The Sun.
London, England, 1855-01-30 00:00:00

poli, April 23. Here let me observe that on the 7th of
April the Duke of Newcastle had declared that never was
an army so well provided for—in food, in all necessaries,
even in articles that might be considered luxuries. On
the 23(1 of April an officer at Gallipoli writes thus :
" There are 20,000 French troops encamped a short distance
from our troops. They are in every respect better
equipped and provided for than ours. Their Government
have provided their officers with mules for the conveyance
of their baggage and everything else they require. We
have to buy Mules for ourselves, which cannot be done at
Gallipoli, as the French Government have already bought
thorn all up." Why was this? The Secretary of War
said the Government wore buying up animals in Egypt
and Spain ; why did you not buy some mules at Galli-
poli ? " The French soldiers fraternise freely with ours,
and to-clay we saw them giving ours some of their bread,
of which they have a most bountiful supply, while ours
have not enough." At Gallipoli, in April, at the opening
of the campaign, the soldiers of the Queen of England
eating the bread of our ally ! Is that a position that is
worthy her throne, or our pride of a nation, and how does
this agree with the Duke of Newcastle's statement of the
7th of April ? Now let us pass on from Gallipoli ; you
proceed to Varna, not to fight, not to assist the Turks at
Silistria—you have not, indeed, the necessary transports
for that—but because Omar Pacha says that the presence
there of your army will have a moral effect upon the Rus-
sians. Now, sir, I think that this was a request on the
part of Turkey which, so far as the selection of a site to
encamp, we had a right to refuse. We came to defend
them and to fight, but not to remain stationary, and melt
away by pestilence in a climate notoriously pestilential in
that special time of the year—pestilential, net from an
accidental cause, but from one periodical and invariable—
end which, if your Minister had asked any traveller, or
consulted any authority, he must have known. (Hear.)
Well, sir, from the camp there, this officer writes,
July 28 :
" I hope something will be done soon, as I should look
forward with horror to another summer in this country. We
have now considerable difficulty in getting supplies, and
frequently have to live on bread and cheese for a day or
two, as ration meat cannot be eaten, though the officers eat
it when the men will not."

Now comes the reason why that climate was pestilential,
and why you ought to have known it. " July and Au-
gust," says the officer there encamped, "are unhealthy
months, as they are all dry and very hot, and the deposits
from the lakes, which overflow in the spring, dry up and
create miasma. Nearly all our cases of cholera occur in
the night, and are mostly fatal in six hours." (Hear.) '
This young man has the cholera himself—he probably re-
covers—he rouses when the report comes that something is
to he done—something, no doubt, which it was necessary
to do ; but was it the impression that that something
should be the siege of Sebastopol ? Then hear what he
says :—" Of course they keep secret where we are going ;
but we believe that it is to take Odessa, which is full of
corn granaries, &c. I think this is the best thing we could
do, and winter there, both army and navy. It is too
late in the year to attack Sebastopol." That could not
have been the solitary notion of that young soldier ;
it must have been the talk of his comrades—" too
late in the year to attack Sebastopol !" But, no !
out of all the twelve months, you had taken the worst to
encamp at Varna, and it was consistent to take the worst
to besiege Sebastopol, that Gibraltar of the East. You
take the worst time, not only for military operations, but
for sanitary conditions. Open even so common a work
as "11`Culloch's Geographical Dictionary," and you will
find it was the unhealthiness of the Crimea which frus-
trated its colonisation by Germans ; open the " Gazetteer
of the World," and you will find that it is in autumn the
climate is more especially unhealthy, and subject to the
epidemics you have found there. Yet you land without
ambulances, without waggons, without hospital provision,
without even tents. Here ends this young soldiers corres-
pondence. Scarcely saved from cholera at Varna, cholera
seized him at the first breeze from those new and more
fatal shores—seized him while his comrades were landing
in the Crimea. Without common comforts, without com-
mon medical aid, he died—calling out in his delirium to
be set on shore, so that he might, at least, perish in the
field. I then charge you with this—that twice in one cam-
paign you expose your army in situations notoriously pes-
tilential, at the precise seasons which you choose for both
encampments. Considering this alone we need not pause to
weigh the reasons for disasters alleged by the Secretary-at-
War—viz., that our staff-officers had no experience of ac-
tive command, and that our soldiers selected from the pea-
santry, had not learned to take care of themselves. The
main cause is here—the situations to which you have ex-
posed your army, and the destitution in which you leave it
—and the fault is the worse for the reason you state—viz.,
that your officers were not accustomed to invent resources,
nor your soldiers inured to encounter hardships and disease.
The defence of the Secretary of War has been chiefly di-
rected to show that, wherever omissions were discovered
and blunders made, he hastened to repair them. That
excuse may avail for his department, but it is the duty of
the Government, taken as a whole not only to repair but
to foresee—to provide beforehand what may probably be
wanted, and not to wait till the consequences of their own
neglect start up and defy reparation. You cannot repair
the loss of life ; you cannot repair constitutions ruined for
ever, because men were exposed to disease and deprived
of proper medical attendance—because men were sent te
bravo all the rigour of a dismal climate, without clothing
to cover and roofs to shelter them. Now, even with re-
gard to a road from Balaklava, you read every day in the
papers that the whole region between Balaklava and Sebas-
topol was exposed to columns of dust. A moment's re-
flection would have told yon that dust in the summer be-
comes mud with the first rain of winter; and when, after
the battle of Alma, it became clear that you would have
to invest Sebastopol, you should have seen to the construc-
tion of a road between your camp and your harbour.
Here, indeed, at first glance, Lord Raglan may seem chiefly
to blame. But he told you in his despatch, after the
battle of Alma, that he wished he had more men ; and it
might have occurred to you that with young recruits—
many of them more boys—weakened by disease, and n,A,
enough for the work of the trenches, Lord Raglan might
have no force to spare for the supplementary labour of roads,
and also that he was deficient in the necessary animals and
vehicles, and you ought not to have waited for Mr. Peto's
offer—your patriotism should have been no less inventive
than his—before you had completed a contract for
the construction of a road by a certain date. It has been
said, " How are Government to blame for winds and
hurricanes, rains and mud ?" Buk you are to blame for
taking no pains to learn that youilrmy would be exposed
to a climate that is subject to winds and hurricanes, rains
and mud. (Cheers ) You are to blame for not resorting
to the ordinary inventions of art to counteract the hostile
operations of nature. (Hear, hear.) When the clouds
gather a prudent man takes out his umbrella ; when the
wind sets in the east ho will see that his coat can button ;
and a man attacked by cold and disease for neglecting such
every-day precautions, might as well exclaim, " How
could I foresee that it would rain, or that it would blow ?"
as you exclaim, " How coal we foresee that there would
be winds, rain, or mud ? " in a climate in which winds,
rain, and mud are the ordinary phenomena of winter,
(Hear, hear.) Attempts have been made elsewhere to fix
blame upon our military commanders. It was wisely as
well as generously said on this score by the Secretary at
War, "What generous man would indeed attack the ab-
sent agent not here to answer for himself, wh n there sit
before us, face to face, the employers responsible for his
errors so long as they continue him in office ?" (Hear,
hear.) But here what Lord Grenville said en the question
of the Walcheren expedition is so apposite that I will ven-
ture to quote it :
"I am disposed," said Lord Grenville, "to believe that
in the situation of the commander he did all that could
reasonably be expected, or was possible to accomplish. The
error was in the plan, and the want of foresight and infor-
mation on the part of her Majesty's Ministers. The place,
the situation, the season of the year were chosen by them.
There is a season of the year when the air of that place is
most pestilential and dangerous; yet,-to that place, and at
that place, say her Majesty's Ministers, we will send the
flower of the British army—we will not send it at a time
when its operations may be advantageous, but we will send it
when from every information it will be destroyed more by
disease than by the sword."
Does this apply? (Loud cheers.) But it is said in defence
of the War Minister, that the fault is not in himself, but
' the nature of his office. lam too happy to accept any
palliation for his errors. But if I accept that excuse for
the Minister of War, it becomes another grave charge
against the collective Government, for you aassated that
office, and why did you leave it so imperfect? (Cheers.)
Here you had no want of advice and information. You
had the recommendations of a celebrated commission, the
advice of some of the ablest men, who had ithoroughly
examined the subject, and your excuse for not grappling
with the question was, that the commencement of war
was not the proper moment for a thorough reform in the
War administration, and that the proper time to make
a war-office efficient was the moment of returning peace.
(A laugh.) But, at all events the reform, as far as it
went, was, according to you, an improvement on the
old system, and yet, under the old system, we fought
the wars of the Peninsula and gained the victory of
Waterloo. (Hear.) But if the complications of this office
were so mischievous, you must have discovered it long
ago. Why, when you summoned Parliament for the 12th
of December, could you not have reformed the office, even
if you did not change the Minister, and propose to us that
reform for which you are now prepared ? That would have
been worth calling us together for; but no, you then com-
pleted your cardinaPtin of short-sighted incompetence by
confining all your exertions to save the remnant of your
army to two bills, for which you said not a day was to be
lost, and one of which has remained a dead letter to this
hour. (Cheers.) Here, again, tie same eternal want of
information ! You go to Germany for foreign troops, and
Germany declares your overtures illegal and rejects them
with scorn. I ventured to tell you that, if you carried
the Foreign Enlistment Bill, you would never be able to
use it. And now Parliament meets again, meets with
fresh accounts of almost incredible suffering-9,000 of our
surviving soldiers enfeebled, I fear, by disease, the huts
that should shelter the rest still at Balaklava, and Lord
Raglan, according to the despatch we read this morning,
• still without men and vehicles to land and fix them. Men
look to us, half with hope, half with despair. " What is
to be done?" is the cry of every voice. No man is a more
shrewd observer of public opinion than the noble lord the
member for London, and his resignation significantly tells
us what ought to be done. (Loud cheers.) But if this
motion succeed, if this incomparable Ministry retire,
and, like the gallant member for Middlesex, lose a place
and find a constituency—(cheers and laughter)—who
is to replace them? Where can we find their equals,
in the unity of their counsels, the foresight of their
policy, and the good fortune that attends their mea-
sures ? (A. laugh.) Let us compose our terrors, and face
the possible calamity of such a loss with manly courage.
The hon. member for Richmond chides my right hom
friend the member for Medhurst because, on Friday night,
he condemned the Government for basing its existence on
the principle of coalition. The member for Richmond is
historically correct. Looking through our modern history,
I find that most of oar powerful, even popular Adminis-
trations, have been more or less coalitions. Both the Ad-
ministrations of Mr. Pitt were coalitions ; and the last was
very remarkable, for he first turned out the Addington
Government, and then coalesced with six of its members.
Nay, he was not contented till he bad netted the expelled
Prime Minister himself, and made him Lord President of
the Council. (Laughter.) But thee there is one indispen-
sable element of a coalition, and that is, that its members
should coalesce. (Loud cheers and laughter.) It is that
element which seems to nae wanting in the present Cabinet.
(Cheers.) It has been an union of party interests, but not
a coalition of party sentiment and feeling. (Cheers.) It
was a jest of Lord Chesterfield's, when a man of very ob-
scure family married the daughter of a lady to whom scan-
dal ascribed a large number of successful admirers, that
"nobody's son had just married everybody's daughter."
(Great laughter.) If I may parody that jest, I would say
of this Government, that everybody's principles had
united with nobody's opinions. (Laughter.) It is dimly
intimated, that the noble lord—now in a state of transi-
tion—(a laugh)—but after all he is equally illustrious as
the member for Ti rertan—it is intimated that the noble
lord the member for Tiverton is intended for an appoint-
Pant that some months ago would have satisfied the