The Sun.
London, England, 1868-05-21 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times, commenting on Mr. Trevelyan's motion for
the abolition of purchase in the army, complains that
the British army offers no opening to the mass of the
British people. A man too poor or too desperate to be
anything else may become a soldier, and much to his
own benefit ; a man too rich to care for the hire of his
labour may become an officer, also to his own advantage.
But for a man who, as Mr. Trevelyan fairly put it, desires
"to live by his profession, and to rise in propor-
tion to his professional merits," there is no place in the
British army. The sons of the shopkeeper, the tradesman,
and the poorer members of the mercantile or professional
classes see no caner before them in the profession of arms.
They would be willing, with a fair prospect of subsistence
first and avdancement afterwards, to enter the ranks in
such numbers as would render the ambiguous functions
of the recruiting sergeant unnecessary. Open the door to
this class and the army would be manned as it has not
been manned since the days of Cromwell. But the door
must be opened, and the prospect must he displayed,
before this consummation can be reached, and the
first step must be the abolition of the purchase sys-
tem. If t'.e son of the shopkeei e • or yeoman is to
enlist in the line, it must be first on the condition of
pny measured more nearly by the demands of his
station, but, above all, by the view of a fair career before
him. So Mr. Trevelyan and his friends would abolish
outright that strange and anomalous system which makes
military promotion depend, not on merit alone, but on
merit, backed by money. If we are to have a real middle-
class army, there must be no promotion by purchase.
It may be cheap, it may be popular, it may be superior
to any alternative presentable, but it is certainly incom-
patible with such a reformation of the army as we
have here described. The question to be considered
is whether the army should be thus reformed. We admit
without reserve all that Mr. 'Trevelyan and his sup-
porters predict from the revolution. Our army would
become beyond all question one of the most formidable in
the World. It would be the counterpart, not merely of
that army which " could go anywhere and do anything,'
but of that which " never failed to beat and break utterly
into pieces " everything opposed to it. What we have to
consider is whether it is expedient to provide ourselves
with this tremendous machine. The cost, compared
with the result, might perhaps be disregarded, but it
would be exceedingly heavy. The mere expense of abolish-
ing the purchase system was computed at £10,000,000 or
0,000,030, but that would be the least part of the affair.
We should have to provide both officers and men with pay
on a scale unknown except in the American army, where,
we are told, 50,000 men cost £20,000,000 a year, or at
the rate of VOO a man. These figures, of course, are
only reached by saddling a small remnant of force with
the dead-weight of a gigantic war, but it may be safely
anticipated that a reformed army would be no less costly
than formidable. We should become a nation of soldiers
instead of a nation of shopkeepers ; we should be enabled
to embark with confidence on any scheme of ambitious
conquest, and the world, perhaps, as well as the Treasury,
would feel the effects of the change. But is this the kind
of army that Great Britain desires to possess, or the kind
of policy it desires to embark in?
Another crisis, says the Daily Hews, has arisen, and
once more the Queen's name is found discussed in connec-
tion with grave censures such as we had hoped we should
never see published by the ,most responsible of our news-
papers. The effect of the Queen's withdrawal is too plainly
seen in the proceedings of the House of Commons, where a
defeated Minister is compelled to delay for four days expla-
nations which, if the Queen were at Windsor, he might
make at once. Her Majesty does not need to be informed of
the general reasons which make it of consequence that she
should be accessible to her constitutional advisers, or that
even if Mr. Disraeli chose to spend his days in travelling
between Westminster and Balmoral, the House of Com-
mons could not submit to continually renewed obstiuc-
tions of public business. In fact, Mr. Disraeli is
remaining in town, while the Queen is at Balmoral
unattended by any member of the Cabinet, so that the
practice of personally communicating with the sovereign
at critical conjunctures appears in this case to have been
abandoned, and her Majesty's commands must be signified
by a messenger. To those who have followed with any
attention the history of similar periods of political
anxiety, this state of things will appear eminently unsatis-
factory, for Englishmen are not yet prepared to see the
old practice of constitutional government exchanged for a
novel and dangerous delegation of the most sacred prero-
gatives of the Crown. If we look for any explanation of
the Queen's absence—and explanation is looked for--we
shall not find it in her Majesty's indifference to constitu-
tional usage. A more constitutionally minded sovereign
than Queen Victoria never sat—and, we venture to
say, never will sit—upon the British throne. Nor
will the suggestion be accepted as satisfactory
that the Queen did not know last Monday that which
any newspaper reader might learn for himself, that ques-,
tions were pending which might give rise to critical divi-
sions. If it were foreseen that the House of Commons
might at any moment adopt some decision which Ministers
could not accept, then it must have been foreseen they
would have to consider the alternative of resignation or
dissolution. Under ordinary circumstances we should
find it impossible to believe that the Queen had consented
to remove herself six hundred miles from the capital at a
time when such issues were pending. The only light thrown
upon her Majesty's actual removal gleams from Mr.
Disraeli's recent speeches. If it be true that the
Queen has been persuaded by him that a dissolution of
Parliament is not one of those solemn exercises of the royal
prerogative which require to be preceded by the most
careful examination of the special circumstances under
which they are recommended, but a power which may
properly be entrusted to a Minister, like a weapon to be
worn about his person and used in cases of extremity for
his personal convenience, the Queen's absence is explained,
and that in full conformity with Mr. Disraeli's repeated
representations. In that case, however, no language
could be too strong to denounce the conduct of a Minister
capable of so diminishing the dignity of his sovereign and
depriving her of her just rights. ,
The Standard observes that the talk about stopping the
supplies may be taken in conjunction with the wild attack
upon Mr. Disraeli for letting the Queen go into Scotland.
The supplies are already voted. But the suggestion
betrays the anxiety with which some persons are now
engaged in observing the political barometer. Wanting
a crisis they have made one, and, having made it, they
are angry with the Minisitry because they will not
recognise the fury of the storm. What they really
want is, of course, that Mr. Disraeli may abandon
the care of the vessel. They blow hot and cold that they
may have an elemental convulsion. They cannot wait
even a few months so that the question may be decided by
a complete constituency. They are doing all they can to
prevent the completion of the new electoral body, and to
force on a crisis, at any inconvenience to the country.
They are angry even with the Queen, because, as is noto-
rious, her ill health will not permit her to stay in London
to aid them in their strategy. And yet they presume
to charge with " high treason " the Minister who shall
resolve to appeal to the country to defeat this deep-laid
conspiracy.

The Herald sympathises with Mr. Eyre's on his com-
mittal. The hardship of his case will not appear one whit
the lighter after reading over the evidence given in the
course of the inquiry before Mr. Vaughan. For the
fiftieth, or five hundredth time, we have heard the story
of the floggings and executions, of the widely-spread
disaffection which sheaved itself in acts of armed. rebel-
lion, and of the strong-handed measures which were
successfully employed to put it down. Every one will
regret that measures of such severe coercion had to
be used against any of her Majesty's subjects, and
will wish that it had been possible to convince them
of their duty by moral suasion. This, however,
is not a matter of sentiment. The question is not whether
severities were inflicted, and excesses committed, but
whether the first were made imperative and the latter
venial, by that stern necessity which knows no law, and by
that regard for the sales poputi which made it imperative
to visit a few scores with suffering that many thousands
might be saved from massacre. This is the issue which
the Court of. Queen's Bench may in form have to try, but
upon which, in substance, the grand jury of the entire
country has already decisively pronounced. It is idle
to talk of the illegality of imprisonment for no proved
offence, and of the infliction of punishments by informally
constituted tribuuals. The very same things may be and
are said by the hundreds of Fenian suspects who have
been lodged in prison pending the suspension of the
Habeas Corpus Act, and who might come forward to
detail their fancied wrongs with the greatest unction if
they could but get a magistrate to listen to them. The
answer to any such complaint would be that theirliberties
were abridged that good order and constitutional govern-
ment might be preserved.
The Telegraph notes that after many unsuccessful
efforts—some of which failed on technical grounds, and
some from the character of the tribunal before which the
ex-governor was arraigned—the Jamaica CoMmittee have
at length gained a point which enables us to anticipate
a solemn judicial decision on the matters debated
with such acrimony for the last two years.
Although the particular action now brought is
nominally to obtain damages for wrongful imprison-
ment, yet, as Mr. Vaughan clearly pointed out,
opens up the whole question of the legality
or illegality of all the acts committed under Mr. Eyre .s
sanction in Jamaica, Mr. Glifard's denunciations of the
conduct of the present prosecutors may have been very
suitable for a bench of Shropshire magistrates, but it is
really foreign to the subject. No one can seriously be-
hove that Mr. Mill is swayed by a feeling of personal hos-
tility to time ex-governor ; what he and his colleagues ask
is. simply au authoritative exposition of the law with
respect to the duties and powers of those who rule the depen-
dencies of England. Whether the original proclamation of
martial law in Jamaica was legal, and whether, if legal, it
could be considered in force after an amnesty had been de-
clared—these are matters on which every English subject,
of whatever creed or colour, has a personal interest, and it
is for the public benefit that they should be settled by a
distinct judicial utterance. Now that the question is to
come before the Court of Queen's Bench, we shall at last
have the decision of the highest authority ; and the wish
to see the point determined is shared even by those who
havn.2 anunos#y azaipstigirs Lyre. .