The Press.
London, England, 1858-01-23 00:00:00

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74

ment have been utterly disproportioned to the
magnitude of the crisis they had to meet.
They have been trifling with a rebellion which
they ought to have seen in the first instance
to be one that would require all the exertions
of England to crush. They have spent month
after month in conflict with the mutineers,
when they ought to have seat lbrth thole
armies with the, utmost rapidity, and in such
masses as no force of rebels eoltid have Ten.
tured to face. Instead of the few regiments
Sir Court has with him, composed of dribblets
arriving weary and footsore, in numbers not
enough hardly to fill the gaps that disease and
the bullet make, he ought to have, at least,
40,000 Europeans in his camp, and even that
number would be rather under than over the

mark. Instead of cavalry without horses, and
artillery with a parcel of brutes to drag the
guns that in other days committees would
have rejected with contempt, he ought to be
supplied with the best horses sufficient for every
arm, and there should be a remount at Calcutta
large enough to replace on the instant all that
are disabled and killed. Seasoned harness he
cannot of course expect ; but with a proper
field establishment there would soon be found
a remedy for the chafing which is rendering
his few artillery* horses almost useless now.
Then, too, his means of transport ought to be
abundant ; for it is futile to send an army into
the field without the amplest means of moving
on any point which the general commanding
may think it advisable to attack or to defend.
It would not be more absurd to mount a regi-
ment of cavalry on foundered horses, than it is
to send a general to subdue a country without
the fullest means of changing his position as
strategy may direct.
If, then, t ngland is determined to crush
this rebellion, it had better set itself in earnest
to the task. It .is neither saying men nor
money by the delay ; on the contrary, the
longer the rebellion lasts the more men and
the more money its suppression will cost.
This, if the country would have but listened to
the Conservative Leaders, it might have
known long ago. However, it is of no use
talking now of what it might have done, for it
more concerns it to know what it now must
do. More men, then, must be sent to India;
battalion after battalion must go there, until
Sir CoLIN shall have at his disposal a force at
least double that which the highest estimate of
the existing number of European troops in
Bengal or en route there gives. And a flow of
recruits must be kept up sufficient to replace
every casualty that war can make. Horses
must be supplied in abundance, and means of
transport, no matter whence they are obtained
or what they cost. The nation is in the
midst of a great war—the most dangerous, if
not the greatest, in which she has for centuries
been engaged—and she must come out of it
with honour if she is to come out of it at all.
It is idle to discuss the question of where the
money is to be raised ; it must be raised, and
it must be expended by millions if the war is
to be carried on with effeet. The country
cannot allow the army to languish for want of
means while the men respectively responsible
for the misgovernment of India are disputing
who is to have the patronage and who is to blame
for the past. England's honour is at stake on
the issue, as Lord ELLINBOROUGH long since told
the public, and its existence too. Either the
rebellion must be subdued, and subdued effec-
tually, or our place among the Powers of
Europe will be lost. The tranquillity of India
must at all hazards be reconquered, and there
will be the greatest hazard if it be not recon-
quered soon. We have made what the Govern-
ment calls great efforts, but we must make
infinitely greater if they are to have any real
result. We have spent much money, but we
must spend millions more if we would achieve
success. Every day the rebellion remains
unsubdued the more difficult it will be to
subdue and it only can be subdued effec-
tually by the Cabinet's casting off the dis•
guises and concealments which it has hitherto
adopted to divert the wrath of the public from
itself. It must admit fully and frankly the
monstrous difficulty in which its errors have
involved us, and proceed to do all it can do at
this, the eleventh hour, to remedy them, even
though the issue he the total loss of popularity
and place. The Whigs are ever prating of