The Sun.
London, England, 1855-04-23 00:00:00

THE. CONDUCT OF THE WAR.

(From. Me Times of this day.)
The war continues, and is likely to continue. Our
money and our blood are poured forth like water. We
desire no peace but an honourable peace, and are willing
to endure all the sufferings, all the privations, and all
the losses, that may be necessary to obtain it. Whether
with or without the assistance of those Powers to whom
we have been taught to look for support, we hold that
the country ought to be prepared to stand to those terms
and to insist on those conditions which we required be-
fore we took up arms ; but we have a right to demand
from our Government that our sacrifices and our devo-
tion shall be met by them in a corresponding spirit. We
have a right to ask that our statesmen shall rise to the
height of the emergency, and shake off those miserable;
practices which might be tolerated in the quiet timeso
peace, but whch become absolutely insupportable under
the iron pressure of war. Of all the persons
wh
have
le
been pointed out as guilty of the disasters which
befallen our army, who has been recalled, what effortt
has been made to replace their proved inefficiency,ld what
exertion to supply their acknowledged negligence?
i once? They
h
remain, to ruin a second army as they done a first,
and to overwhelm the millions of this year in the same
bottomless abyss as the milli
y
ons of last.
The Ministry has been utterly wanting to its dot in
this respect, but one thingisleft to which the English
mind clings with instinctive
fondness and partiality.
The prestige of the conntry, it is said, cannot be utterly
lost, its honour cannot be utterly tarnished, while they
remain under the safeguard of the House of Commons.
How, then, does the House of Commons perform
itsh di:tyelasend vindicate the trust which, when every-
fails, the people are still determined
every-
thing in it ? Let the disclosures of Friday
night's debate answer the question. The House
of Commons determined that there should be an
inquiry into the management of the expedition to the
Crimea, and in order to carry out that determination
the House of Commons appointed a committee for the
purpose. It was no ordinary duty that these gentlemen
were called upon to discharge—they had, and they have
still, the very highest and most important functions to
execute. They should possess experience in the trans-
action of business, great discretion, and unswerving im-
partiality ; they should have been the very best, the
ablest, and fairest jury that could be chosen out of the
House of Commons. The notion of packing such a tri-
bunal, of putting men in to vote one way or another,
aught to have been discarded as entirely unworthy of
the magnitude of the issue. If we shield, with the most
jealous care, the appointment of a jury to decide on the
cause of the death of a single fellow-creature, was not
the House of Commons bound to the most jealous and
anxious solicitude in selecting those who were to pass
their verdict upon the causes which led to the death of
15,000 of our noble troops, who perished of cold, of fa-
mine, of overwork, of exposure, of neglect, and of di-
sease ? how, then, did the House of Commons insti-
tute the inquiry for the sake of which it had destroyed
one Ministry, and is now tolerating another I Much as
schoolboys make a match at cricket. It was a matter
of private arrangement, it appears, behind the Speaker's
chair, between the mover of the committee and the Go- '
vernment. Each was to put in his own men, and the
result was, therefore, to preponderate on the one side or
the other, according as the nominees of each should ad-
here to the line of conduct on the faith of which they were
introduced into the committee. So great was the confidence
felt by Government in the gentlemen who were induced to
act on its behalf as judges of its own proceedings, that
it has since seen fit to select one of them to fill the very
difficult and reasonable office of Under-Secretary of
State for the Colonies. This even the Government, with
unaecountable candour, admit to be a disqualification,
and the discussion on Friday night arose as to who was
to be put into the vacant place. Mr. Bentinck proposed
Captain Scobell, not a member of his own party, but on
the ground that no naval man had at present
a seat in the committee, by which so many matters
connected with the transport service had to be decided.
But Government has made up its mind • that the new
member of the committee shall be Mr. De Vere, a gen tre-
man who has only been for a few months a member of
the House of Commons, who is not known to many of
the members of the house by sight, who has as yet taken
no public part in its proceedings, and on behalf of whom
the only recommendation put forth is that he, like his
predecessor, Mr. Ball, is a member for an Irish con-
titueney. _ _

This, then, would seem to be all that is wanting in
order to give the last finish to the system of jobbery
and favouritism under which we live, or rather under
which the honour and reputation of the country in which
we live seem destined to perish. We fit out an expedi-
tion —we job every appointment in that expedition, from
the highest to the lowest, till it fails, with an amount of
discredit and disaster which even that jobbery seems
scarcely sufficient to account for. To expiate the failure
we discard a Ministry, and we job the new Ministry
with an utter disregard of merit and a slavish de-
ference to the claims of clique and connexion at which
even the trustiest followers of the Whig aristocracy
are astonished and disgusted. We appoint a tribunal
to inquire into these heavy delinquencies, and
we job and pack that tribunal to such an extent
that upon one of its members being called to serve
the Government in office, instead of on the com-
mittee, they claim as a matter of right to appoint
his successor, and that claim is conceded to them, not
only as a matter of riffht, but as a matter of course.
And our Government, having established its right to
choose one of its judges; exercises it without amnia,. in
the selection of a gentleman on behalf of whom it can
allege nothing but that he is an Irishman, and against
whom there is at least this to be said, that he is un-
known to the country on behalf of which he is to act,
and to the house whose delegate he is to be.
Will nothing rouse Lord Palmerston to a sense of the
real position of our affairs and the real feelings of the
country with regard to them l What shall we say—
what can we do to convince him that he is straining l'ar
beyond its powers of endurance a system which, even
before he undertook to discredit by exaggerating it, had
met with the unanimous reprobation of the eJuntey
All men are anxious, at least for the moment, not to
disturb the action or discretion of the Government, and
upon that anxiety a small fraction of our aristocracy has
presumed to set utterly at defiance the most reasonable
demands of public opinion. We beg Lord Palmerston
to believe that the peop'e of this country regard the ap-
pointment of a member of Mr. Roebuck's committee as
a weighty and responsible trust, to be by no means
complimented away, or to be treated with the same
splendid indifference as an ordinary piece of patronage.
Mr. De Vere ought not to be placed in this situation,
unless no fitter man can be found to supply it, an idea
which apparently never entered into the head of our
Premier. Surely, if the vessel of the State is to he
safely navigated through the storms that assail her, we
must contrive to find some limit beyond which favou-
ritism and patronage shall not go. We may be content
to pack our Generals and our Ministry ; let us at least
make an effort to save from the same influence the tri-
bunal to whose judgment we refer them.

T.HE NEW LOAN.

be a statesman, and Mr. Gladstone a man of business.
The people "know better" now. Sir G. C. Lewis reaps
the disadvantage of coming after a Chancellor of petty
" sharpness," finesse, and chicanery. The Frecch have
got their loan of 20 millions under circumstances which
do credit to the nation, and confer stability on the Go-
vernment. We write before the event ; but it appears
more than probable that there will be considerable diffi-
culty in obtaining our loan, unless Government make
great sacrifices. They have already greatly modified
their plans, and have placed themselves in the hands of
'Messrs. Rothschild. It remains to be seen what the
City will do for them. It is, however, quite certain
that the country will now borrow at a great disadvan-
tage, and that the loan, like everything connected with
the war, comes too late.

NAVAL AND MILITARY INTELLIGENCE.

This evening mails for the naval forces and vessels em-
ployed in the transport service in the Black Sea, the
troops in Greece, Turkey, and the Crimea, and the sick
and wounded and medical staff at the hospitals at
Smyrna and Scutari, will be despatched via Marseilles.
Letters, &c., must be prepaid.
Sir John Liddell, M.D., C.B , F.R.S., Medical In-
spector of Hospitals and Fleet 4, and at present in the
Royal Hospital, Greenwich, is appointed to succeed Sir
William Barnett, M.D., K.C.13., K.C.H., F.R.S., as
Director-General of the Medical Department of the
Navy, in consequence of which Sir John Richardson,
M.D., C. 8., Medical Inspector of the Royal Naval Hos-
pital at Haslar, has sent in his resignation, he being the
senior medical officer of the service, and not liking t
serve under a junior, Sir John Liddell standing two be-
low hint on the list.

A letter from the Black Sea Fleet, dated Balaklava,
April 6, gives the following movements :—" In harbour.
—the Leander, 50 ; Diamond, 28 ; Wasp, 14 ; and Ca-
radoc, despatch boat. In addition to the Diamond, the
Wasp has been ordered to prepare for the reception of
wounded consequent on the bombardment and expected
assault, and the transports St. Hilda, Orient, William
Jackson, and Sir George Pollock are also being fitted
with cots for a like purpose. The St. Jean d'Acre arrived
off here on the morning of the 4th, and sailed five hours
afterwards. She came for the purpose of embarking
huts, which will be erected near the Lighthouse for the
reception of some cases of smallpox which she has on
board. Mr. Elliott, surgeon, attached to the Marine
Brigade, is suspended from duty pending the decision of
the Admiralty on an alleged charge of neglect of duty.
Mr. Lapidge, of the Royal Albert, is appointed clerk in
charge of the Royal Albert, vice Arlidge, to be supernu-
merary paymaster of the Diamond for service, as secre-
tary to Captain Heath, principal agent for transports ;
Dr. Hill. to be assistant-surgeon of the Hannibal, vice
Preston, to the .Agamemnon. The Triton arrived to-
day. The Principal Agent for Transports will hoist his
pendant in her and live on board."
Rear Admiral Baynes, third in command of the Baltic
fleet, again struck his flag on board the Retribution,
steam-frigate, at Portsmouth, and went on leave for an-
other week on Friday evening. The Retribution will
be ready for sea on Saturday next.
The Cruiser, 14, screw sloop, Commander the Hon.
G. S. Douglas, returned to Spithead from Dover Roads
yesterday morning.
The Great Tasmania, steam transport, taken up to
convey troops to the Black Sea, is hourly expected at
Portsmouth from Liverpool to embark 1,000 troops of
the 7th, 23d, 88th, and 77th Regiments, and the Ist and
2d battalions of the Rifle Brigade.
The Hecate, 6, paddle-sloop, Commander Glynn,
arrived at Spithead yesterday from Woolwich.
The hired screw steam-transport Albatross, Captain
Lyal, belonging to the Cork Steam-ship Company, from
the Crimea, entered Plymouth Sound on Saturday, and
landed there five invalid merchant seamen. Sue has
been chiefly employed, during her 12 months' engage-
ment, in the conveyance of cattle to Varna and Bala-
Icava, and has brought home some returned stores. The
Cormorant, Captain Burns, belonging to the same com-
pany, which left Malta 10 hours after the Albatross,
with 80 pipes of limejuice on Government account, was
off Plymouth on Saturday, bound up Channel.
The schooner Walla, Captain Knowles, from London,
is unloading pork and beef at the Royal William Vic-
tualling-yard, Plymouth. The brigantine Mary, Captain
James, from London, is discharging rum and iron tanks ;
and the schooner Alexandrina Victoria, from Ireland. is
unloading beef and pork. The schooner Argo, Captain
Dicks, is loading 5,000 gallons of rum, and a quantity
of salt beef, pork, and bread for Balaklava. The schooner
Susan, of Cardigan, is to load provisions for Malta. The
transport Moultan sailed on Friday with provisions for
the Crimea.

The transport Chalmerg, No. 38, sailed from Ply-
mouth Sound on Saturday with a troop of Hussars, who
arrived the previous day lrom Exeter.
The paddle-wheel steamer Sultan, Captain Gladstone,
72 hours from Shields, arrived at Plymouth on Saturday
evening, bound to Constantinople.
The Vengeance, 84, Captain Lord Edward Russell,
was towed from Plymouth Sound yesterday morning
into Hameaze.

On Tuesday last the Russian prisoners at Plymouth
were permitted to proceed, with their guards and keepers,
to the public cemetery, to chant over the dead according
to annual custom on the 17th of April. On Wednesday
and Thursday the Rev. F. D. Carlson, chaplain to the
Swedish Embassy in London, performed religious ser-
vices in the Swedish language, and administered the
Sacrament to the Finlanders. During the last three
months the deaths among the prisoners (about 600) have
amounted to seven, caused chiefly by disorders of a pul-
monary character.

The-Hawke, GO guns, screw line-of-battle ship, Capt.
Ommanney, got up steam yesterday, and at 11.45
a.m. left Sheerness for Portsmouth, to complete her
complement of seamen, and await her final orders for her
departure to the Baltic.

The Russell, 60 guns, screw line•of-battle ship, Capt.
F. Scott, is under orders (at present) to leave Sheerness
to-day.
The Dapper, gun-boat, Lieutenant H. J. Grant, has
arrived at Sheerness, having had her compasses adjusted
at Greenhithe, where she has taken in her ammunition,
shell, &c. This vessel is attached (as tender) to the
Colossus, 80 guns.
The Glutton floating battery, arrived at Sheerness at
11 p.m. on Friday last, from Woolwich. She was as-
sisted by the steam-vessel Merry Monarch (recently
bought into her Majesty's service) and the African steam-
tug vessel. She is fitted with four locomotive boilers,
giving 150 nominal horse-power. Mr. Partridge, of the
Woolwich factory, attended her on her trial down from
Woolwich. Her boilers were worked up to 60-b. on the
square inch, with 130 revolutions per minute, with the
engines throated. An experiment was tried coming
down Sea Reach by towing both the steam-vessels!,
when she made 1.6 knot. Ilt.r self-action Was over
three knots. It is intended to put in two more pro-
pellers, the tubes for which are already in place.
This has been found necessary on account of the light
draught of water, which only admits of a 6 feet screw in
diameter. She has been put under the yeasting sheers,
and will be masted to-day, and will be immediately put
into No. 1 dry dock.

The Horatio (late 24 guns), now 2 monster guns, is
being rapidly equipped by the artificers at Sheerness.
The minimum weight of her shot is to be 3cwt., the
maximum lOcwt., elongated shot passing through a rifle
cut barrel; the minimum charge of powder is to be 301 b.,
the maximum unlimited, according tl distance required.
The Cornwall, 50 guns, has been take❑ into the basin
at Sheerness. All her internal fitments are being taken
down. She is lent to the Sardinian Telegraph Company,
for the purpose of being converted into a screw steam-
vessel to convey the electric) marine wires from Sardinia
to Tripoli.
The firm of Losh, Wilson, and Bell, whose works are
at Walker, on the Tyne, have received an order from
the Turkish Government to manufacture 35,000 shells
and some mortars of the largest calibre. Previously t•
being forwarded to Turkey the shells will have to pass
an examination at Woolwich, where they will be filled
with their combusible material, and made ready for use.
-The weight of each as manufactured is about 631 h., and
the diameter 9 inches. The- mortars will weigh 38cwt.
each, and are bored for as 13-inch shell. The firm are
manufacturing 500 shells a-day, and a large quantity
awaits shipment.
Recruiting for the royal navy is go'ng on briskly on
the Tyne and Wear. A number of fine young fellows
were sent off last week from the rendezvous at Shields.
In addition to the reinforcements to embark from
England, the following battalions and regiments will
immediately proceed to the seat of war, viz.:—The 13th
Light Infantry, 54th Foot, 66th ditto, and 92d ditto,
from Gibraltar ; 72d Light Infantry, from Malta ; 2d
Battalion First Royal Scots, from the lonian Islands ;
31st Foot, from ditto ; 48th Foot, from ditto ; Ist Bat-
talion 71st Highland Light Infantry, from ditto ; and
82d from ditto. The above-mentioned regiments will
each be augmented to 1,200 bayonets from their respec-
tive depot companies in England.

' (Prom the Derbyshire Courier.)
The defect which has run throughout the whole of the
Government arrangements for the management of the
war has been a very plain and intelligible one. They
did not at first sit down and count the cost. Yet this
is exactly what every man of the least pretension to pru-
dence or forethought habitually does. In common life
the man who projects a new house, the merchant who
contemplates a new enterprise, the railway contractor,
before he sends in his estimate for the construction of a
new line, enters into calculations, frequently complicated
and minute, of the probable expense. Lord Bacon in-
deed refers to a description of persons who build houses
without counting the cost, and who, therefore, are
turned out of doors as soon as the bills for building the
house come in ; these persons his lordship designates as
fools. But even fools are made wise by experience ; and
few people in England, except a Minister of State, or a
very young lady recently married, order anything with-
out asking " What will it cost ?"
When, however, we begin to mention such a thing as
common prudence in connection with the conduct of the
war, we are reminded by certain parties that war was a
thing for which we were quite unprepared, and that it
was impossible to foresee the turn which the circum-
stances of it would take. Not to insist upon the con-
siderable period of protocols—which might have been
one of preparation—before the first blow was actually
struck, we remind the "forcible feebles," who extenu-
ate the mis-management of the war, that time amid
chance are not to be predicated of warfare alone, but of
every other mortal state. lnd therefore it has occur-
red to merchants, shopkeepers, men of brick, ironstone,
cotton, who have to do with masses of materials, and
bodies of men, all more or less subject to "circumstances
over which we have no control," to -allow in all their
Calculations for the future a certain " margin,
of means,
as '`votive offering to be laid on the altar of the blind
By the arrival of the Peninsular and Oriental Co '
Vele Fortune the revolutions of whose wheel are so
steam-ship Indus at Southampton on Friday we have received
to disarrange mundane affairs. 1 hers
of the following items of naval and military intelligence from
. inns- the
Gibraltar :—The Spanish steamer Independiente was fitting
late, itd .comnderations as these the phi.osop
sem. ,Truastration appear to have been entirely
iup at Gibraltar for the conveyance of horses, having been en-
scribed by :rem was just what is commonly (e- gaged by the British Government for the transport service.
*amt.!, liir„,..expression of " living from hand to The British steam-transport William Oldham, seven days from
"Daiid.enpm,rr-r• Micawaber in Dickens' story of London, with medical stores, &c., for Balaklava and Eupa-
tair -eld," . v.
life constantly ''''.4l passed comfortably through toria, arrived at Gibraltar on the sth inst., and left the same
that, "something would The Bremen Steam Navigation Company's paddle-
t° his ftdranta_ag7rti,ng turn up evening.
hoped for `be
belt' rist"...el`nerdeen Ministry, while they wheel-steamer Hansa, in the British transport service, with
the worst„ They' fiTsZe no
freparation whatever for the Staffordshire Militia on board, and the sailing transports
official existeuce-as-irred Sultana and Escort, with troops and horses for the seat of
their little day of but the dread reaUtti tightleeslutt war, passed Gibraltar to the eastward, on the 4th inst. Her
more disastrous and of the Crimean of an hour ; 3fajesty's steam-ship Hecla left Gibraltar for England on the
expedition, far
the au tranaortalihtyosoef odfisgrWa.acie-
cheren, will confer on hearted
ding thatln 15th inst. The steam-sloop Medusa is stationed in her
and contempt. stead. The British steam transport No. 207, full of troops,
Let not the nation think the having and the British sailing-transport Sutlej passed to the east-
ward on the 6th instant. The British steam-transport
worst of the late Ministers, iwtee -haling get rid of the Holyrood, eight days from M-alta, in ballast, arrived at
effects of their maladministratio, 04"tataDe
Take
the Gibraltar for Deptford on the 7th inst.
from Portsmouth,
i iiig-
loan as an example. Mr. Gladstone a a----* transport, which arrived at Gibraltar
.r m,.
idea in his head, expanded it into a es: VI a financi'ael
hours' duration, the pith of which wisatehhat With artillery and horses, on the 7th inst., left for the
it me tree Crimea on the evening of the same daThe sailing-transport-
to pay for the war expenditure out of the null was
better ship War Cloud with stores for theygarrison at Gibraltar, an-
of titiy;siistearnej
of the country than to borrow money. To thislefoorne rived oat on the 9th inst. She left on the 12th inst. with 200
replied that it was j aster that, as posterity sou was 'tit::n(..l,3rlil :allies on board for the use of the British army in
in the advantages to be obtained, posterity shoeld alsoe P°Tal oTtelL.
with 30 The mules are in charge of a serjeaut, a cor
bear a portion, at least, of the expense. But from the were engaz jitorYal Artillery, and a number of muleteers who
beginning we,
pointed out the absolute impossibility ?It the garrison. The Crimean Railway Com-
Th.enurlris s left Gibraltar for Plymouth on the
)f the R,,,,..a.8'.!1.
6'4'l'l/jog on a warefor any length of time with our present
sailing transport Mariner,
Monetary system without a loan. Several of our con. London,n'per No. 201,
temporaries and no one of them more decidedly and and some fre:l,,toGibrAt.:;:lonrstleArtillery and 43 horses flora
•u""e'°oßlY- than the Sum, supported this view of the she set sail for Ster''vis•l'''l''' 11 .10th inst. to take in water
ease- Mr. Gladstone knew better. Less than twelve ehante
steam
frantari ea the e.',l;els embarked seven horses,
moatha Rai, he 13" new . . . visions, &c. for tillit ~,,,enut!olving afternoon. The Bac-
'mirth; ot his sneered at Pitt, and spoke great swelling aer
Majesty's' e crime_ _ ears fiom London, with • -
own au •
perior financial sagacity. What is steam .:' 'fl'aved at Gib
the issue? We mouth, arrived at.Gibrai at 'wee.;
se raltar on the 10th.
are at last to have a loan of 16,000,000/. the Seat in the Black
But not such a loan _eat!.r on the 11th inset' days from Ply-
txected a year age.-- might readily have been con- Weser, arrived ehortiyanerwThe gecr,, _ ~en route to join
and Confidence. ThenThela the country was full of steamer (in the French
ards. sisterl,llo`44, boat to the
LOrd Aberdeen way Opposed -to -abort of seal, and towed her . Port
Mto sevviaex et the Briton
,_, Gibsaltatater,rway out,
...•• -•- : , _ - - ' • • .010 trams.
_ ._ -