The Press. — London, England, 1855-03-24 00:00:00

MARCH 24, 1855. Siam' deposed " that he thought the War-office " as it then existed, in February last, was re " sponsible" for having sent out the old pen sioners. We think so too ; and, in saying so, we echo the universal opinion on that point. 2. But it may be said that the Doctor's com munication was only " verbal," and the guilty parties may try to escape. Unfortunately for them, the correspondence is extant about the waggons for carrying off the sick and wounded, so long since as the 3rd of March,lBs4 ; and the previous charge relative to the pensioners is fully proved by a subsequent letter, put in by Dr. SMITH and read, " suggesting, as it had " been resolved not to employ ablebodied soldiers, " that a corps should be organised consisting " of eight hundred natives and Armenians" for this service, to be enrolled under military dis cipline. To that letter Dr. SMITH " got no " answer for some time. At last the Duke of " NEWCASTLE sent out Dr. Bran to endeavour "to raise such a corps. Dr. Bazrr was told " that these men would run away, and Dr. " BRETT was sent home again." Let it here be observed that the formation of the ambulance corps was of the greatest importance, yet "no answer was returned for " some time." But "at last" the Duke of NEWCASTLE stirred in the matter, and sent out a " Doctor" to organise a corps, though several military men on the spot would have done as well as the Doctor, whose faith as to what "he was told" was very facile. 3. Doctor SMITH produced letters, dated Bth May, 1854, addressed to the Military Secretary about ships for the transport of the wounded, also about hospital ships, and a fixed hospital on a healthy island in the Mediterranean. "He received no answer to that " letter. He repeated his advice from time to " time, and at last two hospital-ships were " fitted up." And on the same point the fur ther evidence of Dr. SMITH is of great impor tance, as bringing home continued neglects to the War-office. 4 On the 28th of April last year, Dr. SMITH wrote to the Military Secretary about the winter clothing. " They were at work all the " summer examining it." And it would seem that vast difficulty was found in getting warm clothes in manufacturing England to supply fifty thousand men ! Credat Judaus. Officials who could not find time to answer letters about the Ambulance Corps, addressed to them by their medical chiefs, would, of course, find it difficult to write to the manufacturers of the north for warm drawers, flannels, &c. Yet we were told of their " great administrative " abilities." 5. So erroneous, in Dr. SMITH'S opinion, was the plan fur the Smyrna hospital, that he claimed to " be exonerated from all responsi bility in that instance," and Mr. SIDNEY HERBERT consented w that request. Now, here arc revelations which, beyond question, establish cases of gross neglect on the part of the War-office. Further disclosure, we do not doubt, will be made, and the Ministers to whose mismanagement the dis asters of our army can now be directly traced must be brought to the bar of the country, to answer the charges fastened by evidence upon them. THE " PRESS " AND THE "FRIEND OF INDIA." IN Calcutta there is a paper published weekly called the Friend of India. At the present day the title is a complete misnomer, and one would suppose that it had been given on the "Lucus a Don lucendo " principle—the doe trines which the paper advocates being at present wholly opposed to the welfare and happiness of the people of India. It was not, however, always so. The cause of good govern ment, progress, and the abolition of abuses, was that in the interest of which the Friend of India was first established ; and, in order to obtain a security and freedom not then accorded to the . _ _ THE PRESS. Thence in those days issued spirit-stirring denunciations of the monopolising spirit of the Company ; and the young Ben gallee who had mastered the English lan guage felt his pulse beat high at the future shadowed forth for his race in the columns of the Friend of India. Papers, however, like the beings who edit them, have their several phases of existence; and the Friend, when the first flush of youth had worn off, became temperate and steady. As years progressed it sunk into the extreme of calmness and sobriety, and finally it con sented to take the pay of Government, and turn Swiss in the cause of those whom it had been perpetually attacking. It is not easy for the mental eye to perceive an abuse when a well-salaried sinecure and a lucrative con tract are conjointly operating to intercept the view. Such being the antecedents and present position of the Friend of India, it is not very astonishing that, in pursuance of its duty, it should have expended a little ink in endeavouring, to counteract, as fur as possible, the effects of some articles rather damaging to the present rulers of India which have lately appeared in this paper ; but to those who are acquainted with the facts of the case little weight will be attached to the Friend of India's assertions. When, for instance, it tells us that Sir COLIN CAMPBELL did not resign his Peshawur command in consequence of the treatment he met with at the hands of the Governor General, it states what it ought to know to be untrue, and what it may learn to be so, by applying to Sir Court CAMPBELL. When it says that his actual resignation took the form merely of an application to return to England, it is either very ill-informed or very dishonest, as such application, it is perfectly well understood, is the usual mode of relinquish ment of office adopted by commanders who are dissatisfied with their situation. When it says that Surat-men were insurgents, it omits to say that their rebellion amounted simply to a re sistance to the compulsory collection of rent from them at the bayonet's point, they having lived rent free under every former Govern ment from the time of ALEXANDER THE GREAT to the present period ; and when it says that the measures pursued by the Marquis of DALHOUSUC on the north-west frontier had been attended with complete success, it fails to notice another expedition ordered against the tribes about a month since to renew the system of making peace by deliberately in vading the hereditary rights of villagers to their lands, and then punishing the resist ance naturally engendered by a wholesale de struction of the houses, crops, and orchards, of the villagers, and by handing over them selves and their families to the mercy of the invaders. It was not out of any mawkish sensibility that Sir COLIN CAMPBELL protested against this policy as Sir CHARLES NAPIER had protested against it before him ; but out of that tender respect for human life so often risked, so easily taken, but so impossible to restore, that, anomalous as it may seem, is rarely found so conspicuous in any one as in the brave old soldier. As regards the Friend of India's comparison of Lord DALHOUSIE to Lord WELLESLEY, we must merely, in the words of Mr I3URCHELL, say " Fudge." The penuriousness of the one in his personal expenditure affords not a greater contrast to the princely munifi cence and generosity of the other than the narrowness of Lord DALHOUSIE in public life does to the noble and boundless libe rality of view exhibited by the Marquis of WELLESLEY. The one is the lauded tool of the Directors, the other was their uncom promising and contemptuous opponent. It would not be a greater sacrilege to compare Mr. FREDERICK PEEL to the elder Prrr than to compare the Marquis of DALHOUSIE with one of the noblest of modern intellects, and one of the purest and most single-minded of modern statesmen—the great and good Lord , WELLESLEY. .d 271 less than the gravity of an awful dispensation of events could impart such interest as most Christians felt when discharging the duties appropriate to the day for humiliation. Not a twelvemonth since a former day for public prayer was set apart. Some of the considerations on this awful theme belong only to the minister of religion, or to the sincere worshipper in the closet; but some views upon it are fairly within the province of a journalist, and on these we desire to speak. Looking calmly back upon the course of the last twelvemonth, is it quite certain that we entered upon the present war with feelings of the right spirit? Were we not too boastful and confident ? We are afraid that even yet we have not fully realised the excess of levity with which we engaged in a tremendous con test with one of the mightiest Powers on earth, and on this pcint we were struck by some detached portions of the eloquent discourses delivered before the public authorities last Wednesday. Having to preach to the House of Commons, it was only to be expected that a practised preacher like the Rev. HENRY MEL viLLE would indicate the grounds on which, to a Christian moralist, the war might be justified. "It was not," said Mr. MELVILLE, " for Eng " land to sit tamely by while country after " country lost its independence." And again, "We took up the championship of the op " pressed." Now, assuming that such objects and motives fully justified our going to war, there remains the question, whether we acted in our measures with the caution belong ing to our experienced nation, ruled over by a time-honoured and trusted Legislature ? On these heads we think that the Bishop of LONDON was fully justified when, towards the close of his masterly discourse delivered at St. Paul's Cathedral, his Lordship touched on our overweening pride—our vain-glory--our boasts about our armaments—the underrating our foes, and our ignorant exaggerations of our own strength. After what that eminent Prelate urged on that point, it might be almost superfluous to say more. Yet let us look at some of the most disgraceful incidents which accompanied our commencement of the war. After having flung down the gauntlet to a gigantic adversary, it appears that our Government thought that England could play at war ; and we learn from Dr. ANDREW SMITH'S valuable evidence, on Tuesday, before the " Inquiry Committee" that, in the first instance, he was told to pre pare suitable medical aid for "an army of " observation of about ten thousand men." Then it was increased afterwards " to twenty "or twenty-five thousand more." And with tHis handful of troops we were, forsooth, "to " take up that championship of the oppressed" which was to be England's mission, and it was with these units we were to show the hundreds of our adversary that " England would not sit " tamely LI." As if such " overweening pride," such " vain glory," and such " boasting of our armaments " (to use the Bishop of LONDON'S words), were not absurd enough, we made ourselves still more ridiculous by the swaggering and arrogant speeches at the absurd banquets given at the beginning of the war. On this point we must observe that there was not the least resemblance between the dinner given at White's to the Duke of CAMBRIDGE and the grotesque entertainment at the Reform Club. The dinner at White's was attended by noble men and gentlemen of opposite parties in the State, and the speech of the Duke of CAM BRIDOE, in returning thanks for his health, was (like the tone of the company) modest and Unassuming, and quite different from that ridiculous scene when the present Premier and Sir JAMes GRAHAM made speeches which even then were felt to be most offensive to the public mind. We have not forgotten bow, when Mr. BRIGHT drew attention to these unhappy scenes, Lord PALMERSTON had the singular want of taste to sneer , !it " the " honourable and reverend g entleman. ,ful to recollect that in the interest of which the Friend of India of the purest and most sirigle•nunaea oI "LIVIA had was first established ; and, in order to obtain m odern statesmen — the great a nd good Lord unhappy scenes, LOTU rALMERBTON the a security and freedom not then accorded to the WELLESLEY. singular want of taste to sneer , at " the newspaper press in British India, it was printed " honourable and reverend gentleman. and published in the then Danish settlement of These things are now painful to recollect; DAY OF Serampore—a town so near to Calcutta as to HUMILIATION. but we should turn meditation upon them to be practically within its suburbs, while, at the Jr cannot be often in the history of our age good account. Let us, therefore, take care same time, being a foreign settlement, it was that days of such serious import as last Wed- that we do not again expose ourselves to out of the East India Company's jurisdiction. nesday can be expected to occur. Nothing moral censure by making a perfect mockery 71,1