The Sun.
London, England, 1855-07-04 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING. JULY 4. 1856

LINES LEASED AT FIXED RENTALS.

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Shr. Pi

Leasing
Compans

Closing Pricer
yestcrlay.

Easiness
this day,

ROUSE OF COMMONS.—(THIS DAY.)
The SPEAKER, took the chair at twelve o'clock.
Hammond's Estate Bill was read a second time and
ordered to be committed.

( Front the Times of this day.)
The tribute paid last night in both Houses of Parlia-
ment to the memory of Lord Raglan was at once the ex-
pression of personal regard and of national respect.
The character of the late Commander of the Forces in
the Crimea was too well known to all ranks of men in
the political society of this country to require any
elaborate panegyric, and his services in the East are too
recent and too conspicuous to stand in need of any
official chronicler. The name of Lord Raglan is indis-
solubly connected with one of the most glorious, but
also with one of the most difficult, periods in the career
of the British army, and history will name with respect
a general whose whole life was devoted to the public
service. One duty, however, remained to be performed.
The disinterested character of Lord Raglan had allowed
him to add nothing to the slender portion of a younger
son, and he leaves behind him a family whose chief in-
heritance is the name which he has bequeathed to them.
The protracted operations of the campaign have post-
poned the distribution of those honours and rewards
which are due to men who risk their lives in the service

Sir J. TROLLOPE presented two petitions from
South Lincolnshire, praying for reform of the Univer-
sity of Cambridge.
Lord R. GROSVENOR presented a petition from
Kilburn, praying for a reform of the Metropolitan
Burials Act ; also pc;itions from Basingstoke, Chelsea,
and other places, praying the house to pass a law to
prevent all Sunday trading except works of charity or
works of necessity.
LORD RAGLAN.

The resolutions agreed to yesterday in committee of
the whole house for granting a pension of 1,0001. a-year
to Lady Raglan, and 2,0001. a-year to the present Lord
Raglan, were reported. The resolutions were adopted,
and leave was given to bring in a bill founded on them.
On the motion of Mr. CRAUFURD,

The Truck Act amendment Bill, which stood for
second reading, was, owing to the lateness of the session,
withdrawn.

of their country, and many, alas ! of those who
deserve them most are no longer among us to bear
off the prizes which they so dearly earned. The Field-
Marshal's baton conferred on Lord Raglan after the
Battle of Inkerman was due to the rank he held in the
command of the allied armies, and can hardly be con-
sidered as a recompence for his recent services in the
field. According to precedent, therefore, and to a
usage which is sanctioned by the highest authority,
Parliament is called upon by her Majesty's gracious
message to make provision for the surviving members
of the family of the late Commander, and the spirit
in which this proposition was last night received
in both houses is an additional testimony of sym-
pathy and respect to those whose private grief is com-
mingled with the general sorrow of the nation and the
army.
Having performed this duty to the memory of the de-
parted, our attention is next called to the immediate
necessity of providing in the most efficient manner for
the command of the troops and the conduct of the war.
In selecting General Simpson for the important post of
Chief of the Staff, at a time when the want of such an
officer had been very strongly felt in the British army,
the Government were probably not only influenced
by the desire to supply this deficiency, but they also
perceived the necessity of placing by the side of Lord
Raglan an officer who should share his councils, and be
able, in the event of sickness or of any sudden casualty,
to supply his place. The fatal accidents of war and the
trying influence of • a foreign climate and a winter cam-
paign had already thinned, with terrible rapidity, the
list of those superior officers who but a year ago com-
mandei the British army in the East. Cathcart,
Adams, Strangways, Torrens, Bentinck, and many
others had either fallen in battle or been compelled by
their wounds to return to England. Sir De Lacy
Evans, the Duke of Cambridge, and Sir John Burgoyne
had been driven home by failing health. Lord Lucan
and Lord Cardigan have ceased to holecommands. Of
the Generals commanding divisions at the outset of
the war, Sir George Brown and Sir R. England
alone remain, and of these the former has been wounded.
It is undoubtedly desirable that the promotion arising
from these casualties should, as far as possible, be re-
served to the officers who have served with distinction
through the campaign ; but with reference to the
highest and most responsible posts of all the Govern-
ment are bound to exercise an unfettered choice.

NiORTMAIN BILL.

The house then went into committee on the above bill.
All the clauses (seven in number) having been
agreed to.
Mr. MOWBRAY moved to add a clause after clause
6, as follows :—" And whereas it has been held, on the
construction of the first recited act, that a pecuniary
bequest to or in trust for any charitable use is void under
the provisions of the said act, to the extent of the pro-
portion which the assets of the testator, consisting of
personalty savouring of realty, bear to the assets
of the testator consisting of pure personalty ;
and if the assets of the testator consist en-
tirely of personalty savouring of realty, then that
such bequest is wholly void, and by the rules of
courts of equity the assets are not marshalled in favour
of such bequest, whereby the lawful intentions of testa-
,tors are often disappointed; be it enacted, that no pe-
cuniary bequest to or in trust for any charitable use
contained in any will or codicil made after the passing
of this act shall fail or abate by reason only that the
assets of the testator shall consist wholly or in part of
personalty savouring of realty, but every such be-
quest shall be payable as well by and out of such as-
sets as last aforesaid, as by and out of any assets con-
sisting of pure personalty, in the same manner in all
respects as a pecuniary bequest of like amount made by
the same will or codicil to a purpose not charitable
would have been payable if the same had been substi-
tuted therein for such charitable bequest, anything in
the said recited acts, and any rule or practice of equity
to the contrary notwithstanding."
Sir G. GREY said, in the absence of the Solicitor-
General, he should not at present offer any opposition to
the clause. Any objection that the Solicitor-General
might have to it could be made at a future stage of the
bill.

The clause was then added to the bill.
Mr. G. BUTT then moved the addition of the follow-
ing clause to clause 6 :—" And whereas by the herein-
before recited act passed in the ninth year of the reign
of his late Majesty King George the Second, it was
also enacted, that from and after the twenty-fourth day
of June, one thousand seven hundred and thirty-six, no
sum or sums of money, goods, chattels, stocks
in the public funds, securities for money, or
any other personal estate whatsoever to be laid
out or disposed of in the purchase of any lands, tene-
ments, or hereditaments, should be given, appointed, or
any ways settled in trust or for the benefit of any chari-
table uses whatsoever, unless such gift, appointment, or
settlement of any such sum or sums of money or personal
estate (other than stocks in the public funds) were made in
the same manner and subject to the same conditions as are
by the now reciting act enacted and prescri bed in reference
to corporeal or incorporeal hereditaments, and unless such
stocks were transferred in the manner and sabject to the
conditions in the same recited Act also enacted and pre-
scribed in reference to such stocks : and whereas doubts
have been entertained as to the meaning of the last here-
inbefore recited enactment, be it enacted, that no be-
quest contained in any will heretofore or hereafter to
be made for any charitable uses whatsoever, which
bequest is or shall be valid in all other respects,
shall be deemed to be null and void within the meaning
of the last hereinbefore recited enactment, unless by the
will containing such bequest it shall be imperatively re-
quired that the subject matter of such bequest shall be
laid out or disposed of in the purchase of lands, tene-
ments, or hereditaments."

General Simpson owes the very high confidence which
has thus been placed in him to the respect entertained
for his character, to a knowledge of his long services,
and, more especially, to the very high opinion which
was expressed of him by the late General Sir Charles
Napier. Lord Ellenborough stated the other day in
the House of Lords that, is the last Indian campaign
in which Sir Charles Napier was engaged, that eminent
commander placed the greatest reliance on General
Simpson, and considered him the fittest man of the
whole army then serving in India to exercise a high
command. It cannot be said that in the selection
of General Simpson the Government have been affected
by aristocratic influence or by any political predilections.
The new Commander of the Forces in the Crimea owes
everything to his own gallant services and to his attach-
ment to his profession, and we sincerely hope that in
the arduous position in which he is now placed he will
tarn out to be " the right man."
In supplying the other vacancies which have recently
occurred, the appointment of Chief of the Staff will be
conferred on General Knollys, who is promoted from
the easy and innocuous duties of the camp at Alder-
shott to the far more anxious administration of the
Staff in the Crimea. Of this officer too little is
known to enable us to form any opinion of his merits.
His experience of active warfare was confined, we
believe, to the last year of the Peninsular campaign ;
but we confess that we distrust the vigour of men who
graduated at so early a period in the present century.
The remaining appointments we have to announce
are of a more satisfactory character. Colonel Markham,
who was recalled from India by the Duke of Newcastle,
is believed to have already arrived in Egypt on his way
to Europe, and he will be immediately ordered to pro-
ceed to the Crimea to assume the command of a division.
This officer has acquired a high reputation in India, and
especially at the siege of Mooltan, where he greatly dis-
tinguished himself •
,he is known to be a daring, ener-
getic soldier, and of an age to support the toils of active
warfare. Colonel Pakenham succeeds General Estcourt
' as Adjutant-General of the forces of the Crimea, and
he has had the good fortune to be nominated to this
important post at the comparatively early age of 36. In
our .eyes his age is not only no drawback, but the
greatest recommendation. A man of superior mili-
tary talents will show them, if he has an opportunity,
between 30 and 40, or not at all ; and one of the
causes of the success of the Duke of Wellington in
the Peninsula from 1807 to 1814 was that the Army
List was from that time relieved from the old general
officers, and that the Duke's lieutenants were, like him-
self, and like the French Marshals to whom they were
opposed, men in the pima of life. Colonel Pakenham's
own uncle was Adjutant-General in the Peninsula at 34,
and was killed at New Orleans at 36. The race of those
men is not extinct. The British army is full of rising
talent and ability, and the first duty of the Government
and the Commander-in-Chief is to find these men out,
and to place them in positions in which they can per-
form the services they are best fitted to discharge. The
question is not what did a man do 40 years ago, but
what can he do now ; and. the services already rendered
by officers in the Crimea, or by men lately serving in
India, afford the best answer to that question.

The clause was added to the bill, and the bill as
amended was ordered to be considered on Friday next.
DWELLING-HOUSES (SCOTLAND) BILL.
On the order of the day for the third reading of this
bill,

Mr. DUNLOP moved the insertion of a clause to
enable labouring men to acquire houses under the Act
by a cheap, easy, and secure method of transfer, in lieu
of the present vexatious system prevailing in Scotland.
Mr. G. BUTT seconeel the motion, which was also
supported by Mr. WzmuNsoN.

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER sug-
gested the postponement of the third reading of the bill
till to-morrow, in order that he might have an oppor-
tunity of consulting the Commissioners of Inland revenue
on the operation of the proposed clause on the revenue.
The further consideration of the bill was postponed
accordingly.
The Stock in Trade Bill was read a third time and
passed.