The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-26 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, OCrOBER 2G, 1863,

stead. of 400 acres of dock space in the Mersey we had only
40 acres, and that we had to do the greater portion of our
business on the Mersey; suprosing we had to take cargoes
out of ships into flats, take them ashore, take goods'on board
again from the shore and carry them on board the ships in
flats, and that every single piece of work on board the ship
in the river would have to be done by workmen going from
the shore, doing the work in the river, and coming back
again on shore ; why, need I tell any commercial man who
knows anything of the trade of Liverpool that with such a
system as this,Liverpool would never have gone on at all ?
Bristol, or London, or some other port would inevitably
have taken the trade, because the working of ships here
would have been so dreadfully expensive and ruinous that
the port would have been shut up as a port and its trade de-
stroyed entirely. Now, just look for a moment at the posi-
tionbut they fit out in the harbour as far as they
of the royal dockyards. The ships there cannot fit out
can. They go to Spithead, and their stores are taken off to
them. A carpenter is sent off. if it is blowing hard he does
not get there at all. If he does not get there he loses half a
day ; and that is just how the money is spent in the dock-
yards. (Hear.) I say this to the Government and the House
of Commons, " We want two or three millions to make per-
fect accommodation, and if you give us this money now we.
will save that expenditure in two or three years," That is
o r 18 inches.
sawotde,adrn,refitting
that t
shiptTi
lfnsoh gahi
what they should de. They oughtto have done it before; but
they took a contrary step, and in ten years they have spent
a million and a half on Were peddling, stupid alterations,
a
dsteh,
nhi there
ara
nsedath
ihnp°san,t another
fierpri
without deriving any benefit from them. The first thing is,
d
they increase the length of a dock by ten feet. Then they
widen it two or three feet, and next they deepen it a foot
proper
owe
loading
way in
daimnin thea commercialhn
swd h
irhsai
fimvsooc
euhrar,
ha:
dischargingwat
whdawehr
dhotooc
addhrmoneygeas
os-s
lhe would not have beaten another man who was
ed to do all these things in the stream ? The man
can do all this in dock would beat the man who had to
adpopiltaiunset.)he
priovsesribilny,aitvemryayshbeorctontismidee
.red(litheaatrlheecaorLantryd
is too great to look into these matters and the expenditure
of money ; but I say that the true manner in which to
manage public business is to manage ie as a man manages
his own private affairs; and until the Government in this
country is forced to do something of that kind they may
talk about what they will do, but they will never be able to
reduce the expenditure which is going on. (Hear, hear, and
loud applause.) I do not know that I ought to occupy your
time any longer, but various statements have been made
about a vessel that has attained to some degree of fame. I
refer to a vessel well known throughout this country as the
Alabama. (Loud and repeated cheering.) lam not ashamed
to acknowledge that some of my family have had to do with
that ship. Still, some statements have been made about her
which should be controverted. I should not have made any
remark now. but for the fact that the Government of this
country have made certain statements, and have given cer-
tain legal opinions about her, and they have talked about the
vessel having escaped. I see my friend Mr. Hind and other
gentlemen who are somewhat of sporting men, and well
they know what I mean when I say—when hounds approach
a fox cover the fox scents the hounds, and when the hunts-
man comes up to the cover the fox is gone. It is nonsense
to talk about the fox escaping or about the Alabama escap-
ing. The Alabama was in dock when she was inspected by
very many curious people, and in dock she took on board
her coals and her stores. There was no secresy what-
ever observed about the ship. She went out of dock
at night, and if she wanted to escape surely the night
was a time when she could have escaped. But, what
wars the fact ? They were so vainglorious about their
little craft, that they anchored her off the Landing,
stage, and there she remained until half-past 10 or 11 the
following morning, when she left for her destination. They
adroit that she was not fitted out as a man-of-war, and that
they had no legal authority to detain that ship until a man
was engaged to serve on board her as a sailor. Does any
shipowner present believe, or any man connected with ship-
ping, that the captain of a vessel supposed to be going upon
any extraordinary voyage would go and tell a mar who ap-
iinceih
sewnsahvooher
compelled
dhoerckopgweacneerhakl
know
docks,
ap-
pears to have been a hired agent or spy of certain gentle-
men in London ? Would the captain of a ship on such an
expedition go and tell a common sailor, at the Sailors'
Home, all the ins and outs of his intentions regarding that
ship ? (" Hear, hear," and applause.) Certainly not. Nuw,
I know it is not true that that man was told anything of
the sort by
the captain. I have been so informed, and I be-
lieve the information to be on the best authority. But let
me tell you it is not necessary, in engaging men to go to any
part of the world, to tell those men where they are going;
because, you know, I am an old hand myself in fitting cut
secret expeditions. (Laughter and applause.) A few
years ago it was thought desirable by the Government of
this country to send vessels to China and to various parts
of India secretly. A Chinese war was anticipated; the
Russians were expected to come down the head of the Indus
and the Euphrates; and it was desirable to place faith in
somebody. Her Majesty's Government were pleased to place
faith in me, and I built for the British Government about
a dozen vessels ; but the Government said to me, " What
we want you to do, Mr. Laird, is this—we want you to
build, and to arm, and equip these vessels, and to send them
out ; they must be yours, and nobody must know anything
about it." Well, being a prudent sort of a shipbuilder, I
said, " I will take your order on these conditions." I built
the ships; they were armed; 1 engaged men; I did
everything. (" Hear, hear," cheers and laughter.) I had
to engage, not only sailors, but engineers and boiler-
makers, ship-carpenters, and men of a variety of trades ;
I had to send them to various parts of the world, and I can
assure you that a few shillings per month extra did all the
business. They did not care whether they went so long as
they got a little extra pay--;laughter)—and, therefore, the
statement regarding the captain of the Alabama having told
a sailor all about the ship—whose she was, and where she
was for—bears the impress of falsehood upon the very face
of it: I never saw the captain of the Alabama but once, and
that was after having taken the ship out, and I don't think
he was the man to make such a statement as that upon
which the ship might have been stopped. Let me read you
a few words from a speech of the Solicitor-General, who
made another great speech the other day at Richmond. He
said some months ago :—" It was not till the Alabama
reached the Azores that she received her stores, her cap-
tain, or her papers, and that she hoisted the Confederate
flag. It is not true that she departed from the shores of
this country as a ship armed for war." (Hear, hear, and
great applause,) And then went on to say :—" But I wsh
the house to understand that in those depositions there was
a great mass of hearsay evidence, which, taken by itself,
could not form the basis of any action. Of the six deposi-
tions transmitted on the 22d July, only one was good for
anything at all—viz.. the evidence of a person named Pass-
more, which was sufficient to prove the material facts. Two
more were sent, corroborating Passmore, on the 24th, and
and were received by Earl Russell on the 26th." (Hear.)
Passmore was the man who made the affidavit that he was
told by the captain where the ship was to go. I don't be-
lieve him; and he must have got up the evidence for the
occasion. Lord Palmerston, whom we all respect—(ap-
plause)—s: id on the 27th of March last—" I have myself
great doubts whether, if we had seized the Alabama, we
should not have been liable to considerable damages. It is
generally known that she sailed from this country unarmed
and not properly fitted out for war, and that she received
her armament, equipment, and crew in a foreign port.
Therefore, whatever suspicions we may have had—and
they were well founded, as it afterwards turned out—as
to the intended destination of the vessel, her condition
at that time would not have justified a seizure." (Cheers.)
Now, here is Lord Palmerston, an old and experienced man,
who says, in his opinion, the Government would have been
liable to considerable damages had they stopped that ship.
1 think after what has been said—considering my connec-
tion with this place, and after the noise this vessel has made
in the world—(laughter and applause)—the meeting will
excuse my having brought forward these questions. (A-Pe
plause ) But the whole question of the defences of this
country may be, I think, very safely brought before this
meeting, because they are all intimately connected with the
Volunteer movement; and I therefore feel that I have teen
justified in going somewhat at length into the various ques-
tions as to the character of our ships of war, the quantity of
guns that they are to carry, and other incidental matters.
Other speeches have been made by a noble lord who does
not seem to agree with Lord Palmerston. I mean Earl
Russell. (Hisses.) He made a speech the other day which
has caused a great sensation all over the world, and which
the Americans say is only duo to the coercion they have
put upon him. Earl Russell is a man who is well known
and respected throughout the country by his own followers;
but he is a man of whom Sydney Smith said that he had
such confidence in himself that he would take command of
the Channel fleet, if necessary. Well, I think Earl Russell
has undertaken something that he will not be able to carry
through quite so easily as, perhaps, he might command the
Channel fleet. He has undertaken to say in this country
that he can do certain things, and that if he finds the law
is not sufficient he can go to Parliament for an indemnity,
(Hear, hear.) I don't believe myself that Parliament will
and however great he may be, if he is tryinee to transgress
ever indemnify any man in the country, however powerful
the law. (Loud and protracted cheering.) At any rate,
up to the time that tho Act of Indemnity is passed, there are
laws in tbo land which all of us are bound to obey. (Hear,
hear.) Laws are not made for Administrations, but for the
people of this country, and the people are bound to obey
the law as it stands, and not to obey laws which may pos-
sibly come to be passed hereafter. (Renewed cheers.)
Another eminent gentleman, Sir Roundell Palmer, has
made another speech et Richmond; and I must say, hay-
ing read the speech, that it is all very well for an eminent
lawyer, one of the first legal authorities of the day, to make
a speech in the month of March, and say that those were
the views of the country, and to make a speech in sup-
port of another client in October of opposite views; bits
I say it is not the duty' of a man who holds the position of
a statesman in this oountry to be placing one interpretation
upon certain facts in March and another in October. (Loud
cheers.)

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