The Sun.
London, England, 1856-02-19 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING FEBRUARY 19, 1856

was mat' aring his plan for denuding the Exche-
quer
o: Z its balances by paying off some ten millions
of the . public debt. This " valuable financial
demon stration," as it was termed, which was only
less in jurious than the intentional destruction of
a la-rg:e proportion of our navy, on the ground
tha'G we could fight Russia with what remained—
cos vinced the CZAR that we could not be in ear-
nest in our seeming opposition to his wishes. He
col isequently persevered until too late to with-
draw without a loss of prestige which he was not
prepared to relinquish. Thence in a great degree
they crossing of the Pruth, and the measures which
eventually led tc; hostilities.

During the first year of the War, it was starved
because Mr. GLADSTONE refused a loan, and
wishing to disgust the people subjected them to
intolerable fiscal burdens. Last year his succes-
sor asked too little, and the same evil was clearly
perceptible, and now he disturbs the Money Mar-
ket for a paltry five millions. This won't do !
and we earnestly hope that the grievous mistake
may receive the censure which it so eminently
merits from the guardians of the public purse,
the controllers and directors of the National Ex-
penditure. There is yet time for an expression
of opinion by the House of Commons before the
terms be finally concluded.

Sir R. AIRE; together with other notable offi-
cers in the British Army, including among their
number two Cavalry Earls and a Court Colonel,
may be regarded as, at this moment, virtually on
their trial before the highest court of judicature in
the realm—i.e., Public Opinion. Anything calcu-
lated in the smallest degree to throw additional
light upon their proceedings—proceedings im-
pugned so very seriously by the deliberate accusa-
tions recently put forth by Sir JOHN M`Nnin and
his co-Commissioners—cannot, we conceive, be re-
garded as otherwise than of the very first import-
ance. Here are distinguished members of the
service, men entrusted with high authority, upon
whose shoulders the weightiest responsi-
bilities have devolved by reason of their nomi-
nation to positions of extraordinary difficulty,
solemnly charged—charged directly and explicitly
with the wanton destruction of the forces en-
trusted to their safe-keeping--either by the most
wilful cruelty or by the most lamentable incom-
petence. The accusations lately directed against
Sir R. AIREY need not be here recapitulated. Any
more than it need be recounted in this•place, all
over again, what are the particular faults, now of
commission, now of omission, imputed by Sir J.
M`NEIL and his coadjutors in the inquiry, on
the one hand, to the Earl of LITCAN, as the Chief
of the Cavalry, and, on the other, to the
Earl of CARDIGAN, as one of the most re-
sponsible of his Lieutenants. The dreadful
narrative of the winter of 1854-5 is familiar to
every one—the awful narrative of suffering and
death, of exposure and starvation by which the
flower of the English army was considerably more
than decimated, was actually, in several instances
so to speak, wholly annihilated. The Committee,
in No. 17, gave us last session, noon after noon,
the miserable particulars. Those particulars
have since then been massed together in a blue
book of portentuous dimensions, giving us proof
after proof, categorically, of the heinous and
criminal incapacity of the leaders of our troops
under the walls, or rather under the earthworks,
of Sebastopol.

Nobody wants to be told now about
the green coffee served out to the unfortu-
nate soldiers—about the seven miles of impas-
sible slush separating them from shelter, clothing,
and provisions—about the planks sent out for the
making of huts without the vestige of a nail or of
a hammer—about feet unshod and frostbitten in
the snows of that disastrous season—about sum-
mer uniforms in rags in the midst of a Crimean
December, and furs, and overcoats, and bearskins
tailing up at last when the crocuses were budding
among the ruins of Inkerman and over the
grassy slopes of Balaklava. Every one remembers
all the details to this effect, by the piecemeal
revelation of which the mothers, and wives, and
sisters, and daughters of the heroic sufferers in
the East were horrified at home, and panic-
stricken even through their first bewilderment of
mingled incredulity and indignation. The record
of the horror existed throughout England at the
disclosure, demands at this moment no repe-
tition. It is remembered vividly as a thing
of yesterday. It has been burnt into
the popular recollection by the caustic eloquence
of the Times Correspondent to be afterwards
seared anew upon the national heart by the fiery
ordeal of Mr. ROEBUCK'S Committee of Inquiry
into the State of the Army before Sebastopol.
What is required now, is not a recapitulation of
facts already proven and catalogued, but some-
thing (may be) in the way of supplemental illustra-
tion of the neglect branded afresh upon the
memory of us all by the burning words recently
pronounced by Sir JOHN M'NEIL and his brother-
Commissioners. Can anything be added to what
has already been declared in these matters by the
authorities empowered to investigate and pro-
nounce by her MAJESTY'S Government—anything,
we mean, in t'se way of this same supplementary
or illustrative corroboration ? Let us see !
And, remember ! we are speaking hese by the
card, and not at all at random—what we
are about to add nut having yet to our
knowledge anywhere made its formal or printed
appearance. Suppose—for we will put it only in
the way, of course, of a cursory supposition ! Sup-
pose such provident wiseacres as General AlRErand
Colonel GORDON so m is- man aged affairs generally, in
the midst of the winter 1854-5, that they caused
twelve pairs of long boots (at the time when there
were thousands of such hoots in store) to be issued
to 500 men, say of the 77th Regiment, those 500
men being, then and there, actually nearly allot them
barefooted ! Suppose the colonel of the regiment
(and imagine him, just for the sake of argument,
to have been a gallant, noble-hearted, glorious
soldier, such as the famousllfero of the Rifle Pits,
the dauntless and lamented EGERTON)—suppose,
we say, the colonel of the regiment to have taken
these twelve wretched pairs of boots to Colonel
AIREY (the brother of the sagacious Quar-
termaster-General), then acting as Assistant-
Quartermaster-General of the Light Divi-
sion, and to have thereupon asked (we will
presume
as a mere matter of curiosity),
what in the name
of fortune was to be done with
this dozen pair of long boots among 500 bare-
Suppose the aforesaid Assistant
of of o
thet ec 1 soldiers
aforesaid
Quartermaster-General to have
responded in terms of befitting imbecility, and
appropriate insouciance, and kindred absurdity
—to say nothing, of course, about such hard truths
as cruelty and criminality—" Why, I should give
them, if I were you, to the men on
sentry!"
I Suppose the Colonel thus answered (still we will
presume him to have been, simply, to be sure, for
the sake of argument, Col. EGERTON, the heroic
leader of the gallant 77th, suppose him to have
retorted, with soldier-like bluntness,—" So ! the
men going on sentry are to walk out barefooted to
their posts, strip off the other men's boots, and
let them walk back to the trenches in the
same way !"—a reply bringing the whole affair
to the true reductio ad abgardum. Suppose all
this, we repeat ! Well, and what then ? Why
that you will have supposed an incident which ,

actually did occur before Sebastopol. And which
we here commemorate as one, alas ! in every way
painfully significant and frightfully characteristic.

The agitation in the Sabbatarian camp in-
creases, and numerous as have been the petitions
in favour of the existing monopoly, the cry in the
House of Commons still is " They come." So
be it. " Truth is great, and must prevail !"
Despite oceans of froth, some appeals of a higher
order, barrowsful of petitions, gallons of black
ink, and thousands of signatures authoritatively
invoked or ingeniously manipulated, the move-
mentparty have the satisfaction of knowing that the
victory must be theirs before long. The goodness of
their cause becomes only the more manifest as
the hubbub increases. Their arguments are still
intact, and even more cogent than before, and for
misrepresentation and calumny they can expose the
one, and have virtue enough to despise the other.
The great cry of the Sabbatarians is that the
opening of the British Museum and similar insti-
tutions on a Sunday involves the secularisation of
the Sabbath, and will inevitably lead to the
emptying of churches, chapels, d7c., on that day.
A humiliating admission truly, and provocative
enough of sarcastic comment. What are
the facts ? The movement party, who
neither make nor wish to make any profit
of the Day of Rest have made inquiry into the
condition of the working classes who most need
it, and to their sorrow have discovered that in
the metropolis at least they are debarred from
moral and intellectual recreation during the week,
and only celebrate the Sunday as a day of recrea-
tion from animal toil. Wholly dissatisfied with
such a state of things, they have sought for some
means to raise them from their degraded condition,
and have found in the institutions in question at
once a lure and a lever for the purpose—a lure
in that the novelty of the sights there to be wit-
nessed is sure to attract them, and a lever in that
it is impossible to witness such sights without being
drawn out from their heathen materiality and led to
reverence the DIVINE power and goodness in crea-
tion, and in the labour of the chiefest work of His
muds. This lure and lever, far from setting
n rivalry with the lure and lever of Revelation,
;hey are only desirous shall be put in action in
;he interval between morning and evening service

—a period at present not so satisfactorily em-
ployed as they, whatever may be the case with
the Sabbatarians, can approve. In this lure and
lever they cannot discover, and the Sabbatarians
are unable to point out, anything sinful, unless it
be a sin to see a collection when there is no sin in
seeing a part—a sin to inspect curiosities of
nature and of art, gathered from every quarter of

the globe, and no sin in witnessing the wonders of
nature and art scattered broadcast over and about
the metropolis of their own country. Yet this
lure and lever the Sabbatarians will not have
employed. To open the doors of the British
Museum, &c., for the moral and intellectual ele-

vation of the masses is, forsooth, to "secularise the
Sabbath." To raise the noblest handiwork of the
CREATOR from the slough into which he has fallen,
and from which they are confessedly impotent

to so large an extent, to lift him by their chapels
and churches, to hold out an innocent lure that
will succeed where theirs, as they employ it, no-
toriously fails, this is to " secularise the Sabbath"
—to do a work which is to shake honesty, virtue,
and. religion to their foundations, and bring down
on us the wrath of HEAVEN I Might one not ask
whether, receiving fat incomes and showing little
or no Christian harvest for them, is not better
worthy of being designated " secularisation of the
Sabbath ?" " Oh, but," say the Sabbatarians,
"if you open these places you must open others,
and where are you to stop ? The end will
be that the workman will have to give ,
seven days' labour for six days' pay,"
To this we reply, no more places need be opened
than those to which the groundsrof appera of the
movement party will apply, and no 12,1 ace should
be shut to which they do ; and, so tar from there
being valid reason to apprehend the catastrophe
indicated, the only danger, if any, to be appre-
hended in this direction is from the unchristian
virulence of the Sabbatarians themselves. Before
man and GOD, the British labourer is worked hard
enough and paid badly enough already, and it will
be something more than an illogical conclusion which
will get more labour out of him when all the logic in
the world would not suffice. Those who point to
the Parisians, by way of warning on this head,
show, iu our humble opinion, a profound igno-
rance of the subject—the Parisian workmen not
being nearly so hard-worked, and having more
opportunity for recreation during the week ;
while the Parisian shopkeeper, it is notorious,
takes care at all times to make business pleasant.

DEATH OF THE DUKE OF NORFOLK, LG.

We deeply regret to announce the death of the Duke
of Norfolk, which took place yesterday morning, at
Arundel Castle, the ancient baronial seat of the illustri-
ous family in Sussex. 1-1-2. s Grace during the last two
years has been in an unsatisfactory state of health, which
has occasioned un9-..sitiess to the members of his family,
but not alarm. :it appears his Grace was seized wit t
serious symptoms yesterday morning, which caused toe
utmost al"...rm to the Duchess, and at a few minu,es be-
fore 10 o'clock tke noble Duke expired.
T'lo deceased, Henry Charles, Duke of Norfolk, Earl
0.1 Arundel, Surrey, and Norfolk, and Baron Fitzalan,
Clun, Oswaldestre, and Maltravers in the peerage of
England, the Premier Duke and Hereditary Earl Mar-
shal, was the only child of Bernard Edward, 15th Duke
of Norfolk, by Lady Elizabeth Bellasyse, third daughter
of Henry, second and last Earl of Fauconberg, which
marriage was dissolved in May, 1794. The deceased
Duke was born 12th of August, 1791, and married 27th
of December, 1314, Lady Charlotte Leveson Gower,
eldest daughter of Granville first duke of Sutherland,
and sister of the present Duke. By that marriage the
late Duke had issue three sons and two daughters--
namely, the Esrl of Arundel and Surrey (now Duke of
Norfolk), Lord Edward Fitzalan Howard, M.P., mar-
ried to Miss Talbot, niece of the late Earl of Shrews-
bury, Lord Bernard Howard, who died in Egypt a few
years ago ; Lady Mary, married to Lord Foley, and
Lady Adeliza, married last autumn to Lord George
Manners, M.P.

His late Grace, when Earl of Surrey, was the first
Roman Catholic who took the oaths and his seat in the
House of Commons after the passing of the Roman Ca-
tholic Emancipation Act in 1829. The bill received the
Royal assent on the 13th- of April, and Mr. R. H.
Hurst, M.P. for Horsham, resigned his seat, and the
Earl of Surrey was returned for that family borough,
and took his seat in the House of Commons on the 6th
of May following. He was again re-elected for
„:„Hors-
ham at the general elections of 1830 and 1831. At the
next general election, in 1832, be was returned, in con-
junction with Lord George Lennox, for the Western
Division of Sussex, and continued its representative up
to 1841, when his Grace was summoned by writ to the
House of Lords, during the lifetime of his father, by the
title of Baron Maltravers, one of the ancient titles of the
family ; and on the 16th of March, 1842, he succeeded
to the dukedom on the death gf his father.
His Grace had filled several offices in her Majesty's
household. In July, 1839, he was appointed Treasurer
of the Queen's Household, and made a Privy Councillor,
having succeeded Sir W. H. Fremantle, who had dis-
charged the duties of that office more than 20 years. On
Sir Robert Peel's retirement from office in July, 1816,
he succeeded the Earl of Jersey as Master of the Horse,
which office he held until the formation of the Earl of
Derby's Ministry. On the Earl of Aberdeen taking
office he was made Lord Steward of the Household, but
soon afterwards relinquished that place to Earl Spencer,
in December, 1853. In politics it is almost unnecessary
to say his Grace was a staunch Whig. He was highly
incensed at the Papal aggression, and the same year his
Grace renounced the Roman Catholic faith, and passed
over to the Anglican Church.
_ _

The deceaselduke is succeeded in the dukedom and
ancient family honours by his son Henry Granville, Earl
of Arundel and Surrey, born Nov, 7, 1815, and married
on the 19th of June, 1839, to Augusta Mary, daughter
of Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons, G.C.8., Commander-in-
Chief of the Mediterranean fleet, by whom he has a youth-
ful family. The present Duke was formerly in the Royal
Horse Guards, and on his retirement from the army, in
1837, entered the House of Commons representative
for Arundel, which he sat for in several Parliaments. He
also sat for the city of Limerick for a'fevv month•. The
duke is a Roman Catholic, and highly esteemed by
the Romish clergy.
The laze Duke was a Knight of the Garter, a Fellow
of the Royal Society, and several other societies.
The hereditary office of Earl Marshal, so long con-
tinued in the Norfolk family, is descended by the female
side from Thomas. De Mowbray, Elrl of Nottingham,
the first Earl liaralaal of England.

MR. AND MADAME GOLDSCEMIDTS

MORNING CONOB 7',

This concert was precisely similar in arrangement and
character to previous evening coneerts given by Mr. and
Madame Goldschmidt et the ilanover-square Rooms,
and attended by an equally crowded audience. Madame
Goldschmidt's performances, as usual, were calculated
to display her powers in all their variety. She sang the
grand scena from Don Giovanni, containing the air,
"Non mi dir," uniting the most biilliant execution to
the]most passionate expression, in a manner of which
she alone, of all the singers of the present time, is ca-
pable ; then, with Signor F. Lablache, Rossini's duet
"Per placer alla Signora," from the Turco in Italia,
which she made the very perfection of gay and graceful
comedy; next, Meyerbeer's lovely air, "Quando lasciai
la Normandia "—the air in which she first delighted the
ears of the English public when she made her debut on
the boards of ber Majesty's Theatre ; Benedict's song,
"The 2Eolian Harp ;" a Dalicarlian melody, full of the
wild beauty of the Swedish national music ; and a very
original and charming French duet by Meyerbeer, called
"La Mere Grand," which she sang with Miss Dolby.
We never heard her sing more splendidly, nor did we
ever hear her more rapturously applauded. Miss Dolby
(besides the above duet, in which she sustained her part
with her usual judgment and fine taste) sang Stradella's
air, "Oh, del mio dolce ardore," one of the most beau-
tiful specimens of the pure Italian melody of the seven-
teenth century. Mr. Swift sang Cherubini's " Ave
Maria" and Verdi's romaaza, "Deserto sulfa terra,"
with much finish and expression. The only solo instru-
mentalist was Mr. Goldsclimidt, who performed Men-
delssohn's concerto in D minor in a manner worthy of
his high reputation as a pianist.