The Press.
London, England, 1855-10-06 00:00:00

OUR LEGISLATORS ON THE WAR.

MEMBERS of the Legislature, in different parts of the
country, are beginning to express their sentiments
on the present aspect of the war, and their opinion
on what should be the policy of this country. As
yet, however, there is great reserve in the language
spoken, and in but one instance—the exception is
illustrious—do we find the slightest attempt to guide
public opinion, or to run counter to what is supposed
to be the popular desire for the prosecution of hosti-
lities. At the Nithesdale Agricultural Society, last
week, the DUKE of Buccmuctr, in proposing the
t )ast of the "Army and Navy," paid a well-deserved
tribute to the memory of the late Lord Raglan, and
concluded by expressing his hope that peace might
soon be concluded. His words were remarkable :
He hoped no attempt would be made to force on Russia
an ignominious peace; such a peace could nut be a lasting
one. He hoped that an honourable peace would speedily
be attained—a lasting peace, not only to this country, but
to Europe ; and that the balance of power would be arranged
in such a spirit as that the country would not for long be
again engaged in such a war.

The sentiment here expressed will remind the
reader of an acute observation by Lord Mahon in
his "History," that though the most remarkable
treaties of peace in our annals have commonly been
received with great popular dissatisfaction, yet that
no peace is likely to be lasting which is not based on
moderate terms, as a nation which feels its power
impaired by a cession of territory, and its honour
degraded in the eyes of its people, will only observe
the peace forced on it, until it can collect resources,
and form alliances, to renew the struggle with better
chance of success. Though not immediately con-
nected with our subject, we are happy to quote his
grace's feeling and eloquent tribute to Lord Raglan's
talents and virtues :

Attempts had been made to show that the wants of the
army bad been neglected by the commander, and that the
troops were discontented with their leader. But from the
highest authority he could state, without fear of contradic•
Lion, that no man was more beloved, respected, and looked
up to by an army than was Lord Raglan.. It had been in•

Amount applied out of the Net Income for the Quarter
ended Sept. 30,1855, to Redemption of Exchequer
Bills (deficiency) for the quarter endedJune3o, 1555 .. 63,306,433
Amount applied to redemption of Ways and Means
Bills issued in the Quarter ended June 30.1855.... 1,740,100
Net amount applied out of the Consolidated Fund to
supply Services in the Quarter ended Sept. 30, 1855 14,024,840
Charge of the Consolidated Fund for the Quarter
ended Sept. 30, 1555, viz.:—
Interest of the Permanent Debt 65,582,506
Terminable Debt
Interest of Exchequer Bills (De-
ficiency)
Ditto, ditto (Ways and Means) 19.231
The Civil List
Other Charges on Consolid. Fund 327,307
Advances for Public Works, &c 432,270
7,861,400
Surplus Balance beyond the Charge of the Consoli-
dated Fund for the Quarter ended Sept. 30,1855,
viz.
Great Britain
lreland

£27,253,258

sinuated that a coolness had existed between Lord Raglan
and General Pelissier ; but he gave a positive contradic-
tion to such insinuations, and could inform them that
General Pelissier looked up with the greatest respect to
Lord Raglan, and felt for him the personal affection of a
friend. These insinuations were false. (Cheers.) Like
other great commanders, Lord Raglan had been assailed
by the attacks of discontented spirits in the Crimea, and
unmerited anonymous slanders had been poured out on
him in this country. He (the Duke of Buccleucb) felt
strongly on the subject. He considered it to be the most
dastardly offence a man could commit to issue an anony-
mous article, and, by dark and insidious attacks, attempt
to blight the fame and character of brave men. Those
who presumed to lead public opinion ought to have been
careful how they gave circulation to base slanders in their
papers. (Loud cheers.) It was an easy matter to injure
even the brightest character ; people were too ready, too
willing to hear a:tacks on the fair fame and reputation of
others; but often it was a long time before a refutation of
the slanders, to which they had given too ready credence,
reached them. Lord Raglan's death was lamented by the
whole force in the Crimea, and no less in this country,
when the truth was known. When too late, people in-
quired into the truth of the unjust attacks made upon him.
He had known him personally, and a more honest, upright
man never lived. He was a man who never made an
enemy, nor sought to court a friend. A more single-
minded man never existed. From his earliest military
career, the Duke of Wellington—a keen inquirer into
character—had the highest opinion of his talents. He re-
gretted that Lord Raglan had not lived to hear the shout of
triumph over the rains of Sebastopol. It had been truly
said his disease was nine•tenths mental and one-tenth
bodily. He was a man of sensitive mind, and could not
hear of the attempts to disparage his fair fame without
feeling wounded in spirit.
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER presided at
the meeting of the Radnorshire Agricultural Society
on Monday last, and spoke at some length on the
Sebastopol expedition, but carefully abstained from
saying one word on the present situation of affairs.
He rather seemed, however, to claim credit for the
Government that they had " broken off" the nego-
tiations for peace :

The course which was taken by this country in the ne•
gotiations at Vienna was pursued with steadiness and con•
sistency throughout. No change took place In the terms

95

which were offered by this country and France to Russia.
Those terms were refused, and others were offered on the
part of Russia. The result of those conferences was that
her 'Majesty's Government, looking at the circumstances
of the contending powers—to the position of the armies at
Sebastopol, and to the duty which they owed to their
country—thought no good would arise from their con-
tinuance, and they were therefore broken off. (Applause.)
Since that time the war with Russia has been prosecuted
with all the vigour which this country, with its great re-
sources, could command ; it has been prosecuted with all
those more extensive military resources which the great
population and the great military organisation of France
puts at the disposal of her Government, and the result we
all know.

The sufferings and privations of the army last
winter were, he said," such as scarcely any civilised
army was ever before exposed to," but he attributed
them " to the inherent difficulties of the expedition
and the failure of immediate success," though be
" did not mean to exculpate all the persons who were
concerned in the government of that expedition."
The distinction is curious. We are to infer probably
that only the members of the late Government who
withdrew were culpable, while those who still remain
in office are blameless. He deprecated any attempt
to disparage the merit of our army in the attack of
the Bth of September, or to draw invidious compari-
sons between the achievements of our soldiers and
those of our allies, as the French themselves so
generously acknowledged the services rendered by
the British troops on that day. On other topics Sir
G. C. Lewis maintained the official reserve which he
probably thought becoming his station.
MR. VERNON SMITH, at the Northamptonshire Agri-
cultural Association, broadly stated his opinion that
the Vienna negotiation would have been disastrous
if brought to a successful termination—an odd admis-

sion to come from a member of the Government which
opened and conducted that negotiation, though it
may help us to understand how it was that the nego-
tiation was so abruptly " broken off." Mr. Vernon
Smith seems to have thought that he should be on
safe ground in roundly attacking the friends to
peace :

The British public had most consistently borne its part
in the prosecution of the war. He was sorry he could not
say as much for the British Parlii.ment. Occasionally in
that body men arose who were indisposed to the prosecu-
tion of the war—some were for peace at any price, and
some were for war at half price. But war could not be had
at half price, for if the war were starved it was impossible
for success to follow. Others, again, high in power, were
for war while it was prosperous, but shrank from pursuing
it when it was disastrous, and did not hesitate to call upon
those whom they had plunged into war to extricate them by
what he (Mr. V. Smith) must ever consider would have been
a moel disastrous peace.

MR. BAXTER has addressed his constituents at
Montrose in most warlike terms. Russia was to be
warred with as " the champion of despotism whose
voice had been potential on the side of tyranny and
misrule in every part of the world." The diplomatists
of Vienna, with whom his " unaccountable friend
Lord John Russell" was willing to agree, were a set
of "old humbugs," and it was to Lord Palmerston
that we must mainly attribute it that the country
had not made "an ignominious peace." In the
midst of much raving some sensible observations
occur, as that,

had the Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen acted with proper
decision, hostilities never would have broken out ; and
even after their commencement, had the struggle been
carried on with all the resources of this great nation, the
Cabinet of St. Petersburg would have yielded ere now.

The general purport of his speech was, that the war
must now be waged to extremity, and that peace
must not be thought of until the power of Russia
was completely broken, and she was willing to accept
such conditions as men of Mr. Baxter's Liberal
sentiments were willing to grant her.

THE CAMP GROUND AT ALDERSHOTT is to be stir
rounded by a pallisade, to inclose the entire space of
ground taken by Government for the incampment.
The object of this inclosure is to keep the public
from getting into danger by strolling across the rifle
practice-grounds. The artillery are to have a practice-
ground apportioned them as soon as the inclosure is
completed. Some opposition is being made by the
residents of adjoining villages, as the proposed
inclosure will atop up some public roads. The per-
manent buildings at Aldershot for 10,000 men are
progressing rapidly towards completion.
THE Swiss LEGION have received this week about
300 recruits, who are at present encamped under the
Western Heights at Dover.
POLITICAL OFFENCES AT NAMES, by an official list
lately published in the capital, are shown to have
been very numerous of late years. From 1848 to
May, 1854, 839 persons had been condemned to
different punishments. Of 47 of those condemned
to death 26 were commuted to the Ergastolo, and 21
to heavy irons. Among the condemned were 57
priests, and 34 of the prisoners had died. This list
does not include the number of persons arrested by
the police, and retained in custody without trial br
examination.

956

yittraturt.

My First Season By Beatice Reynolds.

London : Smith and Elder.
THE readers of this tale will, we fancy, be
more struck by its cleverness than by any
other quality. The story is well developed,
the dialogue sparkles with talent, and the pages
are crowded with satirical sketchings, and
close, clever presentations of life and charac-
ter, drawn with artistic skill, especially in the
delineation of those minute and secret points
of woman's inmost character, which we all can
recognise but so few define. The story is
ingenious and spirited. Beatrice Reynolds, a
young orphan, is brought up with the family
of her cousin, Lord Ailye, a curious young
ascetic, who inflicted a life of routine upon his
younger brothers and sisters, and sought,
in his retirement from society and the
rigorous restraint which he inflicted upon his
family, to turn their thoughts by prayer and
fasting away from the things of this world.
Luckily for our heroine, and for the full
development of her life, Lord Ailye's gentle,
subdued spirit fails under the severity of the
trial, and he dies, leaving his younger brother
George to succeed to the title and estates, and
his sister Rowena and cousin Beatrice to the
care of Lady Barres, a distant relative. Under
her ladyship's protection Beatrice is received
into fashionable society, passes through the
ordeal of her first season, and at the end
of it retires disgusted with the hollowness of
the life she witnessed and deeply in love
with her cousin's tutor, a princely Pole, in
exile, but who, restored to his estates, returns
to his native land and leaves poor Beatrice,
not lamenting—for she is too proud on the one
hand to do that, and too contented on the other
in having contributed to the happiness of her
cousin George, now Lord Ailye, by making a
match between him and the Pole's sister,
Maya, at once a beauty and a model woman—
but tinged with a certain colouring of disap-
pointment and sarcasm. Lady Barres, to whose
protection Beatrice is confided; is one of the
best and most finished characters in the book.
Well bred, indolent, selfish, and intriguing,
she felt Beatrice— passing poor, with only
seventy pounds a year of her own —to be
rather a responsibility, and sought by every
means to get rid of her by marriage ; yet,
when rank and fortuns desired to be laid at
the feet of the young beauty, Lady Barres
sent Beatrice out of town forsix months, and
successfully consoled the dissonsolate earl by
offering herself in her stead. The character of
her ladyship is neatly sketched :
Lady Banes was a widow, who concealed, if she felt, any
lingering regret for a husband she had lost before the birth
of an only child. I did not know, until I became acquainted
with this consolation of his mother, that his father had
been killed in a steeple-chase ; and, until subsequently un-
deceived, I fancied that this inauspicious event was the
reason Lady Barres had remained a widow two and twenty
years, she having been married at the mature age of sixteen.
I soon found that she loathed any kind of disturbance to
her indolent dreamy life—she suffered neither poverty nor
passion to ruffle its calm
I need scarcely say Lady Barres would put up with no
kind of scene. I never gave her any trouble of this kind;
but when Rowena gave way to her feelings, as young ladies
in society sometimes will, she always locked her into her
room, went out for a drive, and did not return for several
hours.
Lady Barres was a person of the best ton, rather than
thoroughbred—which means that, though a prince, the
cream of royalty, had once or twice honoured her hand by
touching it with his glove in a cotilion, the King Cophetua
would scarcely have discerned a desiderated consort
beneath her tatters had she been a " beggar maid." She
was rank-ridden, aristocratic to the care—the evidences
of her " blood " being hands and feet as white as lilies, of
which she was so openly vain that I have seen her sit for
an hour in her dressing-room with her shoes and stockings
off, and her feet displayed on a cushion of crimson velvet,
while she coaxed me with the eloquent gestures of her
hands, or rallied, which was her method of scolding, in her
soft, ineffably polished tones. She was plain in features,
but her bead was beautiful; and her natural languor gave
the impression of a being less busy by far than I found
she really was. She was not less fitted by nature than by
her courtly experience to introduce those ciphers of civili-
sation, young ladies not yet out, to the splendid circum-
stances and serious absurdities of the circle she adorned—
which, perhaps, all who can should enter, at least in youth.
Lady Barres is anxious to marry Beatrice to
her son. The description of the lover is
clover :
On going downstairs to breakfast I found Lady Barres,
10,19 w!aally bMqcbitpd 'her. dressing•roora4 sitting at p