The Press. — London, England, 1856-06-21 00:00:00

-_ _ , _......-.- -364- ___ :1;_ ___ -..___..__ .. i. E g • i ..,___________. -.............:- . - -%•.-,:-----,_ _ _ •.............- - - „,,.........„....,-.. ....- 4w,- 578 Government will ever be truly amicable, or that the danger of serious misunderstanding will ever be removed. But it is a policy which Lord PAT.MERiTON during the whole course of his political life has opposed, and which we believe he is totally iucapable of appro. elating. THE PRESS. on his " want of caution." His anonymous censors have in their attacks upon him exhibited that fault most egregiously. The imputations unfairly 031§H. upon Mr. CRAMPTON are applicable in u tenfold degree to those high parties whom it is sought to relievs from condemnation by damaging a gentleman who must still keep silent under unjust strictures not founded in fact. We were much struck by some of the art ful attempts at wholesale disparagement of Mr. CRAMPTON. We allude particularly to a carefully veiled attack upon him in a leading organ of last Tuesday, prepared ev id en tly with as much care as if it were the political plea of a Ministry demurring to a public in dictment. It begins, of course, in the " Mrs. Candour" vein. "Mr. CRAMPTON has not been " wholly faultless." That safe assertion, so applicable to almost every official, may be passed by without further comment from us than to mark it as the false key of affected impartiality. "We do not doubt Mr. CRAMP " TON'S zeal and activity, but he appears to " have wanted caution and dignity." Why, these were the exact requisites in which the contrivers of the wretched scheme of a " Foreign Enlistment Bill" were them selves deficient. We do not think that it is for the abettors and supporters of that miserable measure to blame subordinates compelled to follow out indiscreet instruc tions If an incompetent general orders an experienced officer to perform a rash act, the junior must obey, and his courage and skill are of little avail while carrying out foolish commands. If a vacillating Minister presides over affairs, a movement of instability will be invariably communicated to his official ser vants; and we may rest assured, whenever Lords PALMERSTON and CLARENDON take a leading part in high diplomatic affairs, that, as the past history of their lives shows, there must be ample reason to apprehend want of " caution and dignity" on their parts. Both of those Noble Lords have talents of a certain kind. But, certainly, a reputation for " caution and dignity" dues not belong to either of them. Some of our readers may require to be re- ' minded that Mr. CRAMPTON is son to the eminent Surgeon-General of Ireland, Sir PHILIP CRAMPTON, of European celebrity in science, and nearly the lust of the old and brilliant school of Irishmen of past days. The ridiculous sneers at Mr. CRAMPTON as " an Irishman" are rather too absurd, when the circumstance is recollected that at the time of his appointment as Envoy to Wash ington it was specially mentioned that " an Irishman " would be the best for that mission, as he would have more facilities for super vising the conduct of certain " unexecuted patriots" of 18-18 Recollecting, also, that some of the best diplomatists our service ever boasted were " Irishmen," like Lord MACART NEY, the Marqu is WELLESLEY, Lord CASTLE REAGH, the arquis of HASTINGS, Lord PONSONBY, and also that Lord PALMERSTON himself is an " Irishman," it shows, indeed, some want of " dignity " and great absence of " caution" to exhibit animus against Mr. Caauvrort by deriding him as " an Irishman." The sneer, also, about his " conversational" talents is rather rash, as Lord CLARENDON takes particular pains to toil in that depart • ment. A great talker himself, the Noble Secretary for Foreign Affairs has a positive weakness - for " conversational " effects. Amongst all our public men is there one that can be matched against Lord CLARENDON for his love of long talking? He has, indeed, a masterly power of pouring forth torrents of gossip. "It may," proceeds the attack on Mr. CRAMPTON, " safely and certainly be said " that an Ambassador ought not to talk too " much." We sincerely hope that Lord CLARENDON may learn that official aphorism, and reform his loquacity. No other Viceroy ever talked so much in Ireland, though his Lordship was certainly no orator. He was incessant at lecturing in public and private, and his didactic harangues at dinners and at the Royal Dublin Society were the themes of deserved ridicule. His addresses about the art of growing flax were formidable proofs that he was matchless in the art of " spinning yarns." We are then told how a man may be SATURDAY, • " even a sharp fellow in his way," but if he be not " habitually an:l systematically observant," he will (the slang words are not ours) " get " himself into a mess." all of which is applied to Mr. CaAmivrox, but which reads as if some oblique censure Were intended on Lord CLARENDON, for the faults there hinted at were fatally shown in Lord CLAwmoN'sViceroyalty. Could anything possibly be worse in Mr. CRAMPTON than the conduct of Lord CLAREN DON in making an arrangement with Lord ENNISKILLEN and the Orangemen in 1848, and afterwards denying it ? Or his Dollybrac's " mess," when he attacked the Orangemen officially (after having previously courted. them), and when his Lordship " tumbled the " buck of the herd " in depriving the venerable Lord RODEN of his Commission of the Peace? Let it not be supposed for a moment that we wish to make out a to quoque case against Lord CLARENDON. Our object in referring to these matters is to show that there is power fulscircumstantial evidence for believing that much of what is charged against Mr. CRAMP TON should really be preferred against Lord CLARENDON. Experienced politicians believe that Mr. CRAMPTON must have had secret in structions (which, of course, cannot now be produced) ; and it happens, unfortunately for the reputation of Lord CLARENDON, that no English statesman ever dealt so much in do mestic affairs with " secret instructions." The mode in which Captain KENNEDY was used about the Orangemen ; his Lordship's esca pades with Messrs Coma . CONNELLANS, Frrzimox, and "Mr. BIRCH;" the confidential letter about an intrigue to prevent Lady JoeitLyx accompanying her Majest) to Ireland, because her ladyship was daughter-in-law to Lord RODEN; his Lordship's long transactions as "man of the world ;" his largesses to " Mr. BIRCH ;" the series of strange revelations about his mode of managing the public press— all these things cannot be forgotten, when we see Mr. CRAMPTON rebuked for " want of self " respect in the kind of persons with whom lea " connected himself, and the style of proceedinys " he adopted." That language can be made to recoil with fatal effect on the Foreign Secretary himself ! Here, fur instance, are the words used by a present member of the Judicial Bench in Ire land, in talking of the acts of Lord CLARENDON. In his speech to evidence in the case of " Birch versus Sir NV. Somerville," Mr. KEooa stated : In the columns of the World the Government assailed its opponents in st.ason and out of season, righteously and unrighleossitly, creditably and discreditably; and discredit ably not one whit more to my client than to the members of a Government who were supported by all the wealth and opulence which power can confer, men whose educa tion and position ought to have rendered them incapable of dijiling and degrading the public press by making use of it for those base purposes ; and it does not now, I say, lie i n the mouths of these persons to come forward and calum niate and defame their agent. Those words were received with applau in court ; and Lord CLARENDON'S conduct was afterwards discussed in Parliament, to the no small detriment of his Lordship's eputa non. We think that those who lecture Mr. CRAMPTON ought to think more carefuliy be fore they proceed to "defame and calum niate" that gentleman, who might have had special and secret instructions worthy of the Clarendonian school, and which must, as a matter of course, have been obeyed. Mr. CRAMPTON is a thorough gentleman, and we believe him to be a man of untainted honesty. We must recollect, also, that it was because Lord CLARENDON was found to be scandalously insincere, and not to be relied on, that all parties in Ireland finally joined against lain. and that he was obliged to leave Ireland pri vately, instead of following the routine course of a public departure. Never was any Irish Viceroy so remarkable for want of " caution and dignity " as Lord CLARENDON, and there is not a charge preferred against Mr. CaANwrox which cannot be applied with far more force to our Secretary for Foreign Affairs. But it is impossible to deny connection between the Government and Mr. CaotrroN. Where, for example, did Mr. CRAMPTON get the money which he gave freely to recruiting agents, and for what purpose was it intrusted to him? Lord CLARENDUN must recollect that a similar question was raised as to the money THE ITALIAN PENINSULA. THE best service that can be dogma to the peo• ple of Italy at the present moment is to warn them against illusions which, if indulged in, must lead to their destruction. If they listen to the language of our Ministerial journals they are lost. The sympathy expressed for their political state may be sincere, but it, must be fruitless. The Triple Alliance. has sealed their fate. Should they venture on in surrection, they will have the power of the three Governments of England, France, and Austria arrayed against them. Can they fail to perceive that the decisive language of the Austrian Government pro ceeds from a consciousness of the increased strength of its position, resulting from the Treaty of the 15th of April. It was with an eye to the Italian peninsula that that treaty was framed. The statesmen of France and Austria may be sincerely desirous of amelio rating the political condition of the Italian States, but on the first indication of that resistance which our journals so earnestly counsel, they would join their forces to repress it with a vigorous hand, and English ships would appear off the Italian ports charged to bear their part in the preservation of order. Whatever may be the amount of efferves cence among the Liberals of Italy, and what ever the activity of their secret societies, they may be assured of this, that there never was a time when revolt was more hopeless, or the means prepared fur its prompt suppression more vast. The twenty-five millions of people which some sanguine speculators talk of as ready to take up arms for independence, would avail little against the alliance of the three most powerful empires in the world. It may help to calm the agitation in Italy to tell the people frankly that arty expectation of assistance from this country would be even more miserably disappointed—if that were possible—than in 11348. No triple alliance then existed, yet humanity shudders to reflect on the fate of Brescia and of the Sicilian in surgents. If Lord PALMERSTON, after all his expressions of encouragement and promises of support, deserted them then, caii they be credulous enough to believe that he would support them now ? The evils which afflict Italy are to be de plored ; but those evils would be infinitely aggravated if the encouragement to revolt thrown out by our press were to have any effect in producing it. Sardinia is powerless in presence of the restraints imposed upon her action. Any movement on her part in favour of Italian nationality would only result in the overthrow of her own independence. The quietude of Italy is resolved on ; and nothing but mischief can result from any at tempts, however plotted, or by whomsoever favored, at political disturbance. OUGHT MR. CRAMPTON TO BE MADE A SCAPEGOAT? THE tendency of Governments when in a scrape to cast blame on subordinates was never so plainly seen as in the treatment offered to Mr. CRAMPTON. .Comments of peculiar sort have simultaneously appeared in three different organs notoriously friendly, " and something more," to the present Cabi net; and one might almost infer that the same demi-official pen had been employed in the triple attempt to make Mr. CRAMPTON a scapegoat for the acts of his official superiors. We must utter a strong protest against the excessive unjustice of so unworthy an attempt, and it is not impossible that these artifices may recoil upon their contrivers. Mr. CRAJiP zux foie grave literary rebukes • -c ral