The Press. — London, England, 1856-04-26 00:00:00

THE WEEK. As usual, our first information of a most important document comes to us in a clandestine manner. The Daily Neu•s has published the text of the Treaty of Peace, with the exception of the Articles 5 to 9. How the text of the Treaty became known before the ratifications were received in Paris was a puzzle at first. But it is shrewdly sus pected, and with every degree of truth, that a traitor in the office of the Moniteur betrayed the secret, at the same time in the strictest confidence, to both the Indipendance Belge and our contempo rary, in whose columns it appeared! on :Wednesday morning. This premature . promulgation of the Treaty has excited the indignation of the French Government. Such publication, it is announced on authority, can only result from an " unjustifiable breach of trust." Of the authenticity of the text, as far as published, there appears to be no doubt. The first articles confirm the accuracy of the statement made in THE PRESS so far back as March 22nd, that "Kars was the fatal " obstacle to the faint attempts made by our Foreign Secretary to " ride the high horse. Kars was politely whispered into his ear by the " Russian Plenipotentiaries when he attempted t't introduce a new " stipulation, or insisted on a strict construction of the recognised " terms." The Treaty commences with a recital of the exchange of conquests, " the town and citadel of Kars, as well as the other parts of " the Ottoman territory, of which the Russian troops are in possession," being set against Sebastopol, Eupatoria, Kertch, &c. There are two points in the Treaty likely to be thought eminently unsatisfactory by the people of this country :-1. Russia retains the whole of her Trans caucasian territory; and hence will, as before, possess the power of extending her influence in Persia and through Central Asia ;—and 2, the Principalities will remain divided, and under the nominal suze rainty of the Porte (for it is no more), instead of being united, and formed into an independent kingdom. It is said that this result is due to Austria, who would have disliked an independent kingdom on her Hungarian frontier, and whose views of acquiring a predomi nant influence in the Principalities such an arrangement would have thwarted ; and to Lord PALMERSTON, who on this point sided strongly with Austria against the sentiment of the other Powers repre sented at the Conference. It was certainly the opinion of many of the soundest statesmen in Europe, that the Danubian provinces should be raised into an independent kingdom, as most conducive to their prosperity, and most expedient for the purpose of forming a barrier between the Turkish and Russian empires. The speech of the Emperor of RUSSIA at Moscow is a new proof that the policy of the empire is about to undergo a total change. He says he prefers the " real prosperity of the arts of peace to the vain " glory of combats ;" and he indicates the steps he has already taken, and the measures he has in view, to promote commercial freedom and the industry of the Russian empire. This speech will meet with cor dial response in England, and go far to allay the hostile feelings roused by the war. Now that the contest is over, there is no reason why our Government should not cultivate the most friendly relations with Russia. The interests of the two countries are the same. The com mercial prosperity of Russia must conduce to the commercial pro sperity of England, and if the Emperor keeps his promise, and a portion of the large revenue which has hitherto been expended in warlike armaments be now devoted to the development of the natural resources of the country, a revolution will have been accomplished in the Court of St. Petersburg, likely to prove of incalculable benefit to the whole world. The evidence of Sir EDMUND LYONS before the Crimean Court last Monday completely demolished the Crimean Com missioners' charge of a " want of promptitude and ingenuity " against the cavalry officers in not sheltering their horses. There was a want of promptitude and ingenuity, but it was displayed nearer home than in the camp at Kadikoi. Colonel Teu.oen rested his charge upon the ground that no canvas or carpenters were applied for from the fleet. Sir EDMUND LYONS, in a few words, proved that he had neither the one nor the other to spare ; and, in a pithy sentence, hit the right nail straight home, in reminding Colonel Tuu.oen that, however ingenious his suggestions, they were formed after the event, and from false premises. The fact is, that Colonel Tti.Loen's sugges tions will not bear investigation for a moment. No man accustomed to horses, or who has ever camped out in his life, will pretend to assert that " canvas covering " would have saved those horses' lives in the Crimea. All the canvas in the United Kingdom would not have made the horses one degree warmer. Forage and rugs were the only things required. If every horse had had a warm rug round his loins, DM a bellyful of good food, though exposed day and night, the losses in the whole division would have been trifling. The want of " promptitude and ingenuity" lay in not providing these primary necessaries, and their provision rested with the authorities at home. The suggestions of Colonel TULLOCH are all admirable in themselves, no doubt, but they arc just the suggestions of a man who visited the camp in summer time, and, on all points connected with the fleet, r‘ally of a man who has nothing more than a theoretical acquaintance W:th his subjec'. The fatality of the Government to make a mess of whatever• it undertakes is really laughable. The Nemesis of red tape was never more netive than on Wednesday. The first victim was the Premier himself, who, late for the tabu, got into it it•aiitst rules just a it started, but, was f.'reibly chugged out by the coat-taili by a seru ~ • . - -0 THE PRESS. SATURDAY, pitlous policeman, and kept back on the platform till " a ll d anger had passed." Then, what a succession of blunders filled up th e day! The trains were all hours after their time. Of the two steamers appro priated to Lords and Commons, one was under-manned and could not get the anchor up without the help of its passengers, while, to make things more pleasant, the stokers let the fire out, just as the th un d er of the fleet's guns broke upon the fretful ears of Lord GRANV ILLE and his Peers. As to the Perseverance and the Commons, it got t o t h e review just in time to see the end of it and go back again , a feat it achieved with the manifest advantage of some four hours time over the Upper House vessel, Transit, which broke down, ran over a gunboat, and kept Lords, Ladies, and Bishops between the Nab Light and Southampton from six to ten p.m., in Transit-u. Never were sightseers beheld in so deplorable a condition. And to crown the whole affair, nothing but beer and soda-water, with insipid cold chicken, had been provided for the refreshment of our hereditary and elected legislators by their economical Admiralty. The mismanagement of the whole affair was gross to a degree, and Sir CHARLES NVOOD cautiously lost himself in Portsmouth until the edge of legislative indignation had been partially blunted against the Premier. But his attempt last night to excuse the intolerable mess he had made of the business, by attributing it to tidal phenomena, was the worst joke of all. The Government has been defeated in both Houses of Parliament this week. It is at the mercy of every challenger. Ministers only stand up to be beaten. Where is this to end ? The times are past when an Administration felt bound to resign in consequence of an adverse vote. It is necessary, as one result of the Reform Bill, that the range of open questions should be extended, and that greater latitude should be allowed to the expression of independent opinion yet it appears very questionable whether a Govern- ment should retain office which is unable to command a majority in either on strictly governmental business. The first defeat of the week was on the Church Discipline Bill. When !the present LORD CHANCELLOR was plain Mr. Baron Rolfe he had rather a good reputation on the Bench. He was considered a fair lawyer, and one or two of his charges are still quoted as specimens of such addresses. What can have induced him in his character of Lord Chancellor to undertake a crusade against the British Constitution in Church and State, we cannot imagine. Defeated in his attempt to revolutionise the House of Lords, he has sought to console himself by cogitating how he may best undermine the Church of England. Lord CRANWORTH, we presume, thought to seduce the Primate by the offer of a species of Papal authority over the Diocesan Bishops, while a snug little bit of patronage was created to be divided between the four Primates of England and Ireland and the Bishop of LONDON. Four Chancellors were to be appointed at salaries of 3,0001. a year for the trial of clerical offences, an arrangement which seems to imply that the clergy of the Established Church are about a million times as wicked as the rest of the community, there being only 20,000 of them to be tried, and four judges to try them,while there are but fifteen judges for the entire population of England. All the wiles of the Lord Chancellor were, however, thrown away, and his bill defeated by a majority of eight. We should advise him to desist from these attempts for the future. He has succeeded in damaging the present Govern ment to no small extent. But one or two more such efforts would destroy his own reputation for ever, and bring discredit not only on his sagacity but his honesty. The beating experienced in tho Lords has been rapidly succeeded by another even more decisive disaster in the Commons. Lord GODERICH has proved himself more than a match for the whole collective strength of the Government. It is in course of dissolution, and that weariness which the Merry Monarch of our history supposed the attendants on his last moments must feel is veritably experienced by those who watch its expiring throes, feeling that some apology is required for its being such " a long time In dying." In one of the most brilliant of his essays, Mr. MACAULAY, speaking of the intellectual superiority of one age over another, compares the progress of humanity to the motion of an animal ; where the head and tail, though each successively occupying a more advanced position, still always preserve the same relative distance. The controversy on the moon's motion, which has been raging for nearly three weeks in the columns of the Times, would seem to suggest a doubt as to the applicability of this comparison. Certain, as all educated persons now are, of the actual existence of the moon's rotation, the majority of those who have thought themselves capable of offering an opinion on the subject hare generally supported Mr SYMONS'S remarkable) error, the head may have gone forward, but the tail, in this instance, cer tainly remains in its old position. Yet the question involves no refined conceptions, either of geometry or dynamics; once let the meaning of the phrase " rotation about an axis " be clearly under stood, once let the common property—in virtue of which that part of the moon's motion which astronomers call "rotation" and " rotation " about a fixed axis " are called by the same name—be clearly per ceived, and the conclusion of scientific men must follow inevitably. Mr. SYMONS and his school express much astonishment that one phrase should be applied to describe two motions, so distinct as that of the moon and that of a body about a fixed axis passing through its mass. The application is their own. They have first misrepresented scientific languages, and then fallen foul of scientific men for creating difficulties which they themselves have originated. Mechanical phi losophers have always described such a motion as that of the moon as a compound of tiro motions, one of revolution about the earth, the other of rotation about an axis fixed in the moon's mass, and executed in the saute time as the revolution itself. 396