The Ashantee blunder has very nearly turned out the Govern-
ment. On Friday night, too late for our last issue, Sir JollEkn4; moved a resolution amounting to a vote of censure on the Goveite- ! meat for its management of the Ashantee war. Instead, however, of denouncing the war itself, he confined himself to management, shielde,d Governor Pine, whose ambitious folly was the cause of the expedition, and who actually proposed to rai-e 50,000 savages to conduct a British war of conquest, and ended his speech by a most intemperate denunciation of the men who had betrayed Denmark and truckled to Germany, convulsed China and produced anarchy in Japan. The official reply was in fact an apology for the war, which, however, had not produced such loss of life as Sir J. Hay stated, and a promise that it should be ended at once ; but on a division Government only escaped by 233 to 226, a majority of seven. There never was a madder war suggested, or one more carelessly carried on; but the Minister really responsible to Parlia- ment was too ill to conduct it, and the catastrophe might have occurred to any Government ruling territories so vast as those of Great Britain. The near defeat just met the case,—no punishment, but the severest censure.
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