The Sun.
London, England, 1858-08-14 00:00:00

THE SUN.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1858.

The arrival of the Calcutta Mail gives full parti-
culars of the events of which we were lately enabled
to indicate the leading features. The dates are, from
Calcutta to the 4th July, and from Hong Kong to
the 23d June. We gave, in our impression of yester-
day, a valuable summary from the Calcutta English-
man of the 3d July, very clearly and distinctly
explaining the actual state of affairs, and the results
of the operations of the British troops. We give
further important information this day, so that our
friends will have the latest intelligence both from
India and China.

The Governor-General has very heartily congra-
tulated Sir Huou RosE on the successful result of
his rapid advance on Gwalior, and tendered his best
thanks to Major-Generals ROBERTS and WHITLOCK
and the various corps under.their command, and cor-
dially 'welcomes them to the Presidency of Bengal.
These congratulations and thanks have been well
merited. Sir 11. RosE has proved himself to be a worthy
successor of the illustrious HAVELOCK. Worn out
by fatigue, prostrated by severe illness, when rest
was of vital importance to himself and the wearied
troops under his command, he started into immediate
action at the call of duty, although he had ample
excuse for remaining quiescent. He cast aside every
selfish consideration, and proved himself just what
an English General ougkt to be.
It was of vast importance to neutralise the conse-
quences of the temporary success of the mutinous
contingent and the treacherous troops of Sciadia.
Nothing could have been more injurious
to British interests, or more calculated to
prolong the strife, than the appearance of a pre-
tender seated on the musnud of a faithful friend and
devoted ally—one who, to use the words of the Go-
vernor-General, did "not shrink from his obligations,
or hesitate to avow his loyalty." Never was there a
case where prompt and decisive action was more
urgently required, and seldom, if ever, has it been
more strikingly displayed than by Sir HUGH ROSE,
in his truimphant march on Gwalior. Had there
been the slighest hesitation on his part—had he
wasted even a single day in recruiting his own
strength or the severely-tried energies of his
followers, the consequences might have been
of a very formidable character. Gwalior would
have become the head-quarters of the in-
surgents ; all the disaffected—and their name is
" legion"—would have hurried there. It would, in
fact, have been made the rallying point of the rebel-
lion. Agra would have been seriously menaced, and
a considerable force must have been diverted from
other service in order to protect it. All these evils
have been averted by the skill and activity of Sir
HUGH Ross, and we trust that he may receive the
rewards to which he is so justly entitled for his bril-
liant exploits.
Not the least interesting part of the intelligence is
that relating to the death of the Ranee of Jhansi,
whose name had long since acquired painful noto-
riety in this country for her brutal and abominable
treatment of the English captives who had the
misfortune to fall into her hands. Her name
was associated as a monster of cruelty with that
of the arch-demon NANA SAma ; and, per-
hapq, considering that she was a young woman
scarcely more than twenty years of age, it may
be regarded even in a more terrible light. If she had
more than masculine vices, she had a corresponding
degree of courage. She and her sister, both dressed
in men's clothes, led the rebels to the attack, and
headed the defence against the sharp pursuit of the
Bth Hussars, They fell fighting bravely, and thus
avoided the terrible expiation of their offences that
was otherwise inevitable. Their antecedents had
not merited such an end. They should rather have
graced the same gallows with the NANA SAIIIB, and
been made signal examples of retributive Justice, and
of the anger of an avenging NEMESIS !
As we long since pointed out, the contest has now
resolved itself into a guerilla war. The enemy,
beaten at every point, only find safety in flight. They
may harass, but they cannot, so long as British officers
act as worthy representatives of Lord CLYDE and
Sir Huoit ROSE, seriously endanger our position.
They may cause annoyance, but that is all. The danger
has passed away with the capture of the several strong-
holds held by the rebels, and the restoration of
Scindia to his rightful throne. Sir H. GRANT, Sir E.
LUGARD, and other gallant officers, fully maintain
their well-established reputations. The Moulvie has
been executed by a native chief, who captured him
during a wanton attack on him by one of the leading
fanatics.

At I resent there must be a cessation of operations
until the restoration of better weather. The climate
is now far more fatal to our gallant soldiers than
the weapons of their enemies. The burning sun
causes more deaths than either steel or lead. The
heat has been greater than any experienced during
the last twenty years ; but the rains having set in,
even at the eleventh hour, have in some degree
purified the oppressive atmosphere, and rendered it
more endurable.

We recently pointed out the state of affairs is
China. It is said that )P o
been ordered out, and there
French troops have
Ten thousand
certainly be at
en
least an equal British force.
r7t h English and
Celestials
toe s to a
Frenchmen would speedily brinb
" sense of their situation," and enablee us
rwoMandarins,nestialgotiate
on the most advantageous terms. r
of very exalted rank, had opened negotiations with
Lord ELGIN and Baron GROS ; but as it appeared on
investigation that their credentials were not satis-
factory or their powers sufficiently extensive, they
were sent back to the place from whence they came.
It seems by no means improbable that there
must be a further approximation to Pekin before
the remonstrances of the Plenipotentiaries pene-
trate the recesses of the Imperial palace, or the
Brother of the Sun can be made to understand the
true state of affairs. At Canton the braves (!) are
still butchering all the victims whom they can kid-
nap.

It is more than hinted that they are encouraged by
the Chinese Government, and if this be so, surely the
time for forbearance has gone by, and the most
nergetic measures should be adopted, not merely
t Canton, but also at Tien-sin and Pekin. With
wh evidence of faithlemesl Lord ELGIN thould not

listen to the humbugging excuses for procrastination.
He should decide on the exact extent of the satisfac-
tion he requires, and firmly insist thereon, without
permitting any change or alteration whatever.

ELIIIU BURRIT'S project of an Ocean Penny Post-
age will be all the more rapidly and readily realised
according to the spread of the submarine system of
electric telegraph. It is merely a question of time
when the Ocean Penny Postage shall be one of our
actual institutions. Come the day inevitably will—
we are hastening towards it perceptibly—our advance
being appreciable even now by a momentary glance
at what is, and at what has been, in the matter of this
particular branch of our expenditure. An ordinary
letter, for example, may be conveyed at the cost of
sixpence, rut Southampton, along the whole of the
oriental route to India, across the Mediterranean'
from Gibraltar (calling at Marseilles) to Alexandria,
across the desert at Suez, along the entire length of
the Red Sea, onward, the whole distance to Calcutta.
And all this, remember, a mere sixpenny commu-
nication—when not so very long ago a letter
would have been charged ninepence if con-
veyed from Bath to London in the mail bags
in the hind boot of one of those wonderful old red
coaches, with the red guard, and the red charioteer,
and the smoking :relays, team after team, of well-
groomed horses, bowling along the brown level of
the highroad trailing and winding between green
hedgerows all the way from the extremity of Middle-
sex to the heart of Somersetshire. Because the
truth, here mentioned, is trite, it is none the less
worthy on that account of being thus explicitely 1
reiterated—now that the necessity is becoming every
day more and more apparent, that the facilities of
intercommunication between ourselves and our re-
mote possessions must sooner or later be subjected
to a wise, a comprehensive, and an economical reor-
ganisation. The submarine electric telegraph,
we repeat, must hasten the otherwise inevitable
event of this Postal reorganisation. It obvi-
ously stands to reason that with intercourse, direct,
I positive, verbal, written intercourse established be-
tween the extremities of the world, along the depths 1
of a gigantic ocean like the Atlantic, bringing to-
gether, in the throb of a pendulum, the new world
and the old, Valentia and Newfoundland—the previous
sluggish channel of communication will be so far
deteriorated in value and importance that it will ap-
pear more than ever slow, tedious, and, under the
circumstances, almost, one might say, exasperating.
The extension of our maritime steam resources again
will come in aid of the growth of the more extended
and complicated webwork of submarine cables thread-
ing hither and thither the abysses of the deep sea•
An oceanic penny postage is in these respects already
virtually un fait accompli. It will be the corollary
of the steam engine as applied to the purposes of
marine locomotion, and of the electric telegraph as
worked through thousands and thousands of miles
of- submarine cable. Insomuch do we regard this
advancement as one that must be—by a necessity no
less inevitable than that by which a pear, when it is
ripe, must fall in obedience to the laws of gravita-
tion—that we conceive that not one more effort in
his humane agitation need be made towards the
furtherance of his cherished scheme by the accom-
plished American Blacksmith.
Yesterday another stride in the right directien—
another step towards the attainment of the golden
goal of the Ocean Penny Postage as an established
fact, was incidentally referred to by ourselves in the
course of our editorial observations in allusion to a i
certain remarkable petition preparing for presenta-
tion
to her MAJESTY'S Secretary of State for the
Colonial Department. It has allusion to the
mismanagement hitherto of our postal communica-
tion with Australia. The immediate and unhesitat-
ing abrogation of the old bungling contract for the
conveyance of the mails between England and Aus-
tralia was, if we remember rightly, the first act of
any importance adventured upon by the right hon.
baronet upon his accepting the seals as her Ms-
JESTY'S Secretary for the Colonies. It was a bold
easure which Lord STANLEY had scarcely had time
LO
think of, and upon which Mr. LABOUCHERE had

'Ter seriously for an instant dreamt of adventur-
ing. The new
_Colonial Secretary, however, was
I scarcely gazetted, when by a word, by a stroke of the
I pen, the thing was done. It is the way of the Derby-
ites. They don't talk about reform—they reform.
They don't content themselves with moodily pro-
mising to take a grievance loudly complained of
some time or another into their consideration—
they take it into their consideration. That, in
effect, is the very simple reason why the
radical reformers, the ultra-liberals —in the
House, Messrs. BRIGIIT and ROEBUCK, out of the
House, let us say the Daily News and ourselves—
have taken kindly to these statesmen ; have accepted
as one of the best Governments that well could be
under the circumstances, this energetic and patriotic
this really laborious and conscientious and painstak-
ing DERBY Administration.
And so—according to ministerial custom now-a-
days—there was an end very speedily to the
obstructive contract in regard to our postal
service with Australia. A memorial is now
accumulating signatures in the city—a me-
morial intended to bring directly under the
personal observation of the Colonial Secretary the
enormous advantages almost certain to accrue, both
to the mother country and to the colony, from the
organisation of a double route (westwards as well
eastwards) to our Australian possessions. The peti-
tioners very reasonably suggest that the mail thence
and thither, to and fro, ought, in reason and
prudence, to be regular and fortnightly. They
then go on to expatiate upon the facilitation it would
be to the intercourse with our antipodes, if—besides
maintaining the rapid intercourse with the southern
and western colonies of the Australian group
by continuing the route via Suez—we further
secured the interests of the northern and
eastern colonies by establishing another and
very different route, one via the Isthmus of Panama.
The two routes, of course, being used alternately—
just as the Indian mails leave this country now for
Bombay, now for Calcutta. The project appears,
upon the first blush, to be both rational and feasible.
We entertain very little doubt that it will secure to
itself the instant and serious attention of her
MAJESTY'S Colonial Secretary.