The Press.
London, England, 1856-06-28 00:00:00


JUNE 28, 1856.

WALPOLE gained an immense advantage by
carrying the Address to the Crown, and that
Address is not rescinded. But we cannot
give our approval of the course followed on
Monday night by the highly respectable gen-
tlemen of the minority who voted for Mr.
GROGAN'S amendment. Mr. WALPOLE did not
proceed in this grave business without con-
sulting high ecclesiastical personages, whose
opinions on Protestantism are revered by the
overwhelming majority of Irish Protestants.
In their conviction, deliberately expressed,
the motion of Mr. FORTESCUE was not incon-
sistent with the address of Mr. WALPOLE. The
words of a considerable part of Mr. FORTESCUE'S
resolution were actually similar to certain
affirmations of many eminent Protestant pre-
lates in 1812 and 1814, who were then engaged
upon Irish education. But, besides, the case
urged by the Church Education Society was
that they did not desire to subvert the
National Board. Consistently with that
avowal, it would have been better policy to
have adopted Mr. FORTESCUE'S resolution as
recommended with Mr. WALPOLE'S clear expla-
nation. Instead of doing so, the minority
moved an impracticable amendment which, of
course, could not be carried, and its failure
(so obviously inconsistent with the National
Board) considerably weakened the effect of the
success achieved by Mr. WALPor.E's concilia-
tory tact. _ _

Surely, the accomplished gentlemen of the
minority, who are entitled to all respect, must,
on reflection, perceive that their course was
altogether impracticable. In politics nothing
is so fatal to success as the notion of imprac-
ticability. It is because that character too
much appertains to Irish politics that, in spite
of the genius and eloquence applied to them,
discussion has of late Sears become so unpo-
pular in England. Unless ideas can be
realised, they become mere chimeras of the
brain. Sincerely desirous that the Church
Education Society should be helped, and con•
vinced of the justice of its claims, we should
be sorry to see its interests jeopardised by
impracticable proposals from over-zealous
friends.

2. Independently of the fact of Maynooth
having been a legacy to the empire from the
exclusively Protestant Parliament of Ireland
(a fact which increases the difficulty of deal-
ing with it), there are present reasons which
make it most impolitic to take a retrograde
course about it. The two religious bodies in
Ireland, if not in complete unity, at least are
not arrayed against each other now in that
internecine warfare which left such ruinous
results in former times. The ravages of the
great famine have still to be repaired, and a
policy which should again array Protestants
and Roman Catholics against each other, and
exasperate their animosities, cannot possibly
be encouraged. No friend to Ireland, no loyal
subject of the empire, would at this time re-
commend a renewal of that fierce strife which
injured the sister country so much in former
years. In saying that, we are far from echo-
ing the cant of indifferentism. On the con-
trary, we rejoice that Ireland has the security
of a Protestant Church Establishment, and its
clergy never stood so high in public estima-
tion as now. Seeing that there is only one
Roman Catholic (Lord EDWARD HOWARD)
retained in the English representation,
we have no fear that the existence of May-
nooth will endanger our Protestant institu-
tions If Maynooth were an endowment,
there might be a serious danger in having it
stand ; but that distinguished jurist Mr.
NAPIER, with the candour that honourably
characterises him, admitted on Wednesday
" that he had never heard Maynooth de-
" fended as an endowment." Nor is it so ;
Maynooth rests only upon an arrangement,
confirmed by an Act of Parliament, and we, as
Protestants, are in nowise permanently com-
mitted to it upon a plea of constitutional en-
dowment.

Some of our friends, we are aware, differ
from us upon these points; but we are
satisfied to leave our views to future expe-
rience. In much of the spirit of Sir JOHN
PAKINOTON'S remarks on Wednesday we agree,
though some of his expressions, used possibly
in the hurry of debate, do not exactly coincide

THE PRESS.

with our views. But we rejoice to see that
his sound sense and practical understanding
recognised the impropriety of " interfering
" with the status of the Established Church in
" Ireland," which rests upon the Act of Union
in point of law, and upon its civilising in-
fluence in point of political utility.

OMER PACHA AND THE BRITISH
GOVERNMENT.

THAT the campaign of OMER PACHA in
Min-
grelia was ably designed, and, as far as the
season would permit, brilliantly executed, we
have hitherto imagined to be universally ad-
mitted facts. Nor is it our present intention
to allude to the origin and strategy of that ex-
pedition, any further than to notice the cir-
cumstance that rumours unfavorable to the
Pacha's reputation have began to circulate in
society, which, taken in connection with the
facts we are about to adduce, cannot fail, we
think, to be suggestive of very disagreeable
reflections. The nature of these rumours we
shall not discuss; it is sufficient to say that
they are such as to throw the failure of the
campaign entirely on the shoulders of the
Turkish commander.

Starting, however, from the commonly-
received opinion that OMER PACHA is both a
gallant soldier and a skilful general, as well
as an honourable man, we cannot help feeling
some degree of surprise at the little recogni-
tion of his services by the English Govern-
ment. Since the Danubian campaigns, OMER
PACHA has received no one single mark of
Queen VICTORIA'S approbation ; though it is
an undeniable fact that, in many respects, his
expedition for the relief of Kars has, from the
number of English officers engaged in it, and
the devotion with which they were followed
by the Turkish troops, exercised a most
powerful effect in impressing the Eastern
races with our qualities for command. But
not only has the Pacha himself been treated
with this apparent neglect, but he has ex-
perienced what to a truly generous mind is
even still more galling—the steady disregard
of all his commendations bestowed on
the British officers under him. In the
despatch which the Pacha wrote to his own
Government after the battle of the Ingour,
published in the Journal de Constantinople of
the 3rd of December last, two English officers
—Colonel SIMMONS and Colonel BALLARD—are
spoken of in the most flattering terms. To
the former, in conjunction with AHOY PACHA,
the whole glory of the victory is attributed ;
and he is stated to have " shown himself
" worthy, not only of the thanks of the Im-
" perial Government, but also of the con-
" gratulations of his own Government." Of
Colonel BALLARD, it is said that he distin-
guished himself in a most remarkable manner,
and equally deserves to be rewarded for his
conduct before the enemy. The latter officer
is still only a lieutenant in the Indian army;
and Colonel SIMNIONS, after repeated applica-
tions to Lord CLARENDON, has failed to obtain
a single step of promotion for his conduct in
Asia. He was promoted to the rank of
lieutenant-colonel on the 12th of December,
1554, for previous services, but for the much
more important ones rendered by Lim subse-
quently, and after a recommendation which,
had it come from an English commander-in-
chief, would infallibly have insured instan-
taneous promotion, he has received literally
nothing.
There is more behind. By the influence
of the British Government SELIM PACHA
has been dismissed from the governorship of
Erzeroum, because he did not march to the
relief of General WiLtiAms. We are not par-
tial to the criticisms of civilians on military
matters ; still there are certain features in the
ease of SELIM PACHA which, viewed by the
light of common sense, render his dismissal
on the above-mentioned charge a question-
able proceeding. his whole force never
exceeded from six to eight thousand men,
of which he must have left at least four
thousand in Erzeroutn ; and even that, accord-
- ing to competent judges, would have been

highly dangerous. Now, to march with a
long convoy of provisions, escorted by 4,000
men, a distance of upwards of one hundred
miles, and to attempt to break through an
enemy with 20,000 infantry and 12,000
cavalry, does not, from any point of view,
appear a practicable proceeding. It is a
question, doubtless, for professional men to
decide. At all events, it appears hard
that an officer should be disgraced be-
cause in the exercise of his discretion he did
not choose to hazard a valuable portion of the
Turkish army in undertaking so desperate a
movement.

These three cases—the slight upon OMER
PACHA, the neglect of the two officers he spe-
cially recommended for promotion, and the
dismissal of SELIM PACHA—are remarkable,
as all tending towards one result—to bring
discredit upon the efforts of the Turkish army
for the relief of Kars. Whether there are any
persons in power interested in producing such
an impression on the public mind, we cannot
pretend to say ; but we call attention to
the present aspect of the case. The people
of this country believe that great services and
gallant actions were performed by certain men
in Mingrelia, and that if Kars could have been
saved by OVER PACHA, OMER PACHA would have
saved it. On this hypothesis that officer him-
self, as well as his subordinates, are entitled
to acknowledgment and reward by the British
Government. On the other hand, the British
Government itself has been charged with
contributing to the fall of that ill-fated fort-
ress by their own neglect and incapacity.
We need scarcely point out the deduction
that, assuming the Government to be guilty,
any recognition of OMER PACHA and his English
officers would tend to corroborate that charge,
while any punishment of a Turkish general
for alleged misbehaviour in the matter would
tend to exculpate them. A final decision on
the merits of this question is probably re-
mote. At present the burden of proof rests on
the Government ; and unless they can come
forward and say they are in possession of in-
formation which justifies them in offering this
studied indignity to the Turkish commander,
and this apparent injustice to Colonels SIM-
MONS and BALLARD, they must he content to
remain under very unpleasant imputations.

THE NAWAB OF SURAT'S TREATY BILL.
THERE could not be a better specimen of the
way in which India is governed than that
afforded by the discussion on this Bill, and
by the manner in which the question has
been treated by the Company throughout.
From beginning to end the whole difficulty
has been caused by the personal activity :of
an individual holding successively offices in
which his influence had the fullest opportu•
nity for operating to his opponents' disad-
vantage. We do not go the length of saying
that he deliberately violated his trust for the
furtherance of his private enmity ; it is,
however, notorious that a feeling of private
enmity has from first to last existed in the
breast of the most influential of those with
whom the decision of the case rested.

The facts of the case are briefly these :
There was, many years ago, at the Court of
the Guicowar, the native Sovereign of Baroda,
an influential Minister, named MEER SUR-
AFRAZ ALI, while the assistant to the Com-
pany's Resident at the Court was a young
Englishman, of considerable talents, great
application, and most indomitable will. His
chief characteristic, however, was the entire
devotion with which he pursued the
objects on which he had set his heart. It
happened that this young Englishman was
brought into hostile collision with MEER SUR-
AFRAZ ALI, and did his utmost to effect his
ruin ; but the footing of the MEER at his
Court was too powerful, and the attempt
failed. MEER SURAFRAZ ALT was the father of
MEER JAFFIR ALI, the present claimant on be-
half of his children of the pension guaranteed
by treaty to the heirs of the Nawab of SuaAT.
Being a Syud, or, in other words, a descen-
dant of the Arabian Prophet, his blood was

A

considered noble enough, according to
Mahoinedan ideas, to mingle with that of the
greatest sovereigns of the earth, irrespectively
of his being a man of considerable wealth and
holding an influential position at the
Guicowar's Court. His two sons were accord-
ingly married to the two daughters of the last
Nawab of SURAT, and the representative of the
Company sanctioned the wedding by his pre-
sence, and gave no reason to suppose that
any of the ribaldry would be afterwards raised
up in reference to it which has lately been
given utterance to by the Directorial spokes-
man, Sir JAMES HOGG.

In process of time one of the sons and his
wife died without issue, leaving MEER JAFFIR
ALI, or his wife rather, the sole heir apparent
to the Nawab. Shortly after she also died,
leaving two children, and the Nawab her
father died of cholera at no distant date. Up
to this period all had gone on smoothly, but
then the contest which has not yet ended
began. As far as the local authorities at
Surat were concerned, they were favorable to
the claims of MEER JAFFIR ALI, and so was
personally the Governor of Bombay. But
there was a power behind the Governor
greater than the Governor, for the old enemy
of MEER JAFFIR'S father had risen to be Political
Secretary to the Government of Bombay.
The decision, therefore, virtually rested in his
hands. It was against the MEER, and, being
argued with all the ingenuity the Secretary
was master of, the award was confirmed by
the Supreme Government, with whom the
final decision on the question lay. There
never was a more honest and upright Gover-
nor-General than he who then presided over
the affairs of India; but a Governor-General
must rely to a great extent upon the informa-
tion laid before him by the secretaries, and
if these are biassed by personal feeling in
their reports, the most sagacious Governor-
General is liable to be deceived. And to this
extent alone has MEER JAFFIR ALI even ques-
tioned that high functionary's decision ; he
says that the Governor-General did not de-
cide correctly, only because the facts were
not fairly put before him. In short, he avers
that his Lordship was as unjustly dealt with
in the nutter as he was himself. How far
MEER JAFFIR iS correct in this assertion we
are unable to say; but one thing must be clear,
which is, that a secretary who has a personal
bias is, however upright and well-intentioned,
not likely to prove a very reliable authority
when appointed the reporter to Government
on his adversary's case. At any rate the
Governor-General should have been macro
aware of this feeling when the papers were
laid before him for review.
A decision adverse to MEER JAFFIR ALI
having been thus obtained, he left India to
seek a reversal of it from the authorities in
England, and after much labour succeeded in
inducing the Directors to promise him redress
if he would only cease to agitate the case in
this country and return to India He did so,
but there the hostile Secretary's influence still
prevailed. The favorable intentions of the
Directors, if they had even been more than a
pretence, were rendered nugatory ; hostile
suits against him were encouraged among his
relations ; and not only was the pension re-
fused, hut much property that personally be-
longed to him was attached and placed under
seal. He returned, therefore, to England
again to pursue his claim, but his evil genius
was still to he encountered. The hostile
Secretary had been made by Sir CHARLES
Woon a Director, and all the influence of his
new position was used to defeat his old
enemy's son. With Sir CHARLES Woon he
was successful, and the Indian Board refused
to entertain the appeal. MEER JAFFIR then
applied to the Judicial Committee of the
Privy Council, but they, while expressing an
opinion that the case was one in itself very
fitted for reference to them, declared them-
selves unable by their constitution to enter-
tain it, unless referred to them by the Crown.
This Sir CHARLES Woon refused to allow, and
then the matter was intrusted to Sir FITZROY
KELLY, and brought before the House of
Commons in the shape of a private bill. The
select committee to which it was referred, and
which embraced some of the most eminent
men in the House, reported favorably on it,

bk,,,