The Press.
London, England, 1857-10-31 00:00:00

on our

to, and with our re-
___ guns and arsenal to secure, it is
probable that the army at Delhi will be
r the present to follow them with effect.
may, to be sure, disperse, as often in
cases happens ; but wherever they go to
they will give us trouble yet. Nor do the still-
extending mutinies both in Bengal and
Bombay, and the still-extending disturbances,
bode us a very quiet time. There is many a
hard day's work still in store for our army,
and there will be many a stronghold to re-
duce. Many a brave fellow yet will fall a victim
to the climate or the bullets of the enemy before
the affair is over. After what has occurred
the whole native army in all the Presiiencies
must be deemed untrustworthy, and on our
own soldiers the heat and burden of the day
will fall. Every man that is now in India will
be needed ; the stream of recruits from
England to supply casualties must be
kept up ; and all the energies of our Com-
missariat and Ordnance and Finance depart-
ments will be taxed to the uttermost to main-
tain effective the flying camps that Sir COLIN
CAMPBELL will of course establish. It is in
reference to these points that the highest
military genius is so necessary; it is in refer-
ence to these points that incapacity is always
productive of such disastrous results ; it is in
reference to these points that the Duke of
WELLINGTON showed such masterly ability ;
but in India these functions are now wholly
severed from the office of commander-in-
chief. On the Council Board at Calcutta, even
more than on Sir COLIN CAMPBELL, our army's
success or failure will depend.
We wish we could see in that Council any
signs of being equal to the occasion—we wish
we could perceive any ground for that confi-
dence which we would willingly bestow. But
with every respect for Lord CANNING, with
every sympathy for the unforeseen and truly
difficult position in which he has been placed,
we must confess that we do not think the
public interests are likely to be consulted by
retaining him in his office, unless he will cease
to be guided by those evil counsellors by
whose advice he has hitherto allowed

himself to be swayed. His exchequer
is virtually bankrupt ; his commissariat
arrangements are the laughingstock of
Calcutta (though a source of anything but
laughter to the troops) ; and his arsenal
there is so bare that there is but one nine-
pounder battery to meet the requisitions of
the artillery that are arriving, and that have
left their guns at home. He is precisely in
that position, in fact, in which he requires all
the zeal of the army, and all the aid and
patriotism of the European independent com-
munity of India, to pull him safely through.
Yet he selects this as the moment to insult
and paralyse the army by placing them under
the orders of civilians, in respect both of their
operations and their administrations of mar-
tial law. And at the same time he drives into
the most implacable hostility the whole Euro-
pean independent community by placing gags
upon their press, by issuing orders for their
disarmament, by depriving them of all the
liberties they are constitutionally entitled to,
and, finally, by threatening to revive the laws
which once enabled the Company to deport front
India on the instant any European who, whether
wilfully or by inadvertence, had occasioned the
Government offence. Subjected to insult-
ing imputations on their loyaltiand patriotism
which are wholly undeserved, they are made
by him victims of a despotism as absolute as
that of Naples, and more galling from their
being unaccustomed to wear such chains. To
doubt the infallibility of Colonel BIRCH, or
Mr. BEADON, or Mr. GRANT, is now as
great a crime in India, as it is in Rome for an
Italian to doubt the infallibility of the Pope.
Nor are the censorship and the Index Expur-
gatorius less rigid in the former than in the
latter land. Is this the way, we ask, to recon-
quer India ? Is this the way to enlist the
sympathies, the purses, the heartfelt efforts of
our fellow-countrymen either here or there
for the accomplishment of that great task?
Surely, common sense must answer no. If
we would engage our fellow-countrymen
to enter heart and _ soul into our plans,

we must show them that these are simply to
subdue the natives who have risen against us.
and not to rivet on their own limbs the most
galling of chains. If British efforts are to
save for us India, they must be the efforts of
British freemen and not of British slaves.

THE GOVERNMENT AND REFORM.
Ix is most amusing to observe the continued
apologies of the Liberals for not bringing for-
ward prominently the subject of " Parlia-
mentary Reform." In vain they strive to hide
the dissension in their camp ; in vain they seek
to turn the public mind in other quarters.
The fact cannot be concealed—a " Reform
Bill" from Lord PALMERSTON is mere moon-
shine. The
heart, and
take issue
Reform B
employed to
fact remains
evidently
shelved.
call themsel
remains to be seen. One portion

e Premier is n• c, ' - • ..er at
i .i.,,
the Ministe.el •. . vtier
i • -! —7,-, . / +-r
on any qui ~, . ..._ - ....; a
unii 11.--- /.4. *L„e
Sill. Deelauo i ' , •
...o hide this s 91:riv .t ',.. IMI &e
' 24, ^fii.l.Vo- Ads
wish that nr„o7• t.,,„,..,; .
wish that ' :11,-44-:','. . .0
Whether thl4' Wey
viii - •
;elves) will be a"- ,t'l. •. do so
) be seen. One portion of their

1050

body is desirous of forcing it on at any cost ;
but the Ministerial Whigs have not yet made
up their mind upon giving battle upon it, and
yet they do not well know how to retreat.
We must, however, r3mind the Conserva-
tives that for several years past the " Libe-
rals " have used the subject of Reform as a
sort of threat. They have always pretended
to be in earnest, in spite of the fact that the
Whigs of Brookes's sill not readily part with
their boroughs. Would not " large consti-
tuencies" knock up the "families" of the
Whigs ? Could the " Liberal" connection
possibly hope for better terms than it received
1532 ? How could the " outsiders " be
managed under a new Reform Bill ? These
are questions which worry the managers of
the Liberal party. . . . .

To many persons it is abundantly evident
that " Reform " now-a-days is falling into the
same condition as it was a century since. It
was a great subject to make a noise about for
thirty years before the French Revolution
broke out, but nothing was ever done about
it until 183 l ; and the late Earl GREY boasted
that the bill which his Cabinet passed was the
most aristocratic measure that ever Parlia-
ment enacted. Lord JOHN RUSSELL then
hoped that the country would accept the bill
as a final one, but no sooner was a new Par-
liament summoned, in 1833, than further de-
mands were made. The Ballot was at once
taken up for the sake of a cry, and secret
suffrage would now be the law of the land but
for the resistance of the Conservatives. Other
cries also have been raised, and the Liberals
da not know how to shape a measure which
they would dare to present to Parliament.
The fact is, that the return moved for by
Mr. DISRAELI (25th August) has frightened
the managers of the Liberal party. In the
face of that most important document they
could not venture to assert that the Conserva-
tive wealth and connection in the community
have their adequate proportion of representa-
tives. The great standing interests of the
Church and the Land are much overborne by the
members of mushroom towns and streets of
dismal factories, politely called " cities." In
every commercial crisis we see how little the
wealth of these petty new towns in the north
can be relied on. They look statistically
formidable, and to a railway tourist they seem
solid and substantial. But when closely
examined they are frequently found to be de-
pendent on four or five " capitalists," and a
commercial "crash" shatters them with fear-
ful rapidity. They are not to be compared
with the solid old towns, whose prosperity is
a thing of time.

A breath can make them, as &breath has made.

Their leading persons often turn out to be
men of straw, and the hollowness of their
social structure is often made visible in long
lines of workmen without masters or wit4es,
and in vast fabrics, where the blaze of the
furnace is not seen, nor the stroke of the
hammer ever heard.

For the great hives of genuine manufac-
turing industry we entertain high respect.
But it is too much the custom to suppose
that a couple of great factories built on the
banks of a narrow stream, with long rows of
cottages, a lathe-and-plaster imitation of a.
Gothic church, half a dozen "publics," and a
showy dispensary, can be called a " town."
Smart writers and speakers give a glance at it
hastily, and talk of the " masses " collected in
it. They do not look further than appear-
ances. They talk and think of the " middle
classes" in connection with these agglomera-
tions of individuals which " flourish and fade "
with ephemeral rapidity. In point of fact,
there is often no genuine "middle class" in
these petty " towns," and the capitalists who
have run them up are in debt to the local
banks, which too often stop payment. The
sound and the unsound, the real and the false,
the sickly and the strong, are nowhere so
jumbled together as in some of the third-
class .new towns of the north of England.
In a political point of view, the representa-
tion of those third .class new towns becomes
an important subject for reflection. Do they
introduce a new and thoughtful body of sena-
tors into Parliament? Are not the memoers
for those places mere factory-lords and little