The Sun.
London, England, 1856-03-20 00:00:00

nestly to be hoped that this same re-examination
of the evidence originally submitted to Sir JOHN
NEWELL and Colonel TULLOCH—and set forth by
those eminent officers as the " reason " for the
deliberate judgment pronounced by them through
their very memorable and authoritative Report—
may by some good fortune put an end to the con-
stant and apparently interminable bickerings by
which the military system of England has of late
been brought into deplorable ridicule, and by
which her more intimate Allies at least may be
said, without any exaggeration, to have been
grievously scandalised ! This, we say, is a thing
to be very heartily desiderated. But seriously to
expect so much would be simply—we all feel that
—nothing less than absolutely preposterous.
Everybody is convinced from the outset that the
whole ostentatious arrangement is what is vulgarly
but significantly termed in the homely vernacular
—a DO ! We know perfectly well that the upshot
of it all will be—after a good deal of talking, and
cross-questioning, and minuting, and reporting,
and so forth, mail everybody has become cor-
dially sick and tired of the whole transaction—
that no one has *ln in any way at all in fault !
That every one has' Acted from first to last to per-
fection ! . That Commander-in-chief, Generals
of Division, Gott Is of Brigade, Adjutant Gene-
rals, Assistant Adjutant Generals, Deputy Assist-
ant Adjutant Generals, the Commissary General,
Assistant Commissary Generals, and Deputy.
Assistant Commissary Generals, Colonels and
Lieutenant-Colonels, Staff officers and Aides-de-
Camp—every one, in short; from the Field-
Marshal ruling off his recommendations for promo
tion with his bran new baton, down to Ensign
TITE BARNACLE paring his nails and warming the
calves of his legs in front of the mess-room fire at
head-quarters—has done his duty in every depart-
ment just exactly as England expected him to do it !
And yet that after all in some strange unaccountable
manner to be left a moot point and an unsolved
problem for ever and ever afterwards—everything
—somehow—went wrong and no mistake at al
about that! Future inquirers being left in after
times to form their own conclusions precisely as
the humour may suit them at the moment—as to
how on earth it came to pass that the Bri-
tish Troops before Sebastopol, in the winter of
1854-55 had no fuel and plenty of green coffee-
berries—had rags and vermin enough for a whole
generation of the Jews of Houndsditch had
boards for the building of huto, but no nails or
hammers—had hatchets thatwould not cut, spades
that would not dig, pickaxes that would not on any
account whatever consent to pick without snap•
ping in two at the first blow—and so on through
all the maddening sections of that long, weary,
awful Chapter of Accidents !
How all 'this was so—people, of course, will be
left to decide just as they have been left to de-
cide as to the identity of PERKIN WARBECK, or
as to the mystery of the Man in the Iron
Mask, or as to the authorship of the "Letters
of JuNrus," or as to the arrival of the Greek
Kalends, or as to the squaring of the circle.
That it was so—history relates, already in accents
of horror and lamentation. But how it was Bo—
is to be left, of coarse, as the Scotch have it, " not
proven." A miserable, disgraceful sham, in fact,
the whole scrutiny has been hitherto—and a miser-
able, disgraceful sham it will continue to be when
all has been said and done before the Chelsea Hos-
pital Commissioners. That—we all know. That—we
all feel certain of. That—we all look for. Even
Mr. FILDER—(and everybody appeared at least to
be perfectly agreed in his instance, everybody---
taking the most lenient view of his case—seemed
to coincide entirely in the opinion that Mr.
FILDER had something excessively like a turnip
for a head) even Mr. FILDER, now that
he has given in his reply to the
Report of Colonels 111'NE/L and TuLLoar, comes
out of the inipliry of course perfectly innocent,
completely whitewashed, thoroughly and I-totally
exonerated ! The fact is (we must all of us, at
any rate, have by this time arrived at thus mucn
of a conclusion), the fact is, *nobody at all is in
any way to hlame.y The coffee, ought to have
roasted itsslf, and ground itself, and cooked
itself. Nails and hammers ought to have grown
up among the grass with the Crimean crocusses,
or to have rained down from heaven with the
Crimean sleet, and snow, and hail-stones. Bread
ought to have come like manna, and coats and
waistcoats, like the coats and waistcoats
deposited (according to a Nonconformist Joe
Miller) by the bedside of the Rev. RowLAND HILL
during the nights that followed the days of his
benevolence. Nobody is to blame—it is the drift
of the whole inquiry—nobody at all is in any way
to blame—but—The Dead ! That is the one
inevitable deduction alone remaining to us.
And it appears to be the only deduction
authorised by the different statements
and documents put forth by living authorities in
the way of exculpation. Vide—as corroborative
of this the latest of these exculpatory explanations
—Mr. FILDER'S reply to the Report of the Com-
missioners ! If anything at all is to be deduced
from thal reply it is most certainly that Lord
RAGLAN was to blame. Read it—and see ! Let
the Supplementary Commissioners about to as-
semble in solemn conclave at Chelsea—read it,
and see ! It may suggest to them a loophole
for escape from their rather difficult, and most
delicate, and even embarrassing position. Cannot
they contrive to take the hint—not upon the
mawkish principle de mortuis nil nisi bonum, but
upon the inexorable and rhadamanthine one de
mortuis nil nisi verum. There are plenty of dead
scapegoats—RAGLAN, and BOXER, and CHRISTIE,
and NoLart, 'and even the poor Scutari apo-
thecary !

The Crystal Palace is to be opened in the
afternoon of Good Friday, and special trains
provided. The sight of a placard to this effect is
very suggestive ; it reminds us first of our Sabba-
tarian friends—a large portion of them think Good
Friday a holier day than a Sunday, and would
enforce its observance more stringently ; they
would have us not only abstain from work but from
food also. Anotherlarge section hold the observance
of this day and of Christmas-day also to be sheer
superstition. In England the former party is
triumphant, in. Scotland the latter. The result
is the Scotch lose two holidays, the English gain
two days free from business, at least, and attend
to their worship or their amusements, according
to their tastes. The' Protestant Dissenters on
this side the Tweed concur, for the most part,
with the Presbyterians, in so far as they reject all
religious observance of these holidays ; they use
them for visits, pleasure, and frequently for school
anniversaries and treats. It occurred. to us when read-
ing the above announcement—why should not the
Palace be open in the morning ? The afternoon
is but a short time just now ; the families are
very numerous to whom it would be a treat in-
deed to spend the whole day there, and who, as
things stand, have no other day in the year to
give to such a pleasure.
In regard to both the holidays referred to, the
chief ground of the Sabbatarians is unde-
niably cut from under their feet. No one
who has learned to read pretends that these
are days of Divine appointment. No misapplied