The Press. — London, England, 1855-06-23 00:00:00

-- -- e 584 tribution of his patronage has to consult nothing but his own personal interests and wishes. He may provide for his sons, and nephews, and relations, and connections to the remotest degree, without let or hindrance, and whatever appointments he has no direct use for he may barter with the holders of other kinds of patronage or interest for such equi valent as he requires. He may legally dispose of his appointments for any valuable consi deration except money ; and, though the sale of Indian appointments for money be pro hibited, there is little to prevent a Director converting them into cash if he pleases. We have no present acquaintance with the state of the market in respect to these things; but, till very lately, at any rate, they were pro curable without difficulty by any one who knew how to set about it. Like the purchase of game out of season, the thing was illegal, but there was little danger attached to the proceeding. Under such a system, the claims of service or of merit go, of course, for nothing. At the Horse Guards, an honourable career in the army never fails to procure a commission for a son without purchase ; but the merits of the most distinguished officer who ever bled or died for his country in India would be held to con vey no earthly claim for his children on the Direction. Nay, so strenuously do the Direc tors insist on their personal interest in these appointments being maintained, that some assistant - surgeons, who had been sent on emergency by the Government of India to fill vacancies during the Sciude and China wars, and who had served some three or four years with distinguished credit, were refused confir mation of their commissions, and were turned adrift after the war was over. In the same way, sergeants in the company's service, who have won their ensigncy on the field of battle, are invariably removed from their regiments, and permanently shelved. The plea in both cases has been, that assistant-surgeoneies and ensigncies are the private perquisite of the Directors, and that they are not to have their property diminished by granting commissions for services to men whom they neither know nor care for. Incredible as it may seem, officers with Scinde and China medals on their breasts have been driven forth to starve in order to make way for nominees of the Direc tors, in the shape of personal relatives, or of men who had surreptitiously purchased com missions from them in London. Nor has the evil of the Indian system of patronage rested here, for the consequence of filling Indian appointments with the sons, and nephews, and friends of the Directors has caused a waste of the public resources, in the shape of salaries and allowances, that is driving 'lndia daily nearer and nearer the verge of bankruptcy; while the frightful abuses and misgovernment it has been the occasion of are beyond belief. But what rational being could expect anything but abuses and misgovernment to prevail in a land where the controlling authorities are the fathers, and uncles, and relatives of the pei - petrators of these abuses, and are the very persons who profit by the (misgovernment against which all the rest of the world cries out Talk of ,the evils arising from the ne potism of the Whigs, why it is the merest trifle compared with the evils arising from the nepotism of the Directors in their appoint ments to India. To realise the idea of the latter one must supposo the ELLIOTS, and THE PRESS. GREYS, and Russimui to hold office not for a term merely, but for their lifetime. One must suppose them virtually irremovable by the Crown, and really unmoveable by Parliament. One must suppose their Parliament, like the Court of Proprietors, to meet on only four days in the year, and each time for only a couple of hours. One must suppose them to be themselves the makers of the law, and the nominators of its Ministers, and to have the power of removing those Ministers at pleasure. One must suppose them empowered to appoint their sons and nephews as magistrates and judges the moment they leave Harrow, though they may have no earthly knowledge of law whatever. One must imagine them, in fine, to have the patronage of every office in the State, fixing the number and salaries of those offices at pleasure, and to use that patronage entirely and avowedly for their own and their relatives' aggrandisement. One must fancy them, moreover, to be themselves the only tribunal to apply to in cases of complaints against these relatives for malversation, cor ruption, or incapacity. That is the position which one must fancy the Whig families to hold in England, in order to understand what the Directorial families are to India. It is true that the patronage of the medical service, and of the regular civil service, has been cut off from them by the late India Bill, but it is clear that they do not yet despair of regaining this, while the whole military, and naval, and ecclesiastical, and uncovenanted civil service appointments remain in their hands to do as they please with ; and these and the civil engineer appointments for India have in creased so vastly within these two years as almost, if not entirely, to compensate them for the patronage they have lost. The gift of all the contracts for India remains in their hands also, and the gains on those are understood to be enormous. Lord PALM KRSTON, on the part of her Majesty's Government, has avowed his acceptance of, and his intention practi tally to carry out, the principle laid down in Sir BULWER LYrrox's "Administrative Reform" amendment, which is, that the paramount object in the distribution of patronage should be "to secure to the service of the State the " largest available proportion of the energy " and intelligence for which the people of this " country are distinguished." That principle thus laid down by the Opposition, accepted by Government, and affirmed by the almost unanimous voice of the House of Commons, is the principle which the Premier has declared his intention of abiding by in his Ministe rial career. Whether he means honestly and truly to fulfil the pledge which he has thus publicly given, it is impossible for us at this moment to tell ; but one thing we are sure of, which is that he could not give the world a better proof of his being in earnest than by proceeding at once to deal effectually with the monstrous abuses involved in the present sys tem of dispensing the patronage and super vising the contracts for India. HANGO MASSACRE. THE Russian version of this detestable cruelty in no way invalidates the evidence of the seaman BROWN. The official report of General De BERG, while omitting all notice of the flag of truce, charges the boat's crew with having landed with in tention of plundering—with having fought when attacked—and, finally, with having laid down their arms and surrendered. In opposition to this, Capt. FANSHAWE assures ns that the muskets of the boat's crew were not loaded, and that they were stowed with the men's cutlasses at the bottom of the boat when starting. Now, although between leaving the ship and landing on the jetty there was ample time and opportunity for the boat's crew to have loaded their muskets and buckled on their cutlasses, yet is it p robable that, coming in with a flag of truce, and seeing no signs of troops in the neighbourhood, such precautions would have been deemed neces sary! And, moreover, the testimony of Baows is distinct in stating that they dragged the bodies, himself included, from one end of the boat to the other, to get these arms out of the bottom of the boat. The Tory number of the arms SATURDAY, supplied "seven muskets and seven cutlasses" for eleven seamen, to say nothing of the officers and btewards, would be sufficient answer, if the mere fact of a ship sending in a solitary boat unsupported made any proof that no hostile intention could be meant. But the flag of truce was flying in the bow of the boat from within a mile of the shore to the moment of landing. Fastened to the end of an eight-foot boarding pike, it must have been seen from the shore, and who is there to believe that an enemy who secreted himself and laid a trap for his approaching foe would not keep a good look out upon the movements of that foe ? With regard to the resistance which General De BERG asserts the crew to have offered, little need be said. He admits that the boat's crew were first attacked, and "resisted feebly ;" but is it likely th*t a British boats crew would, if landing with hostile intentions, have only " resisted feebly," and so feebly as not to inflict any loss upon their assailants? The last paragraph, asserttng that the boat and its gun had been sank, is manifestly disprove i by the actual circumstances. No cutter ever carries carro nade ; no boat under the size of a barge or pinnace carries guns; and as to the boat being sunk, the fact of its being brought on board the Cossack with its bloody freight is sufficient answer to the assertion. There is but one feeling throughout the country in relation to this savage atrocity, which nothing short of the most severe and condign punishment of its perpetrators will satisfy. Whether the Russian Government will so far acknowledge its submission to the laws of war among all civilised nations, as to mark by a vigorous investigation and appropriate punishment its sense of this ferocious and unmanly deed, remains to be seen. Should it dispute some minor points of the charge, and refuse to punish the assassins who instigated the attack, the Allies would then, in the language of VATTEIy be authorised to put in practice everything against a barbarous enemy which shall bring him to reason and to a sense of those despised laws which govern honour and hu manity. OUR FLOATING BATTERIES. THE first floating battery was tried this week at Sheerness, and made such an essential mess of her trial that as yet no opinion can be given of her capa bilities beyond the fact that she would neither steer, wear, nor stay under steam or canvas ; that she rolled heavily in smooth water, and would certainly go to the bottom in a heavy sea; that she broke her donkey engine, and nearly burst her boilers in con sequence ; and finally, with fires out and boilers empty, was towed ingloriously by a tug steamer, and rescued from all further danger to herself or others by being lashed alongside a dockyard hulk. We have the best authority for contradicting the statement which has lately been made public, that there is at present any probability of lineal transmis sion of the Crown of France. Mn. BUSBY, the wealthy Dublin distiller, dropped dead on Thursday week while preparing to attend the funeral of his friend, Mr. Arthur Guinness, the eminent brewer. THE RIGHT HON. SIDNEY HERBERT has been ad vised by his medical attendant to abstain from all public business for a time, in order to recruit his health, for which purpose he is now on a tour in Scotland. A RErmur moved for by Mr. Oliveira, M.P., shows that the total quantity of foreign wines in bond in the United Kingdom on the sth day of April last amounted to 11,254,066 gallons, of which 171,863 were imported from South Africa, 730,404 from France 5,601,437 from Portugal, 3,849,006 from Spain, 24,995 from Madeira, 49,568 from Holland, 21,465 from the Canaries, 2,891 from the Azores, 265,600 from Naples and Sicily, 838,731 from other parts, and 398,626 from various countries, mixed in bond. ALL accounts from the Highland moors concur in the assurance that there will be a full average stock of grouse this season. No traces of the disease which formerly committed such ravages have yet been ob served among the old birds. •-•••••,