The Sun.
London, England, 1859-03-24 00:00:00

THE ARMY.

• Colonel Eyre John Crabbe, K.H., died on Satur-
day last, at his residence in Hampshire, aged 68
years. The gallant colonel had received the silver
war medal and eight clasps for his early career in
the Peninsula, and was made a Knight of the Royal
Hanoverian Order for his military services. The
deceased served in the Peninsula from January,
1810, to the 31st of December, 1812 ; and again
from June, 1813, to the end of the war, inc:uding
the whole of the retreat to the lines of Torres
Vedras, battle of Busaco, the advance from the
lines to Guarda, first siege of Badajoz, siege and
storm of Ciudad Rodrigo, siege and storm of Bada-
joz, battle of Salamanca, capture of Madrid and
subsequent retreat through Spain ; battles of
Nivelle, Nive, Tarbes, Orthez, and Toulouse, and
the whole of the various minor affairs during that
period. For many years the gallant deceased com-
manded the 74th Highlanders. His commissions
bore date as follows —Ensign, the Ilth of June,
1807 ; lieutenant, the 11th of May, 1808 ; captain,
the 19th of May, 1814 ; major, the 31st of January,
1828; lieutenant-colonel, the 6th of November,
1841 ; and colonel, the 28th of November, 1854.
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir William Russell, M.P.,
was expected to leave Calcutta this week on his re-
turn home on leave of absence, after an arduous
and most creditable career with his regiment, the
7th Hussars, in Oude, during the recent hostilities
in that province.
Lieutenant-General Sir Harry G. Smith, G.C.8.,
is still detained in town from the effects of his acci-
dent.

THE REVENUE OF INDIA. —A return to the House
of Lords, yesterday printed, shows that for four years there
has been a net deficit in the revenue of India, after de-
ducting the charges in England. This deficit is set down
as follows—viz., in 1853-54, £2,044,117 ; in 1854-55,
£1,707,364; in 1855-56, £972,791; and in 1856-7, £143,597.
In 1857-8, there was a net deficit of £1,911,986; and in
1848-9, of £1,473,225. In four years (1849-50 to 1852-53)
there was a continuous surplus, varying from £354,187 to
£531,265. The deficit appears to arise from the charges in
England being included, as otherwise there has been a large
net surplus in India itself ever since 1847-48, varying from
£1,104,086 to £3,386,076; thus, in 1856-57 the total income
mats £29,702,854, and the expenditure £26,316,778, leaving
a net surplus of £3,386,076. The total debt of India on the
30th of April, 1857, amounted to £52,074,986, and the
annual interest actually paid to £2,100,554. The registered
debt is £45,369,210. Treasury notes figure for £1,126,644,
temporary loans for £219,656, and deposits for £5,359566.
The sum total of the balances in all the treasuries of India
amounted on, the said 30th of April, 1857, to £13,009,664,
or 13,87,69,749 rupees.
[ADVERTISEMENT.]—ThorIey's Food for Cattle is now
beginning to seriously attract the attention of the farmer,
breeder, and feeder of stock. Two years of unremitting
care and attention have enabled its inventor to take high
ground as a benefactor to these interests; and notwithstand-
ing the many drawbacks, the malevolent shafts hurled
against it and its probable utility, the food, from its admitted
value, will become a necessity to the agricultural interest.
Experience has proved, first, that it affects a considerable
gavingin the consumption of provencter ; secondly, that it
produces health and vigour in all animals subjected to its
influence : and lastly, increases in a remarkable degree an
early development of fat. Mr. Thorley, originating this
singularly efficacious food, aimed at a compound calculated
to supersede, to a certain extent, the tedious and expensive
mode then prevailing of fattening stall-fed beasts. In this
he happily succeeded ; and success prompted a very natural
desire to improve upon the invention, so as to make it ap-
plicable to every description of domestic animal. The Eng.
lish farmer was slow to encourage its use, and manifested an
unwillingness to rely upon its efficacy, fancying he possessed
in the produce of his farm, ample materials whereby to feed
and fatten his cattle at a cheaper rate than by the employment
or addition of artificial food. The tests to which this food has
been subjected have proved its perfect admissibility as a cheap
addition to the natural produce of the farm ; inasmuch as in
all cases a subtraction of one-third may be safely submitted
to in the usual food of animals ; and that the produce will be
realised, and rendered marketable in two-thuds of the time
usually consumed in developing fat ; it, therefore, becomes
apparent that a certain saving is effected by a fair application
of Thorley's Compounded Food. It is believed that the present
unprecedented low price of wheat has induced its very gene-
ral use, in preference to any other of the usual articles of
food ; it is, however, much questioned whether wheat is a
nourishing and proper food for the working horse, certainly
it is not for cows or pigs. Mr. Thorley's Food, besides
possessing the advantage of greatly invigorating the health
and increasing the physical power of all animals, is a tonic
and gentle stimulant, and when mixed with their other
food, materially assists their digestive powers--a matter of
great consequence, since it is an undoubted fact that the
nourishment contained in their ordinary food is lost, conse-
quent upon the impaired or defective action of the digestive
organs ; it will also be found to be particularly beneficial
in restoring to good working condition horses which have
been over-worked, or become weak from disease, or are
naturally of a feeble constitution. In cows its effects are
undoubted, indeed almost marvellous, nearly doubling the
yield of milk and butter, whilst it at the same time enriches
the quality of both. In pigs its fattening qualities are still
more remarkable, displaying in a few weeks its manifest
superiority over every other kind of compound or manu-
factured food adopted in the feeding of swine. Such has
been its marked success, that at all our great cattle shows,
Royalty, noblemen, and others who have fed their cattle
on Thorley's Food, have invariably carried off the principal
prizes, whilst cards of commendation have been awarded.
The patronage of Royalty, of our principal nobility, the
clergy, and of our leading agriculturists, must prove a
great incitement to this gentleman to pursue his onward
course ; and he may confidently rely, in producing so
highly-favoured a compound, on a continuation of such
high and cliktirlsished ptdrmage,

THE REV. ALFRED POOLE'S CASE.

Mr. Poole has at length arrived at the result for
which he has long been striving; that is, an
enaphatic condemnation, by the highest ecclesiastical
authority, of his peculiar views upon the subject
of Confession, and a formal confirmation of the
sentence by which his licence was revoked. There
is not another word to be said against the manner
in which these final proceedings have been con-
ducted, although undoubtedly, the Archbishop of
Canterbury had been misled in the first instance by
wrong advice. It was a monstrous thing that Mr.
Poole should have questioned women in a locked
vestry upon their violation of the Seventh Com-
mandment. It was almost equally monstrous that
he should be condemned unheard. The Court- of
Queen's Bench has put the archbishop right, and
the archbishop has put Mr. Poole right, and the
matter is now brought to a satisfactory conclusion.
Henceforward let us hope that the archbishop and
his successors will not visit curates with so severe a
penalty as the revocation of a licence implies with-
out giving them a full opportunity of defence ; and,
further, that curates will abstain from walking in
the steps of Mr. Poole in this particular matter.. It
is but fair to that gentleman to state that the Bishop
of London, after due investigation, seems to have
arrived at the conclusion that he had not addressed
to his penitents the filthy questions of which we
ha're heard so much. Of this he stands fully
acquitted; on the other hand, it seems to be equally
clear, upon his own admission, that he had interro-
gated women upon the matters referred to, and that
he justified his conduct as consistent with the
rubrics and doctrines of the Church of England.
The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of
London now tell us that this is not so ; that the
views of Mr. Poole on the subject of Confession
generally, and especially upon Confession where a
violation of the Seventh Commandment is at issue,
are of a dangerous tendency, and calculated to
bring scandal on the Church.
It is curious to mark how numbers of excellent
people, simply by dwelling for a length of time
exclusively upon one idea, can arrive ultimately at
conclusions which they would have spurned before
the process of intellectual and sentimental incuba-
tion began. Here is Mr. Poole, now—we doubt
not a most excellent and moral man—who, after a
due course of the one-idea fever, found himself
locked up with a woman in the vestry of St. Bar-
nabas, putting searching questions to her on the
subject of her unchastity. Be it most clearly
and broadly understood that we do not mean
to suggest the faintest shadow of an infer-
ence against Mr. Poole's personal morality. We
quote him but as an example of an excel-
lent but simple young man whose brains had
got muddled on the point of Auricular Confession,
just as Don Quixote's wits were turned on the sub-
ject of chivalry. Could the Knight of La Mancha,
when in his sober senses, and before he took to his
library of romance, have seen a picture of himself
charging the windmills or stabbing the wine-skins
he would surely have said, " Why, that's the pic-
ture of a madman !" In the same way, had Mr.
Poole, before his head was addled by the perusal of
such little volumes of nonsense as the one which
Mr. Gresley has given to the world upon this
particular subject—had he, we say, seen himself
locked up in the vestry of St. Barnabas and con-
ferring with a Pimlico Magdalen upon the Seventh
Commandment, he would have deemed himself a
fit inmate for Bedlam. Granting—as we are fully
prepared to grant—that he himself was pure as the
topmost drift of snow on the crown of Mont Blanc,
would it be so with others ? Was this a practice
which would be tolerated in the British Islands—
save by the Roman Catholic portion of the popula-
tion—in the year 1859 ? There is no doubt that
step by step a man may ascend the ladder of mental
delusion until he has forgotten how far he has left
the solid earth, upon which human beings must be
content to walk, beneath him. Ordinary men of
our time, however, have no sympathy with these
acrobats of imagination. As was well remarked
by- an old divine, though not one of Mr. Poole's
school, " True religion is the 'most common sense
thing in the whole world." When you arrive 'at
such conclusions as Mr. Poole deduced in the ves-
try of St. Barnabas, there is something false in your
premises or your reasoning. Your conclusion is a
practical absurdity, and therefore some or all of the
steps by which you reached it are false.
The subject is so delicate an one that we almost
fear to remark upon it at all; yet surely it cannot
be wrong that an independent voice should be up-
lifted somewhere to warn these excellent young
gentlemen that they really must abstain from cross-
examining English women upon such subjects.
With the great bulk of the middle classes they can
do but little harm, for there they have to deal with
occupied and educated people. The sect to which
Mr. Poole belongs may be fashionable for a season
in Belgravia and other polite quarters, but it came
in like crinoline, and like crinoline it will go out.
In those regions its success is based upon the idle-
ness and ennui of the population, and generally of
that graceful and interesting section of it which is
composed of young ladies under twenty-five years
of age. With the humbler classes the evil is greater,
for with regard to them, no doubt, the priest has
the advantage of knowledge and position, as op-
posed to ignorance and no position at all.
The machiiery of charities, and doles, and cus-
tomers and employers, and lady-visitors, too, can
be thrown into gear for their benefit with
startling effect. It is just the old story of
electioneering oppression as applied to matters
of religion. Certain of the humbler classes are at
the mercy of their employers and patrons, and these
persons choose to establish a religious test as the
price of their favours. We must in justice to the
High Church say that instances of a similar system
of oppression committed by the other side have been
brought under our notice. Such and such an Evan-
gelical minister, again, has before now been as much
the spiritual inquisitor of his flock (and the crooks
of these gentlemen have been pretty long ones) as
any Anglican priest who ever laboured at the Con-
fessional. It does not signify much, if the inquisi-
torial process is to take place at all, whether the
penitent be standing, sitting, or kneeling. It is not
a question of a posture, but of a fact, and the fact
is the abuse of priestly power. The abuse of this
power has been brought very offensively before the
public in this case of Mr. Poole, but we are far
indeed from asserting that cognate abuses do not
take place on the other side. The matter must be
left, after all, to the discretion of the heads of
families. • It is their business—indeed, one of their
highest duties—to guard all persons under their
authority from such dangerous delusions. In case
of abuse it only requires that the fact should be
made ' public, and publicity will soon supply a
remedy sharper than any in the laboratory of bishop
or archbishop.— Times.

UNITED SERVICE INSTITUTION,
WHITEHALL-WARD.

On Friday, March 18, a lecture was delivered in
the theatre, Major-General Stanhope in the chair,
by Lieut.-Colonel E. Hawley, R.A., on " Frederick
the Great's Campaign in 1757." The lecturer de-
scribed the general nature of the operations in this,
one of Frederick's most famous campaigns, and
sought by means of its incidents to illustrate
some of the principles of war. It begun by a sketch
of the geographical features of the Prussian province
of Silesia and the frontier between it and Moravia,
the Austrian province through which lay the most
direct route to Vienna. Though this was, in the
abstract, the most eligible territorial line of
operation, yet, in 175 G, Frederick justly
considered that it was better to begin with pos-
sessing himself of the secretly hostile country of
Saxony, which lay between his hereditary domi-
nions in Brandenburgh and the Austrian army
in Bohemia. In 1757, Saxony being in his
power, there was no longer objections to
the territorial line of Moravia, yet Fre-
derick chose to operate in Bohemia, which
line offered far greater difficulties to his enterprise.
He commenced with a double line of operations from
Lusatia and Saxony, converging on Prague. The
defects in the Austrian dispositions, whether for
attack or defence, were shown, and Frederick's
mode of passing the mountains, and effecting a
combined movement on Prague, was contrasted
with that of Napoleon in 1800, showing the great
superiority of the latter as a strategist. The
use of interior lines against a double extension
line was illustrated—and it was shown -how the
Austrians, instead of availing themselves of
their advantageous position, suffered the Prussians
(notwithstanding their erroneous system of attack)
to combine before Prague.
After the defeat at Kollin, Frederick retreated from
Bohemia before the superior forces of Austria. The
French, too, now threatened him, coming from the
Maine; ,but in these difficult circumstances all his
genius and energy were called forth. Applying the
principle of interior lines, against the double lines
of the French and Austrians, he prevented them
from uniting till he had overwhelmed the former in
the famous battle of Rosbach, when, marching to
the aid of his lieutenant, who, opposed to the
Austrians, had been defeated by them, from act-
ing on a line too widely extended, he joined
his forces to the beaten Prussian army, and by a
second brilliant victory, over greatly superior
numbers at Leuthen, recovered Silesia, and forced
the Austrians back within their own frontier.
The lecture concluded with an enumeration of
the faults committed by the Austrians, and a sum-
mary of Frederick's characteristics as a great
gwieral.