The Sun.
London, England, 1856-08-12 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, AUGUST 12, 1856.

THE BEPORT OF THE CHELSEA COAL
MISSION.

(Front the Examiner.)
The public took very little interest in the frivolous
inquiry at Chelsea, and they take as little in the report
containing its valueless results. That report, with the
evidence, is now before us ; but we have little to add to
what we observed last week upon the subject. Had the
statements of the commissioners in the Crimea been ever
so untrustworthy, it is obvious they were not to be
shaken by the investigations of any possible commission
sitting in London. It was not a case of two courts of
equal competence and authority investigating the same
matters, using the same means to arrive at truth, and
entitled to equal respect and credit ; but, independently
of this consideration, the public were satisfied on the
whole, not without reason, with the information col-
lected by Sir John and Colonel Telloch, corrobo-
rated as it was by the entire stream of correspondence
from the scene of mismanagement and havoc.
At all events, the public convictions were not to be
disturbed by the counter-statements of the very parties
implicated, a description of defence which, except in the
hall of Chelsea Hospital, was never admitted by any
court assuming the name of justice.
The report bef re no, therefore, carries as little weight
as any document of the kind ever pOsseseed, e ren were we
to forget how favourably to the accused the tribunal was
constituted, and the purpose it was notoriously intended
to serve. The Chelsea inquiry would never have been
heard of, hut that Government, having rained rewards
and employments upon some incapable men, were
anxious to invalidate as far as possible the evidence that
condemned the givers no less than the receivers of un•
deserved public honour,.
Before, however, we take the final leave of a subject
as discreditable to our rulers at home as to the authors of
our disasters abroad, let us offer a few comments upon
what is called the acquittal by the second batch of com-
missioners of the personages who appeared at their bar.
Save in the case of Commissary General Filder, we do
not find that the position of these officers have been at
all improved by the report. The Chelsea Commissioners,
indeed, declare themselves satisfied that Lord Lucan and
Sir R. Airey used every exertion to meet the difficulties
they had respectively to contend with, and are not justly
chargeable with mismanagement and neglect ; but what
their particular exertions were are unluckiy not set
forth ; what they managed well we are still ignorant of;
what they did not do, what they did not manage, still
remains all the public is acquainted with. If Lord
Lucan, for instance, did his best to save the horses of
his brigade, if he did anything to save them, why are we
not told what it was that he did ?
The Land Transport service did something by the ex-
periment of pitting, the Sappers and Miners did some-
thing also, by making the best use of such slender
resources as they had ;'but as to what Lieut.-Gen. Lord
Lucan did we are still as much in the dark as ever, ex-
cept that he snapped at a subordinate officer who made
a suggestion, probably the best that his emergency ad-
mitted a The commissioners tell us that "Col. Griffiths
does not appear to have ever contemplated erecting any
shelter, but merely digging a drain in front and rear."
Perhaps so ; but this was contemplating something, this
was at least thinking, this was showing himself a superior
animal to the helpless horses, as well as to the equally
helpless Lieut.-General. Lord Lucan can cavil at
the exertions of others glibly enough ; he gave the com-
missioners his valuable opinion upon pits, which he said
"might more appropriately be called graves." Even if
graves they were, they were surely as becoming graves
for our horses as the maws of the Crimean vultures, to
which his lordship, in his taste for graves, gave the
practical preference.

The commissioners speak slightingly of the few men
who, like Col. Griffiths, exercised their intellects in the
terrible emergencies of the period ; their sympathies are
manifestly not with British officers who think ; Lord
Lucan and his fellows had the considerable advantage of
being tried not only by their professional, but their intel-
lectual peers.

For Sir R. Airey, the Quartermaster-General, what
did he do? What case did he establish to justify the hon-
ours heaped upon him ? We cannot find that, beyond
making formal requisitions, at which he seems to have
been expert enough, he did anything whatever that night
reasonably have been expected fri,m an officer in his high
command, and who, as the Times has well remarked,
was up to the day of sailing military secretary to the
Commander-in-Chief—a post that gave him the amplest
opportunity of knowing all the probable wants and defi-
ciences of the artny, Sir Richard Airey was in a posi-
tion to have known beforehand the probable deficiencies
of the service in the several articles of bedding, mothing,
tenting, and butting. It ho was ignorant of the state of
things, he was unfit for the post tie held at home ; if be
was aware of it, he must have known the futility of his
orders and requisitions. But when were some of his
requisitions despatched ? " With reference to tents."
say the commissioners, "it appears that Sir Richard sent
home a large requisition in consequence of the destruc-
tion of tents and marquees in the storm of the 14th of
Nov. This order was not complied with until the May
following." Storms were never dreamed of, it seems, in
the Crimea—the stormiest climate in the globe, as every
schoolboy knows. After the tempest lags the requisi-
tion for the tents. The steed is stolen—lock thestable
door ! This was the providence of the Quarter master-
General. The tents of course did not arrive for months.
Disease and death are the results. Yet what is the con-
clusion drawn by the commissioners ? " Therefore,"
says the Report, " the Quartermaster-General's depart-
ment is completely exonerated from all blame on this
head."

How forcibly are we not reminded at every step of
this miserable narrative of Mr. Grate's remarks upon
the fatal expedition to Sicily under Nicias :—" Some-
times petty trifling, sometimes apathy and inaction,
sometimes presumptuous neglect, sometimes obstinate
blindness even to urgent and obvious necessities, will be
found operative at every step, whereby this fatal arma-
ment sinks down from exuberant efficiency into the last
depths of aggregate ruin and individual misery."
Neither in Lord Cardigan's case nor in Col. Gordon's
do the commissioners pronounce the same general for-
mula of acquittal as in Lord Lucan's and Sir Richard
Airey's. Lord Cardigan's complaint was—
" That the commissioners had charged him with hav-
ing contributed to the ultimate inefficiency of the Light
Brigade by his refusal to adopt a suggestion which, in
the opinion of the commissioners, was calculated to im-
prove the condition of the brigade—viz., the sending the
troop horses down to Balaklava for forage."
Two suggestions to this effect had been made to Lord
Cardigan, the state of the roads rendering it impossible
for the Commissariat to transport the forage in question.
The matter is thus stated in the Crimean Repert, with
his Lordship's refusal to comply with either suggestion,
and the natural results :

"This proposition appears to have been brought speci-
ally under the notice of Lord Cardigan by Lieut.-Col,
Mayon, Assistant•Quartermaster-General of Cavalry,
who states that his lordship declined to accede to it, as
he had previously done when a similar proposition was
made to him to send the horses down for hay before that
supply failed.

"Tee whole brigade remained in this state till the 2d
of December, when it waR directed to return to its pre-
vious position, but by that time the horses were reduced
to such a state from starvation that they could no
longer bear the weight of their riders ; they had to be
led down, many were left on the ground in a dying state,
and of the remainder 17 died on the toad before they
could reach their former station—a distance of only about
six miles."

Lord Cardigan's frivolous defence is as follows :—First,
he thought it uncertain whether the supplies were to be
obtained. But the Commissariat officers bad certifies the
fact. What becomes, then, of Lord Cardigan's uncer-
tainty ? 2dly, he thought that the journey to fetch the
hay and barley would. have caused a greater loss of
horses than actually occurred frem insufficiency of sup-
plies. This is what Lord Cardigan calls thinking. It mar-
vellously resembles not thinking. The proposition was
made before the horses were exhausted to such a degree
as to make a journey of seven miles so formidable; and,
the seven miles performed, the horses would have been
fed, and further exhaustion prevented. 3dly, there were
military reasons for not reducing the number of horses at
the position of Inkerman, and Lord Raglan's orders on
the subject were positive. This is the most absurd alle-
gation of all. Military reasons for retaining at Inkerman,
or anywhere else, horses in a state of famine. For mili-
tary purposes, of what use could they have been ? And
if useful for military purposes, they could not have been
too weak to go to Balaklava. This is a depth even
below Lord Raglan. But mark how one little fact
demolishes this poor defence from the foundation ? If the
reasons h weree
subject
should military, and Lord Raglan's ordets posi-
tive, have been brought under Lord
Raglan's notice. Was this done ? The commissioners
report " there is no evidence to show that Lord Raglan's
attention was particularly called to the proposal of the
Assistant•Commissary-General that the horses should be
sent to Balaklava. Whit steps, therefore, might have
been taken had that proposal been brought under his
lordship's notice can now be only matter of conjecture."
The commissioners did well after this to abstain from
a positive opinion in favour of the Earl of Cardigan's ca-
pabilities. We have said that the case t,f Mr. Filder is
the only one which is improved in consequence of the
inquiry at Chelsea. The Commissary-General seems to
have shown (subject, of course, to future discussion)
that the Treasury was the department really to blame
for the miscarriages which have hitherto been laid at
his door. It would appear, among other points, that
the incomparable arrangement of sending out the green
coffee was due to the sagacity of the officials of White-
hall ; and—what is of still more importance to Mr.
Filder's case—he seems to have succeeded in shift-
ing upon the same domestic authorities respon-
sibilitythe ;
for the deficiency of forage, to which as he ex-
plained, "step by step all other deficiencieswere mainly
attributable."

The Treasury will, of course, claim to be heard upon
this subject, so that at present it would be unjust to
pursue it further. We have, indeed, already exhausted
our space, and have only room to quote the just ami
eloquent observations with which the Times has dis-
missed the subject of our Crimean misfortunes from the
province of journalism to that of history :--
" We need not speak of Lords Lucan and Cardigan,
and of General Airey's appropriate adjutant, Colonel
Gordon. It is wonderful to find to what men the dosti-

nies of a nation can be confided. The matter is now pro-
bably discussed for the last time. The Crimean war must
now be left to the historian, and the officers who have
just been exonerated by the Chelsea Board are beyond
any other justice than that which follow from the They
of their countrymen now and hereafter. They
will wear their orders, and their rank and titles, won
amid so much desolation, will be blazoned in'the face of
the world, for of that courage which boldly faces shame
they have no lack. But from the verdict of history they
cannot escape. They may well hope that obscurity will
cover their names, and they may not share the immor-
tality of Mack and Whitelocke ;.but if the democrat
wishes to enlarge on the worthlessness of titles, orders,
and distinctions, he will for many a year be able to point
his moral by showing how they have been bestowed on
Lucan and Cardigan, Airey and Gordon."

most say providential—that they should be enabled most
unexpectedly to bring forward evidence of the most
positive- character in corroboration of the Scriptures.
He added that he had never found.one poiut of disagree-
ment with the Scripture, except in the question of num-
bers, where they could not be sure that the Hebrew
text was correct.

A vote of thanks was passed to the lecturer.

CHELTENHAM, Mom:JAY.

The business of the association was resumed to-day
with renewed ardour. The weather wag pleasant and
the attendance in the various sectional departments was
good. All the Sections met at the College at eleven
o'clock, and the reading of papers occupied until between
three and four.