The Press.
London, England, 1857-10-24 00:00:00

operation, unless Lord JOHN RUSSELL is
possessed of some military locomotive secret
that he can furnish our troops with, but which
is unknown to us.

The fact is, that when people talk of an
army of eighty thousand men (the number we
are told we are to have in India for the work),
they have for the most part very little notion
of what the term implies ; as little as a lady
allowed to take a million sterling in banknotes
into her hand has of the enormous mass of
human labour represented by that sum. To
equip and send into the field from Calcutta an
army of eighty thousand Europeans, for a
three months' really efficient campaign, there
would be required the following trifling
adjuncts. We leave to the sagacity of the
reader to determine how long in the present
state of the country it would take our officials
there to collect them. There ought to be some
thirty or forty river steamers, with several
thousands of tons of coals for their use. There
would be required some thirty thousand
baggage animals, and eighty thousand camp
followers, at the very least. There would be
required some seven or eight thousand re-
mount horses for the cavalry and artillery,
and almost as many saddles ; and several bat-
teries, with their carriages, harness, &c., com-
plete, for the troops and companies that left
their guns and stores at home. There would
be required nearly nine thousand tents. There
would be required thirty-six million pounds of
forage for the troop horses and baggage
animals, and about nineteen million pounds
of grain for them, to be collected on various
points. There would be required about a
hundred and twenty thousand pairs of shoes
and boots, and a proportionate number of
blankets and other slops. There would be
required ten million pounds of biscuits, three
million six hundred thousand pounds of pre-
served or salt provisions, about twelve thou-
sand bullocks for slaughter, nine hundred thou-
sand quarts of spirits,and tea,sugar, rice, lemon-
juice, and various other little articles of that
kind in proportion. There would be required
about a hundred and fifty thousand rounds of
gun-ammunition, and about thirty-two million
rounds of ball-cartridge. The etceteras of an
army, and its ambulances, and its hospitals,
one need not specify ; though, like the etceteras
of a lady's travelling-luggage, they form no
small item in the whole. There is, besides,
the military chest, which must be well filled.
We suppose that in thus enumerating some
of the principal articles required for the per-
fect efficiency of an army of eighty thousand
men in the field for three months, we shall
have done enough to satisfy Lord JOHN
RUSSELL that such a force is not likely to he
brought to bear upon the rebels at any time
between this and January next. Indeed, we
may safely say that the sending such an army
up thecountry is simply an impossibility in the
present condition of Bengal. A fourth of that
number is all that the resources there, tax them
to the uttermost, are likely to prove avail-
able for the equipment of; and, indeed, we
take leave to doubt whether there will be at
the outside more than ten thousand men got
off in a style adapted for fairly following up
the rebels before the end of the year. One
may do something, to be sure, with very small
means in the way of putting our now menaced
garrisons into a position of safety ; but that is
a very different thing from the completion of
the mighty task that has to be completed
before the rebellion shall be finally suppressed,

and that retribution inflicted on all the parti-
cipators in it which Lord JOHN expects. As to
the latter point, however, the examples made
will probably not be very numerous, for
beyond those taken in arms there will be few
against whom proof of complicity will be
producible. The police will not dare
to aid in ferretting out the rebels after the
affair is over ; besides, it is pretty generally
understood that the police are tolerably deeply
implicated themselves. And as to our own
powers of discovery, we may instance the well-
known fact that ever since the practice of
branding felons in India has been abolished,
it has been found impossible to prevent
Sepoys dismissed from one regiment with sen-
tence of penal servitude from enlisting into
another when their term of punishment has
expired. There were numbers of such in the
ranks of late years. The man changed his
name, and gave a different village as his
birthplace, and the thing was done. The
deception may or may not have been known
to the other Sepoys, but discovery of it by the
officers was extremely rare. There is, indeed,
nothing more probable than that many of our
present trusted natives are no better than
mutineers in mufti, spies and agents of the
rebel camps.
We are sorry to say, therefore, on the
grounds that we have given, that we have no
hope whatever of the business being disposed
of by January next. Delhi, to be sure, may
have fallen by that time, for the mutineers
will probably cease to defend it after they have
got :all the plunder from the King and the
people that they are able to extract. But,
after Delhi falls there will still be the whole
country to be reduced to order, and that assu-
redly, under the most favourable circum-
stances, will be a work of time. If, however,
the latest intelligence received from Calcutta
is to be relied on, circumstances are not likely
to be so favourable as the English public ap-
pear to expect. We do not allude to little indi-
cations of a storm to the north-west, though
that in the present condition of India would
be hard to face. What we allude to is the
feeling which has been engendered among the
European community at Calcutta, by Lord
CANNING'S yielding so implicitly to the evil
counsellors about him, whom Mr. DISRAELI in
the House of Commons so long since de-
nounced. Nor is the feeling confined to the
Calcutta community alone. We learn from
sources which we see no reason to doubt, that
most unmistakeable signs of mutiny have
made themselves apparent among the Euro-
pean troops. We hear that the commanding
officer of one of her Majesty's regiments has
communicated to the Governor-General the
fact that his men are not to be depended on
unless their demands aro submitted to, and
that the rest of the European troops
have sworn to uphold them if the Govern-
ment should venture to resort to force.
We do not vouch for the statement ,
we only say that it has reached us from a
source on which we think -- rely • ld
there can be no indiscretion
bringing the matter to
authorities, because it
alluded to in terms

tr
.72

gible by One of the
journals here. We hope
like Sir COLIN CAMPS/
the army, these sparks
exist, will be speedily
intelligence that such a

tic we can rely ; and
tion in thus publicly
the notice of the
has alrs47 been
sufacieptly.
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