The Press.
London, England, 1855-07-14 00:00:00

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No. 115.—VoL. 111.

LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 14, 1855.

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bear the whole odium of openly advocating
one course of policy while he secretly con
tended with all his might for another. He

did not stand alone. We have yet to learn
what number of his colleagues sided with him,
and who they were. Will these gentlemen not
be inspired by the courageous example of
their chief, and make a clean breast of it?
Surely, as they have so long been sheltered
by his protection and benefited by his pa-
tronage, they should not hesitate to share his
peril in the hour of need. We have a right to
know the names of those Abdiels, " faithful
among the faithless found," who agreed with
their leader that it was better they should, on
the most vital question of their time, violate
their conscience and act against their con vie•
tions, rather than ran the hazard of breaking
up their party, and the still greater calamity—
for that is the real point—of resigning their
places.

LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 14, 1855.

"PRESS" OFFICE,

Friday Evening, July 13.

WE have received the following conununi-

cation from a high authority at Berlin :

BERLIN, July 10, 1855.

I hasten to communicate to you the im-
portant intelligence that the Prussian
Gof3mment have received positive informa-
tion from St. Petersburg that the effective
army Russia amounts, at the present
time, to 650,000 men. Of this force it is
ascertaLied that there are 140,000 in the
Crimea, and that already General LUDERS
and General GRABBE, the formerwith 80,000,
the latter with 60,000, are advancing to the
relief of the garrison of Sebastopol by
forced marches. The knowledge of these
facts, proceeding from an authentic source
to the Court of Berlin, has produced a great
sensation here. It cannot be doubted that
Russia is straining every nerve to secure
the active co-operation of Prussia by an im-
posing display of her strength. Nor can it
be a matter of surprise that the intelligence
I have here conveyed to you should have
great weight in her councils.

Conscious of.the services he has rendered
to his faction, and secure of its support,
Lord Joim challenges the issue. He has
betrayed the trust reposed in his personal
honour ; he has slighted his Sovereign ; he has
deceived Parliament; he has recklessly played
a part so palpably double-faced, and so
glaringly unprincipled, as to be without
parallel in English statesmanship. But be
has trust in the management of HarrEa, and
in the strength of his Whig connection, to
secure for him a majority, and gain for him a
verdict of acquittal.
All the particulars of that intrigue which
has been fermenting in the Cabinet Since its
irmation are not yet made public. ' We have
caught but glimpses of the darkness of the
interior; but the track of Lord JOHN RUSSELL
is to be marked by such a kind of fcetid light
as putrescent substances throw forth. in the
last stage of decay.
It was he who first declared that the exist-
ence of Sebastopol was a standing menace to
Turkey, and his words helped to give to the
contest a character of mortal arbitrcineut.
Conceiving that as he had been a principal
in provoking the war he was for that reason the
fittest to settle it, he wen t to Vienna the avowed
emissary of peace. And now we find, from his
own statement, as well as from the revelations
of Count 13uoL, that he no sooner arrived at
Vienna than he discussed with the Austrian
diplomatists, not only the terms he was com-
missioned to accept by his Government, but
others also which had never been agitated, and
bad for their object to create an equilibrium
in the Black Sea by maintaining there a French
and English squadron equivalent to the Rus
sian navy.
These terms, when other proposals failed,
he declared to Count Buol. in his opinion
ought to be, and might be," accepted:—
I said to Count Buol that I could assure him, and that
he could convey that assurance to the Emperor of Austria,
that I would lay the ease before the Cabinet of this coun-
try, and that I would use my best endeavours to put these
propositions in such a light that they might hope for their
adoption.
It was while these terms were under dis-
cussion by our Government, and while it was
yet doubtful which faction in the Cabinet
would prevail, that Mr. MILNER Gissox con-
veniently postponed his motion, and that the
penetration of Mr. Disaazu discovered that

ERRORS are manifested by their consequences.
It is now evident how great a fault the House
of Commons committed when, after expelling
Lord ABERDEEN'S Ministry from office, it ac-
cepted a mere reconstruction of that Ministry,
instead of insisting on a total ehange of men.
Transition Ministries are always dangerous in
times of extremity. From the first the Govern-
ment was in a false position. Its members
were implicated in the acts and committed to
the policy of the condemned Ministry; and
the decisive vote of the Commons, with all the
political confusion • resulting from it, had no
other result than to change the occupants of a
few offices, some of them visibly for the worse
Hence it has come, that while the country
hugged itself in the belief that it had a
Ministry unanimously resolved on the vigorous
prosecution of the war, there were in that
Government two parties—one for peace and one
for war, and that their division, long smothered
by interest, has at last exploded in a scandal
which, if it be not promptly effaced, will make
our Legislature and Government the scoff of
Europe.

Lord JOHN RUSSSLL is at present made to

STAMPED .... SIXPENCE.
UNSTAMPED..FIVEPENCE.

" uncertainty of conduct and ambiguity of lan-
guage "on which he founded his motion. The
justification of the course he took is now com-
plete.
Defeated, Lord Jour; determined not only
to remain in the Cabinet, but to conceal the
part he had played under a new assumption
of warlike ardour. Hardly had he ceased hie
urgent advocacy for peace with Russia, than
he rose in the Commons (May 24) to denounce
the unscrupulous ambition of that Power.
He pointed to her immense territory and
population, to her fortresses in Poland, her
strength in the Baltic, her influence in Ger-
many—all his observations being directed to
show that there could be ho security for peace
but in her material humiliation He spoke as
if he had never entertained any other pro-
posal than that of the limitation of the
Russian fleet, and directly stated that there
were but two proposals to be considered :

After all that I have heard against that project of limi-
tation, in the position of affairs in which we were placed.
I see no better security than that limitation, or the plan to
which Russia was more opposed—that of making the Black
Sea a commercial sea altogether, and riot admitting say
ships of war in that sea.

This was spoken but a few days after he had
hotly advocated terms essentially distinct from
either of the above projects, and which terms
he tells us he then thought, and still thinks.
" might have been accepted." Yet, further,
he argued against Mr. GLADSTONE'S proposal
that we should be prepared to defend Turkey
when in danger of attack from Russia. Why,
that, he exclaimed with a sneer of triumph,
" brings us to one of two conclusions—either
" that we must be there perpetually to defend
" Turkey and to make perpetual war, or that
" we must be contented with leaving Turkey
"as she is ;" the first conclusion that our
fleet should be perpetually in the Euxine
to defend Turkey, being the very proposal
which in the first days of that same month of
May, as ho tells us, he had been pressing on
the Cabinet of which ho was a member.

Indignation is sometimes expressed at the
license of counsel, who lend their tongues and
talents for a fee; their position is understood,
and it is recognised that they stand in place
of their clients. But what is to be said of the
license of a statesman in the position of Lord
JOHN RUSSELL, Nho prostitutes his character
that he may obtain a momentary advantage in
poliii2al warfare? His speech of the 25th of
May, read in the light of that explanation
wrung from him on the Bth of July, is one
long tissue of the meanest deceit and sub-
terfuge.
Lord PALMERSTON favoured the deception.
He intimated that Lord JOHN, like himself, was
resolved to be content with pothing less thin
a limitation of the Russian fleet. " Turkey is
" exposed," he said, "as my Noble Friend
" (Lord ;Tons Rosszia,) has stated,toa standing
" danger, and the existence of that fleet is a
" standing menace to Turkey." How adroit!
What a spectacle to be witnessed : the Minis•
ters of a great country converting themselves
into professors of legerdemain, and competing
which could beat cheat the senses of their
hearers by conveying to them false im•
pressions.
The question to be determined by Sir
EDWARD LYTTON'S motion is,- whither this
system is creditablter r. 7 be
allowed to continue, wh et Ali. 'MO to
have confidence in the •mt 1: •u. • • it?
Lord Jowl declares lie is r • AA
•

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