The Sun.
London, England, 1862-06-27 00:00:00

FIE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, JUNE 27, 1862.

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one. He rejects the heavy floating batteries, on
what appear to be ample grounds, altogether; and
insists on spending the money on ships, of which
the first requisite shall be speed, the next a more
powerful artillery than the enemy, and the next
protection for machinery, guns, and men. Captain
CoLEs' shields b e would decidedly confine to smaller
vessels, such af) could carry at most two of them.
He gives to Mr. R. L. STEPHENS, of New York,
the credit of being the true inventor of shot-proof
ships, and to the EMPEROR that of being their in-
ventor, so far as being the first to reduce them to
practice, though it seems that Mr. F. LLOYD, of
our Adasiralty, first suggested one four-inch thick
plate, instead of several inch plates bolted together.
Mr. RUSSELL gives a sad account of the way in
which our Admiralty obstructed the commencement
of iron ships, and mentions that Sir JOHN PARING-
TON was the first whom he could induce to apply
his plans, by beginning the construction of the
Warrior. It is only to be regretted that Sir JOHN
wasted so much money previously, like all his pre-
decessors, on wooden ships and the dockyards.
The Duke of SOMERSET and his Admiralty come in
for little mercy. Mr. RUSSELL concludes that the
"ineradicable evil now is that, where the know-
ledge is the power is not, and where the power is
the knowledge is not." He appeals, therefore, to
the House of Commons to step in. He asks it to
resolve—First, to buy a fleet, not to build it in the
dockyards. Secondly, that the fleet shall be built
at the rate of six Warriors a year. And, thirdly,
that three millions a year shall be devoted entirely
to that purpose. He means, of course, not to in-
crease the estimates by that sum, but to determine
its application. Thus, in seven years, we are to
have 40 Warriors; in ten years, 60; but, if this is
to be done we must give up the dockyards, and
prefer getting fleets to supporting establishments.

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THE SUN.
LONDON, FRIDAY, JUNE 27, 1862.

The men who ought to know—and who do
know—are beginning, effectively, to make their
appeal to the public on the great question of Na-
tional Defence. We noticed a few days ago Sir
MORTON PETO'S masterly pamphlet, in which,
single-handed, he showed himself more than a
match for the six Defence Commissioners, their
pragmatical secretary, and their four associates;
and Monday night showed very plainly that Sir
MORTON had convinced the House of Commons, by
the somewhat ignominious retreat of the Government
respecting the Spithead forts. We have now ano-
ther pamphlet, a re-writing of one published a year
ago, by a gentleman as conversant with shipbuild-
ing and dockyard works as Sir MORTON is with
general engineering works. Mr. SCOTT RUSSELL,
in his " Fleet of the Future" (Longmans), has ex-
posed the impotency and the incapacity of the Ad-
miralty, and shown what requires to be done so
clearly, that his views need but an effective man to
propound and support them in the House of Com-
mons, in order to render his pamphlet as practically
serviceable to the country as Sir MORTON PETO'S.
Every member of both Houses ought to have a
Copy, and a move ought to be made on the subject
this year.
Mr. RUSSELL, indeed, justly observes that a body
of six hundred men is not the proper one to take in
hand the management of a department. or in any
way to usurp the functions of the Executive ; but
the sad fact is that the Duke of SOMERSET himself
throws the responsibility on the House of Com-
mons of telling him how he is to do his work, what
kind of ships he is to build, and how many of eaeh
sort. His excuse, for inexcusable Admiralty de-
linquencies, is that the House of Common did not
" press on him" to give up building wooden ships
and to build iron. He and the Admiralty have no
notion of leading the House, they await its instruc-
tions in the details of their department. The
avowed maxim of their late surveyor, a good sailor,
but one who boasted of his ignorance of building
ships, was that we were not to lead but to follow
other nations in ship-building improvements !
The grand gener4l charge against the Admiralty
Mr. RUSSELL limits, in his pamphlet, to the last
seven years—the years since we have had the expe-
rience of our Black Sea operations before Sebastopol
and Kinburn. We there learned ourselves, what the
Turks learned at Sinope, that shells made slaughter-
houses of our wooden ships, and that the entire
crew, officers and all, were actually driven in a
reasonable panic out of the opposite side of one of
our first-rates into a steamer close by, by three
horizontal shells, which actually killed eighteen
men. The Congress experienced the same fate at
Hampton-roads from the shells of the Merrimac.
We also learned that the iron and floating batteries,
even in their first imperfect construction, were
absolutely uninjured under a heavy fire at Kin-
burn. The general charge is that, since then, since
the Emperor of the FRENCH, in consequence of our
common experience, immediately changed his plans,
our Admiralty has spent, in the dockyards, THIRTY
MILLIONS sterling, and the result has been only
two seaworthy iron ships. That vast sum of
money—one-eighth of the income of every Income-
tax payer—has been wasted, blundered away, and
left us none the more secure, at the cost of one-
eighth of each of our incomes ! Mr. RUSSELL con-
trasts with the stupidity, officialism, and routine
muddling away of the nation's money, the business-
like dockyard changes and proceedings of the EM-
PEROR, after the lessons taught both allies by the
shells on shipboard at Sebastopol, and the iron-
plated batteries at Kinburn. He at once discarded
the rout:ll:lists of the old school, selected the most
able young man in his service, and arranged a sys-
tem by which, at a cost of less than we have already
wasted, he will in no long time have a fine fleet of
ironsides. He shown that by this time, had we
used the money we have spent as well as our ally
does, we might have had THREE FLEETS OF
TWENTY WARRIORS EACH in the Channel, the West
Indies, and the Mediterranean.

Mr. RUSSELL lays down that, to effect this ob-
ject in the next seven years, we must make one
great alteration at the Admiralty—it must devote
itself to getting a Fleet, not to keeping up and
1 patronising vast establishments. The latter is the
old and routine course : it involves all the plea-
sures and political couveniences of Government
Patronage. But the ruinous fact is that the money
wasted on Government establishments would itself
buy us a large Fleet. We have builders who can
do all the work better than the Government pos-
sibly can ; who now do the most skilled part of the
work—the engines and other fittings—who have
actually turned out of their yards the iron ships on
which we now rely, and who are competent, on the
ati -
mouy of Mr. RUSSELL, who names the places
where they can be built, to turn out twelve War-
riors
every two years, or at the rate of one every
twomonths,
how grossly the Duke of So
the contracts which la .
i.,this point Mr. RUSSELL shows
SOMERSET mismanaged
e did make for several vessels.
It is for the Duke to
answer Mr. RUSSELL if he
can. It will not do to ignoreifMr.writesAnd what comes from
" such a man"—We suppose
We ought to say "such
RUSSELL Were not perfectly
intoeon believing
vin is o thatt that
informed
r 'o'.l-7:
what if he can-
not answer him, the inevitable conclusion
he has at the same time muddled
away public
money, and duped the country
be was doing more with it than he actually did.
" Buy your Fleet" is our author's advice ; this is the
only way you get good engines for your ships, and
it is the only way you will get good ships to put
them into. The " Establishments" had succeeded
last April in getting r d of four millions of money
in the year ; they
have turned out the keel and
some frames of one Achilles with the money ! Pri-
vate yards would have given us for it eight War-
riors, all comp:etely found.
Mr. RUSSELL strongly objects to conversion. He
gives a ludicrous, but practical account of what it
is. He affirms, as a builder, that when all is done,

A document has recently made its appearance
that we should immensely like to have translated
faithfully into the most elegant Japanese. More
than anything perhaps that has yet come under the
notice of their Excellencies, the Ambassadors from
the Court of the TYCOON at Nangasaki, it would—
or we are very much mistaken—be calculated to
astonish the natives in their remote fatherland. It
is a complimentary address at once of farewell
and of acknowledgment recently transmitted
from Algeria to "the great and glorious Emperor,
the ornament of the highest of thrones, the most
august of CASARS," his Majesty the Emperor
NAPOLEON 111 ! It has been add-essed to his Im-
perial MAJESTY, this extraordinary epistle of " the
lowly son before GOD," the CHIEK SI-OTHMAN,
son of SID EL HADY HADJI, EL BEKRI EL TARGUI,
and his nephews, MAHOMME and MAHOMMED,
Marabouts of the land of the Touareg. It is one
of the most amazing outpourings of adulation that
perhaps the most flowery of Oriental scribes ever
indulged in. Not so much homage as prostration
—grovelling in the dust L-licking the soles of the
EMPEROR'S boots—performing salaam in the gutter:
and evidently expecting all the while that this kind
of profound self-humiliation must be agreeable to
the august personage before whose throne the
CHIEK SI-OTHMAN performs kotoo with such lowly
genuflections. Saith the Sheik and his associate
Chiefs from the land of the Touareg:—" It has
been given to us to know that your MAJESTY and
your august Consort have received from Heaven a
distinction and a natural goodness as elevated as
your fortunes. You have overwhelmed us by your
kindness, and enchained us by your gifts. There-
fore shall we always bear witness of the kind man-
ner in which our presence was received. May the
very High give you a fitting recompense, for He
alone is sufficiently powerful to give it ! As to our-
selves, we have been struck, and, we may say,
termed at the greatness of your empire ; we are of
a country isolated from all others, and had never
presented ourselves, nor our fathers, nor any • of
our ancestors, at the court of any Sovereign, for
never has King had any right over us, and you are
the first Sovereign before whom we have appeared."
Certainly, for the dignity of human nature, it is to
be hoped that his Imperial Majesty of FRANCE may
be the last Sovereign, to the footstool upon whose
dais the Marabouts of Touareg may approach with
such evidences of volunteered abasement. Decidedly
the oddest thing about the whole of this prepos-
terous communication is the child-like acknow-
ledgment made to the Emperor NAPOLEON by the
CHIEK SI-OTHMAN, and his companions the other
Touareg Marabouts, immediately they have set
foot again upon the soil of Africa, after their
recent visit to his Imperial MAJESTY'S European
dominions : " We regret infinitely," naively con-
fesses the Touareg Chieftain, " we regret infinitely
that we did not bring with us our finest arms and
our best clothes to be presented in to your Majesty ! "
If Mr. MACDONALD would but kindly forward a
literal translation of the whole of this egregious
add ress from the CHIEK SI-OTHMAN to the Emperor
NAPOLEON 111.—if Mr. MACDONALD would but
forward uu an exact version of It in Japanese to
their Excellencies the Japanese Ambassadors, it
would certainly be worthy of preservatirn very
carefully among the documents those ambassadors
will take back with them, to be placed among the
Tycoon's archives in the City of Nangasaki. There
would not, thereupon, be the smal lest probability, we
conjecture, of the diplomatic agents of the Tycoon
emulating, in any way, the extravagant flatteries
poured forth in such nauseating abundance by the
Marabouts of Touareg at the feet of an European
sovereign. The Japanese, at least, have more self-
respect, than thus to kiss the dust before a fellow
mortal, even though that fellow mortal be the chosen
chief of 40,000,000 of one of the most riighly civilised
peoples upon the earth, and the master of 600,000
soldiers as dauntless as they are disciplined.

More Free Speaking in the French Imperial
Chamber of Deputies ! Ca va bien! M. JULES
FAVRE yesterday took occasion to vindicate the
newly recognised right of free debate and untram-
melled discussion in the Napoleonian Legislature by
enveighing, in the strongest possible terms, against
the further prosecution of the Mexican expedition.
Mr, ROEBUCK could not speak more boldly from
below the gangway, Mr. HORSMAN could not ex •
press opinions more thoroughly independent from
the back benches of the House of Commons, upon
any question whatever that could be ventilated
within the walls of that popular branch of
our own Legislature down at Westminster,
than M. JULES FAVRE took occasion to do
yesterday from the Tribune of the Chamber oF
Deputies—and this, moreover, upon the delicate
question of the military expedition recently sent
out to Mexico by order of the Emperor's Govern-
ment. To the prosecution of that enterprize the
Government of NAPOLEON 111., one would say, is
as fairly committed by this time as well could be.
The very fact of the unsuccessful character of its
to determine his
commencement tends, we might reasonably suppose,
until his plans th.•
thing like an a
true, no doubt, that
FRENcs has evidernee
MAJESTY to a resolute persistence
in it. At any r
ate, until the tide should have turned,
ceodulmdorbee
thanonce his readi-
ness
to withdraw from a difficult position—from a

dilemma, in short—precisely at the critical moment
and without any visible derogation from his perso-
nal dignity. The Peace of Villafranca, it will be
sufficient to remember, followed not so very long
after the issuing of that famous Proclamation at
Milan, in which the Liberator of Lombardy talked
about becoming Italy " Free from the Alps to the
Adriatic." Even there, however—NAPOLEON, if he
had not emancipated,ltaly from the Alps to the Ad-
riatic, had, at any rate, beyond a doubt of it, libe-
rated from the thraldom of the Austrian
rule that beautiful province of Lombardy, which,
with Imperial magnificence, he at once handed
over to the King VICTOR EMMANUEL. But—even
then—the grace of the whole of that memorable pro-
ceeding was sadly marred directly afterwards by
the transference to his Imperial Majesty of France
of those old appanagcs of the Crown of Sardinia—
the province and city of Nice, together wth the Niz-
zards peopling them—besides the picturesque and
mountainous province of Savoy, with all its brave
and freeborn race of Savoyards ! Strange to tell
—the most illustrious among all Savoyards living
(or even dead, we may say) being the Liberator
and chosen chief of the Italians General GARIBALDI.

It may be quite safely and confidently predicated,
we presume, in regard to the present expedition
undertaken by the French troops in Mexico, in
compliance with the orders of the Emperor NAPO-
LEON 111., that it has been resolved upon by his
Imperial Majesty for the currying out of a certain
object, and also (judging at least from the Italian
antecedents just alluded to) for the acquisition of—
what shall we call it ? Well,—a consideration !
Whatever the object in view, whatever the
" consideration," we may be quite certain of
this—that each has all along been distinctly there,
in the mind of that inscrutable potentate. NA-
POLEON 111. does not allow the blood of his soldiers
to be shed for nothing. Whenever he embarks
upon a war-like enterprise, we may reasonably take
it for granted at once that he has not vague inten-
tions of allowing the history of the campaign thus
voluntarily inaugurated, to have, for its last chapter,
a mere chapter of accidents. However compara-
tively small the number of troops sent out to
Mexico, they are not sent out there, we may
rest assured, to meet with a discomfiture,
and then come home ingloriously. At the
same time—while we cannot, for an instant,
anticipate any such modification of the imperial
design in regard to the Mexican Expedition as M
JULES FAVRE avows to be in every way so desirable
—we cannot but exult, as spectators of what is
occurring just now in France and also in Mexico—
we cannot but exult, we repeat, in the fact of a
man as eminent as M. JULES FAVRE having spoken
out as boldly as he did from the Tribune of the
Chamber of Deputies, and this, moreover, as re-
cently as only yesterday.

The unfortunate fortifications, the more they are 1
discussed the worse they fare. The Lords had their
1 debate on them last night; and no impartial reader
will dery that the Earl of AIRLIE and Earl GREY
had far the best of the argument. We only hope
the Lords will be as watchful over preventing use-
less national Expenditure, ab they were in prevent-
ing for one year the sacrifice of national Revenue
in the case of the Paper Duty ; and if so, they will
net be very ready to accept any bill which the Go-
vernment may force through the Commons to pro-
vide money for the fortifications which have been
so unadvisedly begun. In the arguments in the
Commons on Monday, it was not remarkable that
hardly any one WhS brought forward which told at
all with the House, except the appeal to consist-
ency—the argumentunz ad hominenz. The House
had once voted for the fortifications—could it stul-
tify itself by declining to continue its vote?
We quite agree with Earl GREY, that so far from
stultifying itself, it would do itself honour by de-
, clining to continue in a course proved to be extra-'
vagant ; and, we fear, worse than extravagant—we
mean positively injurious to our means of defence,
and advantageous to an enemy. We have all pro-
per respect for a Royal Duke, and the Duke of
CAMBRIDGE is as sensible a Duke as most Dukes of
his family, but we think the opinion of General
BURGOYNE, who had not to quit the Crimea, and
who could not be dispensed with there, worth, cer-
tainly, many times over that of the Duke of CAM-
BRIDGE. Now this veteran military engineer is
decidedly against the works on Portsdown Hill.
He denies their advantage to a moderate army de-
fending Portsmouth. He maintains that fixed
works there would inform an enemy, previously, of
precisely what he had to meet with, and that he
could make his preparations accordingly. The
General him himself would much rather trust to
works thrown up at the time of waich the enemy
could have no previous information. , His experience
of what TODLEBEN did at Sebastopol showed what
extemporized works can do in a very similar posi-
tion. Indeed all of us recall to recollection the
place made almost impregnable in the face of two

armies.

Lord GREY also very properly laid stress on the
other general consideration affecting our means of
defence—that of wasting our accumulations of
wealth. Even Lord PALMERSTON and Sir G. C.
LEWIS must confess that the question of the utility
of forts and fixed fortifications is now in a very un-
certain state. If they will not concede to us that
the preponderance of the argument is in favour of
ships versus forts, they may yet concede that we
have so many first-class authorities on our side, and
so many weighty arguments, that it is at least
reasonable to suspend a course of action which
' saddles both us and posterity with burdens grievous
to be borne. When we have such names as Gene-
ral BURGOYNE, Sir FREDERIC SMITH, Colonel
BOXER, and Captain COLES on our side, to mention
no others, it does seem too bad to expend millions,
which can never be retrived, on the works which
they condemn. These millions are the wealth of
the country. They ought to circulate, increasing
its wealth, and thereby better qualifying the coun-
try to provide in the hoar of need the sinews of
war. Lord PALMERSTON once, in the heyday of
his popularity, and when his own Chancellor of the
Exchequer would not do it, succeeded in persuad-
ing a young and green Parliament to vote the
eleven millions—for what, for purely unproductive
works—for works which yield no revenue; and the
money spent on which would permanently impo-
verish the country to that extent. Unless the forts
and fortifications are a necessity, they diminish, by
every million they cost, the capacity of the nation to
meet the charges of a war should one arise.
Above all things, the state of trade calla loudly
on Lord PALMERSTON to stay his fortification ex-
penditure. It is somewhat like mockery of the
sufferings of Lancashire to go on with these costly
inutilities, which, if they could be afforded at
another time, certainly cannot now. It is scarely
possible, notwithstanding the happy results of the
French treaty, that the diminished trade with
America and the " cotton famine" in the North
should not tell on the means of popular consump-
tion, and of course on the Customs and Excise.
What the loss to the revenue will be, it is impossible
to tell. Manchester men have estimated it at ten
millions; but, even at half that, it will be a dam-
aging thing for Ministers to come before Parlia-
ment next spring with the statement that they have'

been raising £1,200,000 this year for forts, when
they could not but know that the revenue must so
largely fail them,

We will not now re-enter upon the general cha-
racter of the best defences for the country. We
have seen or heard nothing whatever to rebut the
position chosen by even the Government men in
the last evidence taken by the commissioners, that
whatever the utility of forts there can be no ques-
tion that ships ought to come first. No one can
doubt that, in the event of a war, they must be
wanted. Without going more into detail, there-
fore, here, the obvious conclusion is that the forts
can well afford to wait, since they are second to the
ships, on which we are spending and have spent
money enough. We hope the Government, there-
fore, will have the moral courage to come forward
with the avowal that the altered opinions and the
altered circumstances of the country—we should
add, and the facts which have recently come to
light—require an entire suspension of the fortifica-
tion scheme. Such an announcement of repentance
would be far more honourable than proud official
obstinacy.