The Press. — London, England, 1855-03-17 00:00:00

246 WILLIAM KEOGH, the new Attorney, goes to mass; Mr. JOHN D. FITZGERALD is a consistent Roman Catholic, ardently attached to his Church, and, contrary to all former prece dents, Mr. FITZGERALD is nominated to the Solicitor -Generalship, his colleague being also a professed Catholic. The teunsel to the Castle is Mr. ComfatAts, a Most staunch supporter of the Pope, but a moderate poli tician. Sergeant HOWLBY is a Roman Catholia s and a legal pluralist, holding a sergeantcy along with the valuable Chairmanship of the County of Tipperary, and he is constantly put into the commission as a judge of assize. Mr. sergeant O'BRIEN, a zealous Roman Catholic, is M.P. for Limerick, and a leading Crown prosecutor on the Munster circuit. Mr. Sergeant CHRISTIAN iS a Protestant and a Whig. It is further worthy of note that not one Conservative is now found amongst the three Sergeants-at-Law, and this occurs at a time when the leading practitioners of the Irish bar are by a proportion (at the least) of three to one in the Conservative party. Mr. NAPIER, Mr. WHITESIDE, Mr. FRANCIS FITZGERALD, Mr. HENRY MARTLEY, Mr. BuTr, have all repeatedly figured as " special" counsel in cases of great importance. They have either pleaded before the House of Lords, figured in State trials, or gone on large retainers to different circuits, where clients had vast interests at stake. A similar statement could not possibly be made on behalf of Messrs. KEOGH, FITZGERALD, CORBALLIS, or Sergeants Howl.Ev and O'BRIEN. Thus—to put the case strongly and with brevity—while the intellectual ascendancy at the Irish bar belongs to the Protestant and Conservative connection, it would appear that " old Whigs" are organising an official superiority for the Roman Catholics in Dublin Castle. It is still more extraordinary that the " Liberal Protestants " of the Irish bar have been contemptuously passed over in the recent promotions. Mr. Sergeant CHRISTIAN, a Pro testant " Liberal," has been overlooked ; Mr. WALTER BERWICK (the grand-nephew of HENRY GRATTAN), and other " Liberal Protestants " whose professional position was infinitely higher than that of Mr. KEOGH, or Mr. Con- BALMS, or Sergeant HOWLEY, have all been neglected. Nor is it less singular that the Parliamentary Catholics should have such offices showered on them, while their Catholic brethren not in Parliament—like Sir COLMAN O'LOOHLIN, Mr. HUGHES, and others—have been passed by. What else is meant by such conduct than to indicate that the " P.P.'s " and " R C.C.'s" are to be courted, and are to aid in the manufacture of the Queen's Judges? These facts are significant. Lord PAL MERSTON was always supposed to be inimical to the Romanists of Europe, but his first acts in office are decidedly calculated to increase the power of the Pope in Dublin Castle. Our Premier has degenerated into the patron of Mr. KEOGH and the ally of Pio Nowo. THE INDIAN ARMY. As the mismanagement which has been exhi bited in reference to the Crimea has given rise to a good deal of discussion regarding the alleged superior fitness of the Indian army for the purposes of war, it may not be inoppor tune to give a brief sketch of the constitution of the latter foroe, with such remarks upon the question as the accurate information possessed by us on the subject of Indian affairs generally enables us to offer. The army of the Company is composed of the branches common to all armies: engineer, artillery, infantry, and cavalry. The appoint ments to cadetships in all rests with t Chairman • appoint , while to proportion assigned. tronage to . are dealt only that by .active they are connections; to tors, in equal .roportions, saving the C ant ) • - 'tote , who have two . her Director's one, .dia Board a pr th: 'hairman is s - t :igned in pat] • of office, and - `t",141.. • : . leasure, only iammitar- In practice fl • •s, and connec THE PRESS. customers where the Directors are engaged in commerce ; or they are bartered for other appointments, or given to voters in exchange for political sarT; aft where Directors have chosen to vio b they have been clan- destinelr sold, When a cadet is intended for the enginnets or artillery, be is tent to Addiscombe (the East India Cotnpany'e Woolwich), where he studies for two years. At the end of that period those found qualified on examination for engineer appointments are sent to Chatham to complete their Military education, and thence to India ; those found fitted for the at.• tillery are sent at once to join the artillery in India; and those unable to pass for either of these branches are sent out to India to be posted to the infantry regiments as ensigns, as are also alt those who are called direct infantry cadets. These latter, and the cadets of cavalry, pass through no intermediate course of study whatever. In India a portion of the young en gineers are sent to join the sappers, while the rest are employed in the junior appointments of their own corps ; the artillery are posted as second lieutenants to the horse, foot, or native artillery, according to their interest at head quarters or the exigencies of the service. The infantry cadets are posted as ensigns to regi ments according to their seniority ; and the cavalry cadets are posted to cavalry regiments as comets in the same manner. Once posted they all rise entirely by seniority, the only system of purchase allowed being the buying out a senior by a common contribution of all below him in the regiment to which he belongs. The result is, that promotion for the most part is very slow, and were it not for the insalubrity of the climate, and the natural desire of almost all to escape from it as soon as they have the means to do so, the rate of progress up the ladder would be intolerable. As it is, it is nothing uncommon to see a lieutenant of se venteen or eighteen years standing in the army, a captain of from six and twenty years to thirty, and a major of from thirty to thirty-six years ; and this, be it remembered, in a climate the wear and tear of which certainly ages men in a much shorter period than the climate of Europe. In consequence of this, and of the manner in which regiments are constantly broken up in detachments and scat tered about on all kinds of service—and in consequence, also, of the extent to which offi cers of the junior ranks are taken away from their regiments for all kinds of miscellaneous military and civil-staff appointments, to return to them only as majors long after all their regimental knowledge has been forgotten—the Company's regular regiments are very much inferior to her Majesty's, and its regimental officers are for the most part far less efficient as regimental officers, while among its briga• diers and divisional commanders there are perhaps more worn-out and incompetent old men to be found than in any other service whatever. But, people talking of the Indian army forget that in nearly all the great battles of India, from the time of Lord LANE to the present, the brunt of the action has fallen on her Majesty's regiments stationed in India, and it is her Majesty's officers who have almost invariably held the supreme command. The Company's artillery forms a splendid contrast to the infantry, and that is by all allowed to be fully equal—the European por tion of it, at least—to the artillery of th. Royal army. Nor has the native portion of it failed to prove itself, to the best of its ability, to be worthy of so high a standard. The engineer corps also is excellent. Again, the Company possesses an irregular service, the cavalry branch of which is so per fect that there is nothing of its kind superior to it in the world. In this service the greater portion of the native officers and troopers are men of good family, who purchase into the regiment in the first instance, and are pro moted afterwards, according to their skill and gallantry, while the European officers are young lieutenants and captains, selected spe cially with a view to their qualifications, and who thus have commands open to them in the prime of their manhood which in their own regiments they would have to wait for till they had arrived at the rank of lieut..colonel. For the same reason, the commissariat and staff of the Company's army are for the most part SATURDAY, admirable. The officers of both branches have ordinarily been selected after a very short term of regimental duty—they thus learn their work at the time they art MONS Ottisble of doing so by nature. 'they ttre early tatight to think and act Ng thimselves, and thus become full of resoltted s and are•-ieblom at a loss in the most critieg sltUations ; and, from the frequency of st+St and the Went of its operations, their blinds become f4Miitarised v;ith difficul ties and dangers, and they are able with facility to meet anti overcome them. Had the English army been for the same period accustomed to the same kind of work, its staff would, no doubt, have become equally effective; but the operations of war were for the most part new to it, and it had, moreover, to contend with what we look upon as an enormous disadvan tage—a civil commissariat, instead of having a commissariat composed, as the Indian com missariat is, of military officers—men who know that they will be at once remanded back, with prospects ruined, to their regiments if they fail to give the most entire satisfaction to the Commander-in-Chief. From the above it will be seen that the Royal army is not an inferior army to tho Indian army, but, on the contrary, that, as a whole, it is most immeasurably superior to it, though the Indian army possesses some ad mirable points too. The statesmanlike mode, therefore, of making the Indian army useful will not be by superseding men like Lord RAGLAN, and Sir GEORGE BROWN, and Sir COLIN CAMPBELL, by lieutenants and brevet-majors taken from it—who could probably hardly manceuvre a regiment on parade— as some papers propose, but by recalling some of the superfluous regiments from India (as we see, ou our suggestion, they are already doing); by raising an effective contingent in Turkey, offi cered by Company's officers (another measure which we long since recommended) ; by getting overland some troops and batteries of the Company's admirable artillery, whose intimate knowledge of field service would be invaluable at the present crisis ; and by sending out as many of the Company's commissariat, engineer, and staff officers, as they can lay their hands on in England, and as can be spared—not to supersede the staff officers of the Royal ser vice already in the Crimea, but to aid and assist them by their practical knowledge of what is requisite with armies in time of war. Above all, there should be introduced at once the Indian system of issue on emergent ser vice, and when forms and orders cannot, with out detriment to the service, be waited for, a receipt headed " emergent service " should be held by the storekeepers a sufficient voucher for the issue of the articles required. The evidence given bafore Mr. ROEBUCK'S committee is sufficiently clear and explicit as to the absolute necessity of establishing this rule : it would be difficult indeed to form an estimate of the vast amount of death and suffering that have been caused by the neglect of it. THE MISCHIEF OF A TRANSITION MINISTRY. THE evils of a Government like the present are more apparent as each week rolls on. Public and private advices from every capital in Europe acknowledge that in no quarter is the Palmerston Ministry looked upon as per manent. Our foreign and domestic affairs are beginning to feel the consequences of a Cabi net necessarily weak and vacillating, without parliamentary support, and without a policy. All the world is agreed upon the point that the Premier is identified with no ideas, is fol lowed by no party, is tremulous with age, and has utterly disappointed the expectations of his admirers. MIRABEAU called LA. FAvrrrx a " Grandison-Cromwell," and our Prime Minis ter might be termed in similar style a " Lord " Ogleby-Chatham." Lord PALMERETON laughs, while the politicians before and behind him are grave at the aspect of our affairs. Nor could Lord PALMERSTON, even if he had youth, atone for the necessary evils attendant on a transition Cabinet., which is necessarily 11111