The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-25 00:00:00

have their sgparate bungalows. The officers have
another very great advantage. They are able,
when ill, to move to a healthier spot, at least tem-
porarily, and can recruit their strength by
the fresh breezes of the hills, The hills
are India's native sanitarium, and the
advantages which they have over the lower levels
are clearly manifested in the children reared in the
Lawrence Asylum, who are strong and healthy,
looking, as a native chief remarked, like lions' cubs,
while little Anglo Indians pine and droop unless
sent to England in good time. The enforced idle-
ness of troops in barracks is an unmitigated evil
even in England, but in India it is disastrous in its
consequences. It induces the men to drink, and
drink is one of the prime agents of disease in India.
There is, therefore, as much practic.-„1 prudence as
kindness in the new system of establishing regi-
mental workshops and allotting small gardens to the
men. They have availed themselves most eagerly of
the means thus offered to dispel the ennui of their aim-
less existence, and already the Commander•insChief
is able to compliment the men at several stations
on the result of their handiwork. Fresh vegetables
and more wholesome food will also be attainable
by means of the gardens, while the pleasant recrea•

tion will draw off the men from the vicious indulp
ences which have helped to swell the death rate.
Besides the 69 per 1000 lost annually to the service

it seems from the statistics furnished that 84 per
1000 in the stations of Bengal are, on an average,
constantly in hospital. The average mortar
lily in the native troops in twenty years was

8 per 1000; 19 per 1000 being the rate of the

invaliding. Allowing for all difference of
constitution, the commissioners attribute the chief
part of the native superiority in point of health to

,he fact of their generally living with their families

in small bamboo huts, instead of being crowded in
barracks, where many sleep in one small, perhaps
ill-ventilated, room. The Commissioners are san.
guine that, from the experience now gathered, the
mortality may be reduced from 69 to 10 per 1,000.
It now remains for the public to watch carefully

the progress of reform, and to see that official negli-
gence and indifference are not suffered to trifla with
a matter so vitally important. Plenty of air espe-
cially in sleeping rooms, pure water, good food,
and temperance appear to be the primary requisites
for health in Indian stations as elsewhere, and they
are none of them sufficiently unattainable to justify
a rate of mortality four times as great as the highest
in England.

It is a pity that Lord PALMERSTON cannot learn
the propriety of keeping silence at times. His
conduct during the past session was not of a cha,
racier to elevate his reputation, and it is a mistake
for him to be perpetually referring to the policy
of the Government. It would seem as if the mis-
guided course that was taken by the House this
year had completely obliterated the sense of shame
that ought to be experienced by all in power re-
garding the line adopted in the question of the
Der o-German war. For a Minister to take credit
to himself or his colleagues concerning our foreign
policy at present is really quite absurd and a
mockery to common sense persons. Lord PALMER-
STON seems to be one of those whose glory is their
shame, and ho endeavours to put forth all the miss
deeds of himself and his Foreign Secretary, for the
purpose of pronouncing a laudation upon them,
First of all, he begins with Poland, and congratu-
lates his hearers that we had not been reduced to
lend our succour to the Poles; this ho declares to
have been a great advantage. If it be true that it
was not desirable for us to be involved in a war, it
was not justifiable fur the noble lord at the head
of Foreign Affairs to induce the Poles to believe
that our sympathies were ail enlisted on their be.
half, and that at the worst they would receive
assistance. Then as to America, the course pursued
by our Government has been most prejudicial for
our interests in a commercial form, and created
many evils in various ways, while their mean spirited
subserviency to the Federals has been a disgrace to
the country. Great as are the blunders and mis-
takes made in connection with other countries,
however, nothing at all comes up to the
enormity of the conduct pursued towards
Denmark, and the remarks of the Premier
on that subject are quite unwarrantable. Ile has
adopted a tone at Tiverton that he dare not have
used in the House of Commons, and it is perfectly
scandalous that the First Minister of the Crown
should employ such terms, in speaking of this coun-
try's resources, as he has done. Much may be
allowed to speakers in the heat of debate, and, of
course, all officiel personages get used to comment-
ing upon their management in a bombastic tone;
bat it is too much when a man deliberately gets up
and discourses as Lord PALMERSTON has done at
Tiverton. It would have been better to have said
that the Government did not see any call to go to
war, and that the Danes had acted imprudently.
Anything would have been better than to traduce
the fame of England and the character of her army
to cover the errors of policy, of which he must be at
heart ashamed. Everyone at ell competent to
judge of the affair must know that England is more
than a match for Germany at any time, and for
Lord PALMERSTON to state that we could not have
succeeded in rescuing the Danes from the grasp of
their greedy foes is perfectly preposterous. Such
language will lower him in the esteem of all inde-
pendent persons, and. for ever diminish the influence
that he ought to possess in the country. It is, in-
deed, seldom that one in his high position so com-
promises himself. It is almost incredible that the
Prime Minister of this country should thus ex-
press himself:--" We have no means of sending out
a force at all equal to cope with the three or four
hundred thousand whom the Germans could have
pitted against us, aad such an attempt would only
have insured a disgraceful discomfiture not to the
army indeed, but to the Government which sent
out an inferior force and expected it to cope
with a force so vastly superior l' If the
Government have escaped discomfiture they
have decidedly reaped a double rshare of elk-
' grace by their dastardly conduct. What can Lord
PALMERSTON mean by thus scattering to the winds
the reputation of a long career, and throwing away
the renown he, has won by half a century's service
to his country. There was a time, in past days,
when his name sounded stirring in the ears of the
enemies of this country ; it was a trumpet blast to
remind them that England possessed a minister
with spirit to defend her rights, and enterprise to
consider the affairs of other nations. It was, indeed,
very suitable that Lord PALMERSTON should have
endeavoured to pass an eulogium on the peace
party—it is on the principle of making friends with
the mammon of unrighteousness—and certainly the
only consistent part of his speech. If he has
rightly read the history of his country he must
have seen that in the battles where the
English gained enduring renown, their num-
bers were always inferior to those of their adversa-
ries. Surely it is too much for the impertinent
exaggeration of ministerial parlance to assert that
the German legions are to be compared to th e
armies of NAPOLEON. It is but seldom in the hiss
tory of the world that such a military genius
appears, and if wo could conquer his battalions,
flashed with their unrivalled success, it is ridi.
1 culous to speak of the GimecAn troops as inyini