The Sun.
London, England, 1848-10-23 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
IFROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAI.
TIMES.—An answer from Sir James Hogg to a letter
from Sir Charles Napier, which appeared in the Times
of Saturday, will be found in another portion of our co.
lumps. It is a subject of regret to find an officer who
uermubtrioieirle.d in phena-vaendfr-uinulk wtianirfearteuwtiitnilansoemx!
has won so high a reputation by his military services
I e
adversary or
tolled Sir Charles Napier's services in
Sinde highly, as
his achievements deserved. The praise
due to a military
pro-consul tor having added a province
to the empire,
'and for having established on his conquest the
r,h rudiments
of administration, is his indubitable t,
.and it has
been awarded to Sir Charles Napier innii
mea-
sure by the voices of his countrymen.
higherThonsonted
then
the point this gallant officer had obtained
is
s in men's
estimation, the more painful
it
engaged in a dispute—in a mere broil,to oafee w hhiiculiii
prize-money is the essence, and invective the
only
-
weapon that seems ready to his grasp. We say
phatically that there is not a gentleman in thethreeena
kingdoms, or in our Eastern possessions, who will
not regret the tone and manner in which Sir Charles
Napier has seen fit to address the chairman of the great
company he was so lately serving. We will go further
than this, and add that within the same limits there is
not a man of plain common sense and ordinary discern..
ment, who reads the letters of the disputants and com-
pares their statements, b?it will declare that the facts do
nut bear out Sir Charles Napier in the flat contradiction
he has offered to the expression used by Mr. Baillie in
the House of Commons. On a careful perusal of the
two letters these are the facts we find alleged on either
side :—Sir Charles Napier tells us that when he was in
India he read a statement to the effect that Mr. Baiilie,
while speaking on a debate which passed in the House
of Commons about Sinde, stated " that Sir Charles Na-
pier had been sufficiently rewarded for his services, for
he had received 70,0001. prize-money," or words to that
effect. Mr. Baillie, upon being applied to on the subject
by Sir. Charles Napier, gave him the name of Sir James
Hogglas his informant. Now, it appearsthat Sir Charles
Napier had not at that time received the prize-money in
question—he was only to receive it. A dispute had arisen
as to the amount of the booty the successful General was
to receive. Sir James Hogg and his colleagues—so says
General Napier—were trying to prevent his receiving
that share of prize-money which their own regulations
awarded to the Commander of the Forces, from which
act of injustice he was protected by the Duke of Wel-
lington, by Lords Ellenborough and Hardinge, and by
the Lords of the Treasury. For the concluding para-
graph of this letter we would rather give the ipsissima
verba of Sir Charles Napier than transfuse his meaning
into other language. Let him speak for himself, and
1
the public will decide if the facts of the case justify
the language employed:---" Here, then, was a mis-
statement unintentionally made against me, in Par-
liament, by a gentleman who, ignorant of the fact,
was betrayed into the error which he committed, and
I have traced his informer to be this Sir James Hogg ;
on whom it now rests to clear himself to the public from
having committed an action so
dishonourable.Mr.
13aillie did with honourable promptness clear himself .
me, so, in like manner, let Sir James Hogg clear to
himself
to the public by unkennelling the inventor of
malig-
nant falsehood which has thus been brought to ahis door." Thus far Sir Charles (Napier—we have giovwein the substance of his letter on all points bearing on the
subject in dispute, for we presume it is unnecessary to
re-state so well-known a fact that the directors were
trustees of the Sind(' prize-money. Sir James Hogg
cannot plead ignorance or venial error. Nor is such his
defence. Ile substantially admits that he gave the in-
formation to Mr. Baillie. " I find," he says, "on refe-
rence to the Parliamentary debates, that Mr. Baillie
stated that Sir Charles Napier had obtained 70,000/. at the
time he conquered Sinde." That, then, was Mr. Baillie's
statement, and Sir James Hogg was the authority upon
which it was made. What then is his answer to the In-
dian General? Why, in point of fact, he says Sir Charles
Napier's share of the prize money will not fall far short
of the sum above stated. He will have as his portion of
the Sinde prize money one-eighth of a spoil estimated
at above half-a-million. "It is impossible," adds Sir
James Hogg, " that it could have been meant that the
money had been actually paid, it being matter of noto-
riety that no distribution had actually taken place." If
the facts should turn out to be, as we presume, that it
was in the perfect knowledge of every man who heard
the expressions fall from Mr. Baillie that he was speak-
ing of the Sinde prize money, and equally so that the
prize money had not been distributed, it is a straining of
terms indeed to accuse either the speaker or his in-
formant of "malignant falsehood." At the very utmost
the " malignant falsehood " just means that Mr. Baillie
stated in the House, upon the authority of Sir James
i Hogg, that the distribution of the Sinde prize money
had taken place, when, in effect, it had not as yet
been so distributed. Now, really there is nothing
in such a state of facts to call for all this
blood and thunder, and giving of the lie. Sir
Charles Napier has worn the sagum so long that he
cannot reconcile himself to the peaceful habits of the
costume of peace. The question as to the amount of
prize-money to be received by Sir Charles Napier, upon,
which point he also accuses Sir James Hogg and his
colleagues of unfairness, is just as quickly disposed of.
It appears that whether Sir Charles Napier was to re-
ceive one-eighth or one-sixteenth of the spoil turned
upon a point which was raised, not by the Court of Di-
rectors—the trustees of the prize-money tinder the
royal warrant of November, 1845—but by the General
Prize Committee at Calcutta. The orders sent out
from England were—that the prize-money should be
distributed according to the usages of the army in
India. When this order reached the Calcutta Conunit-
tee they hesitated upon the exact position of Sir Charles
Napier in Sinde. Wes he Commander-ia-Chief ? Was
he Major-General in command ? In the former
case, according to the precedent of Lord Comber-
mere, and the Bhurtpore prize-money, Sir
Charles Napier would be entitled to one-eighth
of the spoil. On the latter supposition, ac-
cording to Indian precepts, also cited, he would
have been entitled only to ono-sixteenth. The matter
was referred by the Government of Bengal to the Go-
vernor-General, and by him it was referred again to the
Home authorities, for submission to the Lords of the
Treasury. Now, nothing but a very robust wrong-
headedness could upon these facts base an imputation
against the Court of Directors. It was not with them a
question of injuring or favouring Sir Charles Napier.
They might honour his valour and services as highly as
they would, but they could not, therefore, pay him over
money to which they were not satisfied he was entitled.
Every rupee unduly given to their commander would
have been a robbery upon the humbler companions of
his toil and his glory. Sir Charles Napier is evidently
in a very great passion, and, like most men in that frame
of mind, he appears to be very wrong. It is possible,
for aught we know, that every statement made by Sir
James Hogg may be wrong, but in the presence of so
very fiery an opponent this appears so unlikely, that wo
have assumed them to be true, and judged accordingly.
POST.—The polished gentlemen and thrice-holy
Christians who are more commonly, but less accurately,
known under the appellation __of the directors of the
Scottish Central Railway, have had now ample time to
apologise publicly for the disgraceful and brutal treat-
ment which they, in strange inconsistency with their
exquisite manners and their immaculate sanctity, re-
cently inflicted on the Duchess of Sutherland—treatment
by which those holy railway officers contrived, at a
single stroke, IMO ictu, not only to disgust and scandalise
men, but to outrage God—not only to violate every
gentlemanly and every manly sentiment, but, worse still,
on the Lord's day, to fly in the face of one of the most
emphatic injunctions of the Lord's Bible. These ex-
emplary Christians, we say, have had am ple time to
express contrition for conduct which it will cost ue but
slight pains to show was contrary at once t o the spirit
and to the letter not only of Christianity, but of the law
of nature itself. The facts are simply these : her Grace
the Duchess of Sutherland was staying at Dunrobin
Castle, in Sutherlandshire, where news reached her of
the dangerous illuess of her father, the Earl of Carlisle,
then actually dying at Castle Howard, in York-
shire. The intelligence urged her Grace to hasten
to the bedside of her lather, it she desired
to see him again alive. With trembling anxiety,
the illustrious daughter instantly left Dunrobin Castle,
and posted to Montrose, where she threw herself into
the last railway train (for which she was only just in
time), and which carried her into Perth early on Sunday
morning. Now, let the object of this all-anxious jouretey
be remembered, and the circumstances under which it
was made be borne in mind. We come to the disgus L-
ing and scandalous treatment which the official of this
holy railway inflicted at once upon the Lair and nettle
lady who was hurrying to a dying father's bedside, and
on that father himself, holding them violently asunds r
from that mutually longed-for last interview, which i.s
so precious in a family bound together in fondness and ill
love. If a father and daughter had been kept apart
when desiring to communicate on some ordinary an d
every-day occasion of life, we should feel indignant
with those by whose acts they had been thus separated,
and we should demand and require a grave and extra-
ordinary reason in justification of such conduct. Here,
a father and daughter, desiring to communicate on no
such ordinary or every-day occasion, but to breathe
forth on one side the last tender warnings and counsels,
and blessings, and to receive on the other the last sa-
cred behests, were kept asunder until it' was too late.
They never can meet again. In the ordinary affairs of
life, we say, such a severance would require some ex-
traordinary motive to justify, or even palliate, its mani-
fest and self-evident cruelty,' unnaturalness, and hei-
nousness—so great would be the injury wird injustice of
opposing even delay to the meeting of a father and a
(laughter on any important occasion. Alas I it was not
e delay which
' was in this instance opposed to that pious,
interview ; it was not delay, it was eternity. Again
and again, we repeat, that no common excuses should
be made for such an injury, even when it is temporary
and easily remediable. What, then, when it is utterly
end entirely irreparable l— hopeless, endless, limitless !
Surely the reason alleged for a wrong so unspetikable ought
to be of paramount weight and authority. But if that
reason be only au aggravation of the offence—if it add the
breach of the precepts of Christianity to the previous viola-
don of the laws of nature, bow shall we then be able to con-
template without indignation and horror those. monstrous
Pharisees who claim, as their peculiar attribute, super-
eminent and transcendental sanctity, and who injure the
name and fame of Christianity infinitely more by pro-
fessing it than all its open enemies have ever injured it
by their attacks? 're that hideous excuse, and to our , ,
view of it, we shall presently come. Meantime, having
brought the Duchess as far as Perth in our narrative, we
will now let our iserthern informant take up,
The
an d
mail con-
clude the account of what befel her there:
train for the south was then preparing for departure, but
to the astonishment of her Grace and attendants, on
w
ap-
plying for seats in the train they ere told they could not
other train on th©
be allowed to travel by it, or by any .
of the Sabbath, it being against the regulations
direc-
tors. Letters having been sent to all the stations to
have engines ready to convey the Duchess through,