The Press. — London, England, 1855-02-24 00:00:00

174 of political economy ; and it has been pre eminently successful in its operation, for it inflicts the maximum of injury upon the enemy and the minimum of injury upon our selves. If Mr. CARDWE.L believes that this solemn trifling will satinf7 either the House of Commons or the country nt the present time, he is egregiously mistaken. The public mind is fairly roused on the subject of the war, and it is notorious that the naval policy which the President cf the Board of Trade ao highly lauds has been inconsistent, indecisive, and, beyond all precedent, inglorious. It is not with scraps of political economy that he will convince his countrymen to the contrary. The feeling is instinctive and universal that our naval resources have not been wielded in the present war with the energy of former times. We blockade our enemy's coasts without in terrupting his trade, and we bombard his towns without intending to destroy, or even seriously to injure them. We have tried, in short, the novel experiment of an amicable war, and we have reaped humiliation and disaster as the bitter fruits of our infatuation. We must reverse Mr. CARDWELL'S proposition if we would speak the truth. No serious blow has yet been struck against the enemy, but our reputation as a naval as well as a military power has suffered deeply, perhaps irre trievably ; nor can any amount of sophistry conceal from the public view this painful but notorious fact. We feel humiliated in spite of the soothing eloquence of the President of the Board of Trade. We look for decisive action and not for pretty sentiments at the present crisis, but hitherto we have looked in vain. In introiucing the subject of our commer cial relations with Russia, Mr. COLLIER made a great mistake in not proposing some specific change of policy. He pointed out the glaring inconsistencies of our present plan of opera tions. He showed that if it had been devised by Count NESSELRODE himself, it could not have more effectually promoted the interests of his master. He showed that we take in• directly from Russia very nearly as much of her produce as we ever did, while we pay much more for it, not in kind, but in gold. He showed that the Baltic blockade was a farce so long as this traffic was permitted. As for the blockade of the Black Sea, that is a pure fiction, which has never had any exist ence except in the lively imagination of Mr. BERNAL OSBORNE. The clearest possible case was made out by Mr. COLLIER against the in fatuated policy of the Coalition, which, by per mitting indirectly the free export of Russian produce, has deliberately furnished our enemies with the sinews of war ; yet he proposed no change of system. He had no specific plan to offer to the House, and he wound up his speech by simply moving for certain returns relating to the trade of the White Sea. We regret that he did not take a bolder and more consistent course upon a matter of such vital importance. We have all along thought that the surest as well as the most expeditious mode of bringing this war to a successful termina tion is by annihilating the foreign trade of Russia. It appears from the most recent returns that the value of her annual exports to the United Kingdom amount to between seven and eight millions sterling ; and we must bear in mind that this is fully one-half of the entire value of her exported produce. We take from her as much, and we believe even more, than all the other countries on the globe put together. Probably, no country was ever so dependent, in a commercial sense, upon another, as Russia is upon England ; and yet, with the means in our hands of utterly destroying her foreign trade, we must be con tent to work out the new theory of maritime war as propounded by Mr. CARDWELL. We would recommend that ingenious gentleman to look a little to the past instead of dwelling on the uncertain future. We would remind him that this is not the first war which we have waged with Russia. Some of his col leagues will be able to inform him that they remember the time when the Emperor PAUL, at the instigation of a potentate still greater than himself, declared war upon Great Britain. We had no steamers in those days, but neither had we any political economists ; and if our naval commanders could not avail themselves of L the one, they were not shackled by the THE PRESS. other. Under such influences Lord NELSOK would probably have been quite as restive as Sir CHARLES NAPIER. Fortunately for himself, and for England st s most critical period of her, history, ho was left tg conduct the war according to established usage, and he did so with his aapustosied energy, humanity, and success. He instituted not a sham, but a real blockade, of the entire Russian coasts. The foreilin trade was fur the time entirely de stroyed, and what was the result? The dist content of the territorial nobles, and the merchants whose revenues were thus cut off, produced a revolution in the space of three months, which raised another Emperor to the Throne, pledged to make peace with England. The events of the war of 1801 clearly disclosed the secret of Russia's weakness, and yet our rulers blindly refuse to profit by the lesson. They have been lavish to profusion of their country's best blood, but the profits of trade are sacred in their eyes; and what doctri noire would hesitate to sacrifice an army rather than abandon an opinion? A WORD TO THE CONSERVATIVES. THE first duty of the Conservatives at the pre sent hour is to their country; and they can best serve the cause of England by a firm resolution that no dissension, on any pretence whatever, should be allowed to creep into their great and powerful party. It is through the Con servative connection only that England can be delivered from her perils, and any authors of discord at such a moment would not only be unfaithful to the Conservative banner, but would be foes to the national cause. We rejoice to know that there is not any division amongst our ranks, which are marshalled under experienced chiefs, and are bound together by principles common to a united party. The tone of the enthusiastic meeting at Lord DERBY'S leaves nothing to be desired so far as the parliamentary supporters of Con servative principles are concerned. To that firm phalanx we have nothing to say but to urge it to continue its present course of vigi lance and concord. But to the general Conservative body through the country we desire earnestly to appeal at the present hour, and to intreat its members to follow the example of their representatives, and stand closely together. The pride of our powerful party is justified by the brilliant contrast it exhibits to the bewil dering anarchy of our opponents. While the Conservatives have not fur many years been so combined as at the present moment, the Liberals are torn into twenty petty factions, too tedious to enumerate. It will be utterly impossible to join in one harmonious connec tion such fragmentary bodies as Lord PALMERS TON and his personal friends, the RUSSELL clique of old Whigs, the GREY cousinhood, Mr. BAINES and the Dissenters, Sir WILLIAM MOLESWORTH and the Radicals, Brookes's Club with its old traditions, and the Reform Club with its novel pretensions. Then, at the head of these supporters of a Tower-of-Babel system, we observe a nominal chief who for fifty years has coquetted with every party in the State, and has twice within the last three years wanted to join the Con servative cause. This " faded flower of former " Administrations " is bending beneath the weight of years and the difficulties of the crisis. Let the ominous fact be observed that so old a Prime Minister as Lord PALMERS TON has not been seen since England was ruled by parliamentary government. The third Duke of PORTLAND (the oldest of his prede cessors) died in 1809, after being Premier for two years and a half, and the public affairs suffered severely from his Grace's physical in firmities, as recorded in Lord 211aLmEsauay's Diary. Earl GREY resigned in 1834, because he was too old at seventy ; and now, at a tremendous crisis, when Ministers are called on to work double tides, we have an infirm Statesman in his seventy-second year, who commenced his official life so long since as the times of that Duke of PORTLAND who preceded SATURDAY, Mr. PERCEVAL as Premier! The bare state ment of such a fact is enough to show that any combination under such a chief cannot possibly be lasting. The want of the emer gency is a Axed Ministerial system; and how can it be attained under :t Premier whose per sonal infirmities are painfully obvious at a passing glance, and whose increasing want of pght and difficulty in heisting have become notorious ? Should such a PNIMISr appeal to the coun try, and unfurl the flag of a vague and indis criminate Liberalism, what a pitiful spectacle it would be to witness the colleague and pupil of Lord CASTLEREAGH terminate his career in an inglorious attempt to secure his personal position, by catering to the passions of the Radicals and levellers ! Such a spectacle would carry its own commentary. The only policy, apart from himself, that such a Premier could truly personify would be tho curse of compromised opinions and suspended action, always ending in the terrible " too late." It is cheering, then, for Conservatives to ob serve that they have a noble mission before them in presenting a united front. In both moral and material power the Conservatives have the decided preponderance at this new crisis of the current week. The secession of the Peelites has left our opponents deficient in a parliamentary staff, and has complicated still further the obstacles to a " Liberal" Ca binet,. Lord DERBY, by his calm circumspec tion, has vastly gained in moral power. Had Lord DERBY gone hastily into office, when re cently offered to him, the Peelites would not have broken from the Whigs and Lord PAL MERBTON. A snare would have been set by another conspiracy, baptised as a coalition. By his sagacious foresight, Lord DERBY has thus secured an infinitely better position for the party of which he is the honoured leader. That party is now thoroughly identified with the cause of England; its unity, combination, and harmony of principles clothe it with the political power which can alone decide the crisis. These are no new sentiments to the readers of Tux PRESS. In the first article of our journal, nearly two years ago, " the consider " able danger," resulting from the anomalous state of party in Parliament was distinctly in dicated. It was then predicted in our first printed page, that Coalition Counsels and their abettors would end "in individual scandals, " in aggregate humiliation, and general loss of " weight and character for the Parliament of " England." The danger has come upon us as was them foretold, but we rejoice that there is a remedy at hand. Conservative force can alone give to the counsels of the Sovereign that stability which cannot he found in the distractions of the " Liberals " The password of Conser vatism throughout the Empire, at this event ful hour, must be, " Let us stand firm to our •' colours, and follow .faithfully our gallant " chiefs." WHERE IS THE RESERVE ? WE are told that at the battle of Inkermann the Russian forces were brought into position under cover of darkness and mist. Guns were dragged up to commanding posts, dense masses of infantry were formed within pistol shot of our pickets, and when the attack was commenced the surprise was complete. The result of that day was immense. Though a defeat, it postponed indefinitely the storming of Sebastopol, and reduced the besiegers to the utmost straits. A victory would have driven our army into the sea, and destroyed the expedition. We are now in danger of a similar surprise, on a scale of greater magnitude. We are in the dark as to the movements of the Russian troops. Our vision extends only a few miles from the allied camp ; beyond the Belbeck we know nothing. We are ignorant of the number of troops quartered in Baktchi Serai and Simferopol, or what hordes are accumulated at Perekop and Odessa, ready on the approach of spring to pour down upon our intrenchments. We only learn that on the first open weather thiu 1