The Sun.
London, England, 1855-03-01 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 1855.

Aristocracy is doubly answerable for the ruin
of our noble army ; and we must have yet an-
other committee of inquiry. Its Commissariat blun-
ders, ludicrous in number and kind but for their
fatal consequences, stand visibly prominent as the
proximate cause. Die an army must which could
not get food enough to eat, clothes to wear, huts
in winter to shelter them, fresh meat to keep off
the scurvy, and roasted coffee as a cheering stimu-
lant ; and die horses must with neither corn nor
hay for their food, nor even horse-cloths, not to
say stables, to protect them. But the commis-
sariat is not all, nor the disputed questions of ge-
neralship. The country must not forget other
delinquencies quite as grave. There is some dan-
ger lest the proximate causes of Balaklava horrors
should absorb the indignation of the country.
We charge the late Cabinet with crimes against
the army and the nation greater in reality than
all our Commissariat failures ; greater because not
less fatal, and committed knowingly and inten-
tionally. We fully acquit the Duke of NEW-
CASTLE, on the other hand, of anything but in-
competency to oust, or force to obedience, a
swarm of obstructive or idle officials ; he assuredly
did not mean to starve our men. Nor did his
chief mean anything particular in adhering to
military routine, and in not taking on himself to
subvert with a stroke of his pen the system of
half a century, trusting to Parliamentary indem-
nity for resolutely promoting merit and efficiency,
and letting wealth and connexion take its chance
with the rest.

Far otherwise i 3 it with aristocratic foreign
policy. In that, what they did they meant to do.
It was the designed policy of Lord ABERDEEN and
his colleagues, which has sent more English sol-
diers to the hospitals or to their graves than tlte
deadly seven miles from Balaklava to the camp.
That murderous foreign policy, we use the epi-
thet advisedly, will be continued under pure
Whiggism, and with renovated strength unless the
nation interferes. We may safely leave Mr. Roe-
BUCK now to his patriotic task; he will do it, and
do it as becomes Mr. ROEBUCK. Let the nation
now attack the master culprit. Let another
committee investigate the secret, or shall we say
dark, work which Lord CLARENDON' has done for
the Cabinet and. the Coburgs. There is a field
for inquiry here which imperatively calls for the
most unsparing scrutiny. It may be hard to
c°lll° at the truth. Mia:isters will clamour more
loudly ;Against a Parliamentary Committee to
rummage •Itg4ll,..Plo'naatic papers than oven against
the one for setutinising another branch of the
Executive. But it is even more needed. Why
should Lord CLARENDPN, on behalf of Court and
Cabinet, be alloWed to do work which will not
bear the light ? We have wanted no negotiations
with that deadly enemy to liberty, Austria, which
all England and the world might not know. It
has become the fashion to bepraise Lord CLAREN_
no:.•;'s Austrian achievements so loudly that one
may well believe the noise has keen raised to
bully down investigation by anticipation. We
have not a word to say personally against that truly
excellent nobleman, but hi 3 secret public policy
is the policy. of his Cabinet and his order, and we
arraign it by its results as the cause, and the
curse, and the bane of the War.
It was our foreign policy which waited on
Austria till everything was too late--too late to de-
&are war—too late to send our navy into the Black
Sea and our troops to the Danube—too late,
above all, to sail for the Crimea. There was in

ieedyl. most scandalous deference to Russia,
;,,wftgir
...,open acts of aggression on her part,
'IP-,l4etiling .to, the same result ; but the base
.1;:-.1‘,Isgstlibt',Iffier Austrian procrastination, and sub-
t )Atri
I an purposes—this has been
I*°Z,T con4nAek.l4wai
• e---nhy, down to this very hour.
been the cause of it all ? We