hat abundant wrath and indignation will on
this occasion be poured out upon them. Nor will they complain if so
it should be; but a partial consolation may be found on reflecting
that neither aggressive policy, nor military disaster, nor any gross
error in the application of means to ends, has marked this series of
difficult proceedings, which, indeed, have greatly redounded to the
honour of your Majesty's forces of all ranks and arms. In these
remarks, which Mr. Gladstone submits with his humble devotion, he has
taken it for granted that Khartoum has fallen through the exhaustion
of its means of defence. But your Majesty may observe from the
telegram that this is uncertain. Both the correspondent's account and
that of Major Wortley refer to the delivery of the town by treachery,
a contingency which on some previous occasions General Gordon has
treated as far from improbable; and which, if the notice existed, was
likely to operate quite independently of the particular time at which
a relieving force might arrive. The presence of the enemy in force
would naturally suggest the occasion or perhaps even the apprehension
of the approach of the British army. In pointing to these
considerations, Mr. Gladstone is far from assuming that they are
conclusive upon the whole case; in dealing with which the government
has hardly ever at any of its stages been furnished sufficiently with
those means of judgment which rational men usually require. It may be
that, on a retrospect, many errors will appear to have been committed.
There are many reproaches, from the most opposite quarters, to which
it might be difficult to supply a conclusive answer. Among them, and
perhaps amongst the most difficult, as far as Mr. Gladstone can judge,
would be the reproach of those who might argue that our proper
business was the protection of Egypt, that it never was in military
danger from the Madhi, and that the most prudent course would have
been to provide it with adequate frontier defences, and to assume no
responsibility for the lands beyond the desert."

"Heroes have fought, and warriors bled,
For home, and love, and glory;
Your life and mine will soon be sped,
Then what will be the story?"

--J. RUSHTON.

The agonizing suspense in which our nation had been kept for weeks, was
now at an end, and we learned the worst. The news fell li