The Sun.
London, England, 1855-09-07 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1855.

The Baltic season has virtually slipped by, and
Russia need entertain no further apprehensions
respecting the operations of the British fleets.
The northern malefactor has been respited for
nine calendar months, and may now strengthen
his defences, and make all suitable preparations
for the reception of his assailants in 1856. He
has received a salutary lesson as to weak points,
and has learned by experience what it is he must
provide against on the next attack. That he will
profit by that which has been so painfully acquired
seems certain. There is no Sir CHARLES WOOD
at the head of the Russian Admiralty to pooh-
pooh every useful suggestion, and rest contented
if he can carry on matters along the beaten path
in the old jog-trot pace. It is by no means clear
that the amount
,of damage inflicted on the stores
and buildings at Sweaborg will not be mere than
compensated by the valuable information afforded
to the defenders, as to the actual capabilities of
mortar-vessels, gun-boats, and the rocket service,
against which they can make full provision at
their leisure.

The question then naturally arises, Why should
we be contented with an incomplete measure ?
If it was indispensable that something should be
done by the fleet to satisfy the nation, why did
they not undertake an, easier task, which they
could dispose off in workman-like style ? If
Sweaborg was too much for their powers,
why not be contented with Revel, or Abo,
or Riga? A trifling duty properly performed
would have been far better than a more import-
ant one left unfinished. Last year we had Bo-
marsund. It might not have been all that was
expected by the nation, but such as it was the
work was fully accomplished. It was left in such
a condition that the CZAR • could not repair the
damage during the winter. It no longer remained
" a menace to surrounding nations," or a defence
to Russia. But not so with Sweaborg. By
its bombardmpt the Czar, has suffered

a certain amount of pecuniary damage,
but that is all ! He can, by the simple outlay of
money, not only repair the mischief, but be even
better off than ever—inasmuch, as he has ac-
quired a knowledge of our mode of operations,
against which he can provide when we come pre-
pared with the necessary appliances, which have
been so urgently demanded by the nation for a
considerable time.

The fact is, as truly stated by Sir CHARLES
NAPIER, that "a great opportunity of destroying
Swea,borg has been lost by the imbecility of the
AdMiralty." It is quite clear, from what has
taken place, that if the fire could have been
maintained kit ab few hours longer the remaining
vessels could have completed the work, and have
finally disposed of Sweaborg—and, with it, of
Helsingfore—which would have followed, as a
matter of course, when its protection and defence
was got rid of. But we wanted a few mortar-
vessels Frotn the paucity of boats of that class
at the disposal of the Admiral, too much was
placed on those which he had, and they were
speedily " used up.".. Forty-five hours were all
that they could continue at the extraordinary rate
recoired, and but a few mortars remained avail-
able at the end "of that time. This was the fault
of the,Admiralty, who might and ought to have
proi ided for the failure of these important, arms-.
We agree with Sir C®-fix--those
letter will Ls found in another part. of this-dirs

impression—that spare mortars would not alone
have been sufficient. There should have been
the vessels themselves, ready to take the place of
those placed hors de combat by the rapidity of
their fire. But this additional force was not pro-
vided—nor even the inadequate substitute of
spare mortars. Sir CIIARLES WOOD, the respon-
sible party, was contented to slumber on, in the
vague hope th at the party with whom he was most
closely connected, would be enabled to cobble up
a precarious truce that would have dispensed with
the necessity of exertion on his part.

We believe that it was Mrs. HALL who laid
down the principle that Boards are invariably
" desperate stupid !" The Board of Admiralty
certainly forms no exception to the general rule.
On the contrary, it exceeds all others in obtuse-
ness. This probably arises from the fact that its
head is, generally speaking, perfectly ignorant of
the matters which he is so improvidently allowed
to control. Even were his heart in the right
place, and he himself desirous of doing his best,
it would be a mere matter of chance whether he
might blunder in the right course. He might
possibly do so, but the chances were in favour of
his doing wrong. But how greatly are those
chances increased when the political "Jack of
all trades," the incompent financier whose failure
in the Exchequer was so notorious—the blunder-
ing autocrat of India—was pitchforked into the
situation of First Lord ! If any naval officer held
the position now occupied by Sir CHARLES Woon,
it is almost impossible that he could have neglected
the precautions so obviously required. And the
question for the people to answer is, whether
stolid ignorance and avowed incapacity shall be
admitted as an excuse for shortcomings which
have led to so deplorable a failure, and such
serious damage to the best interests of the United
Kingdom and of the civilised world ? Nor is this
all in the case of the present "First Lord." We fear
that there is something more serious even than
incapacity to be guarded against. We know that
he has been the colleague of Mr. GLADSTONE, of
Sir JAMES GRAHAM, and of Mr. SIDNEY HERBERT
—that he has been the henchman of Lord JOHN
RUSSELL, whose tergiversation has so grievously
damaged his own position, and disappointed the
people of Great Britain. Should the present
Ministry be modified, Sir CHARLES WOOD, like his
great prototype, the celebrated " Vicar of Bray,"
would be sure to retain his position, or at least
to keep a seat in the Cabinet, to which his re-
tarding the operations of the War, and preventing
the real humiliation of the enemy would give
. .
him the best title. Under existing circumstances
there is more than mere " incompetency" to be
guarded against. But even under the most fa-

vourable auspices it would be essential to modify,
or rather to abolish, the Board of Admiralty, and
to obtain some kind of security that the party
nominally responsible, understood something of
the matter which he was expected to control, and
could make provident arrangements to provide for
the exigencies that would probably arise in the
natural course of events.

Formerly it used to be regarded almost as much
high treason to wish well to the enemies of the
country, as to entertain the thought of the death
of the SOVEREIGN. It would seem to be other-
wise nowadays. For the well-wishers of the
Russians, the sympathisers with the Russians, the
deprecators of the War against the Russians—if
they continue, as they unquestionably do con-
tinue, to be the merest atom of a minority, when
considered numerically in comparison with the
vast aggregate of the population—number amongst
them the names of most of those of our public
men who have, in some way or other, been dis-
tinguished for their statesmanship. These eminent
characters are distinguished indeed, at this crisis
in the affairs of the nation, if for anything at all,
certainly for their sympathy with the Russians.
They proclaim it. They insist upon the inutility
and causelessness, and therefore, of course, upon
the cruelty and absolute inhumanity of the War
waged by England and France, united with Tur-
key and Sardinia, upon the Russians. Remem-
ber, too, that such are not the opinions
merely of Political Bagmen like Mr. Con-
DEN, of men who can see no further
beyond their nose, in matters of international
policy, than the length of that good cloth yard
which was of old the measure of the strength of
our English bowmen, but which, in the hands of
our political hucksterers of to-day, is but the in-
strument for the measuring out of the honour,
and glory, and renown of the empire by the
miserable criterion of mere mercantile expediency.
Opinions such as those we have mentioned, more-
over, are in no way restricted to trading reli-
gionists like Mr. BRIGHT, a class of men who
seem to square their conscience by the rules, not
simply of expediency, but of actual profit, legis-
lative actuaries, who would strike the balance of
our imperial policy, guided by considerations of
L. S. D., and not by a sense of Right or Justice,
or by the force of any such unsubstantial and
purely abstract principles. No—the views of
our pro-Muscovite patriots are entertained by men
of greater mark than the " gumptious" member
for the West Riding, or even than the
" bumptious" representative of the city of Man-
chester. They are the views no less of the very
statesmen whose ignorance, whose fatuity, whose
delays at one moment and precipitation at an-
other, whose lust for the retention of power, and
whose greed for the perquisites of place were
among the chief of the proximate causes of the
very war against which their voices are now so
loudly inveighing, with such very admirable consis-
tency ! They are the opinions not only of Mr.
BRIGHT and Mr. COBDEN,
.butt of_ those more nota-
ble recruits who are going through the ignominy
of the goose-step of the drill of folly in the awk-
ward squad of the Peace-at-any-Price Party—raw
recruits who, like the ragged regiments of FAL-
STAFF, are very well known to have been recently
marched through Coventry. Conspicuous among
these pro-Russianites such notorious provokers of
the War against the CZAR, such notorious origi-
tors of that War, such notorious promoters of it
from first to last as—the Earl of ABERDEEN, the
War-Prime Minister ; Sir JAMES GRAHAM, the
War• First-Lord-of- the-Admiralty ; Mr. GLAD-
STONE, the War-Chancellor of the Exchequer ;
with Lord JOHN RUSSELL, the War-President of
the Council, and War-Secretary for the Colonies,
and War-Leader of the House of Commons !
These are now, we all know, the chiefs of
the pro-Russianites who have merged very
recently into avowed leaders of the Peace-
at-any-Price Party. These—the very statesmen
whose folly or wickedness, call it what we will,
gave rise to the very War they are now so shame-
lessly deprecating ! From the outset some among
them were suspected. Lord ABERDEEN, for ex-
ample, from the beginning, was branded by us in
these columns, as a pro-Russianite. Latterly the
others have had their loyalty to the national cause
seriously questioned. Until the time arrived,
when compelled one by one for very shame to quit
the office they had each clung to with such unscru-
pulous tenacity, they let fall the mask and appear
• in their- right forms as the friends of our enemies,
as the antagonists of the cause they themselves had
for a ;,,elfish object nominally espoused) as the do-
'

precators of a war their own evil courses had pre-
cipitated.

Sir J. GRAHAM, for instance, was one of those
far-seeing statesmen who, in 1853, vituperated
with all kinds of personal scurrilities the thrice-
elected ruler of a neighbouring people now
happily our august Ally, thereby confirming
the opinion long cherished by the AUTOCRAT, that
Russia had nothing whatever to fear from the
possibility of any solid union of the interests of
France and England. Yet this same illustrious,
and far-seeing, and over-cautious Administrator—
after being the very man to preside as First Lord of
the Admiralty over the maritime districts of Great
Britain during the first campaign of this mighty
contest with the giant power wielded by the irre-
sponsible Government of St. Petersburg—this
same Sir JAMES GRAHAM had the hardihood, on
Friday, the 31st ultimo, while referring to the
War with Russia, to speak of " the prodigal and
fruitless expenditure of millions of the public money"
upon it [precisely the same despicable argument
dunned into our ears for months past by Mr.
BRIGHT and Mr. COBDEN], and who, later or upon
the same occasion, in a vein of lachrymose so-
lemnity, spoke of the railway he was
then inaugurating as a work for which
a blessing might not unreasonably be expected,
" for it is a work," said he (with a side glance of
reprehension upon the War), "of peace and of
mercy"—adding, " Such are all GoD's works"—
and then—" Our works are generally of a more
doubtful character." The Russian War all the
while being essential, the handiwork of Sir JAMES
GRAHAM himself, and with him of Mr. GLAD-
STONE, and of Lord JOHN RUSSELL, and of Lord
ABERDEEN, and for that matter of Mr. COBDEN,
and of Mr. BRIGHT, and of the rest of these very
Honourable Pro-Russianists Peace-at-any-Price-
mongers. Surely MAWWORM was their prototype,
surely with him they might say, sententiously and
sanctimoniously—" I likes to be despised !" For,
have they not evidenced in their genius the true
flavour and unmistakeable characteristics of the
I Hypocrite ?

The poor unlucky people, the industrious, hard-
working, orderly, and much-enduring people of
the metropolis must bestir themselves. Like the
stray goose which every aspiring lad of the village
considers himself entitled to have a pluck at, they
are again marked out' for victimisation. St.
James's-park is to be bisected by the construction
of a carriage-way from Marlborough-house to the
Birdcage-walk. In other words, it is to be de-
stroyed.

It is really too bad this continued tampering
with the enjoyment of the masses. With a restric-
tive Beer Bill, an insidious Enclosure Bill, and a
pestilent Sunday Trading Bill fresh in every.
body's recollection, comes a fourth scheme, which,
if carried out, will utterly deprive one of the plea-
santest retreats in the metropolis of its attractions ;
and, what makes the matter worm, the author is
not this time a senatorial Mawworm, a money-
hunting heir, or a foolish lordling, ambitious of
Parliamentary renown, but a Cabinet Minister, a
Metropolitan representative, well acquainted with
the wants and necessities of the people, and who
has hitherto been accounted one of their most sin-
cere and liberal-minded friends—to wit, Sir
BENJAMIN HALL

Yes, if most accounts be true, to this zealous and
successful sanitarian, aid, as was thought, en-
lightened Commissioner of the Board of Works,
by whose instructions a band of music is stationed
every Sunday in Kensington-gardens, to the grati-
fication of thousands, is owing this ill-advised and
injurious scheme. The public may wonder, but
mere wonder won't do ; they have to deal with
a fact. The inhabitants in the neighbourhood of
Westminster and Pimlico want a carriage way in
the direction of Marlborough House, and although
their desire could be gratified by permitting them
the use of the existing drives round the Park, the
scheme iu question is deemed necessary. But
then these drives are tabooed for the use of
Royalty and a favoured few, and to let in a mob
of carriages would be desecration. So rather
than Royalty or nobility should be deprived of
an exclusive right, or be exposed to an imaginary
annoyance, the people are to be plucked. Accus-
tomed day by day, or Sunday after Sunday, to
repair to these delightful gardens, and pass at
once from the dust and turmoil of a bustling and
multitudinous metropolis into their verdant shades
and the tranquil enjoyment of their thousand
natural and acquired beauties—the industrious
masses are practically to be deprived of this pri-
vilege, and to carry elsewhere, if they please, for
interment, the memory of their ill-remunerated
toil in pent-up localities, rank with an unwhole-
some atmosphere, simply that Royalty may escape
the possibility of a fortnight's annoyance per
annum !

Who or what set the Right Honourable Baronet
in motion in this direction we are unable to say.
Whether the scheme was concocted in compliance
with a Court hint, or in ordor to win Court
favour, Sir BENJAMIN best knows, and the public
have the liberty to guess ; but of one thing we
are tolerably certain, that if it has had any coun-
tenance from her MAJESTY, which we doubt,
a proper representation of the case will cause
her to withdraw that countenance, it being noto-
rious that her MAJESTY has always displayed a
praiseworthy solicitude for the welfare of the less-
favoured portion of her subjects. On the other
hand, so to speak, we are reluctant to believe
that a popular representative like Sir BENJAMIN
HALL would condescend to fawn even for a coronet
—which he is said to want—on royalty. It is for
him, however, to satisfy the public on this head.
Whatever was the inducement, they have a right
at least to complain of his leaving lent his sanction
and authority to the scheme, and also to expect
its immediate abandonment. Failing a direct in-
timation of this, their appeal must be to the
QUEEN from her misguided Minister.

FAILURE OF NASMYTH'S MONSTER GUN.

We regret to learn that Mr. Nasmyth's wrought iron
gun has proved a complete failure, and this not on ac-
count of the mechanicle difficulties which had to be en-
countered—formidable as they were—but from a most
unexpected peculiarity in the material employed, when
brought together in so large a mass as was necessary for
Mr. Nasmyth's purpose. It seams that wrought iron, so
tractable under all ordinary conditions of working, car-
not be welded together in very large masses without
undergoing a change in its molecular arrangement, ex-
ceedingly injurious to its tenacity. As we understand
the explanation which we have received on this point, an
immense mass of iron like that which Mr. Nasm:iith has
welded together continues so long in an incandescent
and soft state that a process analogous to crystallisation
takes place within its substance, whereby the fibrous
texture, from which it derives its tenacity, is destroyed,
and it becomes even less capable than cast iron of resist-
ing the explosion of a heavy charge of gunpowder. We
understand that, in addition to the unfavourable result
obtained by Mr. Nasmyth at Patricroft, another experi-
ment of a similar nature, made under the direction of
Government, has proved a complete failure from the
peculiarity in the material to which we have alluded ;
and a large gun which bad been completed was found
utterly unfit for use. Indeed we believe it burst into
many pieces on the first trial. Mr. Nasmyth's experi-
ment has consequently been abandoned.—Manchafer
Guardian.

The Duke of Northumberland, who arrived in town
on Tuesday, from Keilder Castle, Northumberland,
where he has been enjoying the sports of the field, left
last night to join the Duchess at Alnwick.
Lord Saltoun is at present at Ness Castle, where a
large circle of friends are entertained with Highland hos-
pitality. His lordship intanis to mill, porraauently at
Ness Castle,