The Sun.
London, England, 1855-05-02 00:00:00

).()N DAN, WEDN EsDA Y EV EI\TING, MAY 2, 1855.

DMINISTRATIVE REF ORM.-
M EETIN G at the London Tavern, SATURDAY, May Mb.
1.55, at 12 for 1 o'clock precisely.
The fo lowing Letter has teen addressed to a large number of the
Merchants and Traders of the Metropolis:-
19, Svvithufs-lane, April 30111,185 i.
Pear Sir,—ln common with, we believe, a majority of the pubic.
the undersigned Vew i‘ith sorrow and apprehension the dangers any
disgrace to which our national mare and national positi 41 have been
subjected by our i,,effictent and irresponsible System of dministra-
lion, and the unbusines,-like management of every department 0'
the Stote.

he re, tits of adminlstrative incapacity have, within the last few
months, fal'en heavily upon every class of the People—they art
canvassed with sorrow and indignation in every home and worksho;
in the land; and it is matter of daily increasing surprise that there is
nothing being done to bring the Government to a better course.
The people are looking anxiously for some sign of life—some effort
worthy of the oceasion—so tie eirection of opinion, which shall rendei
impossible the refusal of such Reforms in the EXecutive as the
national honour and safety Imperatively demand.
The facts alreidy die losed before the Committee of Inquiry Into
the Condition of the Army before Sebastopol" are the natural result,
of a system which must be thoroughly changed, or it will inevitabb
lead to greater evils.
It Is idle to hope for any valid reform from within the circle of the
Government. The tangled knot of Incapacity and routine must Ix
cut by the Pcop'e—the evils are too deep-rooted to be eradicated 133
anything short of a very general, earnest, and largely supporteo
movemi•nt.
It would be out of place to enter at present into details.
Administrative Reform, upon the basis of thorough Responsibility.
Promotion for Merit, and Business Management of every Depart-
ment sat Office of the Government, must be made the question of
the day.
For so important an object there can be no doubt the majority or
the constituencies setting aside, for the time, all party and personal
considerations, would readily associate themselves with London.
With such an organisation in view. it is proposed to hold a Meetine
at the London Tavern, on Saturday, May sth, at 12 for 1 o'clock pre-
ci e
The absence of any constituted authority in the City for political
and soc al purposes, free from all party complexion, must be our
excuse for taking the initiative, and very earnestly urging your
attendance.

We remain, dear Sir,
Yours respectfully,
SAMust, AMORY. JAMES HUTCHINSON.
JAMES BAMFORD. SAME LAING.
. Of-Rairrots,„ - _ IS cGaaaoa LAIRD.
H. BATEMAN. W. S. LINDSAY.
F BENNOCH. WM. LEAF.
T. H. BROOKING. 4AML. bi ORLEY'.
R. W. CRAWFORD. GEORGE MOORE.
J. s. EDLLMAN. W. L. OGILBY.
J. H. ELLIOTT. J. D. FOWLES.
THOMAS ENGLAND. GEO. E. SEYMOUR.
L I,,NOSTROM. ALEXANDER SIM.
EDWARD FAITH. FREDK. SLOITS.
- 3. G. FRITH. WM. TITE.
JOHN P. GAISIOT. J. 1. TRAVERS.
CHAS. GILPIN. NORMAN WILKINSON.
BERMAN GRISEWOOD. JOHN L. WOLFE.
W. J. HALL. HERMAN Da ZOETE.
R. HENDERSON.

The Successful Results of the last half-century have proved beyonu
question that

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strengthens weak H air, cleanses it from scurf and dandruff, and
makes it besutifully st, ft, curly, and glossy. Its operation in cases o
Baldness is peculiarly active; and in the growth of the Beard, Whis-
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operation. For Children it is especially recommended, as forming
the basis of a beautiful Head of Ha:r. Price 3s. 6d. and 75.; Family
Bottles (equal to tour small), It s. 6d. ; and double that size, 215.
CAUTIONI.—On the wrapper of each bottle are the words, Row-
LANDS' Alscissea 01L, in two lines.
Sold by A. Rowlant and Soas, 29, Hatton-garden, London, and
by Chemists and Perfumers.

.'LAVAL AND MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

The Retribution, 28, paddle.frigate, Captain Fisher,
flag of Rear Admiral Baynes, will go out of POrtsmouth
harbour to-day and join the fleet at Spithead. The
Malacca, 17, screw corvette, Captain Farquhar, will go
out and join tomorrow or Friday, having completed her
refit. The Cruiser, 14, Commander the Hon. G.
Douglas ; and the Falcon, 14, Commander Pullen, left
Spithead yesterday morning for the Channel to relieve
the wind-bound merchantmen. Seamen are flocking
into Portsmouth in good numbers, mostly men who
,have bad their run, and been lately employed in the
railing line-ef-battle ships recently returned to England
from the 'Mediterranean. The Victory, flag-ship, vic-
tualled nearly 1,000 yesterday, 400 of whom were sub-
sequently draughted or allowed to volunteer into the
blockships Corn wallis, Hawke, Pembroke, Hastings,
and Russell at Spithead. The ban against these ships
receiving volunteers cf teamen having been removed by
the Admiralty, it is expected that by this day week every
one of those ships will be ready to leave for the Baltic
with her full .complement of 600 men on her books.
The Porcupine steam-vessel, Lieut. Jackson, left Ports-
mouth for Sheerness yesterday afternoon, and the Myr-
midon steam-vessel returned to Portsmouth from Pem-
broke. The Great Tasmania transport arrived at Spit.
head at 6 o'clock last evening from Liverpool in tow of
a tug, to embark 1,000 troops for the Crimea. The
Rhadamanthus, steam transport, arrived at Portsmouth
yesterday evening from the eastward.

THE CONDUCT OF TILE WAR.

(From the Times of this day.)
We often hear of men who are'over-educated for their
understanding, and, indeed, it is of such persons that
the bores, the graters, and the sciolists of society are
composed. Such persons have furnished themselves
with an instrument which they cannot apply, and that
which was meant to be their honour has become their
'eproach —that which was designed for their aid has
eecome their hindrence
Such would. seem to be the position occupied by
modern Governments. Inductive philosphy has ran-
;stoked the storehouses of nature—has forced her secrets
from her, and wrested frern her hand her hidden and
nyaterious powers. We can send our fleets over the
water winged with a speed and possessing a power of
carriage which the boldest imagination never could have
anticipated. We can send a message with the rapidity of
lightning, and outrun, if not time itself, that revolution
if the earth by which we measure it. All these are vast
facilities for cultivatiree awl improving the arts of
peace, aed equally mighty agencies for affecting
the rapid combinations of war. Yet the result
has shown that these magnificent agencies, so subordi-
nated to our will, are in a great measure neutralised, if
not rendered positively hurtful, by the want in our
statesmen of an intelligence able to deal with their
powers—able to foresee and effect the combinations the
control over which is placed in theur weak and unskilful
hands. Our steamers have carried our troops out so
rapidly to the seat of war that preparations for their ar-
rival lagged far behind them, and our wondrous electric
telegraph has been the source of endless confusion and
mystification, disappointment, annoyance, and uncer-
tainty. Take but the latest instance. We have, at
enormous expense, carried the electric wire under no
inconsiderable portion of the Black Sea, and. ade Bala-
klava, for the purposes of intelligence IT-least, into
something little more remote than a suburb of London.
We have done all this, but one thing we have omitted
—we have omitted to supply ourselves with a General
willing to avail himself of the instrument we have pro-
vided, or with a Ministry disposed to give us the-benefit of
the information they receive.- Therefore, the electric
telegraph to Balaklava has turned out of no value to the
nation which paid for it, and has even added to the per-
plexities of those whose business it is to draw such con-
clusions as they may from the fragmentary intelligence
which arrives.
We have news by way of St. Petersburg and Berlin,
by Vienna, by Marseilles ; but all these sources of infor-
mation are discredited when we remember that the more
rapid source of communication is silent, and by the con-
jectures to which we are driven in order to account for
that silence. First, we hear that the key to the cipher
in which the despatches are written travels by steam,
while the cipher itself runs with the feet of the light-
ning ; and, nest, that though the messages are decipher.
able, they consist of nothing but frivolous questions or
unmeaning acknowledgments. Still out of all this con-
fusion there is some glimmering of light—sometbieg out
of which one may forum an estimate, though far from an
exact one, of the real state of things. First, there is the
steamer Caine, which brings us intelligence from Balaklava
up to April 17. The narrative is a checkered one.
General Bizot, the Commander of the French Engineers,
died of a wound received by him in the trenches, and
was buried on the 16th. On the 14th the French ex-
ploded three mines under the Flagstaff Battery, with
only partial effect; and, though the Russians appre-
hended an assault, the injury was not sufficiently great
to justify the operation. On the night of the 13th a
sortie took place, which-cast the French 300 men and
six officers, but was repulsed with more than ordinary
success and more than ordinary slaughter. On the 16th
two of the Russian ships were burnt—a statement which
seems to derive some confirmation from a report drawn
from a Russian source, which states that the enemy's
fleet had advanced from the innerrnoit harbour in order
of battle, and had placed themselves near Fort
Nicholas, the work which, as our readers will re-
member, defends the southern side of the harbour of
Sebastopol. By the Simois we learn that the Eng-
lish have taken by- assault the ambuscades in front
of the Tower of Malakhoff, and that the Russians
have found themselves obliged to abandon one of their
batteries. In the meanwhile the Russians appear to be
drawing their lines more firmly around our position ;
and the concentration of force is, if we are to believe
the reports of deserters,'t normous. Over and above all
this, the Moniteur publishes a despatch of the 28th, to
the effect that the besiegers have momentarily suspended
their fire to await reinforcements, and to spare the ex•
penditure of ammunition.

Putting all these things together, it would seem that
we have certainly made some progress in our operations.,
that we are gradually drawing nearer to the object of
our attack, and that the enemy have found themselvei
quite unable to carry out or maintain the counter-

works with which at one time they so seriously
threatened our position. Even the Russian accounts
which we publish do not claim any brilliant success, and
are in some places expressed with an ambiguity which
may possibly be meant to cover disasters, and admit
the tremendous force of the tire to which the town haz
been subjected. This cannonade must, indeed, have
been of unexampled severity--unique.. as far as we are
aware, in the annals of war. To sustain such a fire for
so many consecutive days and nights—nineteen, accord-
111g to the account in the Monitettr—argues an abundance
of resources, a Solidity in the ordnance employed, and a
power of endurance on the Tart of the men, transcending
anything we have ever heard or read of. The world can
never have witnessed anything more terrible tban this

long-continued struggle, in which instruments of destruc-
tion of a size and p,,wer never before employed in war
have been met by others equally powerful, and the
thunders of a tropical storm have been put to silence by
the fearful din of artillery.
During this great duel of artillery the enemy has
been gathering in mighty masses around us, and any
day may witness an attack made in enormous force along
the whole line of our defences, backed by furious sallies
from the beleaguered t iwn. Never were numbers more
needed than now. As the land dries, and the country
becomes traversable, we must expect to meet, in mortal
encounter all the troops which a great empire not else-
where invaded can spare for the defence of a single pro-
vince. The difficulty of subsisting this immense body
of men in the arid steppes of the Crimea will probably
counsel prompt and even desperate action. We need
every man that *an be sent, and yet we hear of
40,000 Freiich troops remaining on the Bosphorus, and
a whole division of cavalry which has spent the
winter at Adrianople. • Never was there a situa-

tion so full of hope and fear, of danger and of pro-
mise. One moment we seem likely to grasp great suc-
cesses, the next suggests the apprehension of enormous
reverses. The nation is in a fever of expectation. The
absolute Government of France finds means to communi-
cate to its subjects the last intelligence, even though that
intelligence be neither flattering nor encouraging. But
we are condemned to learn, at second-hand, information
carried by our own telegraph, and are indebted to our
neighbours for giving us by that means all the know-
ledge we as yet possess of our own most interesting
affairs. Is it possible that Lord Raglan should have
sent information of the concentration of Russian troops
on the Belbeck, and inquired after the Sardinian Con-
tingent, without informing his Government that he had
suspended fire ? The thing seems incredible, and yet
we have the strongest Ministerial assurances of its
truth.