The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-08 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The events now reported from the Mis-
sissippi are important enough to invite a more de-
tailed explanation of the proceedings of the Federal,
than the present despatches supply. About two
months ago Admiral Farragut, Naval Commander-
in-Chief at, New ()cleans, made a vigorous attempt
to run the blockade at Port Hudson, aid it will be
rectal ected, perhaps, that the most contradictory
accounts of the event were for some time in circula-
tion. Northern reports claimed a victory ; SJutn-
ern versions related the repulse of the squadron. It
turned out that the latter accounts were true in the
main, and that the chief portion of the Admiral's
flotilla had really been driven back with more or
less damage. But, on the other side, it was also
true that the Admiral himself in his flagship, and
with one other vessel in his company, had made
good his way past the batteries, and was actually
ifl )t in the forbidden waters. A grave question,
however, remained as to the reality of this " sue
(teas." The Admiral's ship, the Hartford, was
nothing but a wooden vessel—a " first-class screw
steam sloop" of the old United States' Navy, but
powerless, as might have been imagined, against
the ironclads which the Confederates were known
to possess. Here, then, was the Federal commander,
in a wooden ship, separated from his fleet, and
isolated in hostile waters, with only a sit gle consort
to assist him. It was believed not only in Rich-
mond, but in New York, that he had been caught
in a trap, and that the captor of New Orleans would
all into the hands of the enemy. We conteee,
indeed, that we have felt unable to account for the
impunity which he has actually enjoyed. It is
stated in the present reports that the Confederates
have seven rams and gunboats available in these
waters, and yet the Hartford and the Albatross
have not only remained unmolested, but have been
allowed the whole range of the stream between
Port Hudson and Vicksburg. The Admiral was
just below the latter place when the attempt was
successfully made tojoin him from above. It was
on the 16th of April, about 11 o'clock at night,
that a flotilla of seven gunboats, one ram, and
three transports from the fleet of Admiral Porter,
who commands above Vicksburg, set out with the
design of running the blockade; and so incautious
or so helpless were the Confederates that all these
vessels, with the exception of two of the transports,
passed the batteries, and effected a junction with
Admiral Farragut in the river below the town.
This unlooked-for exploit not only places the Ad-
miral in safety, but puts him in command of a force
equal to any operatio❑ be may devise against either
Vicksburg or Port Hudson. The Benton, which
carries the flag of Admiral Porter, is a strong iron-
cased vessel, mounting 16 guns, and all the rest,
with a single exception, belong to the flotilla of
ironclad gunboats constructed at various points of
the Mississippi for service in this war. We can
hardly, therefore, avoid the conclusion that if the
safety of Port Hudson and Vicksburg has really
depended on the command of the stream between
them, these posts must now be in considerable dan-
ger. The combined flotilla, numbering 11 powerful
gunboats, may co-operate either with General Grant
and his army in an attack on Vicksburg, or with
General Banks and the garrison of New Orleans in
the siege of Port Hudson. Nor is this the whole of
the advantage obviou,ly gained. The possession
of the Mississippi over this p-rt of its course must
enable the Federals to intercept the supplies of the
Confederates, and to ren er, at the same time, im-
portant service to the Northern armies on shore.
General Rosecrans in Tennessee, and the Federal
commander at Baton Rouge, will both feel more
secure now that the garrisons from which their
adversaries might be suddenly reinforced are held
in constant check. In short, though Vicksburg
is not yet taken, nor Port Hudson either, and
though the capture of buth these places would
probably fail to ensure the safe navigation
,f the Mississippi, it cannot be denier,
that the recent success of the Northerners
-nay produce material results. It creates t less sen-
ation than the capture of Charleston may have
done, but it may prove of greater consequence. I.
was high time, indeed. that a gleam of success
should brighten the prospects of the Federals. The

season most favourable for their operations was
rapidly expiring, and in a few weeks none except
tne great rivers of the country would be nAvigabie
to their gunboats. The time for which their troops
had been enlisted was expiring also, and they wou;ci
soon have to choose between a dissolu'ion of their
armies or a conscription. All their great expedi•
'ions hid failed—at Fredericksburg, at Vicksburg,
at Charleston. If a division of their army, sur-
rounded by the enemy and threatened daily with
capture, contrived to escape that was as much of a
success us they could show. But this piece of good
tortune on the Mississippi gives them one more
chance, at the eleventh hour, of signalising the
campaign by a triumph. The Confederates are not
indeed likely to be disheartened by the loss of a
city, hut the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hud-
,on would open the Mississippi to the States of the
North- West, diminish the growing disaffection of
t he population in those States, and enable the Fede-
rals to claim one of the real victories of the war.
POST.—The advocates and supporters of CNA tin
Ericsson's " turret principle" for the construction of
iron war ships maintain that the late sffdr at
Charleston cannot be taken as any prod' of the in-
ferio, ity of that description of vessel, since it has
been shown that the failure in the attack was owing
to the obstructions placed in the entrance channel
of the harbour, and not to the destructive fire from
the forts, for but little injury, it is said, would have
been done to these vessels had the channel that
would have allowed them to run past the forts
been clear. Taking up this ground of argu-
ment is tantamouat to yielding at unce the long
contested point of superiority between ships ana
forts, for until it can be shown that ships are
able to overcome the obstructions placed in their
way without it being first necessary to silence the
guns protecting these obstructions, the ques'ion of
superiority between ships and forts must be decided
in favour of the forts. From the accounts which
we have received of the late engagement, as well as
from reports which have reached us of the prepara-
tions made for the defence of Charleston, it does
not appear to be quite so clear that the vessels em-
ployed in the attack upon that place would have
been much benefited had they even been allowed to

run past the first line of the Confederate defences.
It will be remembered that Fort Sumter, the point
of attack, is situated at a distance of three good
miles from the city of Charleston, the goal which it
was Admiral Dupont's object to attain. As the
rate at which these turret vessels on an average are
presumed to steam is nut reekened at more than five
or six knots the hour, it stands to reason that thee
would have been under fire from the batteries which
line the shores the whole way from Fort Sumter to
Charleston city for a period of at least thirty
minutes, which period is precisely the amount of
time it took to decide matters at the entrance to
the harbour, with the details of which action we
have been already made acquainted. This being
the case, we may fairly presume that by the time
these vessels had arrived opposite Charleston, ad-
mitting that they might have escaped during that
perilous passage all the additional dangers of run-
ning on shore, which were considerable, they would
at last have brought up in a cul de sae in front of
the powerful batteries erectad around the city itself,
and past which there would have been no further
possibility of their running. The question, there-
fore, of superiority between forts and ships would
under any circumstances have been simply trans-
ferred for decision to another locality ; and there
can be little doubt that thirty minutes more
of hammering, as terrific as the one which
sufficed for their discomfiture at the har-
bour's mouth, would have placed them all hors de
combat, and that the most which Admiral Dupont
"out° have been likely to obtain in exchange for a
total destruction or surrender of his ships would
have been the barren satisfaction of having thrown
a few shells among the inhabitants of a city that
has aroused such vindictive feelings in the breasts
of the disappointed cotton brokers of New York and
Boston. To the American Unionists the failure of
Captain E, ic-son's ironc!ads to effect the destruc-
tion of Fort Sumter is a heavier blow than any de
feats sustained by their armies in the field. Not
only has the utmost confidence been placed in the
power of these new vessels to accomplish the de-
struction of all the coast defences still held by the
States which are at war with the Government at
Washington, but the most sanguine expectations
have also been entertained that an entirely new era
had set in regarding. ships of war which would
give the Americans of the Northern States a chance
of assuming such a le.d in naval matters as would
effectually wrest from Great Britain her supremacy
upon the ocean. The failure of the attack upon
Charleston, if ii.has done nothing else, has at least
decided some very important points, and among
others may be seid to have considerably shaken the
theory of the alleged advantages of reducing the
►rmament of ships to one or two guns of enormous
calibre. The application of steam power to the
working of these heavy guns, which was supp *aid
to have overcome the chief objections to their use,
has been found to be attended with very serious dis-
advantages. It has been demonstrated to be unne-
cessary to drive a shot through the iron turret in
order to destroy the offensive powers of a vessel
armed upon that principle. The slightest derange-
ment caused to the machinery of the revolving tur-
ret, upon the nice adjustment of which the work-
ing of the gun depends, is as effectual a method of
rendering a vessel of this description powerless as
if the gun itself had been shattered in pieces.
This may, perhaps, be considered a minor point
with the advocate of the system of revolving tur-
rets, and be a matter which the engineering skill
of the present day may be enabled possibly to
grapple with successfully, but until this defect has
been remedied, the revolving turret system is not
likely to meet with any very great encouragement
in this country. The failure of such vessels as sea-
going ships is too well known and generally acknow-
ledged to admit of dispute; and as one of their chief
recommendations, which consisted in the cheapness
of construction, has also received lately a most
dam +ging blow, there really remains now but little
to be said in their behalf. It has been proved that
the princip e of binding togeth- r thin iron plates to
the thickness required for a vessel's side will not
produce the degree of resistance which was expected ;
consequently when these vessels have to be con-
structed of solid plates of rolled iron, the cost of
their construction will be much increased. It has
been totted that the extra time devoted to the con-
struction of an iron ship is time well laid out, and
that all the materials required should be of the best
quality. This is not the course which has been pur-
sued in America, consequently their vessels do not
bear any kind of compari.on with ours. At the pre-
sent moment it is perhaps fortunate that this matter
should have been so clearly established, as it may
tend to check some of the extravagant notions of
the more violent anti-English party in New York,
and permit of that steady development of the naval
power which we have ever wielded with justice
and moderation.

HERALD.—The objections urged against the pre-
sent s) stein of distributing army prize money are
questions which once more assume additional signi-
fic ince in the midst of those grave complications
which may possibly involve us in hostilities with a
rich and powerful nation. The whole subject will
shortly be brought under the consideration of Par-
liamen', pursuant to the notice given last week by
Col. North ; and we have no doubt that a motion of
this nature, which promises to place the system of
distribution on a better footing, will be strongly
supported on both sides of the house. It is plain,
from the tone in which the First Lord of the
Treasury treated this matter a few nights ago, that
Parliamentary interference for the protection of
the soldier has now become an absolute necessity.
The Prime Minister's reply, on the 20th April, to
Mr. Angerstein's question on a subject of this kind,
was obviously, even in the inaccurate shape in
which it was reported elsc where, a complete evasion
of the inquiry propounded by a member for Green
with. Lord Palmerston did not think proper to in-
form the House of Commons whether the law officers
of the Crown has been consulted on the subject of
the Banda and Kirwee booty. He did not state
what their opinion was, nor whether it was his in-
tention to be guided by it. He only to:d the house
that this was not a question of law, but a matter
which simply depended en the absolute discretion of
the Crown, or, in other words, on Ministerial pa-
tronage, and that the decision in this particular case
was postponed for the purpose of giving due con-
sideration to a statement which had very recently
been rece.ved from p rties concerned, or, in other
words, from the actual captors of the prize. I
would have been fair to have added that this state
ment had only been recently received from the Ma-
d. t as officers, because the counter-statements to which
it was their right to reply had been kept secret for
more than 12 months, and were not brought to light
until April, 1863. It is, however, of more import-
ance to consider how far the country will endure the
sic volo ate jubeo import of the firman in which L rd
Palmerston on Monday week announced his inten-
tion to deal with army prize according to his own
good pleasure. This is not, he tells us, a ques-
tion of law. No doubt there is no special statute
which regulates the distribution of army prize
But we greatly doubt whether any of the
great lawyers of the day would go so far as to
say with Lord Palmerston that a question of this
nature is not to be governed by precedent, a. e.,
by common law, which after all is the sole founda-
tion on which the Royal prerogative itself rests
If the distribution of prize money is not. in any
way to be regulated by law, there is, of course,
nothing to prevent the Lords Commissirners of
the Treasury or their President from recommend-
ing a grant of all capture or captures whatsoever to
hie Excellency the Commander-in-Chief or the Se-
retar3 of State for War, and the sooner this novel
position is announced to the army the better. A 1
ranks will then be properly prepared to provide for
themselves, and the good men as well as the rogues
will be duly warned to take care of their own inte-
rests. Under this view of the subject we have no
doubt that tl.e distribution of prize will be vastly
expedited, and the delays which are now the sub-
ject of just complaint will cease to exist. We shall
hear of no more instanced of men entitled to a
large share of booty dying in a workhouse, and
such suicides as those which attended the delays
and jobbery in the Deccan case are not likely to
occur. On the other hand, however, military eco-
nomists must decide whether the universal invita-
tion to plunder, which the Prime Minister's expo
sition of prize law ho ds out, is likely to conduce to
the efficiaecy or discipline of the troops. It must
naturally be asked, moreover, if there is no law for
the distribution of prize, how it came to pass that
special jurisdiction in disputed eases of military
booty has been given by Lord Cottenham's set to
the High Ccurt of Admiralty. If the matter under
dispute is not to be determined by precedtnt or
common law, we cannot exactly understand in what
way Sir S. Lushington would proceed to take cog-
nisance of the case. We might further ask, if this
is not in any sense a question of law, how it came
to pass that the matter was referred for the opinion
of the law officers of the Crown ? According to the
bold and unqualified statement of the Premier, the
opinion of any other individuals, of the arch-
bishops, for instance, or the Royal Academicians,
would have been of equal value. When Colonel
North's motion comes before the house we shall
know how far the representatives of the
.nation
are disposed to ignore the legal or quasi legal
claim of the soldier to his prize money, and to en-
dorse the absolute and despotic) theory of Lord
Palmerston.

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32, ilasiughali•street, London. -