The Press.
London, England, 1854-02-11 00:00:00

THE ADMIRALS' LIST.

The Earl of HARI:MITRE called the serious atten-
tion of the Peers, on Tuesday, to the condition of
the Navy List, especially as regarded the flag officers
of her Majesty's navy. Present contingencies, he
remarked, rendered the fullest attainable efficiency
in all ranks, and more particularly in the highest
ranks, of the service, a matter of the highest im-
portance. Examining with this view the active list
of full admirals, containing twenty-two names, he
computed that the youngest among them must be
nearly, if not quite, 75 years of agE. Of the vice
admirals the most juvenile must be 69. Among the
rear-admirals in the active list there were doubtless
many officers still competent by age and vigour to
command a squadron; but there was another list
containing the names of men in all respects as well
qualified for command,and yet rendered unavailable by
the regulations now in force. This was the reserved
list, to which captains were compulsorily removed,
if, on reaching the flag, they had not served for the
prescribed period afloat, in command of a ship of.
war. Detailing the various orders in council under
which the present system was organised, the Earl of
Hardwicke explained its injurious consequences to
the service and gross injustice to individuals :
" Taking 16 officers promiscuously from the reserved
list, and comparing them with 16 taken at random from
the active list, it would be found that the aggregate ages
of the 16 on the reserved list amounted to 1,021 years, and
those of the 16 on the active list amounted to 1,038 years.
Therefore, according to this arrangement, the officers on
the active list were the older officers of the tw•o. When an
officer entered the navy, a moral contract was entered
into with him by the Government, that if he was zealous
in his duties, and conducted himself in an officer•like and
gentlemanly manner, he might expect to have an opportn.
nits of rising to the top of his profession ; and that when
he had gone through the whole ordeal of the service, and
had, perhaps, been connected with Governments and with
Cabinets, and was expecting to attain the highest honour
of his profession, he should not have the door to promotion
shut in his face. Yet this was what the order in council

SATURDAY,

actually did, for, if an officer had not served in a rated ship
for six years in time of peace, he was compelled to make
his bow and retire from the service. Tf every officer had
an opportunity of serving offered to him, and did not choose
to avail himself of it, no injustice would be done to him by
denying him promotion ; but when the character of the
service was such that they could not employ him, and such
opportunities did not occur, then it seemed to him the
last profession in the world in which they ought, when a
vacancy occurred, to say to a man that because lie had not
served the fixed number of years he must retire altogether.
It was absolutely necessary, if they wished to promote the
efficiency of the service, that the list should at length he
revised, and that nothing should be suffered to continue
which created well-founded dissatisfaction in the minds of
the service. Recently, a very peculiar mode had been
adopted to check the advance of officers in the navy.
The deaths of admirals were speculated upon, and, when
an officer was seen to have approached near to the top of
the list, the Government refused to employ him. in order
to prevent him from fulfilling the period of service necet•
vary to qualify him for a flag. The order in council stated
that the reason why an officer was required to have served
six years was, that he should be fitted by previous expe-
rience to take the command. This appeared to be ex-
tremely sound and right; but how was it carried out?
Whilst the regulation precluded a captain from rising to
the rank of an active admiral because he had not served the
whole time, on the other hand a young officer sometimes
received a very magnificent ship, and a broad pennant, with
the command of a squadron, who had perhaps never com-
manded anything but a small frigate in his life, and that,
perhaps, only for a period of two or three years. Thus
they perfectly stultified the alleged grounds of the system
established by the order in council. He might make out
a much stronger case before their lordships if he were to
enter into minute details, and to point out the case of in.
dividnal officers ; but that was a course which, out of deli-
cacy for private feelings, he would not pursue."
The Earl of ABERDEEN admitted that the system
was open to criticism ; that in certain instances it
fail& to answer the purposes for which it was de-
signed, and in others occasioned individual injustice ;
but he defended it on the ground that it had prac-
' tically stood the scrutiny of many successive Boards
of Admiralty since the year 1827, none of whom had
thought groper to alter it :

" After the most full inquiry into the subject, the pre-
sent board had come to the same decision as all preceding
boards had done—viz., that although it was to be regretted
that the rule should have operated any hardship upon
individual and meritorious officers, yet upon the whole it
was the most just and most advantageous regulation that
could be devised."

The subject (which had been introduced as a
formal motion for a committee of inquiry) dropped,
after some remarks by Lord Colchester and the Earls
of Ellenborough and Waldegrave.

FEBRUARY 11, 1654,

her successors all treason!
.and traitorous conspiracies
which may be formed against her and them ; and I do
faithfully promise to maintain, support, and defend to the
utmost of my power the succession to the crown, which
succession is established by an act intituled 'An Act for
the further regulation of the crown, and the better security
of the rights and privileges of the subject,' as it stands
limited to the heirs of the ncesSohia; and Ido
hereby abjure allegiance to any others personp claiming a
right to the crown ; and 1 do declare that no foreign
prince or potentate hath or ought to
have any temporal or
civil jurisdiction, directly or indirectly, in this kingdom.
So help me God."
The noble lord then challenged attention to two
points. First, whether this oath should be adminis-
tered to Roman Catholic members in lieu of the one
enacted by the Relief Bill; and secondly, as to the
omission of the words, "on the true faith of' a
Christian." Upon the first head he urged an affir-
mative conclusion. The Roman Catholic oath was
perpared as a safeguard against dangers which were
altogether illusory, and was accepted by the Roman
Catholics themselves in the light of a supererogatory
form, binding them merely to what they would have
performed without it. He urged also that the intro
duction of religious opinions into a parliamentary
oath was absolutely injurious—entangling the con
sciences of some, while it availed nothing to secure I
the faith of others. The words "on the true faith
of a Christian" he had omitted in his suggested
form. They were originally introduced to guard
against Jesuits, but, by a casual operation, as Lord
Lyndhurst had remarked, deprived other persons of
their rights. At present their sole effect was to pre-
vent Jews from sitting in Parliament. If the Legis-
lature really desired such a prohibition, let them
formally insist upon the introduction of the sentence,
and thus express their intention in an unmistakable
manner. But if they sought to arrive at the same
result in a less direct manner, by rejecting his pro-
posal and retaining the parliamentary oaths as they
now stood, then, he contended, another grave ques
tion would be opened—namely, whether the House
of Commons did not possess as much power over the
oaths of its members as a judge on the bench had
over the forma to be prescribed to the witnesses in
hii court.
The resolution having been moved, Sir F. THEM-
GER postponed offering any opposition at that early
stage, wishing the house to have the bill fairly before
them, with time to consider it. He indicated, how-
ever, some of the principles whereon, when the fitting
time came, he should feel it his duty to offer stre-
nuous resistance to the proposal of the noble lord.
He admitted that some portions of the oath of su-
premacy could be dispensed with, but believed that
the times were not such as warranted the oblitera-
tion of the whole. Therefore he objected to any
oath which could be taken alike by Protestants and
Roman Catholics, because from such a form the
acknowledgment of the Queen's supremacy, which
was one of the keystones of the Protestant religion,
must necessarily be effaced. Sir F. Thesiger then
noticed the omission of the words which prevented
the entrance of Jews into Parliament, believing that,
although mentioned last and introduced with some
show of indifference, the change to he thus effected
was the real motive for the whole proposition. Re-
specting the form of oath suggested for their adoption,
he characterised it as containing an attack—he would
not say an insidious attack—on the Established
Church, because it omitted the recognition of the
spiritual and ecclesiastical authority of the Queen,
which was intimately connected with, and was the
keystone of', the Established Church. It would re-
move one of the securities of the Protestant religion,
and would endanger even the Christianity of the
nation, by depriving that house of its Christen cha-
racter.
The resolution was then carried; the house re-
solved itself into committee ; leave was given ; and
the bill brought in. Monday, the 27th inst., was
fixed for the second reading.
THE IRISH MEMBERS AND MINISTERIAL
CORRUPTION.
Articles in the Freeman's Journal and Times re-
peating a charge of "trafficking in places" against
the Irish members were on Tuesday brought under
the notice of the House of Commons by Mr. I. BUTT.
The allegations were first promulgated at a public
dinner in Tuam by Dr. Gray (editor of the Journal)
and a Mr. Kelly. The substantial accusations were
these—that a certain person had bargained with an
Irish representative to pay MK for an appointment
as paid guardian of a union under the poor law;
and that another person unnamed had agreed to
buy the office of stipendiary magistrate for 1,0001.
front another member belonging to the sister island.
By way of additional dishonesty it was stated that in
one case the bargain was struck only five months
.before the paid guardianships were abolished ; and
in the other that, while the candidate for the magis-
tracy paid down 5001. upon the promise of an appoint-
ment, he repudiated the unholy contract, and refused
to disburse the remaining moiety when the promise
was fulfilled. Upon these statements the papers
named, and especially the Times, had commented in