The Express.
London, England, 1867-03-15 00:00:00

HIGH WATHI AT LONDON HILIDGZ.
_ .. .__ __

Tins DAY 9b. us.
Tobioazow—Morning, 101. tnnt Afternoon, lln. 12.ra.

LONDON, FRIDAY, MARCH 15.

M. LE Duc DE PERSIGNY would have been
doubly scandalised last evening if he had found
himself sitting by the side of the SECRETARY for
WAR, under the gallery of the House of Commons,
during the skirmish that preceded the motion for
going into Committee of Supply on the Navy
Estimates. Accustomed to the presence of
Ministers in the Chamber, not as Ministers, nor
even as members, but as mere speaking delegates
of the Chief of the State, to whom alone
they are responsible, he would have been
shocked to find a Secretary of State—who was
the First Lord of the Admiralty a fortnight ago,
and is now Secretary for War—sitting as a spec-
tator and auditor only of a discussion of
Estimates which had been prepared under
his immediate authority, and on which he
was most directly qualified to furnish the fullest
explanations to the House--sitting in a strict
sense out of the House instead of on the Treasury
Bench, albeit actually a member of the House at
the time, and only prevented from taking his seat
from some accidental delay in his " return." This
would have appeared a gross instance of the insane
respect for legality peculiar to the parlia-
mentary system, to the eminent doctrinaire sup-
porter and expounder of a system of government
nearly sixteen years old, which is the creator of
its own traditions and precedents, and which
makes laws of its own revolutionary decrees. But
the Imperial Duke would have been still more
scandalised to hear a statesman like Mr. GLAD-
STONE objecting to any vote being taken for the
Navy Estimates in the absence of the Minister (a
few yards off) under whose responsibility they
were prepared, and of the Minister under whose
responsibility they would have to be carried out.
Probably the Duc DE PERSIGNY would seek an
excuse for this moat objectionable interference
with the liberty of the Executive, in the melan-
choly fact that Mr. Grancross is one of those
orators to whom in • parliamentary system a
prodigious infatuation hands over all the forces of
the State. Happily or unhappily, however,
English statesmen have no fear of French sena-
torial criticism, and do what soemeth right to their
own darkened understandings. So by mutual con-
cession and common consent, the SECRETARY of
the ADMIRALTY, whose unassuming dignity and
respectful firmness were beyond all praise, was
permitted and even requested to persevere with his
statement, and the conspicuous ability with which
he discharged a most laborious duty, under-
taken, as he modestly pleaded, at three
days' notice, received, as it deserved,
the amplest acknowledgments and congratu-
lations from both sides of the House. The
Sr.eacrativ's statement was confined to a clear,
precise, and circumstantial account of the work in
progress in the dockyards, the ships building or
proposed to be built, the condition of the personnel
of the fleet, and a detailed explanation of the sum
demanded in each vote. Whenever he approached
a question of policy, such as the wisdom or neces-
sity of maintaining large squadrons of small ships
on every coast, and more particularly the West
African squadron, Lord HENRY LENNOX, without
altogether concealing his own personal opinion,
ingenuously declined to magnify his office,
and bowing to the discretion of his superiors
simply submitted the case to the Committee. If
we may judge from the significant words that fell
from Mr. GLADSTONE later in the evening, the
SECRETARY'S hinted doubt as to the prudence or
utility of maintaining these scattered squadrons
will not have been thrown away on his audience.
it will be taken up again at a future and
early opportunity, and perhaps embodied in a
separate and substantive motion. For as Mr.
GLADSTONE, in the capacity of Finance Minister,
observed on a former occasion, Estimates are
policy ; and as he remarked last evening, the
vote for building a large number of gunboats,
and the number of men, some of whom were re-
quired to constitute the crews of these vessels,
would be directly affected by the settlement of
the larger question of scattering all over the world
squadrons for the most part composed of ships
" which so far from being a source of security
" would themselves require to be defended, or
" would have to run away at the first outbreak of
" war or threatening of danger." The conti-
nuance of the West African squadron for the pre-
vention of the slave trade—one of Lord PALMER-
STON'S hobbies—has been usually defended on
the ground of humanity, and partly on the ground