The Express.
London, England, 1859-11-17 00:00:00

cONDON. THURSDAY. NOV. 17.

C 11.1 a free and powerful nation consider its means
of defence without striking the war-gong or sound-
ing the alarnm-bell in the ears of all the truculent
and timorous old women of Europe ? The tom-tam
style of terrifying a people into the persuasion of its
invincibility is not, perhaps, barbarian in the
Chinese sense, but it is scarcely civilised in the
European acceptation ; and it has the disadvantage
of majuring the dangers it professes to avert.
Is it allowable to say a few words in season on
such a subject as the Volunteer Corps, or manning
the Navy, without b►wling through a ferocious mask
like the ogre in a pantomime, or even without the
obliouto formula of " Fee, fi, fo, lam " ? Let us en-
deavour, for once in a way, to make • few remarks
on • question of supreme national importance with-
out gnashing our teeth at any foreign power. The
example may be useful over the water, if not
nearer home.

M. MICHEL CHEVALIER, who, for all his friendly
disposition towards nigland, has good a Frenchman
as any corporal in the Zonate., has lately had the
moral courage to confess that to an insular and own-
inertial power the liberty of the seas is a question of
kfe or death. " Liberty of the seas" is at once the
most liberal and the most large expression for
what is sometimes called " superiority," and some-
times even "supremacy." For as this eminent
economist generously and disinterestedly explains,
• England would be seriously affected in the very
" conditions of her existence on the day that any
" possible coalition of maritime powers should be able
." to oppose to her fleets superior or even equal to
" hers." It is in pursuance of this absolute law of self-
preservation that the virtual sovereignty of the sees,
In the English sense, means nothing more than that
freedom of the sees which is indispensable to the life
of as illimitable commerce. That an insular

end commercial nation should be strong enough to
patrol with a constant and universal vigilance the
groat ►ighway of the ocean is in truth a guarantee
of peace sad security to all the world ; and the
weeder is-meiot that at this time of day we
should be taking measures to Mai n tai n oar navy at
the highest point of eftleisney, but that any English

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administration should have been found at any time
willing to cut otf thew:wee of life itself for the sake
of redwing the coat of living. This is the sum and
out:mance of our gaud economy. It is the story
of a seiner who slams himself to the point of death,
sod thee rains himself in doctors' bills to keep body
sad seal together. We have hese paying our
doctors' hills for a good agcy years, and in the
desperate harry to get well we have opened oat
TWOS pretty freely to the experiments of quacks.
Now that we are tolerably convalescent, we take
kindly the final tonics because we feel the good they
do Ise, which is more than could be said of some of
the earlier drastic.. The reserve forte of Royal
Naval Volunteers u, we trust and believe, a true
tome, and eoe that will suit our constitution admi-
rably. The Notice just lamed by the Registrar-
General of Seamen, with the approval of the Mmi-
raltj and the Board of Trade, brings into operatioo
next New Year'rday the Aet passed at the close of
last session to carry out ones of the recommendstiose

of the Royal Commission. The present need of the
Navy is a reserve of voleateer seamen, thoroughly
trained and instantly available, yet not continuously
employed. This reserve is quite independent of the
farce actually afloat, of the Coast Volunteers, and the
Coast Guard. It is designed to do away with tlw
possibility of a resort to compulsory service, to provide
for emergencies, and by a scheme sufficiently stringent
and sufficiently elastic, to promote the interests
of the great body of shipowners and seamen, and
to assist and encourage all who are concerned
in the prosperity of our mercantile manor
To make the mercantile marine subsidiary to the
Naval Service, rather than its rival, is to solve the
question of manning our fleets; and the manner ie
which it is now proposed to carry out the Royal
Naval Volunteer Reserve Bill appears to contem.
plate, and to be likely to effect, this most desirable
. .

. -
reooseiliatioa of sourest' that should oe%ce be di.

joined. We take it for granted that it would
be undesirable in point of expense, if not practically

oarless, to keep up a war navy in time of pease.
itherwise, se we said some time ago, it would no doubt
be a simple plan enough to pay es many men-or- wee*.
men as we want at a higher rate of wages than they

could pt in any other service; and great as this
expenditure would be, it would still be the lent quer
tionable item in the estimates. Bat this is not
the question. What we have to achieve is the
mean, of sending ships to sea thoroughly manned
with trained crews of seamen-gunners in sudden

emergencies. Seamen-gunners—for we want both
combined—are not to be got together in a day nor
trained at a few weeks' notice. The demand, then, is
for a ready and disposable force of able seamen
trained to the use of gaps and small arras, not always
on service, but always ready to be called ont in case
of instant need.

According to the regulations, the Royal Naval
Volunteers will be permitted to pursue their ordi-
nary avocations as seafaring men without hindrance,
subject to 28 days drill in every yew, at their

own seavenimee as to time and piens. They
mut be at beam In England owe is seek halflear,
bat this will be no difficulty to the numerous
elm at manses employed in the touting trade,
and in the service of the great 'steam com-
panies, nor eves to the seamen employed in
the Australian gold trade ; and the Admiralty re-
serves the right to give leave for longer voyages.
T. annual payment or " retainer " of 61. a
year h no insignificant addition to the average
anneal earnings of *meowing men—certainly not lam
than a fourth. Sixty is the age fixed foe a retiring
passion of 121. • year; but it is spscially added, " If
not previously incapacitated ;" so that bard Beryl"
end sot age merely, secures • recompense; and in as
ram the men will get the pension at the time they
Loos the sea—in other words, at the time they west
L The Government binds itself to keep volunteers
es
Lag es they are fit ; but the men may be off
thek bargain if they get promotion in the service, or
if they pay back the retainers they have received,
or eves without any condition at the expiration of
every live years. The men are allowed to set mid' • a
portion of the pennies u • remainder to their wives.
Their interest in any Friendly or Benefit &misty
remain. unaffected. Their travelling expenses to the
place of drill are paid. Daring drill they are paid,
clothed, and victualled in all respects le seamen of the
duet, and if called out on actual service they rank
as

seamen se to pay, treatment,
promotion, prize-tummy, and pewits in miss of
wounds, and eligibility to Coast Heard Service, and
to Greenwich Hospital. In time of perm a volunteer
may never be called upon to servo, yet his twenty.
eight days will secure him all the advantages of
&CULI service afloat. He will only be called upon
in sudden emergencies ; he may then in the first
instance be railed out for three years ; if in time of
war, he may have to serve two years longer, but with
2d. a day additional pay. To attain a pension,
fifteen years' service for a man above thirty are
required, and twenty for a man under thirty; bat
actual service afloat will count double time. The
generous spirit of these regulations, the easy obliga-
tions, and the solid advantages which they present,
moot, we think, fail to re►ch the heart and the
eaderstanding of that very child-like, sensitive,
and self-willed being, the Bntish sailor. Their
wisdom will be justified by success ; and if
the scheme obtains the sumss which it assuredly
downs, it will, we are convinced, be foundeconomical
se a matter of defence, it will remove the last possi-
bility of impressment, it will break down the bar-
nen between the Merchant Service and the Navy, it
will improve the discipline and condition of a large
class of merchant seamen, and will probably in time
introduce into the Merchant Service a knowledge of
gunnery and habits of discipline which will be useful
to both services, and put England in complete poe-
session of all the unequalled resources of an island,
and therefore en essentially maritime power.

There it-need we iasist?—in this Naval Reserve
Bill nothing at which any foreign power has the right
to take umbrage—nothing that justifies • moment's
doubt of oar earnest desire to keep the peace. In-
deed, it is precisely this earnest desire to keep the
peace which commands us to be ready for all emer-
gencies, and to be surprised, as we have been
surprised more than once within the last twenty
years, by clouds in the East and West, or by sudden
claps of thunder in a clear sky. It may be well for

our friends abroad who have enormous armies to
flatter and impatient navies to appease, to be enabled
to wink shrewdly at the well-defended shores and the
well-manned ships of England, and to pat this
and that together. To bolt our doors is not to invite
an attack, nor is a road police an encouragement to
footpads. Besides, naval questions are for England
not merely or chiefly foreign, but rather domestic
questions. We have interests, it is true, to guard
every hour in the Coannel, in the Straits of Gibraltar,
in the Mediterranean, in the North and Booth
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans ; bat it is because we
want leisure and security for reforms at home—be-
cause we are sick of idle fears, of barren threats,
of insolent pretensions—because we are content with

a small and a scattered army, and have no liking for
the splendid apparatus of unlimited monarchy and
military despotism, that we are resolved to remain
invincible at ma.