The Sun.
London, England, 1839-03-05 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 1839.

Lord who sat at the Admiralty Board in 183 a. He said
that the pressure for econerey was so great ,that
it was impossible to resist it; and he very frankly
confessed that the number of men which was then
proposed was much too small, and that he deeply
regretted it.--( Hear, hear.) Now Wokild Honourable
Gentlemen call to mind the 'l!,tosa earns of reproach which
had been heaped tipian the present Government Truck-
ling to the whims of the Hon. Member fur Kilkenny-7
courting low popularity, &c.—were the most ;e.,ntle teribs
of reproach that were heaped upon Ahern !et such a long
period ; yet all was .thre*r‘ itWay, because there was in
fact PO foundation 'or the abuse. He would have been
sorry to htive made such charges against any one. He
appealed to Gentlemen on either side of the House, to
whom the censure ought most justly to be applied?—(Heara
bear.) To them, who had increased the navy, of to those
who bad reduced it—( Cheers)-:-to those now in office, or to
those who acknowledged that the number of men they sought
was too small, but that the pressure for economy was ,so
great, that they could not withstand it.—( Cfsee!ti..! ,so
the present Government, who had l'epallted the blunder
of the former one, were held bp to the execration of the
country by all the clans of the party opposite. Attacks
were wttitten which it made him blush to know ware writ-
ten by Englishmen.—( Oh !) In former times English
writers were proud of their own institutions, and all that
was English; but of late the preference had been given
to all that was foreign. The attacks of late were in a very
different spirit--a spirit which went to depreciate in as
great a degree as possible everything that was English.
The grossest misrepresentations had seen sent forth re-
specting all matters concerning the Navy.—( Cheers. )
When such statements were put forward, of course no one
could be surprised that there was much apprehension
throughout the country as to the effect which they might
have upon foreign nations. He was very sorry that they
had been put forward, though he had no fear of the effect of
the unfounded statements upon foreign nations ; nor that
in consequence of them they would use language, which
under other circnmstances they would not do. There was
no foreign Power which had the slightest information upon
the subject, but bad a clearer notion and more accurate in-
formation upon the whole question than the writers of those
publications. They were in possession of the facts of the
ease, and the most careless of them were in possession of better
informaticn than those whosobasely libelled the Government.
And he must say further, that as to some of those who had
written with a full knowledge of the documents to which
he had alluded—who had even in their works referred to
publications containing accurate information, and after that
stated that which was untrue—that without meaning to
use any harsh expressions, it was conduct which he could
qualify in little milder terms than wilful misrepresenta.
tion. A great deal had been said as to the largeness of fo-
reign navies, and the lowness of our own. He proposed
to refer to both these; and first he would allude to the
state of the French navy, which had been described to-
night as most formidable. He had no wish to say other-
wise than that he believed that statement to be true, but
whets he saw it in a pamphlet which excited no little
attention in the world—a pamphlet containing state-
ments of various sorts, more especially with regard
to the French navy, with an appearance of accuracy
calculated to impose on those who knew nothing
about it—he was surprised to see that a person who had
better means of information should fall into such a gross
mistake. His first statement was that France had 57 sail
of the line ; and he gave a list of the names of the ships,
and the number of the guns they carried. The Committee
would hardly believe that out of these 57 sail, nine were
broken up, lost, or burnt—( Hear, hear)—three were hulks,
one was a school ship, and 22 were building. So that out
of 57, he was wrong by no less than 35.—( Cheers and
laughter. ) He had been attacked for saying there were
20 sail of the line at sea. To prove this position, he was
candid enough to give a list of the 20 ships by name. That
was the way in which he dealt with our fleet. How did he
deal with the French fleet? He said they had 22 sail of
the line actually at sea. The fact was, they
had ten ; and he made the whole of this state-
ment, quoting from a most able and elaborate report
which contained the whole of the accurate information
which he so grossly misrepresented. Now there was no
excuse whatever with regard to the French navy, for they
carried publicity even to a fault, to their own detriment,
and yet with these documents, to which he had referred in
his book, he had made these gross mis-statements.—(Year,
hear.) There was no disguise whatever about the French.,
fleet. They had 22 ships, not at sea hut afloat, including
those in ordinary, and 27 building—he ( Mr. W.) referred
to ships of the line—making 49. Their active force for
1838 was 8 sail of the line. As to the American navy
the officers knew that they consisted of formidable
but it was a great mistake to suppose it was much more
formidable now than a few years ago. There had been in
that country, a 3 in this, great complaints about the
neglect of the navy. The American force was pre-
cisely the same as a few years back. They had 7 ships
of the line afloat, and four building; and they had eight
frigates afloat and six building.—( Sir J. Graham here
made a remark, which was not heard in the gallery.) if
the Right Hon. Baronet would refer to the report of the
Secretary of the American Navy, he would find the state.
merit to be ac.urate. There were two ships of the line in
commission, three ready for sea, two in want of repair,
four on the stocks, four frames delivered, and eleven frames
contracted for to be delivered in 1841.—( Hear, hear.)
Did the Right Hon. Baronet mean to say when he (Mr.
\V.) stated there were four ships building, he ought to
have included the timber yet growing, which was not to be
delivered into the yards before 1841 ?—( Cheers.) Now,
to show that there was as much complaint there as here of
the want of vessels, he would refer to a short extract from
the report of the Secretary of the Navy, to which he had
alluded. It appeared,from this that the Act of Congress of
1837, authorised the President to employ thirty vessels for
the purpose of affording relief to merchantmen in distress,
but that, owing to the want of proper vessels at the disposal
of Government, the steam-ship Fulton was the only one
now available for the service.—( Hear. ) He now came to
that bug-bear of his Hon. Friend, the Rusian Navy, and
certainly he believed, from the accounts in the newspapers;
that his Hon. Friend would seem to have inoculated the
whole country with this fear arid hatred of the Russian
Navy. The accounts of the Russian Navy had been much
exaggerated, and the Admiralty were accused as the only
persons ignorant or careless upon the subject. He
(:Mr. W.) could not expect that anything which fell from
hint should he borne in recollection by anybody, but he
would refer the Members of the Committee to a speech
which he made in opening the Estimates of 1836, when he
stated as one of the grounds on which he asked an increase
of force, the state of the Russian Navy, and he stated, accu-
rately, the number of ;hips in the Baltic and the Black Sea.
What was the reception he met with? He was taunted by
the Right Hon. Bart., the Member for Tamworth with hav-
ing made a speech calculated to excite alarm, and the tear of
hostilities—( Hear)—and yet these things were brought
forward in every shape as an attack upon the Admiralty for
being ignorant of that which he had stated in this House,
and which the Hon. Member for Pembroke stated a year
before the pamphlet of Commander Craufurd was pub-
lished, which had so much enlightened the country.--
( Cheers.) The Russian Navy had 28 sail of the line on
the Baltic, of which 18 were seventy-fours, and ten in the
Black Sea—that again these vessels were so remarkable,
that it was impossible to depend on a ship from one year
to another. This being the force of the Russian fleet,
which from the very nature of the service was kept always
ready for sea, he would, if the Hon. Member for Birming-
ham insisted upon it, admit that if, without warning, with-
out provocation, in a time of profound peace—Russia chose
to make an attack upon this country, regardless of the fear-
ful vengeance we might exact—( Cheers)—the probability
was, she might do much injury. He would say that if, in
the time of profound peace, France landed a force on this
coast, it be some time before we collected an adequate
force to oppose it. But were these dangers that any
prudent man thought it necessary to guard against? He
should like to know whether the line of guard-ships,
which had been so much talked about, would be a defence
against 28 Russian sail of the line?—( Cheers.) If

third of their force, and now they had 20 sail of the
line, and Russia 43, being the orill pariod since 1817
when they had about half the amount a the Russian
force,
..Sn far; thi;refore the lr were in, a .better position
to ith reiVbet to that country than they bad Lebn
1817. They had now a larger fOree ilian Wati
ever main-
tained in that country, during the time of peace, 15owwith
respect to thp numb,cr of menr-,!th,p vote, i-las 14,70, and
the hi'gheit Tory vote was in 18:10, when they had 14,000
4.otbd ; setting the Ordnance against the Coast blockade,
the increase would be found little less than 4,000 men.

casioned by a variety of tatis'es:LL:p.
‘tre4 deal depended cm the
character of the officers. Some otticeri eMployed m'ad'e a Se-
lection of those men who offered themseli. ?, and we're mote