DOUBLE COLONELCIES : LORD LUCA.N'S CASE.

Is certainly is from no disposition to injure the Army that the public has expressed some jealousy of the abuses that have crept an during a long. peace. On the contrary, those are the worst friends of the Army who force attention, just at present, to "claims" for privileges, titular distinctions, and such sinecures as the double oolonelcies. Anxious to possess an army efficient in all ranks, unencumbered by ornamental lumber, the public has condemned offices which exist for the benefit of the individual rather than of the service or of the country. The feeling is, that these titular posts ought not to exist at all ; that the Colonel in command of a regi- ment is sufficient without a Colonel existing only for his own sake, or for the sake of some inscrutable influence that he is sup- posed to cast upon the corps to which he is nominated. If such things exist, their excuse at present can only be in employing them to reward officers for extraordinary service. The Duke of Wellington was supernumerary Colonel of a regiment ; but the country was content to heap every kind of reward, honorary and substantial, upon "the Duke." But why should the Earl of Lucan be placed in the same position towards an English regiment as the Virgin Mary towards a Spanish regiment? An inopportune appointment necessarily attracted attention to the personal donne of the officer. It was a question of military administration that we felt bound to examine, certainly from no personal enmity to Lard Lucan, whom we have had before occasion to notice in a very different sense. We well remember that he set a noble example during the famine in Ireland, when he shared the hard fare of his countrymen, and gave the superfluity to those who wanted it. If we had been told that this coloneloy had been given to him for his services on that field, paradoxical as the reason would have been, we should have felt that it was almost sufficient. Bat in time of war, military posts should be for military services alone; and so ostentatious a selection of the Earl of Lucan, after he hid been challenged in Parliament, cen- sured by his commanding-officer, and not acquitted by the public at large, forbade us to overlook the strange abuse of military pa- tronage. Lord Lamm is still under the stigma of Lord Raglan's despatch; nothing that he has yet said has removed that stigma ; nothing has been officially advanced on behalf of the appoint- ment, to explain away that statement ; and in the correspondence with which Lord Lamm has favoured us we see nothing to satiety us that the view we have taken of the ease was erroneous. The appointment was a surprise to the public as much as to ourselves; and that we do not stand alone is proved by otherjournals. We had no disposition, however, to press the discussion beyond our brief notice last week ; and we should not have done so now, if Lord Lucan had not challenged us. It is for his Lordship's satisfac- tion, therefore, that we take up the subject again. Lord Lucian is mistaken in presuming that our comments were only a com- pendium of a "scurrilous pamphlet": our data were patent to the whole public. We repeated statements which have been made by various authorities, and some of them probably authorities , which even Lord Lucian would not question.

It was necessary to inquire on what grounds the patronage had - been conferred : we sought, therefore, for Lord Luoan's services ; and we found that he was an Ensign in 1816, a Captain in 1818, a Major in 1825, a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1826, a Colonel in 1841, a Major-General in 18.51 ; and these facts Lord Lucan also will find recorded in page 14 of .Harrs Army List for 1855. At page 27 of the same volume he will read his war services : "commanded the Cavalry Division throughout the Eastern campaign of 1854, including the battles of the Alma, Balaklava, (wounded,) Laker- man, and siege of Sebastopol." As examples of the diseipline which Lord Lucan enforced, we

referred to certain orders issued when his division was encamped in Bulgaria in 1854—to the strict rules about sword-knots, the shaving of the beard to the corner of the mouth, the neglect of soap, oil, pipe-clay, blacking, croom, "and everything else," with which his commanding-officers were to supply themselves. These extracts, no doubt, are to be found in pages 12-13 of the pamphlet which he imputes to General Bacon : it is there stated, that " each ; of the ten regiments forming his CLord Lucan's] Division have his orders copied into their respective orderly-books, and of those . which are termed standing orders every officer under his command is expected to be in possession of a copy. It is not surprising, therefore, that they should be known, read, and commented upon, in military circles. Extracts from some of them have already ap- peared in the newspapers, quoted as specimens of absurdity." On such authority we had a right to 'quote them, even from an anony- mous pamphlet. If Lord Lucan will tell us that he did not issue those orders—that they are fabricated—nothing but the produc- tion of the regimental books would make us doubt his word: those books exist, and they would settle the point.

We said that Lord Lucan took credit for moving the cavalry

over the Alma without orders ; and that he thought the movement, though delayed by the upsetting of a gun, was advantageous. Our authority for that was a passage in the appendix to a printed copy of Lord LUCEU1'S Speech in the House of Lords." In page 30, he says-

" This movement, though accidentally delayed by the upsetting of a gun i

in the river, proved most advantageous n its results, as it brought the ca- valry to the front immediately after the Hi4blanders had crowned the heights, gave them the assistance of his guns, which were most effective' and pre. tected them from a large body of cavalry which was hovering in that quar- ter."

Lord Lucan, we said, forgot to add, that the gun was upset be- cause he took the wrong instead of the right road. This is the other statement we derived from the pamphlet ; which is very specific— "The officer in command of the guns which were attached to the cavalry urged Lord Lucan, ill the strongest terms, to advance ; which, after the delay of half an hour, he did ; but, instead of taking the road that lay open before him, he chose a narrow lane, through which the horses could only advance in tangle file, consequent on the upsetting of a gun." -1- (Page 16.)

We said that in: the famous flank march the cavalry was not in

the right place. If Lord Lamm will turn to Major Hamley's Story of the Campaign of Sebastopol, pages 46 and 47, he will find certain passages respecting the march of the artillery of the First Division. The progress of the artillery had been stopped by a troop of horse artillery, halted in the road in the front. "Finding themselves unsupported by cavalry, they had naturally become

alarmed for the safety of their right flank and front, in a spot where artil- lery would be taken at a disadvantage if attacked by skirmishers. . . . . Presently Lord Raglan came riding up, followed by his Staff, and demanded sharply why we had halted; and going to the troop in front, ordered them immediately to proceed, himself leading the way. Aeoordingly, we advanced through the wood about three milea further; when Lord Raglan and his Staff came back in haste, inquiring for the cavalry."

Mr. Woods, in his Campaign in the Crimea, volume i. page 401, says, the artillery advanced, "till Lord Raglan suddenly galloped back and asked hurriedly for the cavalry." In a pamphlet which we have just obtained, entitled "A Vindication of the Earl of Luau from Lord Raglan's Reflections," it is stated, page 23, that Lord Liman did not receive any reproof from Lord Rag-

• "Speech of Major-General the Earl of Lucan. Delivered in the Home of Lords on Monday, March 19, 1855, on his Recall from his command in the Crimea." Pub- lished by Hatchard.

t We should remark, that in the "Rejoinder" of the Cavalry Officer, re- ferred to in Lord Luean's letter to the Spectator—a pamphlet published by Boone of Bond Street—the author repeats his statement.

lan on the occasion, but that "undoubtedly his Lordship said they bad arrived late."

Misconception and disobedience of orders, we said, characterized Lord Lucan's conduct on the 25th October. For the grounds on which we came to that conclusion, we refer to Lord Raglan's de:- spatoh to the Duke of Newcastle dated 16th December 1854; to Lord Lucan's printed Speech ; to .the debate in the House of Lords on the,19th March ; to the works of Hamley, Woods, and others, on the campaign. Lord Raglan says— "I am prepared to declare, that not only did the Lieutenant-General mis- conceive the written instruction sent to him, but that there was nothing in that instruction which called upon him to attack at all hazards Lord Lucan must have read the first order with very little attention ; for he now states that cavalry teas formed to support the infantry, whereas he was told by Brigadier-General Airey that the cavalry was to advance and take ad- vantage of any opportunity to recover the heights, and that they would be supported by infantry,'—not that they were to support the infantry : and so little had he sought to do as he had been directed, that he had no men in advance of his main body, made no attempt to regain the heights, and was so little informed of the position of the enemy, that he asked Captain Nolan, 'where and what he was to attack, as neither enemy nor guns were in sight.' . . . . I wish I could say, my Lord, that, having, decided against his con- viction to make the movement, he did all he could to render it as little peril- ous as possible. This, indeed, is far from being the case, in my judgment. Be was told that the Horse Artillery might accompany the cavalry : he did not 1)1-Mg it Op. Be was informed that the French cavalry was on his left : he did not invite their cooperation. He had the whole of the Heavy Cavalry at his disposal : he mentions having brought up only two regiments in sup- port ; and he omits all those precautions either from want of due considera- tion, or from the supposition that the unseen enemy was not in such great force as he apprehended, notwithstanding that be was warned of it by Lord Cardigan, after the latter had received the order to attack."

For the statement that Lord Raglan said that Lord Lucan had "lost the Light Brigade," see the printed Speech of Lord Lucan, page 11—"In the evening of the action, I saw Lord Raglan ; his first remark to me was, You have lost the Light Brigade."

We spoke of Lord Lucan's language to his superior officers. General Airey was Quartermaster-General ; Lord Lucan a Divi- sional commander. In page 12 of Lord Lucan's Speech will be found the specimen which we quoted—" Now, be careful, General Airey, that no responsibility is placed upon me in this Light Cavalry affair, as I will not bear any." We might have quoted others ; for instance this—General Airey had said, in reference to the charge, "These sort of things will happen in war ; it is nothing to Chillianwallah." "I said," continues his Lordship, "I know nothing about Chillianwallah ; but I tell you, General Airey, that this is a most serious affair ; and, what is more, I tell you that I do not intend to bear the smallest particle of responsibility."

Lord Lucan has called upon us to retrace these statements and give our authorities. We have complied with his desire. We have shown that our paper was not "a compendium of the ma- lice' malignity, and falsehood contained in an anonymous pamph- let called The Cavalry at Balaklava, by a Cavalry Officer," We have shown, at least, that we made no wanton attack upon Lord Lucan. Absolute truth, positive certainty of evidence, may be im- possible even for the judicial bench to attain—journalists certainly can seldom if ever reach either. We have to deal with statements as we find them ; and it is our business only to ascertain those which appear to be confirmed by the best authority, and to use them-in good faith, for an honest purpose. In this case there is a general concurrence of the statements, and official passages which we have quoted appear to establish the charge—which we made, be it remembered, against the Government—that Lord Liman has received a distinction usually appropriated to the highest degree of military merit, while a grave accusation made by his commanding- officer stands on the record unretracted and unexplained. Surely the public were entitled to some explanation of so startling an act of patronage, and surely a journalist is entitled to criticize it. On this; the true question whieh we have raised, Lord Lucan says, that while he regrets our disapproval of his appointment, he is consoled in thinking, "with much confidence," that the Eighth Hussars and the rest of the army in the field will not view it with disfavour; nor does he believe that the home public look unfavour- ably upon him. Let him enjoy that consolation. He mysteriously alludes to three individuals who have conspired against his cha- racter' and whom he likens to "the three tailors of Tooley Street." Who the three individuals are we cannot tell, unless we are to suppose that he refers to General Bacon, Lord Cardigan, and Lord Raglan.'It has been our part only to deal with the statements we find oh both aides: unfortunately, Lord LUOSII is confronted by opponents who exceed him in number. His denials, though strong and sweeping, only in some instances specific, are mostly negative, without positive statement of the facts as they occurred; and they are not sustained by such evidence as he calls for on the other side. The statements of his opponents are more specific and distinct.. If he should advance statements equally positive and distinct, his reply would certainly engage our attention. We have not waited for those _qualities to publish his correspondence, in another page.

Lord Lucan asks what" redress" we propose to offer for the great " wrong " we have done him ; holding out a threat that otherwise he will appeal for protection to a jury of his country- men. Since we are quite unconscious of having done Lord Lucan any "wrong," it is not in our power to afford him any "redress." We lave only, in judging a public act of the government, re- peated statements which have been long before the world, and which are not answered in the replies to which Lord Lucan has referred us. - It is strange, however, that Lord Lucan should seek redress where it cannot be given ; for even a jury's verdict

would not affect his position. His redrees would consist in an explicit declaration' by a competent authority, reversing the judg- ment of Lord Raglan. Sir Charles Napier, who lay under much less specific disapproval, was offered an honorary distinction ; but he refused to accept -what he considered the compromise of an un- retracted censure. With such records as Lord Raglan's despatch still uncancelled, it was inevitable that the public should be DU- prised and offended at the appointment of the new Colonel to the Eighth Hussars; but if the statements were untrue and unjust, it would, we should have thought, have been the course of a person of Lord Lucan's position in military and social rank, to obtain a reversal of those official statemmiti from the responsible parties, before accepting an honorary appointment.