The Press. — London, England, 1855-01-27 00:00:00

74 other means (which we shall not particularise), a British Cabinet ought not to have made such an absurd " leap in the dark" as assailing Sebastopol with a foie of seventy thousa nd u i rt English, French, and T ks. On this point we slit* ire that Ifinistatilt were pressed strongly. at metnl! did till)? take for obtaining Wiottderige tor the actual state of Sebastopol ? Would they produce to Parliament any etridisetial IIihOWIES *lSt t were alive to the necessity of learning who provision Russia had made against their ex pedition ? These are questions that touch the cabinet in a mortal part; for assuredly, if they sent an army to tkib thoeet of Ws I Crimea without seeking for exact knowledge of the renowned fortress, they must be con demned by all reasonable men. One might have supposed that the peculiar talents on which the Duke of NEWCASTLE prides himself might have profitably employed some of the secret service money in obtaining evidence. But it seems, as Lord DERBY truly said, that "Ministers never considered the greatness of " the undertaking upon which they were en " tering." If that were the sole charge against them it would be enough to insure their con demnation. But, thirdly, as the Duke of NEWCASTLB has confessed that the expedition to Sebastopol had been intended from the first, it is a charge of the first magnitude against the Ministry that it never made the least provision for our troops wintering in the Crimea. They never inquired whether it hailed, rained, or snowed there. To the very last they left the men up to December in the clothes which most of the regiments had worn for nearly a twelvemonth. Apart from any consideration of the climate itself it would have been bud enough to have allowed the troops in any campaign to remain so long without new coats, boots, and linen. But when they were sent to the Crimea it was a cruel oversight not to have abundant warm under-clothing for them. But against a win ter in the Crimea the Ministers had made no provision. Here, again, we must say that the charge is enough to insure their con demnation. Whether Sebastopol stood as firm as Gibraltar, or whether it was blown to frag ments, in either case a winter campaign was a positive certainty. From not having provided against it have arisen all the horrors, the mere narration of which has drawn scalding tears from many eyes, and blanched the cheeks of the boldest amongst men. 111-clad, un housed, half-fed, perishing on Crimean hills, our wasted army is victimised with slow but deadly certainty, because the winter season had been left out of the almanac used by the " proper authorities " in Downing-street. We say, fourthly, that the resolution to " spare Odessa " was an error of the greatest magnitude. This stupid blunder has entailed upon us costly sacrifices, while giving the Czar the command of resources which we should have intercepted. It is from the granaries at Odessa that the Russian armies have been supplied. It was a military as well as a commercial depot of Russia, but the Ministry " did not like to interfere with corn- " merce, ' and the enemy was allowed to avail himself of its vast advantages. Our troops are in the country of the foe; they are in a land of strangers, and amidst hostile races. But it is for the Russians that the Cabinet Ministers reserve all their sympathy. They cannot bear to think of crippling the com merce of the enemy. They could have stopped his supplies in all directions, but the notion of Russians on quarter rations -agonised our Cabinet. It was only for their own countrymen that the Ministers contrived hardships. These four charges-1. No reserve ;2. The " leap in the dark " blunder ; 3. Want of pro viding against a winter campaign in the Crimea ; 4. The " spare Odessa ' fallacy—are enough to blast the character and insure the downfall of any Cabinet. We make these charges against them in plain words, and we say that any Ministers who have so egregiously shown their incapacity for carrying on a war ought to be dismissed without delay. Of their subordinate blunders the enumeration would be too prolix for our columns. Nor (after the excellent articles in the Quarterly Review) is it necessary that we should catalogue the pro- THE PRESS. tracted series of mistakes which have destroyed the boasted " administrative abilities" of the Peelites. For let • never be forgotten that the managem Of lvar has been monopo fil lied by the c e lelandestine politic' r . e tt whti itatis mad e . i • roud Whigs tru.. 'Val' their until* AM 1 1 ".. .. . The Premiers ? ilt h the at epattillient, 1 . e Admiralty, the Er Cheque lk e N,X• i o i lalt of Ireland, the great bfficei lif the all seized upon Lord ABERDEE - N - , - eblikes of NEWCASTLE, Mt. SIDNEY HERBERT, TIMES GRAHAM, Mr. GLADSTONE, and Lorr tr. GERMANS. We well recollect the temerity of their promises—we hetv beheld their actual performances. They have been more dreadful to a British army than the swarming legions of the Czar. The presumptuous conceit of the Duke of NEW CASTLE has laid more gallant British hearts low in the grave than all the artillery of Russia. But their hour of downfall draws near, and for the honour of the English name we trust that the country will never again he misruled by a Cabinet of clerks, whose miserable errors have been attended with such fatal conse quences to the Queen's troops. Mr. DISRAELI said that " England does not love Coalitions," but after the horrors concocted by the present one the word will, for years to come, be ex ecrated by all parties in the land. Its mention will be fearfully associated with blunders taus ing torrents of blood to flow in vain, and mil lions of treasure wasted while an army starved to death. LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL OF INDIA. AT the time when the last act for the govern ment of India was passed a Legislative Council was appointed from which it was said that vast good might be anticipated ; but this Council was unhappily so constituted that no one really acquainted with the state of India could rationally expect any benefit from it. In the formation of it not only was the native element wholly omitted—though there are many natives of India whose talents and whose wealth would render them very fitting mem bers of such an assembly—but the heads of the great European mercantile houses were also excluded, as were all officers of the army, notwithstanding that the names of MALCOLM and Musaos are a sufficient proof that political sagacity is nowhere more conspicuous than in the military service of the Company. In fact, with the exception of the Supreme Court judges of Calcutta, whose presence in the Council will be a real advantage to the country, the assembly consists merely of a number of old civil servants, men who commenced their service as " merchants," " factors," and " writers " in the trading days of the Com pany, and who are necessarily wedded to all those corruptions and abuses the correction or eradication of which should be the main object of the Legislative Council. The results of the measure so far are such as to confirm the worst anticipations formed of it. Instead of reforming the district courts of law, the Council appear to be deterniined to augment the evils arising from their ineffi ciency by enlarging the powers of the judges —already too great for the class of men ap pointed—and by limiting the right of appeal, which alone makes their proceedings tolerable. To be sure, it is a roundabout way of getting justice to have to appeal for it in every in stance against the decree of the judge in the first resort; but as long as laymen, totally ignorant of the first principles of law and equity, shall continue to be appointed to the bench in India it is the only method by which justice in the end can be hoped for. To bar the right of appeal without raising the character and improving the efficiency of the judges, would be to take away from the public every chance of obtaining justice from the bench whatever; and the despotism of Turkey in its worst days would in such case be infinitely more bearable than the despotism of India. And not only in respect to the district courts are the arbitrary views of the new Legislative Council of India apparent, but the interests of the European merchants and planters who are settled out of the jurisdic tion of the supreme courts seem likely, if SATURDAY, Parliament should not interfere, to suffer in a peculiar degree. These " interlopers," as th e Company term them. have always, from their independblite, boleti Otektlloo hateful to the Compvy t i w end nothipg but tfle powerful sup ort of mercentdie chile' in this country I , form With Inala hs*,enabled them to old it iround aMid the difficulties of their Isitua n. It it to Wiese bit n that we are in tleb (OP the 1104° 4 Uke sugar, and nearly all the other pro dt involving intelligence and caiSitui in their preparation that corns from India; but at the same time it is these men who, suffering most from the misgovern ment of the Company, have been always loudest in their denunciations of it; and it would seem that the Council, composed almost entirely of the Company's civil servants, are not disinclined to use with rigour that power which as legislators they now possess over them. It is needless to say that if the new Legisla tive Council is to pervert its enormous and un checked authority to such purposes as these— if it it to give vastly-increased powers to a bench admittedly incompetent to exercise those which they already possess—and if, tinder pretence of upholding authority, it is to destroy the few seeds existing of mercantile independence in India—then there can be no doubt that its proceedings will be a curse to the country instead of a benefit, and that it will exercise its powers and privileges, not for the suppression of abuses, but for the suppression of remonstrance against them, and that all those evils will be perpetuated which at present pervade the administration of our Eastern empire. Under these circumstances we cannot too earnestly impress upon Parliament the neces• sity of exercising a strict aMd unceasing su pervision over the acts of the new Legislative Council of India. The good government of that country is a question in which all parties are or ought to be equally concerned ; and if the pre- sent Administration has chosen to barter its duties towards India for the parliamentary support of Sir JAMES HOOO and hie directorial brethren, that is no reason why the rest of the Legislature should calmly look on and by tacit acquiescence give effect to the bargain. Indeed, it should be an additional cause of vigilance that those to whom the control over Indian affairs has been intrusted, have virtually abnegated their functions ; and the interested obsequiousness of the present Minister for India to the India-house should be a reason for increased attention to Indian matters on the part of all independent members of Pan liament. LORD ABERDEEN'S CLAIMS TO THE GARTER. THE bare rumour that GEORGE GORDON, Earl of Aberdeen, the lifelong apologist for the excesses of continental absolutism, whose sinister " credulity" and guilty "connivance" have exercised such disastrous influence in the course of the last twelvemonth, is to be admitted to the highest of personal honours, has caused much painful astonishment Splen did services in the senate or the field, heroic devotion to the person of the Sovereign, have often been rewarded with the dazzling em blems of tke " Order of the Garter," and no kingdom in Christendom can show a more far-famed line of public worthies than that preserved in the knightly list whose em blazoned banners have waved in St. George's hall. A poet of the days of Queen ANNE has commemorated the celebrities of the Garter in an ode which reads now like a fine piece of irony, when we hear that an Aberdeen is to have his name written on that famous scroll Where Britain's foremost names are found, In peace beloved, in war renowned, Who made the hostile nations moan, Or brought a blessing on their own; for through his protracted career of inglorious statesmanship our Premier has exhibited an odious contrast to the generous qualities ez pected from a Knight of the Garter. Crue would be the satirist who would publicly compliment the present Prime Minister o England on being "in peace beloved." A -Mil