The Press. — London, England, 1853-05-28 00:00:00

P. 1.1 MAY 28, 1853 and labour in converting the bloeks of foreign marble into the broad leaves. which are again wrought for all domestic purposes. But now the three- shilling tint y on f o reign marble slabs is to cease. And the result will be that inasmuch KS the stone can be saWII by water power at the quarries, and transported cheaper in slabs than in blcks. the suppl y eren the raw material is likely to cease altogether, and England will henceforth import only the manu factured article. Again the public may, per haps. gain somewhat in the cheapness of their fixture supply ; but meanwhile what is to com pensate the marble manufacturers of Engla nd for their useless machinery, their idle estab lishments, and st randed industry? THE DOCKYARD COMMITTEE REPORT. Utirn. the whole of the evidence in this par tisan inquiry is officially published, we are not (as we stated in our last number) in a po sition to do justice to the labours of the inqui sitors, and we must leave for a while their judicial farce in the hands of its party managers and its elagneues of the press. It will not be long before we obtain au o pportunity of dis posing, of our aceumulated arrears in this behalf. The inquiry has wider bearings than those assigned to it by premature malice in the guise of precocious virtue; and while we hope, in due course, to estimate these impartially, we can, at the same time, do justice to the merits of its conductors and critics. For the present we content ourselves with the hum bler duty of analysing the Report and dis posing of its principal statements. The Report itself was not only presented but read in the House on Monday last—an unusual occurrence, which we owe to the zeal of Sir G. PErucia. for the public service, a zeal which has bespoken its reward in due season The Report, commences with what professes to be a res u me of Lord AUCKLANDS circular of dockyard regulations, whereby three names for promotion are submitted to the Superinten dent. When he has redueed them to two, tO quote the words of the report, " the report of the Superintendent, containing his opinion of the merits of the candidates, with the original documents annexed, is then to be forwarded to the Admiralty, and the Lords of the Admiralty announce their intention to be guided by these reports in the seleetion of one front the two names submitted to till the vacancy." This professes to be a fair state meta, of, if not an actual quotation from, Lord AUCKLAND'S regulations. Let us now tarn to the regulations themselves. These are the words:—" The Superintendent having reduced the list of candidates to two, by omitting the one he thinks least qualified, one of the names thus sent up be appointed by board order to fill the vacant. y." Why could not the Report have stated this? A discretion is hcreby given to the Admiralty, and in the exer cise of that discretion either name may be taken. Mr. STAFFORD'S offence is, not that he passed over both names, but that in one case out of six or eight, or even ten, he chose the second name, as we believe Mr. Wmin had done before him, and us every Admiralty under the Auckland regulations had a perfect right to do. We have quoted the very words themselves of of the regulations —why did not the committee in their Report do the same? The committee states that, during the early part of the year 1849, as well as some years previous, a practice had pre vailed of transmitting to the Surveyor of the Navy the reports and reeommendations from the Dockyard Superintendents. We must wait for the evidence on this subject. All we know at present is, that such a 'statement is in direct contradiction to the declaration made in the House of Commons on the 19th by Mr. Cum, THE PRESS. who had himself been Secretary to the Admi ralty for five years, who said " that it always " was the practice for the Superintendents of the Dockyards to make their report s. not to " the Surveyor of the Navy, as was established by the circular of INV, but to the Secretary "of the Admiralty He was, therefore, anti •• tied to give to the statement of Sir B. WALKER '• the most unqualified contr adiction.' We next come to the words attributed to Mr. STAFFORD by Sir BALDWIN WALKER, and denied by Mr. STAFFORD himself. Admiral PARKER, who made no mention of these in his own e vidence, was asserted by Sir BALDWIN WALKER to have heard them, and Admiral Berkeley, who was not present when the words were alleged to have been spoken, was intro duced to confirm this assertion. To most people the obvious plan would have been to weal Admiral PARKER himself —according to the rule of courts of law, that second-hand evi dence is not admissible while direct evi dence is procurable ; but, as Admiral PARKER had already contradicted Sir BALDWIN WALKER on another important subject at his first examination, the connnittee probably took the more prudent course hi not recalling him. But here we may properly wait for the evidence. In all the reports of the Duke Or NORTHUMIIER LASIis evidence the , appointment of Admiral PARKER Was said to be essenti ally non-political , yet, here, wehavo mum, who had been Super intendent of a Dockyard, hearing an announce ment made by the Secretary to the Admiralty that the leathers of his Government in both Houses had determined un making the wheat , navy subservient to political purposes, and he not only does not resign or bring the m uter before the board, or resist the circular of the 26th of April ; but he simply does nothing. We are therefore reduced to the dilemma of concluding that no such lan guage was uttered, or that Admiral PARKER, in signal dereliction of his duty, took the com promising responsibility of vassing it over in silence. The Ridgway ease has been already debated in the House of Commons. RIDGWAY was twit in turn for promotion, and was accord ingly promoted on probation, not even for six months, us is usual, but for no specified time ; and Captain RICHARDS was told it would be his duty to report of RtDuwAT when found inefficient. Did Captain RICHARDS report at the end of one month, or three, or six? No; but, when rumours reached Chat ham of the appointment of a committee, then the incompetency of poor RIDGWAY became obvious at. once. " Thum wretelici hang that jurymen may dine." We may wait meanwhile to see by the evidence, not whether Sir I'lm :ow SMITH applied in behalf of RIDOWAY, but whether 114 l OWAY wars either stated to have applied, or did apply himself, to Sir FREDERIC SMITH. The committee repeatedly asked Mr. STAF FORD to state any facts which had made him desirous of cancelling the circular of 1 8 19, but Mr. STAFFORD could not give facts without names ; and names, under the existing system of dockyard discipline, could wit be given without injury to those who bad trusted him, and with whom he had acted confidentially. Mr. STAFFORD here laboured under the disad vantage of respect for that code which has still some cogency with gentlemen, anti may naturally have considered that the number of base betrayals of confidence and cowardly evasi4 MS 4if reSIIOUSiI Alit y bel, ore the eommittee was amply sufficient without contribution from him. 75 With regard to the letter of resignation, as Mr. STAFFORD is said to be " in no way remain sible," we presume whatever responsibility exists is to be borne by AdDural PARKER. Sir BALDWIN WALKER states confidently that the Duke is in error, &e. ; but then, as it seems to us, Sir Miami% WALKER eontratlicts everybody except Mr. WALTER EDEN. The Letter of the 10th of May can only be judged of when tile evidenee appears. The committee do not allude to the tinaneial part of it, but we cannot doubt for a moment that Sir BALDWIN WALKER has fully explained it to them —though we have not yet met with any other person who could pretend to a like facility. " Apprehension," -humiliation," " dismay," and " disgust" are the terms in which several officers are reported to have observed upon the course of promotion in the doiskyards during last sunmier ; and " one officer of high stand ing in the navy. and supreme at the Admi ralty, hail power to cheek these proceedings." What proceedings, we ask? If, when the evidence is printed, it should appear that the regulatimis of lt.l-17 were nut infringed—that the question of first entries was maintained, as in justice it ought to be— that the establishments were not inereased beyond the legitimate requirements of the serviee—and that the wages vote was never in the slightest danger of being exeeeded—then nothing remains of these two paragraphs but a piece of fine writing on the part of a civilian committee, and some highly nautieal terms on the part of the Superintendents, and of out' iiTemoveable Sail friend, Admiral PARKER, whose eomments, we conceive, were not in tended to apply when, they would tell with most point—to the ease Of the FIRMIRAND. Mr. Groom.: Carsemp, was not named through political influenee ; fur, as the report itself stated, he made all application IlilllSelf in the spring of itce.t, which was forwarded officially, and he therefore had a right to name the subs .feet afterwards as he did. Every reason was in his favour: his great abilities, his long ser vice, his excellent character, his high testimo nials ; when his was appointed, the Board of Admiralty were in utter ignorance of any com munication whatever having been made to Mr. WELLS. True it is that Mr. Comm.'. presumed to entertain political opinions at variance with those of Admiral STIIII.INo. Mr. Collo:Ws fate, therefore, will be a salutary warning, in a Liberal or, rather, a Coalition se nse, t o eve ry i employe at Chatham or e lsewhere. In regard to being accompanied by candi dates a t Chatham, Deptfrd, and BOVOllllort, turd in regard to having invited six political gentlemen to dine at the latter place, Mr. STAFFORD has admitted that his conduct may have been imprudent in comng political partisans, in any proportion, with the guests whom he may have been expected to invite officially, although no political objects were promoted thereby, and no political topies were discussed upon the occasion. We hope Mr. T UFNEI.I. Was equally contrite about " the pew," the time and place appearing to us to render such contrition necessary. As far as we have gone, then, we have ex. pressed our opinion upon all the statements of the Committee's ItepOrt. It is another question, which we shall hereafter return to, why those statements 11113 ItollfillVll to the 'pro ceedings of the late Hoard of Admiralty, and have so eonveniently stopped short of !malted ings more instrnetive and revelations more pi quant. Why would they iiiii receive the whole itf Mr. Beer'x evidence ! As the ChANcm.i.oh of the EXCHEQUER relllarked on Monday night, in answer to Colonel DuNxE,—" Of course, if in " a matter I,t ' figures all the items on one side " were struck out, you might come to any " result you desired." The Committee, MI doubt, have roue to the result they desired, as far as their combined courage and inelinutipsio would permit ; and they have done so by s similar process to that of Colonel DUNNK, with out the benefit of a similar criticism from tie t i 1 t 4 ii ,