The Express.
London, England, 1864-06-18 00:00:00

J. W. ALLIN,
Loudon. W.O.

mail Pitman, 117, WM elirask

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LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE 18.

As a counter-irritant to the Conferenoe
(which is beginning to act like a blister upon the
temper of Parliament), this miserable Ashantee
affair is an instance of one of those remote and
unexpected questions which, amidst the vast
variety and vagueness of British interests in all parts
of the world, arise sometimes no bigger than a
man's hand upon the horizon, and suddenly loom
over Downing-street dark with menace and
ominous of mischief. When the great Duke said
that a great country could not have a little war,
perhaps (as he was speaking of Great Britain) he
did not mean that the smallest war must be greatly
mismanaged ; but the dictum is certainly open to
that interpretation. This untoward little African
war, if, as one of the speakers remarked last night,
war it can be called where there is no fighting,
is no exception to the national experience
in such cases, large or small. For it re-
solves itself into a question of administrative
blunder and neglect. It is but one more chapter
added to a very old story which we had almost
forgotten, while we were acutely criticizing our
American kinsmen ; a story of which an ex-
Minister of War now speaks in the slashing style
of a newspaper correspondent, as if he had never
set foot in the War-office or enjoyed the confidence
and companionship of the Horse Guards. Whom
are we to blame f on whom are we to fix the
responsibility, on the Colonial-office, the War De-
partment, or the Admiralty I—exclaims General
PERE. When the Sec:armor of the AominsEtv
protests that it is not a party question, the Oppo-
sition cheers the sentiment ironically. The fact
is—as who could doubt last night I—this absurd
and dismal expedition against the King
of Asuisre.r., beginning and ending as
it did in a swamp, has been , exag-
gerated by strong and natural personal feelings
into a party attack upon the policy and conduct
of a whole Government when a notorious Depart-
ment was the real and only criminal. The Under
Secretary of the Colonies might have spared him-
self the trouble and the pain of defending that
traditional colonial policy on the Gold Coast, in
pursuance of which Governor PINE had solicited
and received conditional and guarded instructions
to take measures for the protection of the rights
and honour of the British protectorate insulted and
assailed by the King of Ashantee. Our African
policy was not the matter of debate ; it is a policy
for which neither the present nor the late Colonial
Secretary can be held responsible, and which
Sir JOHN PAK INGTON, himself a sometime
Colonial Secretary, with at least as much
discretion as good feeling, abstained from
calling in question. The mover of the
hostile motion condemned the Government
for the misconduct of an expedition which had
cost the country many valu►ble lives in v►in. A
reinforcement of eleven hundred men had been sent
toact underthe orders of Governor PINE against the
tribes of the K ins of ASKS:NICE. That sagacious and
experienced savngecontented himself with allowing
Governor Pixie troops to perish where they stood
without advancing ay ard to meet them. An unusually
early rainy season surprised them lying out in a
swamp, unprepared, unfurnished, unsheltered, and
struck them down without mercy. Service upon
that cruel coast is so murderous at all times,
that wholesale mortality in a campaign, amongst,
even in barracks, European officers, is easy to socou nt
for. In the present instance the mortality was
perhaps not more than usually severe among the otti -
cersof theunseasonedtroops, but among the victims
was a gallant end distinguished officer, whose name
and fate could not but excite unusual attention and
sympathy in the House of Commons. Could this
deplorable, if not unusual, sacrifice of precious
lives have been prevented, or at least mjtigated,by
due forethought and precaution on the part of the
responsible departments at home—the War-office
and the Horse-guards I It would be difficult, we
apprehend, for any dispassionate reader of these
Ashantee papers, or any hearer of the debate last
night, to acquit these respectable and privileged
delinquents, though it may be granted that the
Under Secretary for Warpersonifieswith exasperat-
ing felicity that happy mixture of indifference and
disdain which is somehow identified in popular
estimation with the inefficiency he is commissioned
to defend. Toe SECRETARY of the ADMIRALTY
was, we need hardly say, a much more plausible
apologist ; we are bound to add that he was a
much more sunicieut and successful one. The
Admiralty had been accused of letting a whole
month pass since Mr. Csaewr.LE gave solemn
pledges to the House, without even taking up a trans-
port ship to bring away those unhappy reinforce-
ments rotting on the Gold Coast. Lord CLARENCE
Pt.:ET declares that immediately after Mr. Cast.
wEtt's promise to that effect the Admiralty ad-
vertised for tenders, that for the delay the ship-
owners and brokers are responsible, and that at
Sir JulIN Hay's personal and urgent soli-
citation Her Mssturrv's ship Gladiator,
a roomy and commodious ship for the
conveyance of troops (not, as had been insinuated,
a sickly and insufficient ship) was to sail to-morrow
for Cape Coast Castle, and a sailing transport to
follow on Wednesday next. The original inten-
tion of the Admiralty had been to despatch the
sailing transport alone, with a steam frigate to tow
her clear of the Bay of Biscay ; and it was calcu-
lated that she would reach Cape Coast Castle in
six weeks. But these are details. The indigna-
tion of the House, which administered so severe a
lesson to Government in the division, wee excited