The Press.
London, England, 1857-04-18 00:00:00

THE ARMY IN INDIA.

Our Indian expenditure is already some two millions
above its revenue. The modern system of annexe
tion is declared to pay ; bnt we find by the following
extract from an Indian paper that our Indian army
is unequal to the additional duties thus imposed
upon its services, and that with an increasiug yearly
deficit we must materially augment that army, or the
safety of our Indian empire, it is declared, will be
seriously compromised:—

Our forces in this country are on a peace establishment,
and we are not able to detach 20,000 men for service in
foreign part•, with any degree of safety or propriety. The
extent to which this presidency is denuded of troops is
hardly credible. We may mention that in Bombay itself
so small is the garrison that the accustomed guards at the
pad•-office and the residences of the members of Council
have had to be withdrawn. At Ahmedabad the police are
doing garrison duty—while in Poonan, the head-quarters
of the Mahratta country, we have less than 1,04)0 meu of
all arms in place of 5,04)0, the usual and safe complement.
We have never been contributors to alarm in this country,
but we confess that there is danger—pressing danger—in
this sudden withdrawal of the troops, absolutely necessary
for our safety even in times of peace. Again, our army is
altogether under-officered for the exigencies of war. At the
present moment we can point to regiment after regiment
with but three or four European officers doing duty with
them. The 15th Regiment of Native Infantry, now in
garrison, has bat three European officers with it; the 29th,
in Belgaum, a like number ; and there are a few regiments
with half a dozen Europeans present. There is temerity
as well u timidity to be avoided, and if this war, to which

SATURDAY,

we are committed, is to last, the army must be augmented,
and the proportion of European officers increased. Neither
the one measure nor the other can be safely delayed any
longer.

THE NEW ARCTIC EXPEDITION.

LADY FRANKLIN has resolved to despatch a final
expedition to the Arctic Seas. The apathy of the
British Government with regard to the attempt, and
the unceremonious manner in which the Resolute
upon her return home was stripped and laid up in
ordinary, has given rise to much comment in the
United States. When the Resolute was despatched
to England, it was believed that. ready fitted as she
was for active service, she would have been employed
with any expedition about to sail. A gentleman
holding a high position in New York, and the main
promoter of the restoration of the Resolute to her
Majesty the Queen, in a recent letter refers to the
unexpected conduct of the Board of Admiralty. Ho
writes :

Whatever may have been our anxieties as to the search
before the restoration of the Resolute to your country, we
had then no reason to doubt but that your Government
would meet half way the expectations and wishes of our
people, by continuing her on a service to which she had
already been consecrated. It is melancholy to think that
men placed in the highest positions of authority and
responsibi ity, beyond the influence, as one would believe,
of personal motives, should so far belie themselves as to
plead the " risk of life " as an excuse for discontinuing a
search when the labours of their countrymen had just
brought them to the very threshold of success. Surely,
the Lords of the Admiralty must know that, excepting the
supposed fate of the crews of the Erebus and Terror, there
has not been a loss of life or limb consequent upon the
climate or navigation of the Arctic Seas during the last
thirty years. Why, then, bring forward that which is so
glaringly untrue, as an excuse for the cruel abandonment
of a sacred duty? This act of your Admiralty is as much
a national disgrace as the recent inhuman decision of our
Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. The poor unfor•
tunate to whom God has given a coloured skin—no matter
how slight the tinge—can never become a citizen of this
free Republic ! If your Admiralty viewed humanity in the
same light as the honourable judges of the Supreme Colin,
there might be, under those conditions, some excuse for
the abandonment of any of the survivors, and the records
of the achievements and fate of the men whom they them-
selves sent out on a noble duty.