The accounts which continue to come from the Crimea down
to this latest date confirm and indeedenlarge the j uster part of the stric- tures on those who have been the guiding authorities. The Allies had been "before Sebastopol" since the 28th of September, and they are still "before Sebastopol" on the 10th of January. The position has been barely maintained, at immense loss. Landing with some 27,000 men, the British had been reduced far below that number, and are now reported to be raised beyond the original strength ; in like manner, the scale of the French strength has fluctuated, and is rising beyond its first point; and an effective Turkish army is in course of being imported to Eupatoria. The Eng- lish position is better fortified than it was, but we have yet to learn that we have resumed the offensive. Omar Pasha has been in camp with the Allied Generals, to consult, and he is under- stood to be acting with unreserved good-will. Kr. Peto's brigade of road-makers had not yet arrived ; and it is only this week that Government has asked the St. Katherine's Dock Company to lend four hundred men to assist in landing stores and introducing some elements of order into the chaos at Balaklava. - The deficiency in artillery, only now repaired—the want of roads, a primary,re- quirement, not yet begun—and the weakness of aid to land stores, only about to be remedied—form but a few of the multiplied facts which establish the charge of deficient forethought. It is possible that Ministers were drawn on from defending Constantinople, to make a demonstration on the Danube, arid's° to attempt a blow in. the Crimea; urged by political necessities to commit the military mistake of entering upon war before they had sufficient numbers, materiel, or deliberate plans.' There is, however, no evidence that the actual mode of operating was not selected on the clear choice of the directing authorities; and the successive events almost convict them of having successively snatched up and abandoned different plans of attack : the plan of a direct and sudden attack upon Sebastopol from the North, by army and fleet combined, was aban- doned after the Alma, for that flank 'march which was a sudden inspiration, and ended in the defensive position of the intrenched camp and a quasi-siege of Sebastopol, without the means of en: gaging the enemy outside; while the latest events would appear to indicate that a new plan has been adopted, resembling that which some military men would have from the first deemed neees7 sary, in mustering sufficient forces to engage the enemy's
ternal army.
The report that the Russians are coming down in great force by a new road along the strip of land which encloses the Putrid Sea is a tale needing confirmation. The worst of their position for us is, that it is not clearly known. But they are somewhere to the East of Sebastopol and between the Tchernaya and the-Belbek. The report of their having recrossed the Danube into the Dobrud- sells is evidently the exaggerated description of a reconnaissance made in force as far as Babadagh and back again. We have not the means of measuring their strength ; and we have not yet any sufficient indication of the plan contemplated by the Allies to know whether their means insure success so as to place the result within their hands.
