The Press.
London, England, 1854-12-16 00:00:00

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No. 85.—VoL. 11.

LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1854.

PRICE SIXPENCE.

Ett Vress.

They will furnish no more recruits. We are I
parting with our reserve, the safest and best
reserve we possibly could have; and whatever
emergencies may arise, the country when these
regiments are departed, will be left perfectly
defenceless, and without even the nucleus of a
military force. And as for the Germans and
Switzers, how long with their foreign habits
and foreign tongues will it take to form them
into British regiments? If we have no other
resources than such as these measures indicate,
our state must be desperate indeed.
The country demands, with a unanimity
scarcely ever exhibited before, that the war
shall be energetically conducted, and these
bills are the answer returned to it. They
directly raise the question of confidence or no
confidence in the Government. The Ministers
have had warning, they have had time, they
have had trust. The nation, as one man, has
pressed upon them powers, supplies, resources
of all kinds,—it has overwhelmed them with
voluntary offerings even,—it has besought
them to take more money and more men,—to
do all that the Government of a mighty em-
pire could to secure our army in the Crimea,
to bring the contest there to a glorious issue,
and to wage the war on a scale which should
save England and the world from the hor-
rors of a protracted contest. Day by day
the voice of public opinion has been thun-
dered in its ears. It has listened, it has
promised, and we have now its acts before fie.
There is a limit to forbearance, and that limit
has been past. The Cabinet or the country
must fall. Which shall it be?

sought to disarm their antagonists? That we
are taking no advantage of their artful affecta-
tion of candour, their over-prompt penitence,
their eagerness to assure Parliament that there
had been numerous blunders of detail, for
which the delinquents were sorry, but which
should not, and indeed could not occur again ?
This contrivance, intended to lead, by infer-
ence, to the conclusion that Ministers had
confessed all that there was to confess, and
that in other respects they had done their
duty, was too transparent to deceive, and may
be contemptuously pardoned. It was natural
that they should endeavour to avail themselves
of every artifice of debate, and it is not in
members of the Coalition Cabinet that we were

LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1854.

PARLIAMENT has met, and the measures of the

Ministry are now before the country. What

they purpose to do is known to us with as
much certainty as what they have done. The
new Austrian treaty has been laid before the
Legislature by the Minister who inadvertently
gave so accurate a description of it on the

entitled to look for the large and noble tem-
perament which, in presence of a grand ques-
tion, forgets the petty manoeuvring of
factions. Those who had conducted a
great war in the spirit of pedantry were
likely to conduct a great debate in the
tone of pettifogging. It is not to the
sham plea of guilty on the smaller counts that
we allude in recording that the Coalition
stood self-condemned before Parliament.
The Ministry did not need Sir JOHN Pismo-
Toles assurance that it was not upon points of
detail that the Conservative Opposition would
assail the Government. The Administration
well knew that generous English gentlemen
confronted it, and that they world acorn to
take advantage of the innumerable small errors
and shortcomings incident to every novel
undertaking. But it was no doubt deemed a
double master-stroke of policy to offer defence
where there had been no attack, and to confess
to small faults in order to escape from the
question of great ones. Such are the tactics
of our high-minded Government.
But the charges which the War Secretaries
on the part of Lord ABERDIEN'S Ministry,
listened to in each House, and admitted either
in terms, or by the not less significant omission
of reply, were these :—That they had sent out,
for the invasion of a vast and powerful mili-
tary empire, an army utterly inadequate to the
gigantic work assigned to it. That not only
had an insufficient force been despatched, but
that no reserve had been prepared for the
reinforcements which it was evident would be
required after the very first grapple with the
foe. And that at this very moment, with a
diminished and debilitated army wasting away
before Sebastopol, all that can be done for it
is to send out succours by driblets, while the
enemy is massing his thousands around the
menaced stronghold.
Those three charges, of the gravity of which
it is impossible to speak in phrase too solemn)
were brought forward against the Aberdeen
Cabinet on Tuesday, and their truth was ad-
mitted. Nay, the wise rule observed in a
court of justice, where, when a capital charge
is made, the judge will not receive the accused
person's admissions, but demands proof step
by step, was followed out. In a series of
masterly speeches, we allude more especially
to those of Lord DERBY, Mr. LATARD, Sir John
PAZINOTON, and Mr. DISRAELI, the whole melan-
choly case was traced out, and proved with a
logical coherence of evidence that made reply
hopeless, and evasion a not less fatal if a more
cowardly course than confession
So far, therefore, the work is done for which
it was so desirable that Parliament should
meet. It has sat as a court of justice, has
witnessed accusation and attempt at escape,
and is spared the necessity of a formal verdict

first night of the session. A bill has been in-
troduced to render the Militia regiments
available for garrison duty abroad ; and
another bill is proposed to augment the army
by 16,000 foreign mercenaries, to be recruited
in Switzerland and Germany. These are the
measures which the Coalition Cabinet, unani•
mous for once, considers equal to the necessi-
ties of that tremendous war to which it has
committed us. The Emperor of RUSSIA, it is
reported, has resolved on a levy throughout
his dominions of sixteen men to every thou-
sand inhabitants, which would give him an
army of a million of soldiers, and Lord
ASERD/CEN'S Cabinet answers the defiance by
this scheme for enlisting sixteen thousand
Germans and Switzers.
The debates in both Houses of Parliament
last night show the marvellous change which
has taken place in the public mind since
Tuesday last. On the first night of the ses-
sion the past conduct of the Ministry was
freely arraigned, but, relying on the assurance
of the Royal Speech, that " the great war in
" which we are engaged" would be " pro-
" secuted with the utmost vigour and effect,"
there was a general disposition to concur in
any measures which it seemed probable that
the Government would propose. The recom-
mendation that " bygones should be bygones "
had some weight, and it was imagined that,
after the discussions of the opening night, the
few days of the sitting before Christmas would
be devoted to routine business. Never, we
will venture to say, did an Opposition meet in
Parliament with less intention to oppose or
obstruct measures which the Government
might think it expedient to propose ; and the
sudden change in the temper of both Houses
can only be referred to the strong conviction
entertained that the country is no longer safe
in the hands of the men who now rule the
State. It is this sentiment, sincerely and
solemnly held, which has gathered against
them the Opposition that threatens, as we
write, their existence as a Ministry.
It is not only that the measures themselves
are in the highest degree objectionable—that
the new Militia Bill will destroy the principle
of the system established—and that the foreign
enlistment scheme will tend to make the
army unpopular, and to check recruiting at
home--but it is the manifest inadequacy of
these measures, supposing them ever so suc-
cassful to the requirements of our state, that
has appalled all reflecting men. If the nation
can do no more than this, how is the war to
be carried on? The Militia regiments once
gone, will be entirely lost to the country.

DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS.

THE Legislature has been addressed by
our gracious Sovereign in a speech which
the Ministers who'composed it seem to have
studied to render feeble and utterly unworthy
of the grand crisis at which it was delivered ;
and then those Ministers were required to
explain why the army and the honour of
England have been placed in deadly peril by
the Coalition Administration.
The reluctant answers have been a mixture
of offensive bluster and of petty detail. Setting
all party feeling aside, nothing could be more
painful than the spectacle presented in the
two Houses during the debate on the Address,
if that may be called a debate in which the
frank and straightforward demands of states-
men were met by the niggling and shifty pe-
dantry of officials. It was humiliating to feel
that the destinies of a nation, at one of the
most momentous conjunctures of European
history, could be lett in feeble hands that
shake with the responsibility. What little
prestige yet lingered in the name of a Govern
went, what little faith any man had managed
to base upon the eternally and solemnly re-
iterated assurances of the Ministerial ogans
that Government had really done its duty,
were fatally dispelled ou Tuesday night.
The whole of the charges they are brief
snd stern—which the Opposition, speaking
the mind of the nation. has been compelled to
bring against those who have had the miscon-
duct of the war, were fully and suicidally ad-
mi.ted by the accused.
Need we say that we do but refer to the
small and tricky device by which the Ministers