The Sun.
London, England, 1855-01-29 00:00:00

THE "TIMES" AND LORD TYINO.HILSBA

(From the Times of Saturday.)

•
Few sessions have passed of late years without an
elaborate attack being made by some member of Parlia-
ment upon the policy and conduct of this jourenawl
i;thando
Last night Lord Winchilsea roared against
'Vigour that, but for the mass of buildings andu the traffic
between Westminster and Blackfriars, would certainly
have given us the pleasure of hearing his r emar
whol ks
The e of his
with-
out leaving the spot where we eine.t e.
vehement address to his brother peerson thecouorse
adopted by the Times since the war motto Cram
a o
anunfavourable turn may, however, summed up in a
• l phrase—Lord Winchilsea is not of our opinion.
Wegaeroso unfortunate as to differ from him upon the
propriety of laying before the country an exact and un-
varnished account of the condition of our forces. Lord
Winchilseaisall for keeping the country in thedark. Upon
this point we join issue with him, but we would preface the
few remarks we shall offer in reply to Lord Winchilsea's
attack upon us by assuring him that from us he has no
" vituperation" to fear. We do net "vituperate" any
Englishman—be he Peer or be he peasant—who fear-
lessly and conscientiously endeavours to discharge his
duty to his country. We may deny his facts if they be
founded on error—we may arraign his opinions if they
be calculated to mislead the judgment of the country,
and more especially so at a most critical and anxious
period—but we shall do so with the dignity of men who ,
respect an antagonist because they respect themselves.
Had Lord Winchilsea been in any way mixed up with
the conduct of this ill-starred expedition—had he been
responsible in any degree for its scandalous inefficiency
—had we him to thank for maintaining incompetent
persons in their posts after their incompetence had been
discovered, we should speak of him in a very different
tone. But, as the matter stands, it is for the English
nation to decide between the English press and those
members of the House of Peers who think that it would
have been for the general advantage that the public
should hare been kept in utter ignorance of the true
state of affairs in our camp before Sebastopol until last
night, when a Ministerial difference set Lord John Rus-
sell free to tell the whole truth, as we have told it all
along. The question, even so, is not stated in its full
force, for, if the official correspondents of the public
journals were denied access to the camp, unofficial cor-
respondents would start up—as they have done—by hun-
dreds and by thousands, whose murmurs and complaints
would be forwarded home for publication. Were we to
close our columns to the complaints of these unfortunate
persons a dozen journals would be set up within the
week, which wonld earn for their projectors a handsome
return for the capital invested by the mere publication
of scraps of letters from the seat of war. When mil-
lions of readers are anxious for the smallest scrap of in-
telligence of this kind, can any man who has attained to
years of discretion entertain a doubt that they will be
furnished with it through one channel or another ? If
we did not do it, somebody else would, and Lot d
Winchilsea would be left to combat one name instead
of another. That would just be the result of the
crusade against the Times. We would suggest, in
all courtesy to Lord Winchilsea, the only method
by which he could attain th© end at which he appears to
aim. A law of a restrictive character directed against
the press, as is the case in the continental States, might,
no doubt, if it could be carried and maintained, reduce
the press of this country into an abject dependence upon
the Government. If he would stop the stream he most
do so at the fountain-head ; but it would be a very un-
safe course for the Legislature to venture upon such a
step. He must be a bold man who, in the middle of
the nineteenth century, should endeavour to keep the
country in darkness, in order that such blunders as have
cost us 40,000 men and plunged a nation into mourning
should escape observation and censure, until the truth
in its full horror was made known. We aro far enough
from writing in a spirit of bravado ; there has been of
late too much bravado ; but we warn Lord Winchelsea
and any other peer who may share his views, to consider
the probable cost to themselves of a crusade against the
press before they commence the attack, We are much
mistaken, or they would soon discover, in a very signi-
ficant manner, that England does not exist for the
convenience of the House of Peers. It may be well for
them that even " the 29th bulletin" will not now take
the nation altogether by surprise. We shall not now
hear, as Paris did in 1812, on one day that the army
was victorious, on the next that it no longer existed.
The one point which appears to have aggravated poor
Lord Winchelsea more than another is, that his friend
Lord Raglan has been called before the bar of public
opinion for alleged disregard of the comfort, nay, of the
lives, of his soldiers. Lord Wirchelsea—who prefaced
his speech by an expression of his conviction that he
would be exposed to "vituperation" from the writers of
the Times —not very much in accordance with the spirit
of his own declaration, pronounces this accusation to be
a "false, foul, and malignant calumny." Surely, had
we needed a pretext for " vituperation," here is one. We
decline, however, the contest to which Lord Winchelsea
would invite us, and beg to recall his attention to the
facts of the ease. Have the accusations directed against
Lord Raglan proceeded at all from the correspondent of
the Times? From the 4th to the 24th of December that
gentleman, suffering from the sad malady which has cost
us ouronly army, was on a sick bed in Constantinople,
and not ono word has he ever written that could, by the
most malignant interpretation, be construed as reflecting
on Lord Raglan, His place has been supplied as Lord
Winchilsea would have it—by the officers of Lord Rag-
lan's army • and has not every mail that has reached
the shores of Great Britain teemed with complaints from
them and from our unfortunate soldiers ? It is of them,
not of our correspondent, that Lord Winchilsea is really
complaining. But do not these complaints proceed from
private soldiers, non-commissioned officers, from regi-
mental officers—ay, and from general officers ? Does
Lord Winchilsea, sitting at his ease at home, presume to
say that he is better informed than wore the poor fellows
who have sealed their statements with their lives ? Ho
must have a very robust faith in the activity and
philanthropy of Lord Raglan, if, simply from col -
fidence in his general character, he ventures to im-
pugn the statements of those who write from the
spot, and who are suffering so cruelly from the effects
of the indifferenCe and apathy of their general.
Was it the Times' correspondent who restored
the locus omissus in the official letter of that brave old
veteran Sir De Lacy Evans, with reference to the ne-
glected post of Inkerrnanl In a word, it is not we who
are the accusers, nor our correspondent, but the army,
or what is left of the army, in the Crimea. If Lord
Winchilsea would seek for confirmatory evidence, he
may obtain it from our gallant friends and allies, the
French. Let him ask, if he dares, for the despatch in
which General Canrobert described to his own Govern-
ment the desperate condition of the English army. Let
him ask, if he desires the truth, for the terms in which
General Canrobert has spoken of our Generals and of
our Staff. We aro willing to be judged by the delibe-
rate opinion of so competent an authority, and we chal-
lenge Lord Winchilsea to demand the production of such
evidence. If he will rely on testimony more easily ac-
cessible, let him inquire of the Rev. S. G. Osborne, or
of Mr. Augustus Stafford, what is the condition of our
sick and wounded at Constantinople ? In the hospital
of Scutari, with its four miles of English soldiers in
their agony, he will find the most expressive monument
of the discretion, forethought, and philanthropy of Lord
Raglan.

The Dnke.of Newcastle, in his answer to Lord Win-
°Lama, refrained from the idle attempt to deny any
longer the substantial truth of the statements forwarded
to us by the correspondents of this journal. The time
for denial was, indeed, past, while Lord John Russell in
the other house was painting, in stronger words than
even our eloptent correspondent could use, and with all
the authority of a Minister was describing the condition
of our army as " painful, horrible, and heartrending."
One awful revelation after another has confirmed the
dark reality of the statements which in the first instance
were treated with indifference or contempt. The Duke
of Newcastle's present complaint is that we have only
spoken with too much truth. He says that the London
press is the most active agent for the information of the
Russian Czar and his advisers at St. Petersburg. Lord
Raglan upon two occasions has complained that valu-
able information has been afforded to the enemy via
London and St. Petersburg through the public journals,
To this we can only reply that, whatever may
have been the case with other journals, Prince Mine-
ehikoff has received very little intelligence of much ser-
vice) to hie operations through Printing-house-square.
When the appeal of which the duke speaks was made
to us, we offered, as he well knows, te suppress not
Only all that could possibly assist the enemy in our cor-
respondence from the Crimea, but also all the intelli-
gence of naval and military movements here which we
believe, and still believe, to be of much greater import-
ance. The dake did not think this necessary, but our
offer and his reply remain, and can be produeed. We
are only answerable for ourselves, and we must leave our
ereporaries te do as much. We may, however,
atm:dart eurselve is with the reflection that the Duke of
Neweastle..deoesnot impugn our patriotism ; he simply
cattolwls oeunrgiligt:rieition in question. As most of us are just
in in
the Crimea,
his discretion in question, and
as the army
men, both Souses of Parliament, the great mass of English-
be
erenent, and even his own col-
leagues appear to
way, in perfect confidence,el same way of thinking, we
judgment. Finally, aithourr this point to the public
we are well-nigh ashamed
to notice such a matter, "
grat(liteer one word upon
the facilities which have been te our correspon-
dent in the East. In common with any other traveller,
being a British subject, he obtained a
ee run in a troop
ship from Malta. To kow many wandering members f
the two houses have the same facilities bees extended
during the last twelve months ?—to how many hundreds
of Englishmen I Lord Winchilsea and the Duke of
Newcastle, moreover, appear to grudge the gentleman
for us a few pouniadse vofuskaelt phork ahnd biscuit
from the Commissariat, and t
who is acting
t the skeletognrsy oftlel'opss,
whose writer clothing
loads of food rot in the very sight of our— hungry ostro e
they were meant to shield, the hfiendcobsut of whose waste mustbee
reckoned by the million—takes credit in an assembly of
Lords, whose boast in better days was liberal hospitality,
That he has cut off the rations of salt pork and biscuit
from the one Englishman who has supplied himeelf, his
colleagues, and the country with the vital truth respect-
ing the state and prospects of an army which such de-
spatches as we publish to-day failed altogether to supply.
Let him comfort himself, and let Lord Winchilsea and
his fellow-economists take comfort ;—the full value of
every ration shall be repaid, and the churls who repre-
sent a generous country shall not have one farthing to ,
charge to the historian e the war. At the same tine,
we would venture to remind them that the obligation is
not all on our side. It was but the other day another
correspondent of the Times clothed a regiment which had
teen
sent utterly unprovided by the War Depart-
ParPetment to-rot away in the trenches before Sebas-
I4Pnl- We console ourselves, too, with the considera-
tion that, Whatever may be Lord Winobilaw feelings