The Sun.
London, England, 1855-01-23 00:00:00

tion of the department the execution of the law should de-
volve. The circumstances above alluded to would seem to
indicate that the Government has been losing time, and
idly dallying with the very instruments which it insisted
upon having placed into its hand. An inquiry into the
truth of these allegations may appear to cover but a nar-
row corner of the great field of the war management ; but
it will bo a test of tho sincerity and energy (or the want of
them) with which Ministers have been urging on military
operations since the Parliament met in December. At that
time much of their past indolence and inefficiency was
condoned, in the hope that the future would make amends.
If it shall appear that they have been going to work since
time, as I.lnguilly and unsystematically as ever—that will
prove their promises of amendment to have been hollow or
insincere; will demonstrate that, either from incapacity
or want of goodwill to the work in hand, the Ministry, as
at present constituted, is incompetent to the great task of
carrying on the war.
The inquiry next in order is of wider scope. It embraces
the whole operations of the naval campaign in the Baltic.
It is generally understood that Ministers are seeking to
throw the whole blame of its comparative failure on Sir
Charles Napier ; and that Sir Charles bitterly -complains
of having been hampered by injudicious instructions, and
of ha inbeen inadequately provided and supported from
home. It is possible that a searching investigation may
show that both parties are in fault. It will be difficult to
excuse an experienced commander for having accepted
command upon terms that might or must have rendered it
impossible for him to perform his duty. And it will be
difficult for Ministers to show that they are not respon-
sible for having employed, and kept in office, an ineffi-
cient agent.
Lastly, full explanations must be exacted of the causes
of the chaotic and anarchical state which appears, through.
out the campaign, to have pervaded every department of
the army and navy in the Black Sas. It will not be enough
for Ministers to show that they have issued orders for all,
things to be done aright. Have they taken the most ordi-
nary precautions to enforce obedience to their orders ? or
have they, satisfied with issuing them, looked apatheti-
cally on, while they were neglected or disobeyed ? This
is too wide and complicated an inquiry to admit of our
entering into its details now Lbut two simple circum-
stances will serve to illustrate our pleating. In a letter,
from an able and respectable military officer of high rank,
now before WI, it is connctently affirmed that "it is well
kilo wn that one of the Cabinet Ministers wrote to Scutari
to direct a pier to be erected at that place for the landing
of the sick, and that it was not done for three months
after." A similar negligence in enforcing obedience to
orders is said to have resulted in the non-erection of a tem-
porary pier or piers for the emharking of the sick and
wounded at Balaklava. And we are also informed that
the military authorities in our army before Sebastopol are
prepared to thwart and obstruct the civil engineers sent
out to construct a railroad from Balaklava to the camp.
The apathy with regard to the war, indicated by these
have pervaded all operations, from
The
truth of the allegations on
this greatests
head, so freely circulated, must be ascertained or dis-
proved; and if it is established, the causer of the offence
must be removed.
It cannot be too often insisted upon, that, to ensure suc-
cess, these investigations must be conducted with all the
sternness, but with all the calmness, of a indicial inquiry.
Talleyrand's favourite maxim, point de zete, was never
more applicable. A random irregular discharge of ques-
tions—every member rushing forward singly, and without
concert, to show how zealous he is—can only perplex and
bewilder, and prevent the attainment of any amelioration
in the management of the war.

(Front the Morning Herald.)
Parliament re-assembles this day, and public anxiety
has,deepened to such an intensity that the truth must come
out. Misrepresentation has reached its limits. Confes-
sions of incompetency on the part of the Duke of New-
castle, and lady-like but false statistics on the part of Mr.
Sidney Herbert, have lost their novelty. Ignorance in the
War Minister will no longer serve the purpose of an ex-
cuse, but will be taken as an aggravation of the offence •
while the assertions of the Secretary at Par are now so'
much distrusted that proof of all he says must be unflinch-
ingly required.
The public are now aware that there are two things
which must be looked to with regard to the state of affairs
in the East, and they will demand Punisnment for the
past as well as security for the future.
The destruction of our army, the betrayal and quasi
ruin of our ally, the utter waste of time, of lives, of money,
are all things which no effort of man can recall • but all
those things must be sifted, examined, searched' into, in
the first place, that the guilty and the guilty alone may be
punished ; and, secondly, that by acquiring a knowledge
of the means by which such events became possible, we
may be enabled to make provision against their future re-
currence.
An effort has been made to shift responsibility from
those who are more obviously guilty to the several subor-
dinate departments, and to assert that all things were duly
ordered, but that the orders were not obeyed. The ques-
tion, therefore, naturally suggests itself, " Why were they
,
not obeyed ?" and the immediate answer is, That the
authority and power to enforce obedience did not exist."
If this be so we say, then, that the great event of the
session of 1854--the appointment of a War Minister—was
a delusion practised on the public, a falsehood and a fraud.
Surely no man can bo so forgetful or so ignorant as not
to know that the reason put forward to justify the ap-
pointment was the strong necessity of procuring uniformity
of action in all the departments, and that to obtain it a
supreme authority was indispensable. Certain are we
that the public understood it, and that Parliament.
" voted 17,0001. a yews" far tha arpsews..-af :the new office,
upon the diltinct- underetending that the' War Minister
eheveld have the power of oompelling obedience to his
commands.

Either tho power exists, or it does not. If it exists,
what must we think of the possessor of the authority who
did not compel obedience ? And if it do not, can we con-
ceive anything more criminal than the pretence of under-
taking duties which the Minister knew he had not the
means of performing, even if he had capacity to understand
the measures necessary to be taken ? We wish the duke a
safe deliverance from the dilemma.
As far, however, as the nation is concerned, it matters
little which may be the truth ; for even if the power did
exist, it was in hands totally incompetent to use it ; the
thunderbolts of Jupiter himself would become innocuous
asp of an infant.
in
npWotn h
ee feeblebelieve,gr
however, that the Treasury will be found
examination to have been the real clog ; and an anec-
dote was yesterday current in the City, which might go
far to illustrate this position if investigated. A merchant
was stated to have taken to Bala.klaya a vessel loaded with
articles of the first necessity for the troops, all much
wanted at the time. That seeing the deep distress of our
noble soldiery, this man, in the true spirit of patriotic
lib3rality, offered the whole to our commissariat withaut
reserving any profit ; and that the offer, being by them
anddeclined,t
Now, if this statement be true, and we have heard it
from more than one reliable quarter, the question at once
a once was
accepted.
subsequently
made to General Canrobert,
arises—why were those articles of the first necessity re-
fused by the commissariat of a starving army ? And we
think that any one at all acquainted with our system will
answer, that the commissariat were under the necessity
of applying in every instance to the Treasury, and well
knew that the myths of that department would answer,
through their oracle, "that nay lords were not aware" of
the necessity of the purchase. Inquiry into these matters,
as we have said before, is to b made regarding " by-
gones," as warnings for the future.e But we are threatened
with results not yet we hope concluded, and which,
although not so vital to the safety of our army, are yet of
enormous importance to the honour of England; we allude
and supplicating the Czar to ac-
to the impending negotiations for peace. Englishmen
will, perhaps, hardly believe that we are now at the
wholegre a
to
offenders—the
Aberdeenites
n substance and fact is
the meaning of the four Points—and this we are doing
without the smallest consideration for the fact, that we
have since the period when that note was rejected sacri-
ecleepvte
thenth
Vienna hour
n entreatingote
fo r
such
sacri-
ficed the finest army that ever left England, and expended
enormous sums of money in the vain attempt to bring the
Cuary means to
, however, is to try by
a
and Nicholas—from the punishment which the wickedness
of the one and the treason of the other have so justly
earned. Is that object to be attained ? The English na-
zre
ascton. rescue Thethe
na-
tion must answer the question, and they should remember,
in making their reply, that the four points aro the Vienna
note in a new shape—that no peace can be safe which does
not provide for the destruction of Sebastopol, nor honour-
able which does not secure an indemnity for the Sultan,
even if the Allies are simple-minded enough to pay the
enormous expenses which they have incurred, and must
yet meet, without exacting remuneration from the Czar.
These are the very lightest conditions which England
and her Allies should impose upon Russia,
and these are
conditions which never can be proposed or acceded to as
long as the Coalitirn remains in office.
The great object of putting out the wretched clique
which goes by that name is to prevent them, by means of
that secret diplomacy which they hay, no scandalously
misused, from involving the nation in difficulties from
which their successors may find it impossible to extricate
the country, with due regard to its honour.
The ejection of Lord Aberdeen must be speedily, if we
wish to save our army, now attenuated to the last degree;
and here let us suggest the only means by which it ap-
pears possible to effect that object.
We can hardly believe that any man, even the most
sanguine, expects that an assault will be made upon Se-
bastopol at present. The loss would be enormous ; and,
exposed to the fire of the northern forts, the Allies could
not retain the town a single hour.
a.
We have, therefore, to suggest—humiliating, t____
bilmiliating, deeply
humiliating, as the course must be—to entreat of our gal-
lant
and high-minded Allies to take off our hands such a
portion of the duties of the trenches as may enable our
poor soldiers to survive, in order to assist them at a future
day. They must perceive the necessity of this measure ;
and so highly do we estimate their chivalro highfeeling,
that we areionvinced the Emperor and us
hie generals would
at once accede to the demand.
This would allow our over-worked and half-starved
troops to be sent clown by divisions in succession to Bala,
Ive
klava, to receive the clothing which 3.
hope has at last
arrived, and to have a few days' rest and good feeding to
restore their exhausted strength; for see still believe food
is to be found in the chaotic limbo which surrounds the har-
bour, although utterly unavailable while the army con-
tinues in the trenches. During the period so gained, the
communications between the harbour and the lines might
be made practicable, perhaps the railway Completed, and
on the return of our soldiers the French, would find their
reward in the gratitude and affection which their noble
conduct would have excited in their Allies.
We protest we feel ashamed and e-iL'IN ed to a degree we
can hardly express, when we find ourselves compelled to
make such a suggestion; but any humiliation is better
than the heartless sacrifice of the noble and gallant fellows
whom the Coalition have betrayed. The nation, how-
ever, will remember that for this, as for other degrada-
tions, they aro indebted to the Peelitea and their Whig-
Radical colleagues.
To return to the meeting of Parliament. We wish in
conclusion, to address a few words to the loaders of the op-
position upon the course which circumstances imperatively
require at their hands.
The nation is now thoroughly awake, and will expect
action from those in whom it may require to repose con-
fidence, Tho dap for forbearamo aro gone by ; further