The Sun.
London, England, 1856-07-03 00:00:00

LONDON, TEIURSDAY, JULY 3,185 e.

Everything really seems to be of a piece in regard
to the mismanagement of the British army. Thirty
thousand men are sent forth at the commence-
ment of hostilities with colours flying, and drums
beating, and trumpets sounding, and a rabble of
good honest stay-at-homes shoutingat their heels,
as regiment after regiment march through the
principal streets of London on th,,ir way to the
central railway terminus from which they are to
fly on the wings of steam to the port of South-
ampton. Then, the authorities aro entirely under
the impression that not a single shot is going
to be fired in anger. Now when the conflict has
been actually gone through, when peace has come
at the end of two years' carnage, and when the
small number of survivors are corning home to us
at last to repose after the toils and anguish of the
fearful ordeal they have had to undergo in Camp
and Hospital—the tables are suddenly turned with
a vengeance ! Thirty thousand go forth in glory,
when no glory has yet been won, when it is quite
proltlematical whether any glory coot be won !
And three thousand—having woo the glory, or
having at least liApe,d to win the glory—three
thousand- gallant fellows bearing upon their
breasts, emblazoned in silver, the heroic names
of " Alma," and " iukerniana," and " Sebasto-
pol"—are brought back, absolutely an if they
Were in disgrace ! It actually app!ars to be
decided that the Guards having left London
in 1854 by the Waterloo Station are to
reenter it in 1850 by the station at
Vauxhall. Going forth on the very vague chance
—(as " the p)wers that then were" blindly
imagined)—going forth ou the very v tgue chance
of possibly, by some rare acoident, being afforded
the opportunity of "reaping laurels," as " cut-
ting the throats of our fellow-men" is poe-
tically termed—the Guards are shonte 1 at
all along the Strand and across Waterloo-
bridge : as though they were a crowd of
Heroes, instead of (as they then actually were)
as a crowd of mere military adventurers ! earning
back with medals, and clasps, and ribbons, and
scars, and empty sleeves, and wooden legs, and
all the other ghastly or glittering . badges of
ilonour--coming back bronzed and wounded
from the war, they are now—with a perfectly
monstrous inconsistency—expected, as it were,
to sneak into the capital of their native
land by a side-entrance, as though they were
afraid of being hooted, and reviled, and pelted
with addled eggs and brickbats. Really, the ab-
surdity of all this preposterous bungling at Head-
Quarters, from the beginning to the end of the
chapter, positively, as the saying is, " beggars,
description." Everything in it so far, in-
deed, as we have said, is exactly of a
piece. The return of the Guards to Lon-
don by the Vauxhall Si;ation, conducting
all sorts of back slums, ia
them ignominiously by
stead of gloriously and ostentatiouslythrough
some few* at least of the principal thoroughltre3,
is really and truly just of a piece with the serving
out of the green coffee to the p worn-out,
thirsty, weary, sometimes almos', fainting, veto-
xans,
coming back to camp from the trenches !I
Tt i 3 of a piece with the planks for
the building of huts, piled up among the
mournful litter at Balaklava, without the thought
of a baron-let or the notion of an ounce of nails !
It is of a piece with the careful preservation of
immense stores of boots and regimentals "some-
where," at the very time when our unfortunate
soldiers were standing up to their ancles in half-
melted ice and mud, bare-footed and in rags ! Yes—
and
again again we say—everything is literally of a
piece in regard to the mismanagement of affairs in
or, as
it should be more properly
the organisation,
called, the continued disorganisation, of the British
Army. IS it Faitivel,y too late, to

repair this last egregious blunder about the re
entrance of the Guards into the metropolis ?
Cannot the absurdity be prevented in time, the
huge and obvious absurdity cif bringing thew
back again into L3ndon cove7,:tly by the side
entrance of that station at Valr,zhall ?

The law for Lord PAIJAERSTON'S opponent'
seems to be the same as the law of the road—

If they go to the left they are sure to go right,

If they go to the right they go wrong.
When they take up sucks left-handed subjects as
repealing the Maynooth Endowment Act, or sec
tarianising the National system of Education it,
Ireland, they can get majorities, but when they
are so unquestionably in the right as they were
on Mr. WHITESIDE'S and Mr. MOORE'S motions
they are defeated two to one.
Probably on no two subjects that have been
earnestly debated in this House of Commons has
the sense of the country been morn against Mi-
nisters than on the questions of Kars and Mr.
CRAMPTON. It should have been easy in both
cases to have secured a triumph. Admitting to ths
full, and being glad to admit the cordial suppler?
which General WILLIAMS received from Lord
CLARENDON, his letters putting fresh life and en-
thusiasm into th© unaided garrison, it was
yet beyond dispute that the Cabinet allowed Kars
to fall, and converted the most splendid military
feat of English Generalship which the War pro-
duced into a defeat—and, worse than that, into
a convenient loophole for the Russianisers at th€
Paris Conference. If South Sebastopol is to bt
henceforth an invincible fort ; if Nicelaieff is to
send forth a " Mosquito fleet" -of gun-boats, and
mortar-boats, and floating-batteries, more formid-
able than the fleet which rots iu the harbour of
Sebastopol ; if the Circassian forts are to be re-
built, and the East coast of the Black Sea to la
again closed to European trade ;—all this we ow(
to the starvation by the Allies of the garrison of
Kars; a circumstance which could not have oc-
curred had Lord PALMERSTON willed otherwise.
Nevertheless, just as a series of small defeats had
shaken his position in Parliament, he gains an
almost unparalleled Parliamentary victory out
of this military disgrace. Russia triumph:.
at Kars, and Lord PALMERSTON triumph
at Westminster, by a majority of 127.
Two months run on, his Lordship who hat,
triumphed were he should not, is again beater
several times where he should not have been ;
but again an egregious blunder comes to hi:
rescue. The Conservatives see their opportunity
and put Mr. BAILLIE forward ; but whether
warned
,by experience that a great public wrot4
must, for Lord PALMERSTON, became a great
Parliamentary right, or being disunited in their
prospective plans, they withdrew Mr. BAILLIE'
motion. Mr. H. G. MOORE, being an independeu
Member, determines to try the value of that hust-
ings boast in the House. Lord PALMERSTON will
give him no battle day, so he forces Ministers to
a battle ; but all to give Lord PALMERSTON
another victory—indeed two—for on the motior
for the adjournment on the first night's debate he
cleverly took a division, which showed a larg,
majority on that question fur Ministers, then
made a merit of necessity, and con-
ceded an adjournment to the Member for
Manchester, to gain a final triumph the.
next night of 194 ? Never assuredly
was a diplomatic business brought to a much
More humbling result than the CLARENDOS
Manes- dispute. Where MARCY was in the
wrong he was allowed to wriggle himself into the
right, and where L)rd CLARENDON was in the
right, he or Mr. CRAmpTON managed to get into the
wrong ; and, as a finale, we receive back our dis-
honoured Ministers and Consuls, while the Ame-
rican Minister remains here with all the honours,
minus that of taking his attaches with their black
stocks in the presence of the QUEEN.
When an unpopular peace was in progress, and
after it was concluded, all the talk was that Lord
PALMERSTON was soon to b© cashiered, and—
somebody—to step in—somebody who had not
been turned out in 185-2 ; perhaps the Noble
Lord who on that occasion, to please Prince
ALBERT and Austria, had turned him out. Bu
hero his Lordship is, rubbing on and joking
with his DERBY Parliament— making them,
like Sir ROBERT PEEL, if they will pass wrong
resolutions, put them right again in a few days—
&ipping every now and then and seeming to go
back, but recovering lost ground again by a -tre
mendous leap, and looking about him more
coufidently than ever. And where are his oppo-
nents ? Oa what question can they raise a cry ?
R.digious gentlemen as they all are, they have
tried the "Protestant" dodge, but the Protestants
do not rely on them ; and unless something un-
foreseen occurs, why may not his Lordship get
through another session, and even dissolve Par-
liament at his own tine ?

Indee I it must b 3 confessed that the political
temper of the day is just the one for Lord
PALMERSTON. There is no active earnest party of
any kind. The Voluntaries seem to be the only one
which is advocating any great new principle, but
though they have made themselves a working
party in the House, a Premier can afford to
c ijole them with Church-Rates Amendments while
it serves his purpose, and then to give them Sir
CORNEWALL LEWIS'S cold shoulder without fear
of consequences. Church Reform may be coquetted
with pleasantly while in the hands of the Marquis
of BLANDFORD. Law Reform will never be a
Cabinet-ousting question, although one of the
most important of all practical objects. Finance—
wall—when in„, the nation thinks all Chancellors
are very :ouch alike. Administrative Reform has
lost its terrors since the War ; and, as to Parlia-
mentary Reform, the country is asleep, and when
it is the .Elouse of Commons is sure not to disturb
its slumbers. Apathy, the breaking up of
great parties, and the absence of great questions
—we may add 12,000,0001. per annum of gold
from Australia—all seem favourable to the reign
of the lucky Premier, the continuance of little
' defeats and great victories, and of peddling
measures.

What is a pound ? Such was the question which
Sir .ROBERT PEEL addressed to the interested or
apathetic Members of the House of Commons,
and by means whereof he succeeded in carry-
ing the iniquitous Bulk Charter :Act of
1844. There would have been no great
difficulty in returning an answer if any
really independent member directed his mind to
the task. But, unfortunately, many of those
who understo3d the subject were men of ample
means, whose wealth would be • greatly increased
by the appreciation in the value of the money
which the bill was intended to produce. Others
were fettered by party trammels, while a still
larger proportion were profound!y ignorant on
the subject. The interrogatory, therefore, re-
mained unanswered in the House of Commons,
although it has been fully and satisfactorily
responded to by Currency Reformers, who have
not been enabled to express their opinions in
Parliament.

A pound, then, is not merely 123 grains of
yellow metal, as implied by Sir ROZEL.T PEEL.
It iS Something that pososscs a purchas-

ing power a command over a certain
quantity of the necessaries and ' comforts
,f life. It is essentially a measure and represen-
tative of value in other things—and there is no
;renter necessity that it should itself possess in-
trinsic value than that the yard of the draper,
)r the weights of the cornfa,ctor should be made
,f the precious metals. It was resorted to in
,rder to avoid the barbarous system of barter,
tnd it has been continued for a long series of ages,
,vithout any effort at improvement. During the
)rotracted war, in which England was engaged
luring the close of the last and beginning of the
nesent century it was found incapable of dis-
,iharging its appointed functions. Our fathers
vere therefore compelled to resort to a more ex-
i)ansive agent. By an inconvertible paper cur-
rency they were enabled to develope the natural
resources of the country, and to maintain a strug-
le unparalleled in the history of the world. The
t'athers of Sir ROBERT PEEL and Lord OVERSTONE
tcquired enormous fortunes by means of " worth-
less rags," without which their sons would not
:lave had the opportunity of expressing their
views in the Senate, and kicking down the ladder
co which they owed their elevation.

But after the V. inconvertible notes had
io completely fufilled their duty they were
deliberately cast aside. The bUllionist theory was
propounded. It was said that unless paper
noney or " promises to pay" were convertible on
lemand, there could be no uniformity of value—
that the nation required a stable currency, in
which its business could be always transacted
with safety and security. With this view the
loctoring commenced, and how has it succeeded ?
Have there not been far greater fluctuations in
~ricer, and in the value of all descriptions of pro-
perty, greater derangement of trade, thin at any
former period when there were unlimited issues of
baper money ? When has there been wilder
-peculation, or more terrible depression ? The
difficulties commenced in 1816, when prepara-.
ions were male for a return to cash payments,
and from that time there have been periodical
panics, increasing in intensity with the steps taken
co avoid them. The gold has been lying idle in
%he Bank cellars, of no greater utility than an
equal weight of rubbish, while the people hate
been enduring the greatest privations. Silver
vas rejected corn could not be purchased,
athough a famine was impending, and all from
he stringency of the unwise and impolitic enact-
nents that have been unequivocally condemned
ny every disinterested and unprejudiced witness.
.4.11 we ask is a fair and impartial inquiry into
die operation of the law, an investigation similar
to that of the. Lords' Committee -in 1848. Let
the People exert themselves, and they must obtain
'hat greatest of all benefits, a circulating medium
)qual to the wants and exigencies of the country.'

It were well fist. France if there wore a few
more men in it, bold, able, and honest enough to
clay the part of public censor like Count MONTA-
LEMBERT. The letter of this distinguished noble-
man to that Imperial tool, the COMA DE UORNY,
the President of the Corps Legislatif, on the
subject of the Imperial concession to the ORLEANS
Family, we are sure Will be read with satisfaction
,n our columns this day, by every one in whom .a
'blind partiality has not extinguished the sense of
justice. With an inexorable logic the right-
ninded Count pursues the Imperial spoliator, and
strips his conduct towards the ORLEANS Family
if every vestige of justice or reason. If the
incient rules of the Monarchy—he argues—so
strangely invokel by NAPOLEON 111., were of
3ufficient force to warrant the appropriation of
he ORLEANS property as the property of the
State, whe:t valid warrant can there be for de-
,:oiling the Sato of any part of it, or of course
my equivalent for it ? The law the Corps
Logislatif were called upon to vote could
ifford no such warrant, or else the property
was wrongfully confiscated ; on the other hand,
this " ancient right" was not applicable to the
Royalty created by the Charter in 1830 ; and in
his case why is a part only of the ORLEANS pro-
eerty to be restored to the family, and to the female
branch only ? Urging with like force the unan-
swerable query—Why, if the property ought to
be restored, was it not proposed to be paid in
kind ? Why not give back the property itself
instead of an equivalent at the expense of the
Ax-payers ? These are h trd nuts for NA-
POLEON to crack (of the Corps Legislatif we
iay nothing, the great majority being merely
poppets, governed by the Imperial hand), and
vitt add to the growing unpleasantness of his po-
sition. The fact is, there never was a more un-
scrupulous and unwarrantable act committed than
the spoliai.ion of the ORLEANS Family, and this
lame attempt at restitution must be regarded, we
ire afraid, rather as an act of selfish policy than
the result of conscientious qualms or sentiments
of pity. NAPOLEON, treading on a soil labour.
ing with conspiracy, looks forward to a possible
event, and is to all appearance preparing for a
contingency in which the interests of himself and
family may be concerned. Whether his aim is
likely to prove successful or not, we will
not undertake to say ; but this much is
certain—his " concession" will have the effect
of drawing universal attention to what we must
be permitted to deicribe as, perhaps, the, most
flagrant and heartless act of robbery that was
ever committed by the ruler of a great civilised.
people. Thus do foul acts return "to plague the
inventors" and perpetrators. Cayenne will hence-
forth become, if it is not already, a word of terror
to others than revolUtionists. We recommend a
perusal of the entire letter, for which not a few
in France will be abundantly grateful.

THE ENTRY OF THE GUARDS INTO
LONDON.

We can positively state that, up to the present time,
no dafinit3 arrangements have been made for the entry
of the Guards into London.

The final arrangements cannot be completed until' the
Scots Fusilier Guards shall have arrived at Aldershot.

We published, yesterday, a telegraphic announcement
that they were in the Channel, but they have not yet ar
rived at Portsmouth. The ships conveying the brigade le't'
Gibraltar on the 24th ult., but up to the time of our
going to press t his afternoon they had not arrived at
Portsmouth.

It is expected that about two days after their arri-
val at that port will be the period fixed for their re-entry.