The Press.
London, England, 1857-05-02 00:00:00

And again Admiral Berkeley writes :

We wish you—if no other operations are to be under-
taken this season—to reduce your ships of the line, the
French in proportion, to as many as you deem sufficient
to lick the Russians when joined together from Helsingfors
and Cronstadt —( August 29th.)
_ _

John Bull is getting uproarious because nobody is killed
and wounded. Meetings are being called to condemn the
Government, because Cronstadt and Sebastopol have not
been captured.—( September sth.)
I suppose we may now as well begin sending for the
ships home ; but we wait for the positive assurance that
nothing more is to be attempted.—( September sth.)
We shall have blue-books and parliamentary questions
without end. The attacks foiling against you, will be
lerelkd at the Board, or failing against the Board trill be
lerelkd at you. The papers yesterday state that the French
fleet has wholly deserted you, thus diminishing your force
to thirteen ships of the line and three blockships. .S'huuld
the Russians pluck up spirit to come ont, the odds, numeri-
cally, are too great to be pleasant; nevertheless I firmly
believe you would give a good account of them. You have
not looked well at the gun•vessels—they can fire both
guns. Next year, if you have to bombard stone walls, I
think you will find them useful.—( September 24th.)
The manner of Sir Charles Wood, and his
offensively curt mode of dealing with indivi-
duals, has repeatedly been censured. The
following note was well calculated to gall a
man like Sir Chailes Napier :

Admiralty, July 4th, 18b1.
Dear Sir,—l have recommended to her Majesty to pro-
mote you to the highest class of the Bath, G.C.8., and
her Majesty has been graciously pleased to approve of
this recommendation.—l have the honour to be, dear sir,
yours faithfully, CHatizs Woon.

Vice• Admiral Sir Charles Napier, K.C.B.
That brief note is awkwardly penned. If not
meant to offend, it should have been addressed
"Deer Admiral Napier," or "Dear Admiral,"
or " Dear Sir Charles," but the use of the
word " Sir" in the circumstances of the case
was well calculated to ruffle the admiral.
The mixture of the official and the familiar is
very clumsy. " I have the honour to be,
" yours faithfully" is a mode of concluding a
letter not warranted by custom. It contrasts
badly with an equally briet' but properly-
phrased note from the Earl of Aberdeen :

Downing-street, February 2nd, 1855.

Dear Sir Charles,—As the Queen has accepted my re-
signation, as well as that of all my colleagues, no further
meeting of the Cabinet will take place. T am therefore
unable to comply with yonr request to lay your statement
before them.—l am, dear Sir Charles, very truly yours,
ABERDEEN.

Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Napier.
The best penned letter in the volume is
the long one from the Prime Minister :

91. Piccadilly, December Ist, NM.

•
My dear Sir Charles,—l can assure you, with the greatest
truth, that the various discussions which have taken place
out of Parliament and in Parliament between you and
the Board of Admiralty, in regard to the naval opera-
tions in the Baltic while you commanded in that sea,
have been witnessed by me with very great pain.
have deeply regretted those discussions both from my
personal regard for you, and from the interest which I take
in the good of the public service.
But I should not be dealing candidly and frankly with
you if I were not to say, on this occasion, that if those
discussions had been attended with circumstances un-
pleasant to your personal feelings, you have for this
yourself to blame. It was you who first began the con•
troversy, by what I must be allowed to characterise as a
very unseemly and improper attack, made by you, on a
public occasion, on Sir James Graham, then First Lord
of the Admiralty.
You hare often complained that you have been, without
jest foundation, accused of want of discretion. I have
always maintained that on all occasions on which you have
been professionally employed, in executing instructions
on matters connected with the department of the Govern-
ment which was under my charge, I had full reason to be
entisfloct with ,our judgment and discretion, 1 wish II

MAY 2, 1857.

Could say u much for your conduct on shore, and when
o u have been acting upon your own impulse:. But lam
bound to sav that, estimating highly, as I do, the great
services which professionally you have performed, and
respecting, as I do, the noble qualities of which, in your
professional career, you have given such frequent proofs,
I have seen, with sincere grief, in your conduct on shore,
things which sour best friends (and I claim to be one of
that number)could not witness without deep regret.
I do not wish however to rake up the past ; my present
purpose is to answer your application for a public investi-
gation of your conduct in nut having attacked Cronstadt.
That application being founded upon observations which
have lately been made on that subject at some public
meetings.
My answer is plain and simple : I think no such in-
vestigation necessary, because I considet your conduct in
refraining from attacking Cronstadt to have been judicious
and proper, and to h.tve been founded upon a correct
sense of -your public duty in the very responsible situation
in which you were placed as Commander•in•Chief d the
Baltic fleet.

The fleet which you commanded in the Baltic was a
very fine fleet, and the Board of Admiralty of the day
deserve great praise for having equipped and sent to sea
iu so short a time so powerful an armanent. That fleet
was perfectly sufficient—especially when reinforced by the
French squadron—to have enabled you to give a good
account of the Russian fleet if it had come out to give you
battle. But the fleet under your command was not suffi•
cient for the double purpose of attacking the stone
batteries of Cronstadt and of afterwards encountering with
success the Russian fleet.

If you had attacked the batteries of Cronstadt, whatever
the result ofyour attack might have been as to the Russian
batteries, your ships must have been seriously damaged,
and your fleet, after such an action with the batteries,
would probiedy not hove been in a condition successfully
to encounter the Russian fleet. The consequence of such
a state of things might have been a naval disaster, or the
temporary ascendancy of the Russian fleet not only in
the Baltic but in the North Sea and on the coasts of
England.
I consider, therefore, that in the then existing state of
things you acted with sound judgment in refraining from
attacking the batteries of Cronstadt with the fleet under
your command, and that in pursuing that course yon best
performed the important and very responsible duty which
you had undertaken.
This is my opinion now; this was my opinion at the
time ; and I think you would find it expressed in a private
letter which I wrote to yon while you were still in com-
mand in the Baltic And this is the opinion which I have
invariably expressed to all with whom I have at any time
communicated upon this subject.—Aly dear Sir Charles,
yours sincerely, PAUrERSTOX.
Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Napier.

It was only after repeated applications that
Sir C. Napier was able to extract the foregoing
letter from its adroit writer; but between its
tone and that of the noble viscount's speech
at the Reform Club there is a wide difference.