does un• doubtedly take place.—Time Correspondent, Sebastopol, Jan. 10. In spite of all difficulties, large supplies of ammu nitiun were reaching the British camp : The preparations for oar renewed bombardment and cannonade are progressing rapidly. Upwards of fifty fine new 82-pound guns, thirteen of the largest sized mortars, and some very heavy siege-guns are all up at the depot, and elsewhere, and can be placed in the new batteries at a very short notice. Up to the present date about 14,000 shot and shell of all sorts have been conveyed from Bala klava to our artillery parks, and in that number is not in cluded 4,000 naval shells (with brass fuses). When the batteries open each gun will be provided with 300 rounds of ammunition. There is one mortar at Balaklava which weighs four tons. How it is to be got to the front is not very easy to determine. A Polish officer who deserted re cently has given us moat lluable information respecting the range of our batteries, and there is reason to believe that when our fire reopens the effect will be so tre mendous that the destruction of the place will be in evitable in a very short time.—/b. Jan. 15. It is doubtful, however, whether any serious assault is really intended until the spring, as At present, from the depth of snow on the ground, operations against the town would be impracticable. The fol lowing paragraph from the Post correspondent indi cates a prudent resolve on the part of our allies The French general has stopped all reinforcements coming up for the present farther than the Bosphorus. The object of the commanders is to have their men as strong as their present circumstances will admit for the ensuing spring. They have enough to maintain their pre sent position until favourable weather for operations sets in. SECOND EDITION. SATURDAY AFTERNOON. LATEST INTELLIGENCE. THE MINISTERIAL CRISIS. The only additional fact that has transpired respecting the pending Ministerial arrangements since our first edition went to press is, that shortly after four o'clock yesterday afternoon Lord John Russell proceeded to Buekingham Palace, where he had an audience of her Majesty, which lasted more than an hour. The Morning Chronicle is informed that her Ma jesty commanded the attendance of the Earl of Clarendon at Buckingham Palace yesterday after noon' and suggests the inference that the noble earl had been intrusted with the task of forming an Administration. This morning's Times hazards no positive state ment as to final arrangements, but writes as follows touching the progress of the Cabinet crisis The active and disinterested exertions of the Marquis of Lansdowne in the present emergency are understood not to be directed to the formation of a Cabinet under his own authority, but rather to the reconstruction and readjust ment of the Queen's Government, with the omission of some names and the addition of others. Lord Derby having failed to form an Administration, and a pure Whig Administration being obviously impossible, we anticipate no change in the policy of the Government, and at most a partial change in some of the offices. It would he an evil of the utmost consequence to the public service to displace Lord Clarendon fruiu the Foreign-office, where his judgment and perse- verance have gradually called into existence a system of foreign alliances which are essential to the sueseas of our policy. It would be not less mischievous to remove Mr. Gladstone from the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, and from the position which his eloquence and his integrity have given him in the House of Commons. Among the younger members of the Government, Lord Granville, Sir William Molesworth, Mr. Baines, and Mr. ('ardwell are evidently qualified for the more active Cabinet offices, and to these might be added Lord Elgin, who is now in this country unemployed, and Lot d Dalhousie on his return from India. We still presume the most pro- bable bead of the new Cabinet to be Lord Palmerston, and in that position his vast experience and reputation will be of great advantage to the' Government ; but the country is mistaken if it allows its enthualastic conception of Lord Palmerston's abilities to magnify his powers or diminish his years. The most essential service that he or Lord Lansdowne, or any other Prime Minister, can render the country, is gradually to place the direction of affairs, and especially the laborious administrative and military de partments, in younger bands, arid not to rely upon their 107 contemporaries as if they were endowed with perennia youth. If Lord John Russell had not resigned exactly when he did, and virtually dissolved the late Administration before the vote on Mr. Roebuck's motion, it is probable that he would still have occupied the must prominent position in the country ; and, even if that motion had been carried, no ostensible reason would have existed for excluding him from the Government. His conduct has, therefore, not only been ungenerous but impolitic, not only captious but suicidal, and be has deprived himself of the Premiership by the very means he took to secure it. His position in this country strikingly resembles on a smaller scale that of the King of Prussia in the general affairs of Europe—aim ing at the post of grand arbitrator, and ending in isolation —unfaithful to his allies, and distrusted even by his friends, until he is reduced to seek in the mischievous M • suggestions of a eatnarille that encouragement he can no longer find in Parliament or the nation. THE CRIMEA. The correspondent of the Chronicle in the Crimea, in a letter dated January 20, thus refers to the pros pects of the projected 13alaklava railway : Messrs. Peto and Brassey, who have contracted to form a railway to the camp, have agents out here busily engaged surveying the proposed line. Although capable of being carried out, I much fear whether it will be finished in sufficient time to be of much service. They calculate it will take about three months to carry it as far as the end of the valley, a little beyond Kiulikoi. By that period we may hope for fine weather and hard roads. Had this melt been taken three months back, instead of the wooden huts remaining oa the shore and on board the steam screw boats in the harbour, the greater portion might have been up at the different camps, and now in the course of corn. pletion. The Times correspondent writes on the same date, giving a picture of the state of our forces in the camp little if at all less gloomy than had been por trayed in former communications during the previous months. He concludes : Quick must be the remedy—nay, instantaneous—else there will be no English army left, notwithstanding the numerous reinforcements. There are now, as it is, not more than 12,000, if so many, efficient men left ; the 7th, know positively, has but seventeen men under arms fit for duty. Advices from Varna, dated the 27th of January, state that, in consequence of explanations from Con stantinople, Omer Pacha retains the command of the Crimean expedition. Ismail Pacha is placed under his orders. Of the seven bureaux of the Chamber of Deputies at Turin, one only, the seventh, has declared itself against the treaty with the Western powers. A despatch from Rome, under date of June 30, states that at the last consistorium, the Pope an nounced that all bis advice, exhortations, and notes to the King of Sardinia and his Ministry has proved fruitless. In spite of the concordat and convention, that Government had infringed upon the rights of the Church, and contemplated the confiscation of ecclesiastical estates and the abolition of ecclesias tical orders. These measures tho Pope condemned, and pointed out the judgments of councils for such offences. Jenny Lind Goldsmidt has arrived in Hamburgh and, with her husband, gave a concert on Tuesday last, which was crowded to suffocation. She intended giving two more concerts, one of which, it was under stood, was to be for the benefit of the poor families who suffered such losses from the memorable inun dations on New Year's-day. It is said, on good authority, that Mr. Thackeray will shortly be recognised at the Olympic Theatre in the new character of a dramatist. By the death of Rear-Admiral Sir John Hill, Cap tain the Hon. Frederick Wm. Grey, C. 8., brother of Earl Grey, now in command of the Hannibal, 01, in the Black Sea, becomes rear-admiral, and Sir Richard Grant senior captain on the list. THE Mercury, steam-ship, left Bordeaux on the 10th ult., with a cargo of clover seed, wine, brandy, &c., fur London, and at half-past nine the next evening was run into by a large outward-bound barque, apparently French, which struck the vessel amidships, stopped her engines in ten minutes, and caused her to sink within half an hour. The barque kept her course. 'l be crew, twenty-two, in two boats, which were kept afloat with great difficulty, continued in the Bay of Biscay twenty hours without water until relieved by the barque Jokanna, of Hartlepool, which conveyed them to Gibraltar. ON opening the hatches of a vessel lying in the basin of the Rem canal on the morning of the 25th ult., the bodies of five able seamen were found lying dead. It appears that the unfortunate men had gone down the previous evening unobserved by the cabin boy, and probably while they were asleep be made fast the hatches unknowingly, and death by suffoca tisn was the consequence. I