SCOTLAND.
Upwards of fifty war-medal officers of the different services entertained the Duke of Richmond at dinner in Edinburgh, on Wednesday, to testify their thankfulness for his services in procuring for regimental officers and men who served in the Peninsula the distinction of a war-medal. Major- General Geddes presided, and Rear-Admiral Montgomerie acted as Vice- Chairman. In the midst of the exchange of complimentary toasts, the Duke of Richmond interposed that of "Lord Raglan and the British Army " ; making it the text not only of some graceful allusions to Lord Raglan but of some remarks on the war.
With the greatest possible pleasure he proposed the health of one with whom he was a boy at Westminster School ; who secomrade he had been on the Staff of the Duke of Wellington and with whom he had ever lived on terms of the deepest friendship. On public grounds, no meeting could be called that would not receive the toast with acclamation. Early in life, Lord Raglan joined the army, and soon became the Military Secretary of Wellington ; went with him through the Peninsula campaigns, and was pre- sent at the crowning victory of Waterloo. He had always shown a clear head and a kind heart ; and had been most properly sent out to the Crimea. The Duke declined to enter on the question whether the army went too late, or whether it should have been sent to the Crimea or not. That was no business of Lord Raglan's, who had been ordered on a particular service ; who had gone on that service; and whose despatches did him more credit than all his career at the Horse Guards. His army, exposed to great hard- ships, lost large numbers in Bulgaria ; and the battalions, decreased in strength, were sent to the Crimea, where they found more difficulties to con- tend with than they anticipated when they left the shores of England. "I again repeat, that I will give no political opinion at all. My views in politics, as is well known' are strongly opposed to the present Government; but I have no politics when the question of supporting the war is concerned. I throw them aside—I fling them away with the scabbard which we have cast from us ; and I say that at the present moment, when the battle for the freedom of the civilized world is to be fought in the Crimean land, I would, if I had the supreme power now, send every native sailor, marine, and soldier, who is Et for foreign service, out to the Black Sea,—with this exception alone, that I should reinforce the fleet in the Pacific. Gentlemen, we cannot aford, as the Duke of Wellington said, to have little wars. Never mind expense; that is a secondary affair. You owe it to the bravery and the heroism and the gallantry of our soldiers who are nowin the Crimea, that they should be reinforced, and that their brigades should be stronger than battalions; and yoe.iowe it to the country at large that they should be strongly rein- forced,:W *jib* ter."
The,,Pukekpoiss d bdtt1Wgallant conduct of the Blue-jackets; corn- men`feeling now existing between the Army and Navy ;
and A., " sgtisf4c "on that the heroic soldiers of France and OUT ed as the new phrase is." To this he added
an interesting testimony to the former relations between the two armies-
" I am not one of those who are surprised at this. There i8 no Peninsula officer here present who will not remember, that when we were opposed to the French troops in the Peninsula, the moment our cross-belts were off, the soldiers of the two armies would meet beside the same rivulet, washing their muskets in the same stream, and sharing with each other their brandy and their biscuits. There always was a feeling of respect on the part of the English towards the French in those wars, which was also felt by the French towards the English. We fought not as savages—(Signsfieane cheers)—and I hope and trust that, in performing the important duty which we owe to the land of our birth, we shall never degrade ourselves into being barbarians; and, if it be true that some of the Russian troops murdered the wounded men, I only hope that no retaliation of their inhumanity will take place. We must look for their punishment to the universal contempt of all mankind."
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