The Sun.
London, England, 1861-04-19 00:00:00

and that the citizens should again be allowed to
act as constables. We observe some signs of secret
attempts to raise the peasants against the nobles ;
after the manner of the horrible and dark deeds of
Austria in Gallicia. It is to be hoped such attempts
will fail, as the nobles have already commenced
the emancipation of their serfs. •
It were premature to attempt to calculate
probabilities. If the Poles of the provinces should
have less self-command than those of Warsaw, the
possibly desired pretext for drowning Polish liber-
ties, once more, in blood, mad be gladly embraced.
But if the spirit of Warsaw be universal,—the
spirit with which the multitude threw away even
their sticks to avoid the mere appearance of resis-
tance—the spirit with which young men bared
their bosoms to the soldiers, and women held up
their children—the spirit with which after one
murderous volley the multitude knelt down and
sang a prayer to God, receiving many of them their
death wounds in this positiou— if this spirit of
determination to die unresistingly rather than to
live as slaves be universal,—then indeed, " Europe
must hear them." It cannot avert its eyes from a
whole nation dying for liberty at the hands of a
semi-barbarian Prince ; it must demand legal
rights for the kingdom of Poland.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer seems to have
sown the seed for a pretty good crop of economical
criticisms, if not of eeonomical propositions. Last
night military men were quite in the mood for
lessening the expenditure of the country, and some
civilians joined them in the same cue. Sir. F.
SMITH, Colonel DICKSON, and Colonel DUNNE
found able backers in Mr. B. OSBORNE and Mr.
MONSELL. Between Mr. OSBORNE and Lord
PALMERSTON it came indeed to a sharp war of
words, the Premier remarking that everything
the hon. member for Liskeard did not like was
a " job, absurd, foolish, ridiculous, or preposter-
ous"—Mr. OSBORNE excusing the noble lord as
suffering under considerable irritation from the
effects of colchicum, and remarking that any one
who happened to differ from the noble lord was
" supposed to have studied in the school of ' light-
ness,' and to be subject to fits of violence."

Some facts, however, came out, which we briefly
advert to with little comment. The fortification
of Portsdown Hill was attacked as being seven
miles of works, and needing a whole army to de-
fend it ; while, from opinions expressed in the
Commissioners' Report, it is evident that our
navvies could improvise in a short time sufficient
defensive works. Our floating batteries have also
changed the whole plan of defence requisite for
Portsmouth. They, too, can be placed almost any-
where they may be wanted.

The enormous disproportion between the increase
of men and the increase of cost was plainly illus-
trated in several cases. For instance, seven years
ago, £9,000,000 was sufficient to meet the expenses
of 119,000 men ; now we are to pay £14,000,000 for
146,000 ; that is, the 27,000 additional troops are to
cost us £5,000,000 more money, or at the rate of
£lB5 per soldier !! And dividing it over the
whole army, each soldier cost at the former period
£75, now he costs just £lOO ! Income tax payers
would like to know " the reason why ?"

Again, Mr. MONSELL gave us some valuable
points of comparison between the cost of our army
and that of France. After deducting everything
in which there was no fair comparison between our
system and that of France there, remained a charge
to us of £5,792,551 for maintaining 146,000 men.
On the French side, by the same mode of calcula-
tion, they spent only £4,000,000 in maintaining
an army of 400,000 men. Let us place the two
pictures in as good a light as we can—

• No. of Men.
France 400,000
England 146,000

Coat of Maintaining.
£4,000,000
5,792,551

Again, we say, Income-tax payers want to know
" the reason why ?''

We also subjoin a rather long extract of details
of vast disproportionate expense between the in-
crease and the cost given by Mr. MONSELL, and
such of us payers of this money as choose to read it
will again rather impatiently demand " the reason

why ?" :
" In these long columns of estimates the difficulty of
pointing out whether extravagance existed was considerable,
and he therefore proposed to quote a few leading items in
1853-61 and compare them with the same items in the pre-
sent estimates, taking into account the number of men voted.

" In 1853-54 the number of men belonging to the army
and scientific corps was 119,881; and in the present year
the number was 146,045. What was the difference of the
expense of the Staff? For the 119,881 men, the expense
of the Staff was £175,895, and the expense of the Staff
now was £326,898. The House would see at once the
enormous disproportion between the increase in the
number of men and the increase in the expense of the
Staff. On that point the House had a right to expect from
the Government a full and complete explanation.

" The next point he would refer to wap the article of

forage. In 1853.54 the army had 9,450 horses, and in the
present year the number was 13,612. In 1853 the expense
of forage—oats and hay—was very much the same as in the
present year, but the difference in the coat of the forage in
the two periods was as follows—in 1853-51 the cost was
£269,165, and in the present year £482,392.

" He would next refer to the articles of fuel and light.

In the year 1853-4 the charge for fuel and light had been
£116,220, while in the present year it amounted to £241,157.
" The expenditure fcr the purchase and repair of barrack
and hospital furniture had in the former year been £57,829 ;
this year it was £127,400. That being so, he thought he
had clearly demonstrated to every hon. gentleman who
listened to him, that a most disproportionate increase had,
in the charge under every one of those heads, taken place."

A delightful speech has just been delivered (it
will be perceived from a report in another column)
immediately upon his return homewards by Lord
ELGIN—EarI of ELGIN and KINCARDINE. It is
less of a formal harangue than of an agreeable and
elmost familiar gossip indulged in by our distin-
guished statesman, and diplomatist, and adminis-
trator directly he finds himself released from
harness, from the toils of office, from the respon-
sibilities of an immense and, in some respects,
unparalleled enterprise, and settling down again
quietly among his old friends and neighbours.
Lord ELGIN avails himself of the occasion to
recal to mind how long it is now since, Scot-like,
he has been a wanderer from the haunts of his
boyhood, a nomadic vagrant almost on the world's
surface, far away from the well-remembered scenes
of Dunfermline. Twenty years, he now bethinks
himself, have elapsed since his public or political
career was commenced, by his being sent to the
House of Commons to take his place among the
ranks of the popular representatives. Scarcely had
he assumed his seat as M.P., hardly had a few weeks
elapsed from the date of his entrance into St.
Stephen's when, by his father's unexpected demise,
he found public life of any kind apparently, for the
moment, closed against him inexorably by the pecu-
liarity of his position as the inheritor of a purely
Scotch peerage. Succeeding to a Scotch peerage, he
says, " I was expelled froth the House of Commons
without being admitted to the House of Lords."'
Barely, however, had he begun to reconcile himself
to the fact of the elimination of his name
from among the catalogue of our national legisla-
tors, when he was suddenly called upon to re-enter
Public life in a very different capacity, to inaugu-
rate his career afresh, in fact, as a responsible colo-
nial administrator. The Statesman whose eagle