The Press.
London, England, 1855-02-03 00:00:00

FEBRUARY 3, 1855.

projects, bitter quarrels causelessly provoked,
appointments recklessly jobbed, colonies
first teased into rebellion and then dragooned
into submission. History will record how, as
early as 1848, the able and popular Lord Elam
was mobbed in the streets of Montreal for
obeying the orders of his chief—how the Cana-
dian Parliamnent•house was burnt, and the
rioters, though well known, escaped un-
punished—how South Africa resisted, even to
the verge of rebellion, the unauthorised im-
portation of convicts—how the Now Zealand
plan of government broke down without even
a trial—with what vehemence Australia pro
tested against the mock Constitution thrust
upon her, its chief parliamentary opponent
being at that time Mr. GLADSTONE—and, lastly,
with what effrontery the massacre of Matelle,
the cruel punishment of the deluded Kandyans,
the imbecile and bloody Administration of
Lord TORRINGTON, were defended in the House
of Lords by the former advocate of colonial

rights and Champion of popular government.
These are acts which no lapse of years,
no new phase of political combinations,
not even the exigency of a crisis in the
national affairs, can banish from our recol-
lection. They were stigmatised at the time
by the leading statesmen of all parties, by
every independent member of Parliament, and,
with scarcely an exception, by the entire
press of England. But these things are
not all. In the department now popularly as
signed to him, Lord GREY has some expe-
rience. The Secretary for the Colonies was
also, until of late, the Secretary for War. This
office, in ordinary times, is nominal ; but there
are occasions when it becomes more than a
name. The Kaffir war was under Lord Chuff's
peculiar management. How it fared we need
remind no one. The Colonial Minister, like a
bad workman, quarrelled with all his tools.
He dismissed Sir PEREGRINE MAITLAND—he
superseded Sir HARRY SMITH ; the reputation
of our officers, the lives of our soldiers, mil
lions of the national treasure, were sacrificed
in the subjugation of a horde of naked savages
whom Dutch boers and English colonists,
when allowed to fight in their own way, had
been accustomed to set at defiance. At the
Cape, Lord GREY sustained a double defeat.
He fought the colonists and got beaten ; he
fought the Kaffirs, and after years of blood-
shed obtained a temporary submission at a
price considerably exceeding the fee simple
value of all Kaffraria. Admirable antecedents
for the ally of NAPOLEON and the opponent of
NICHOLAS ! Having failed against a barbarian
tribe, he is set to conquer Russia; an easy
task, and one most consistently undertaken by
an opponent, on principle, of the war.
Would that we could stop here ; but worse
remains behind. Who that heard it will forget
the memorable debate of August, '4B, when an
English gentleman—an English peer—was not
ashamed, from his place in Parliament, to
avow and to justify the mutilation of an im-
portant despatch, some passages being sup-
pressed and the sense of the whole perverted,
whereby that despatch was construed to mean
precisely the contrary of that which in the in-
tention of the writer it did mean? What
security have we that Lord GREY, as War
Minister in 1855, may not do again what, as
Colonial Minister he did, and defended, in
1848? From that time to this, so far as we
know, there has been on his part no apology,
no expression of regret, no indication of
changed opinions. Shall we ever feel sure
that the despatches of Lord RAGLAN have
reached us in an ungarbled form ? Why
should the letter of a commander-in•chief be
differently dealt with from the memorial of a
West Indian petitioner? And what confi-
dence can the nation place in a Minister
whose code of morality admits of such conve-
nient relaxations ? Intellectual incapacity
may be pitied—administrative disaster may
be a misfortune as much as a fault; but there
are offences against which the most unin-
structed conscience revolts, and exposures
which are more than politically discreditable.
Shame on Parliament if, amidst the perplexity
caused by the disruption of parties, and under
any pretended plea of national necessity, the
s appointment of such a man to such a post be
assed over in silence Shame on the army
, forgetting for a moment its instincts of dis-