The Sun.
London, England, 1857-12-15 00:00:00

111 E SUN, LONDON,: TiIIESDAV

holiday ; and, therefore, they postpone all annoy-
ances until that political To-morrow--February.

The Right Hon. Gentleman the Leader of her
Majesty's Opposition—certainly not very unrea-
sonably solicitous about this period of emergency
—requests the merest hint as to the intentions of
the Government. And lo ! he is complacently,
not to say impertinently, recommended by the
First Lord of the Jokery, as Mr. DICKENS, once
upon a time very happily dubbed the Prime
Minister : the Leader of a great Party—the Chief
of the Conservative Opposition—is flippantly re-
commended by Lord PALMERSTON to entertain
himself, as he best may, during the Christmas
Recess with—his own—speculations ! With the
weightiest responsibilities pressing all the while
upon the Cabinet, both commercial and colonial,
in reference to the state of the currency, and in
reference to the revolt in Hindostan ! With the
heart of the country sore, and the mind of the
people troubled, and the iron of calamity entered
deep into the soul of this great empire—not a
glimpse vouchsafed in any one direction of
anything in the shape even of the most sha-
dowy hope of our ultimate extrication from exist-
ing difficulties

We are as contentedly as we can to entertain
ourselves during this miserably anxious winter—
for the words are addressed, of course, through
Mr. DISRA.ELI to the whole population—with our
own " speculations 1" The very phrase seems iro-
nical ! For it is surely the exact course recently
pursued by so many mercantile firms to the verge,
in several instances over the verge, of the Preci-
pice of Ruin—this course of amusing themselves
with their own speculations !
Parliament has now actuallyadjourned until the
inevitable political Tomorrow—February. And
nothing is left us but this Bill of Indemnity, and
two or three of these preposterous committees !
Nothing is explained. Everything is postponed.
Parliamentary Reform—lndian Reform—Cur-
rency Reform : all these are left as extremely
hard. nuts to crack over the Yule log during
Christmas. Our Administrators refuse even to
make a clean breast of it upon comparatively
subordinate matters (important, some of them,
vitally important, subjects of inquiry, but, compa-
ratively speaking, subordinate)—Ministers, we say,
refuse as doggedly and good-humouredly as that
honest old rascal JACK FALSTAFF himself, to ex-
plain—upon compulsion !
Precisely in this way have they acted in regard
to the " vexed question" of the Transport of our
Troops to the far away Indian Battlefield. All they
consent to do is—in February—to allow the com-
mittee of Inquiry peremptorily demanded by the
Hon. and Gallant Member for Westminster. Yes !

we may Inquire, and Inquire, and Inquire—in
February—through another of these absurd and
interminable Committees. Ministers have no
objection to that—in February. But—in the
meantime they wish it to be distinctly understood
that they are not the least in the world at fault in
regard to this affair about the transport of
our Troops to Hindostan. Hear what Mr. VER-
NON SMITH has to say upon the subject—only
hear him ! Why that Right Hon. Gentleman
condescends to tell us among other things—in a
pet--that, As to sending troops to India by way of
Sue; the Minister who advised such a course as
that, would have been deserving of Impeachment !
That, As to its being the shortest way it was really
nothing whatever of the kind..—it was just of all
the ways the very longest—(Of course, precisely
upon the same principle that a straight line is a
circumbendibus !) That, Even if it were the
shortest way the perils of the Overland Route
were altogether something really very appalling !
Had Hon. Gentlemen ever cros.,ed the de
sert themselves ? And so forth Now
this last argument of all is to us really,
of all, the least endurable. It is the ap-
plication iu times of crisis of the new fangled
notion that soldiers, when making a campaign,
should be coddled as tenderly as a parcel of in-
valid young ladies in a boarding-school, wrapped
up in flannel, and nourished with caudle, and com-
forted with whey, and, generally speaking, laid
up in lavender ! A system of things against which,
we doubt not, the manly heart of the British
soldier:revolts with indignation.

No ! whatever Mr. VERNON SMITH may say,
and however coolly the whole matter may be
pitchforked over to that hypothetical Committee
in February—there is not one moment's
doubt in the public mind, but that Minis-
ters have in this very affair, about the transport
of our troops India-wards, been monstrously at
fault, not simply at fault, but at fault monstrously!
That they ought to have been despatched to the
seat of war, t 3 the arena of the revolt at once,
and by the most direct way, and that that most
direct way was incontestibly through Egypt,
across the Isthmus of Suez! That they ought
to have been despatched, moreover, on board
screw steam transports, instead of on board
sailing vessels—no matter how clearly Mr.
VERNON SMITH and his colleagues may be
able to explain to themselves (to their own satis-
faction) that two and two make three—or, in
other words, that not only is the road to India
via Suez the longest way thither, but that the
slowest of all means of transit is that by means of
steam communication. Finally, to condense the
whole matter into a very few words—England is
perfectly satisfied that Ministers (whatever they
may say to the contrary) are very seriously to
blame indeed, in net having sent the troops out
to India by the quickest and the shortest way, by
the very route upon which, of all routes, they
ought in reason to have been forthwith hastened
by a really patriotic Government. Another thing
let us add : Englishmen recognise still, of course,
as perfectly constitutional, the old time-honoured
axiom, that "The KING can do no wrong." But
the application of that axiom to Ministers, the
transfer of its deep inner meaning from the Crown
to the Cabinet, we are all of us entirely agreed to
be not a jot less absurd than unconstitutional.

COURT CIRCULAR.

OSBORNE, DEC. 14.

The Queen and Prince Consort, the Prince of Wales,
the Princess Royal, Princess Alice, and Princess Helena,
attended by the Ladies and Gentlemen in Waiting, went
to Whippingham Church yesterday morning, where the
Rev. G. Prothero performed the service.
Prince Alfred, attended by Lieutenant Cowell, Royal
Engineers, returned to Alverbank this morning.

A. deputation from the Cotton Supply Association of
Manchester, consisting of Mr. Edmund Ashworth, vice-
president, and Mr. Whitworth, the secretary, had an
interview with the Eirl of Clarendon yesterday at the
Foreign-office. The deputation was introduced and ac-
companied by Mr. James Aspinall Turner, M.P., and
Mr. John Cheetham, M.P.
Colonel Talbot had an interview with Mr. Secretary
Labouchore yesterday at the Colonial office.
A deputation from the Victoria Docks and vicinity,
relative to the police, transacted business yesterday at
the Home-Alice. The deputation consisted of Mr.
Drew ( Victoria Dock Company), Mr. Wise (Thames
Ironworks), and Messrs. Harvey, Brown, Barrett,
Cunningham, Branscombe, Heritage, and Morgan.
The Judicial Comnfittee of the Privy Council sat
yesterday. An appeal (the La Plata), High Court of
Admiralty, was heard. The Lords present were the
Chancellor of the Duchy of Cornwall, Sir J. Dodson,
and Sir W. Maule.
Despatches were received yesterday at the Colonial-
office from the Governors of Hong Kong, Ceylon,
Labuan, land the Lord High Commissioner of the
lonian Islands. Despatches were sent to the Governor
of the Cape of Good Hope.