The Sun. — 1857-05-13 (London, England)

THE NAPIERS.  TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.  Sir,--In The Times of this morning I observe a letter from Sir William Napier, stating that Sir  James Outram published in 1844. a letter full of the most shameless calumnies and insinuations against Sir C. Napier, " telling the soldiers (78th Highlanders), that the General had moved them through pestilent marshes, and wilfully as well as ignorantly caused the frightful calamity that had befallen them. Mr. Buist, of the Bombay Times, reporting the accusation, actually denounced Sir Charles Napier as ' the murderer of the soldiers.' " Sir James Outram, at the date referred to, was political agent at Mundlassis, in the Indore dominions. My conviction is, that he never published any letter whatever on the subject. I am certain he never employed any words in any way resembling those assigned to him. It is with the accusation against myself alone that lam concerned. I utterly deny the truth of the charge brought against me, and challenge Sir William Napier to produce the pas4ao-e he professes to quote. The Highlanders left Kurrachee for Sukkur in August or September, 1844, at a period of the year when Sir Caries apier confesses that Scinde is pre-eminently sickly froth the subsidence  of the inund.ation. Medical opinion, still to be  found on record in the public archives, was strongly opposed to the movement at that season. Sickness made its appearance before the troops reached Hyderabad, and became frightful on their arrival at Sukkur. I saw the regiment leave Bombay, under Colonel Twopenny, just before a visitor in my house, nearly 1,100 strong, and saw it return 18 months afterwards reduced to less than 400. 1 stated these facts on the authority of the official records then in Sir C. Napier's hands, and still in existence. When, en the 27th of January, 1851, Sir C. Napier, in addressing the 78th on his laud- ' ing at Bombay, accused me of the conduct now imputed to me, and asserted that sickness had first made its appearance in the regiment in the hospital at Sukkur iu November, 1844, I met him from the regimental books, which showed that it had broken out at Hyderabad in October, and challenged him to produce the words he had so unwarrant ably put in my mouth. The answer was the ordinary one—a " broomstick" or a court of law. I was at the time on the spot, ready to meet him or his friends in any way they desired. Of course, I was never called upon. lam equally on the spot now, equally ready to meet all reponsibilities, equally convinced of full immunity from danger in any of ite forms.  The present charges are quite as true as are about a hundred others in Sir William Napier's book against nee—they are not one whit more so. Two of them may ba given as a sample of the whole. lie asserts that, in 1844, I was "in Paris writing to the French press"—knowing that, from 184 G till 1845, I had never for an hour been out of  India. He charges me with having stolen at Bombay a copy of "The Conquest of Scinde'' in July, Ib4s—knowing that I had left Bombay it May, and did not'return to it till the following year. Ho adds, that his brother Henry endeavoured to prevent my admission to the Royal Society in 1846 on the imputation of a felony he knew I could not have committed, as I was then refuting, under my own name through the Loudon press, Sir William's slanders—Sir Willi on quoting portions of my letter of that date in one of his publications. On looking over Sir William Napier 's volurne3, just published, I find that iu the portion relating to his Bombay career, about 800 pages in all, there are on an average from two to three misstatements a page, the majority of them capable of refutation from fficial document?, a very large number of them bearing his brother's signature. Having in February, 1845, convicted Sir William Napier of threaiicore deliberate misstatements knowingly made, in about three times as many pages, my contradictions being established by quotations from official documents, I had of late years given up all idea of noticing his romances, whi lauched at as they are in India, I find in England still command attention.  I have the honour to subscribe myself,