The Sun.
London, England, 1855-06-25 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, JUNE 25, 1855.

It would of course be quite unfair to censure
the conduct of the attack which failed so painfully
on the 18th till we have the details before us.
Lord RAGLAN may have a full justification both
for the assault and the failure ; nor in the remarks
we are about to make do we wish for a moment
to prejudge the case. We shall most sincerely
rejoice if it be shown that all which took place
might have done so equally under the generalship
of a C.MAR, a NAPOLEON, or a WELLINGTON. We
can have no wish to lower the reputation of our
own commanders. It must be borne in mind,
too, that the French attack failed equally with
that of the British.

been awake to his more strictly militaryduties.
It is now universally agreed that Sebastopol
might twice have fallen by a coup de main : first,
from the north side after the battle of Alma, next
from the south, while fur days the dispirited Rus-
sians were expecting us to walk in. These golden
opportunities once lost have never returned, and
never will return. We regret to record our con-
viction that if they did there is not the capacity
and vigour to improve them. The rule of mili-
tary precedent, not the intuition of military
genius, is the only guide of nearly superannuated
commanders. The same remark applies to Bala-
klava. and Inkerman. Too wide a line of defence
would not have been chosen at first, exposing the
poor Turks to quite undeserved reproach ; nor
would the unprotected position pointed out by Sir
DE LACY EVANS have been left so long to invite
the attack of Inkerman if a man of more vigour
and capacity had been in the chief command.

We must then confess to our fears that the
suggestions we have heard are but too likely to
be true ; that the attack of the Bth was not
pressed as it might have been, and that that of the
18th was not undertaken with a sufficient force to
follow up what was gained by the martyrdom of
those who headed the assault. We must endure,
however, patiently the pain of suspense for a time,
both as to the details and to the causes of the
melancholy loss. It cannot, however, be denied,
looking at the past only, that the appointment of
Lord RAGLAN was a Cabinet error, and that his
recall is a Cabinet duty. Whether it were due
to routine or to favouritism, to his com-
panion in years, the Premier, or to one
practically greater than the Premier, to the
Horse Guards and Lord HARDING; or to
the Cabinet and Lord ABERDEEN----it is time that
we, like the French, should have a change. New
tad younger eyes will discern new plans, and
younger energies will carry them out. The suc-
cess of the War must not be sacrificed to the con-
ceit of the Guards ; we must take the right man
wherever we can find him, whether it be from the
QUEEN'S or the Indian Service, or even, like Lord
OLIVE, from the counting-house of a merchant.
Lord PALMERSTON is now responsible for procur-
ing a military genius who can do the country's
work. He must act the dictator. Lot him name
the individual whose merit and capacity he can
priwe, and let him, if rebellion show itself at the
Horse Guards or at Buckingham Palace, stake
continuance iu office on carrying his point.
Both would soon have to bow to the country.
The disasters of the 18th may, indeed, if turned
to the account they ought, be the military re-
demption of the army. The disasters of the
winter have been its Commissariat salvation.
Never will another British army seven miles from
the port be starved to death by hunger and cold,
or its wounded half murdered in what should
have been hospitals. But the annihilation of
Horse-Guards and Court favouritism has yet to
be accomplished. The nation strongly suspects
that Premiers, though responsible for the selec-
tion of the General, are not allowed free action.

It is believed that so strong is the pressure exer-
cised by irresponsible influence in a very high
quarter that a Premier cannot easily make the
appointment which he h obliged to defend.
Something, it is thought, approaching to a
crisis is requisite to enable an English Prime
Minister to displace an incompetent Gene-
ral, and to nominate, irrespective of all
precedent, the man of proved ability. If
the rumours of the 18th be true, they may at
least issue in silencing mischievous and irresponsi-
ble interference, and enabling or compelling Lord
PALMERSTON, no one daring to intervene, to
cream the service of India and of England, in
deference to universal and irresistible demand,
perhaps in deference to necessity itself. It is
deplorable to think that nothing but the impera-
tive necessity of redressing unbearable calamity
can get rid of the necessity of a Premier's yielding
to those whom the Crown itself cannot resist.

pass without adding to their already formidable
defences, or in devising new impediments to those
who may undertake the escalade of the key of
Sebastopol. He is too well aware that every
day nay more, every hour wasted must
materially enhance the difficulty of the
task, and the losses that must necessarily be
sustained in achieving a victory as decisive as that
of the 7th of June. He requires no stimulus to
urge him on to the discharge of his arduous duty;
and we may therefore confidently await the issue,
which will not, we venture to assert, be very long
deferred.

It is strange that our chief information on these
points should be obtained from Paris. It is said
that there have been several breaks in the line of
telegraph through Austria ; but surely the French
despatches would have been subjected to similar
delays as our own, and we might as easily have
heard from Lord RAGLAN as our Allies from
General PFLISSIER. We should not, however,
feel greatly surprised if we were enabled in this
very impression of The Sun to repair the omissions
above referred to, and to communicate official in-
telligence as to the amount of the actual losses
of the 18th in killed and wounded.
We earnestly hope that these may not be so great
as had at first been rumoured. British officers
have never flinched from the conflict, or endea-
voured to save themselves at the expense of the
men under their command. They have always
contributed a full proportion to the numbers of
the killed, and we may therefore, from the fact
that nineteen perished on that fatal day, form a
tolerable estimate of the full numbers of those
placed hors de combat in the attack. We must
not, then, give way to despondency. The courage
of our troops is still unabated—their hearts beat
high with ardour, and doubtless before long we
shalt receive authentic intelligence which will
more than compensate for the brief check, and
show that the Russian arsenal and the Russian
fleet are completely at the mercy of the Allied
forces, and that " the standing menace to Con-
stantinople" will be razed to its foundations,
never again to disturb the tranquillity of Europe.

If the unparalleled demonstration in Hyde-
park has not taught Lord ROBERT GROSVENOR and
the party whose work he is doing a lesson they
will profit by to the last hour of their lives, it is
because bigotry and intolerance have placed them
so far beyonl the pale of reason that no warning
cau be of the slightest possible service to them.
Though it was notorious that the observance of
Sunday as a day of rest was more general than at
any preceding time—that the public had not
got over their exasperation at the Act closing
public houses for several additional hours on
Sunday, and that our social system, more
especially as exhibited in the metropolis, presents
contrasts it is not well for the poor to brood over,
Lord ROBERT GROSVERNOR and the Sabbatarians
must wring yet further the withers of " the
galled jade," and by an interference with Sunday
trading, which would deprive thousands of their
Sunday food, and spoil the Sunday dinner of ten
thousand more, hazard all the progress Sunday
observance has made, and provoke a war of
classes by exasperating the toiling poor
against the rich, and that at a period when the
nation cannot be too united. So pestilent is the
folly of your Pharisaic legislation, and so danger-
ous is it toive way to it.

It is with feelings of the deepest sorrow for those
who perished nobly in the attack on the Redan
and the Malakhoff Tower, and of earnest sympathy
with their surviving relatives and friends, that we
publish the names of the officers killed, or who
have since died of the wounds received on the
18th instant. They will be found in another
part of this day's impression, and will be sincerely
mourned over by every true-hearted Englishman.
It will be seen that England has been deprived of
the faithful and efficient services of nineteen of
her bravest children, whose lives have been offered
as further sacrifices to the aggressive policy of
Russia, and who have sealed with their blood the
testimony of their unflinching devotion to their
country. The names of these gallant offi-
cers will be added to the long list of those
who have perished nobly in the conflict, with-
out receiving personally the rewards of their
inestimable services, but whose daring exploits
will not speedily pass from the remembrance of
their compatriots, and whose relatives may, we
trust, receive no stinted tribute of national grad-
' tude and respect.
From the intelligence since received from the
seat of War it appears that the temporary failure
of last Monday has not in any degree dispirited
the combatants, but that, on the contrary, it has
inspired an inflexible resolution to avenge the
mighty dead, and to accomplish the formidable
undertaking which they perished nobly in at-
tempting. Not a day has been lost in pressing
forward the operations of the siege ; nor• do the
Russians themselves appear to consider that they
have accomplished anything very decisive, or in-
flicted more than a temporary check on their per
severing and determined assailants. On the fol-
lowing evening, after tho termination of the brief
armistice that had been accorded for the sepulture
of those who had fallen in the fierce encounter,
they fancied that the attack was about to be re-
sumed, and for a considerable time kept up a vain
and useless cannonade on the approaches to their
works, which they supposed to be tenanted by an
advancing foe, burning to retrieve the disasters
of the previous day. This apparently trivial cir-
cumstance exhibits in the strongest light the mag-
nitude of the apprehensions entertained by the
garrison—while the fact that on the 20th they
themselves set fire to the little faubourg,
at the extremity of the southern port, proves
beyond the possibility of doubt that they scarcely
hope to retain possession of the position which
they have so energetically defended, or again to
repulse the terrific onslaught of the chivalry of
France and England.
Meanwhile, our gallant Allies are busily en
gaged in erecting batteries with guns of heavy
calibre on the Mamelon Vert and other works
captured on the 7th instant, which threaten more
directly the great port. The indefatigable labours
of the Russians will thus be turned against them-
selves, and it is not impossible that the capture
or destruction of their stronghold may be accom-
plishedown hands, ands ofintenwdoers
intended to by mean
a n constructednoy
th e bytheir
enemy,
whose objects they have so materially promoted.
From what we already kno
of the promptitude
and energy of General PELISSIER, we may feel
ascu red that he will allow no 'needless respite to
the enemy who do not suffer a single moment to ;

On Lord ROBERT GROSVENOR and the Sabba-
tarians we charge the origination of the deplorable
scene of yesterday ; on their heads must rest the
principal blame and shame of it. It won't do
to talk about riotous proceedings and denounce
the conduct of the mob. There are provocations
which English flesh and blood will not endure,
and the Sunday Trading (Metropolis) Bill un-
called for, partial, tyrannical, and inhumane as it
is, is one of them. Common sense all along in-
dicated the fact, and yesterday's proceedings
proved it to demonstration. "My lords and
gentlemen and clean shaven Pharisees, all of you"
they said—" What is sauce for the goose is sauce
for the gander. We see through your hypocrisy,
execrate your tyranny, and won't, if we can help
it, tolerate your Bill." Why does not Lord PAle
MERSTON exhibit his wonted spirit by denouncing
such Sabbatarian atrocity.

What, however, does strike us, is—the appa-
rent congruity of the mishap with most of
Lord RAGLAN'S antecedent, failures. They look
like the failures of the age when timidity and
caution override enterprise ; and when the mind,
which might perhaps once have been inventive
and fertile of resources, prefers to follow routine,
and sees obstructions more readily than the means
of overcoming them. We speak with tenderness
of a period we all hope to reach, and in which we
probably, like our predecessors, shall fail to per-
ceive the change which has come over us, and
shall mistake the defects of old age for its advan-
tages, yet we must not sacrifice the national inte-
rests to our veneration for grey hairs. It cer-
tainly then does appear that the military failures
of this and the last campaign have been to a
large extent attributable to the General in
supreme command not being equal to his
post. If he wanted natural ability, the dis-
enabling effect of years has merely aggravated
the consequences of what should have been equally
well known to those who gave him the command.
The plain fact is, that in cases now fairly within
our judgment Lord RAGLAN has wanted the grand
qualities of a Commander-in-Chief. We see in
him none of that military or rather administrative
omnipresence which has distinguished all great
Generals ; and as little of that promptitude and
decision which masters events, instead of being
mastered by them. He surrounded himself with
a staff of kinsfolk who had no eyes for him, while
his Own appear to have been too frequently closed.
Re seemed to learn the state of his camp and hos-
pitals rather from the eyes and pens of English
correspondents than of those whose business it
was to keep him thoroughly informed of all
things ; nor had he the activity of a FREDERICK
THE GREAT or even of a NICHOLAS to test by his
own observation the efficiency of his assistants.
Nothing is more evident in the Report of the
Sebastopol Committee than that Lord RAGLAN
was the last source from whom the Government
learned what he should have known and told
them ; and, indeed, that they for a time fatally
discredited private information, because they
justly thought that such information, if correct,
was of a kind that any Commander-in-Chief must
possess, and that if he possessed it, it must have
been forwarded home by extraordinary express.
Who can believe that, not to say the Duke 01
WELLINGTON, but that such men as Brigadier
MavrTs, Sir COLIN CAMPBELL, or Major EDWARDS,
would either not have known, or knowing have
tolerated the hospital mismanagement, the seven
miles of mud, and the Balaklava Harbour ?
But if such men Would have had their eyes and
wits about them in the necessary duties of a
Chief General, how much more would they have

THE SUN, LONDONI MONDAY EVENING, tyrimv -25, 188 b,

remain faithful to the policy of neutrality she has I
hitherto fullowed. With respect to the third and
fourth points, the note declares that Russia will
never accept any condition which may cause the
least prejudice to her dignity and position as a
great power. The Cabinet of St. Petersburg de-
clares besides that it only considered the last pro-
positions of Austria worthy of examination, because
they laid down the two principles of the mare
clausum and of a special treaty between Russia and
Turkey ; but that it will never accept the principle
of a reduction of its fleet."
Voss's Gazette of Berlin contains a letter from
Vienna, of the 19th, which says :—" The Emperor
was quite pleased with the fortifications and con-
structions in Gallicia, and, above all, the immense
works, raised as if by enchantment, at Cracow ex-
cited his astonishment. Last evening a note was
despatched from this place for M. de Hubner at
Paris, being the reply to the last note sent to our
Government by the French Cabinet, at the close of
the conferences. Within the last few days a num-
ber of conferences have taken place between the
' Ambassadors of the Western Powers and Count
Buol. A great importance is attached to these
meetings, since it is positively stated that the
Western Powers have made at them a formal de-
claration that they do not any longer confine them-
selves to the Four Points of guarantee, butintend
establishing bases of peace more in harmony with
the efforts which they have been obliged to make
to carry on the war."