The Press.
London, England, 1857-12-12 00:00:00

THE PRE S S, DECEMBER 12,1857.

force, but 2,000 of them. Not that they believed these men would
arrive sooner at their destination—for, said Mr. VERNON SMITH, " at
"this period of the year sailing-ships are even swifter than steamers"
—but "to excite a rivalry" between the sailing and steam ships, the
better to insure "an expeditious passage "! About as wise a piovisiou
as if in case of riots in the north we despatched one half of the troops
from Aldershott by railway and sent the rest by waggon. A week after this
we find Sir CHARLES WOOD assuring us that it was "a mistake altogether
" to suppose that steam-vessels were preferable to sailing-ships for the
"rapid transpert of troops," and asserting with all that diffidence
peculiar to the Right Honourable Baronet, that " long voyages at
"certain periods of the year were accomplished quicker, or as
" quick, by sailing-ships as by steam vessels, and that the
" particular case now under consideration was one of them " !
Such were the views and opinions of Ministers. On these opinions
is impressed that " original vice " of the mean and small con-
ception with which the intelligence of these Indian disasters was
by Ministers first received. They sent a brigade to suppress a rebel'
lion, and they trusted to the winds to save an empire. The result we
need hardly recapitulate here. After five months' desperate struggling
against desperate odds, assistance is at length arriving to the aid of our
fellow-countrymen; but by what means does it arrive but by those very
steamers her Majesty's Government on consideration had decided made
slower passages than sailing-ships? Thirty-three sailing-ships left
England in July, and not one had arrived at its destination before the
latest steamer that sailed in August ! More than that, the August
steamers had reached Calcutta before those ships which sailed in
June. What would have been the effect on India if these steamers
had teen despatched in June and July? No admissible objection
was ever urged against their employment. It was simply the opinion of
"the Government" that sailing-ships would do as well. The influence this
opinion has exercised upon the campaign is incalculable. It has sacri-
ficed many valuable lives ; it has tarried mourning into every home in
England ; and it has damped the spirit and wasted the resources of the
country. We have on a previous occasion incontestably shown that
the Government, in the first instance, underrated the Indian rebellion.
It. will need very little inquiry to prove that there is to be added the
additional crime of having neglected to take those obvious measures
the occasion demanded, and of having refused to despatch the rein-
forcements in the most expeditious manner at their command.

The extraordinary delay which took place in the transmission of
the last telegraphic news from India fully bears out the opinion which
we gave a short time ago of the inexpediency of trusting to foreign
Governments for the delivery of important telegrams. The message
having left Malta at 4 p.m. on Friday, the 4th instant, was despatched
from Cagliari at 8 p.m. on the same evening, and did not reach the
Foreign•oftice until 6.30 p.m. on Monday, the 7th thus, notwith-
standing the advantage of the submarine telegraph from Malta, hardly
anticipating the arrival of the mail by more than► a day. Let us at any
rate learn a lesson from this delay. If we cannot at once have a cable
of our own from Falmouth to Gibraltar and thence to Malta, let us
beware of depending upon foreign Governments for the transmission
of our messages at both ends. Let us take care that the telegraphic
connection with Alexandria is kept in our own hands. We an sure
that the Government will find Englishmen who arc willing to under-
take the service on terms luite as favourable as those of the Austrian
Government; and we cannot but think that the company which has at
this late *mason of the year successfully connected Sardinia, Malta, and
Corfu by submarine cables, should at all events have the option of
still further advancing this great national undertaking.

The case of Mr. JOHN EDWARD STEVENS, late Manager of the
London and Eastern Banking Company, whose examination at
Edinburgh has recently been filling the cclumns of the Times, must
evidently not be confounded with the ordinary ruses of bankruptcy
produced by the existing crisis. From the first establishment of the
bank, between three and four years ago, with a paid-up capital of
250,0001., a series of transactions commenced between the bank and
.the notorious Colonel WAUGH, which has ended in leaving the latter
indebted to the company in a sum only a few thousand pounds
short of their entire capital. The principal object in the examination
of Mr. STEVENS HD to the present time seems to have been to elicit
first whether any of this large sum of money went into his own
pockets, or whether he was guilty of nothing worse than culpable
negligence and ignorance. Mr. STEVENS was apparently not brought
up to business, which perhaps accounts for the ardour with which he
plunged into it when first apprised of its delights. He was
an, assistant-surgeon in the army up to the year 1850.
Then he returned to England from India, and during the
next few years we lose sight of him. We suppose ho became
one of that class, of whom we must all have met speci
wens, who are always going to make their fortunes by a short cut ;
who are invariably deep in the formation of new companies, patents,
mines, and the like, and to whose lips the words chairman, directors,
inanager, secretary, and so forth, are always most significantly present.
These men usually live in luxury, and are the standing wonder of a
smell circle of intimate friends to whom their pecuniary resources are
known, but the resources of their ingenuity are not. After about the
average period of expectancy, Mr. STEVENS accomplished his destiny.
A joint-stock bank was formed in which he bad several fingers; and
he very soon contrived to get in his whole hand by securing the office
of manages at a salary of 1,0001. a year, subsequently raised to 1,5001.
Tied, no doubt, by an affectionate remembrance of dangers shared
in common, and anxious to meet an ancient comrade, who should
" ,f the bank soon after Mr. STEVENS'S

1205

friends embraced each other. Business, however, was business ; and
it was partly upon business, it appeared, that the Colonel had called.
A little discounting proposal, a mere trifle, was gone into—agreed to—
further proposals afterwards--and so on, and so on—Colonel WAUGH
practising a curious piece of superfluous mystification on the directors
by paying them with notes borrowed out of their own bank—until the
gallant customer withdrew to Spain for his health, Mr. STEVENS to
Edinburgh for his convenience, and the shareholders to their respec-
tive " studies " to arrange a new start in life, and curse the hour they
joined the London and Eastern Banking Company. Now what is the
moral of all this? Is it that fresh penal statutes should be enacted—
that new meshes should be constantly spread to entangle these sharks
of society? Well, all these precautions are very well, but still Mr.
STEVENS goes free. We may be sure that while roguery lasts, ohica nery
will exist too ; that we can never entirely secure ourselves. In our
opinion the moral is simply this, that people must compel themselves
to take more trouble in ascertaining the character of those to whom
the}• intrust their money ; and that the laxity of commercial morals
renders it incumbent upon every good citizen to be more or less am
inquisitor.

A deputation, consisting of Miss CARPENTER, Lord SHAFTESBUY, Sir
JOHN PAKINGTON, Sir ARTHUR ELTON, Dr. W. CARPENTER, and other gen-
tlemen interested in the question of Reformatories, this week waited
upon Lord GRANVILLE to ascertain whether a Minute of the Council of
Education withdrawing aid from all such schools as would not certify
they received none but legally convicted criminals, or well-known
mendicants and vagrants, would not receive the reconsideration of
Government. It is well known that one class of boys among whom
reformatory institutions have had the greatest success consists of
precisely that description of boys who are by this Minute
cut off from State assistance. So far from there being
any doubt of the existence of a class of boys, some
manfully struggling against all but overwhelming tempta-
tions to a life of crime, others on the brink of ruin, but neither
beggars nor criminals, it has actually been made the subject of
special study by eminent philanthropists ; analysed, classified,
aad its phenomena carefully registered. The " involuntary vagrant,"
the orphan, or abandoned child, who works hard and lives
hard to avoid crime, is well known to the honest investigator
of poverty and misery, however little believed in by the
red-tapists who affect to control them. Such children as these are
eminently fit objects for the reception of State bounty. And in their
case we get rid at the threshhold of one great difficulty—namely, the
danger of encouraging parental neglect. It is scarcely credible
that one reason assigned by Mr. COWPER for discountenancing this
class of schools is " the difficulty of stating in the official Minutes, in
" formal and technical language, the class which should be admitted
" into ragged-schools." Verily, Mr. Commissioner Pordage has not
been overdrawn.

The fruits of the last general election, and that adroit ruse by
which the Prime Minister secured a Palmerstonian Parliament,
pledged to nothing but his own support, is becoming each day more
apparent. What other House of Commons would have exhibited that
" strange subservience " to the will of one man, and that equally strange
indifference to the wrongs of their own countrymen, which is exhibited
by the Parliament of to-Jay? Twelve months ago Lord PALMERSTON
DARE not have treated with indifference the case of the Neapolitan
prisoners. Now he revels in his new-found absolutism, and seems
determined to try how long the patience of the country will endure
him. The question at issue between the King of NAPLES and
ourselves is not, be it remembered, whether or no British
subjects iu a foreign land are to be tried by the laws of that country.
However gloomy a prospect might thus come before them, it is pos-
sible we should not be justified in interfering. The question is
whether British subjects are to be treated, pending their trial, in a
manner which modern civilisation, in all countries alike, has declared
to be intolerable. The King of NAPLES is not acting contrary merely
to our own notions of justice ; he is breaking the law of nations, and
England is the victim. Is it that he is acting up to the old maxim
which tells us that experiments should be tried on what is worthless ?
And is it possible that what neither France, America, nor Russia
would endure for a moment, England will submit to in silence ?

Ministerial impertinence is still a topic of the week. " Whom
" the gods wish to destroy, they first deprive of reason," says the pro-
verb ; and the infatuated self-importance of certain members of the
Government would seem to indicate a similar intention of Providence.
But, after all, what is dangerous in the chiefs is only laughaMe in the
underlings. And the pompous indignation of Mr. VERNON SMITH on
Wednesday last was certainly more funny than fearful. We can very
readily excuse the President of the Board of Control for wishing to
absent himself from his place in the House as often as he can find an
opportunity. It is only natural. But, nevertheless, as long as he
continues to be intrusted with the management of this important
department, it is his duty, though, doubtless, not his incli-
nation, to be on the spot when required. Seriously, tho
attitude which her Majesty's Ministers are so fond of assuming
is unworthy of their status and position. It is unworthy of
the respect duo to themselves; still less is it fair or honest towards
the Houses of the Legislature. Ministerial responsibility, whatever
her Majesty's present advisers may think to the contrary, is a solid
and substantial reality. It is no myth. On the contrary, it is an
obligation which cannot be hastily assumed nor lightly repudiated; it
should be treated as a matter which Ministers should frankly and
Aliment should imperatively

in common, and anxious to meet an ancient comrade, who shouid oongatiou %MIMI mtunot ue nastily atnau...".
make his appearance in the of of the bank soon after Mr. STEVENS'S should be treated as a matter which Ministers should frankly and
appointment, but the gallant Colonel WAuott, whom the manager " had freely share, and which the country and Parliament should imperatively
known in Judi& "—qui complexus et gaudier quanta faerwit, as the old demand and as rigidly enforce.