The Sun.
London, England, 1862-05-01 00:00:00

SDAY EVE NI G, MAY 1, 1862,

jog along in the old ruts and at the old pace. It
Will giVe' offence, I know, even to hint at this; in-
deed, the mere production of my design has proved
offensive is some quarters; but the national inte-
rests now at-stake are so great that we cannot afford
to defer to personal prejudices and apprehensions,
for if we go through the next three years as leisurely
as we have gone through the last three, our pre-
eminence s a naval power will most certainly be
lost to 'us.
On the other handl it must never bo forgotten
that we are bound the rightly as well as rapidly ;
end hero - again-another danger awaits us. The
counsels offered to the Admiralty in Parliament
and elsewhere are various enough and extravagant
entugh to distract almost any set of men. Mem-
has of the Hods° of commons, naval officers, pri-
vate shipbuilders, engineers, and even railway con-
tractors, all set themselves up nowadays; in the
most confident manner conceivable, as great autho-
rities on the eonatruction of ships of war; and Mr.
Cobden actually reproaches the Admiralty (in his
pamphlet ou ". The Three Panics") for not follow-
ing the guidance of gentlemen of the greatest abi-
lity undoubtedly in other spheres, but who are
probably as iittic CAtialified to design ships of war as
they would be to take a fleet into action. It ought
not, must not, be f4gotten that the construction of
a ship-of-war is a spfcial and an exceedingly diffi-
cult art, and that to viand the designing of our navy
over to amateurs' Would be the most fatal of all
dangerous measures. I may be allowed, I hope, to
say this, having spent 10 years of my life in prac-
tically studying the art in question, and another 10
in watching the momentous changes which it has
lately undergone.

beau, aided by a contingent of Americans under
Washington, were not only besieging the British
with a force considerably exceeding two to one, but
bad a powerful fleet in the river. There was no
Merrimac in question; no friendly garrison Close at
hand in a great arsenal; no command of the two
great rivers forming the Peninsula; no base of ope-
rations in the population behind them. There aro
very few Americans of the present day who do not
believe the surrender of Cornwallis was a magnifi-
cent result of American skill and courage, and who
would not be inclined to dispute that the French
had "anything considerable" to do with it. They
would be astonished to learn that but for the French
it never would have happened at all. By private

letters we learn that General M'Clellan is obliged

to land a regular siege train under most difficult cir-
cumstances. His troops are greatly irritated by the
conduct of the Government towards their favourite

General. He has, under various pretences, and

with a singular want of straightforwardness and
consideration towards the man who was hailed a
few months ago as Salvator Patrice, been deprived
of 10,000 men, when his plans were all completed
and he had taken the field to execute them. Rightly
or wrongly, there are suspicions entertained
that General M‘Dowell has not been acting with
perfect loyalty towards his old comrade and recent
commander, and great indignation is expressed
against him by the Staff and by the officers of the
regimeats under M'Clellan's orders. These small

elements are not to be disregarded. The most seri.
ous consequence of Mr. Stanton's recent degrada.
tion of General M'Clellan into the post of comman

der of a corps d'arnzec may prove to be that the
Genenal cannot rely on General M'Dowell's co-ope-
ration, as he cannot command it, for that officer, as
well as General Banks, is now free to report directly
to the War Department, and to receive orders from
Mr. Stanton exclusively. A New York paper.
" doing Juistory to order," thus discourses of the
first siege of Yorktown, and of the second siege,
which is so singular a commentary on the first.
What would the gentlemen who objected to a three-
penny tea-tax think if they found their great-grand-
children fighting under a tax upon everything for
King Union against King Cotton ?
Says King Union's man,--
"In the first instance the object of the wet was
the establishment of the independent nationality of
the Union against a powerful European enemy; in
the second instance, our object is the maintenance
of the integrity of the Union,' against the most
causeless, foolish, and hopeless, and yet the most

formidable, domestic rebellion in the records of any
nation on the face of the earth. In the first of these
two groat wars, after five years of a gloomy and
doubtful struggle against superior numbers, re-
sources, and facilities for war by land and sea, the
final issue was decided in favour of the Union in

the successful siege of Yorktown ; in the present
war, with all the advantages of superior numbers
and warlike means and resources, and after a nu-
merous train of brilliant victories by land and
water, who can doubt the issue of the second siege of
Yorktown ? Surely it will virtually end the war, as
did the first, in favour of the Union. But in view of
tbo grand results depending upon the siege of York-
town of 1781, how insignificant appear the contending
forces of that day compared with those now gathered
around that famous locality ! The army surrendered
by Lord Cornwallis amounted to 7,000 men; the
combined forces besieging him consisted of 7,000
French troops, 5,500 American continentals, and
3,500 militia, amounting in all to 16,000 men. The
killed, wounded, and missing of the British, during
the hot work of a close siege of 19 days, from the
let to the 19th of October inclusive, were some 552
men ; of the allies about 300. The artillery em-
ployed in the defences of Lord Cornwallis hardly
amounted to 60 pieces, and these were chiefly six-
pounders, and the artillery investing him was
largely composed of six-pounders. Now, with Gen.
M'Clellan's approach to the work of besieging
Yorktown, instead of a resisting force of 7,000, he
finds himself in front of an enemy numbering per-
haps 100,000 men; and, instead of a little circle of
defensive works, embracing 40 or 50 guns of the
smallest calibres, he finds himself confronted by a
yawning labyrinth of earthworks, extending across
five or six miles, from river to river, and armed
with perhaps not less than 500 heavy cannon, in-
cluding numerous 100-pounders and long range
rifled pieces. And yet we are satisfied that Wash-
ington, in moving upon Yorktown from the north
and west, in conjunction with a French fleet and
army from the east, commanding both rivers and
the peninsula, confident, as he had every reason to
be, of a complete success, was not more confident
than Gen. M'Clellan may justly feel of repeating
the decisive victory of Washington. That he will
do it we feel entirely assured, and if he should do it
within Washington's limit of 19 days, or within a
period twice as long, the country will appreciate
the crowning glory of this achievement."
The Confederates are well prepared indeed, and
the American papers point with truth to the cir-
cumstance as an argument against the ridiculous re-
strictions on the press, and against the theory that
the enemy are guided in their movements by the
accidental and non-accidental or incidental corre-
spondents of the Northern papers. Had 20,000 men
been sent round to Fortress Monroe in June, 1861,
Norfolk could have been taken, the Merirmac never
could have become the Virginia, and the second lines
of Yorktown would never have existed. The circum-
stantial details of the New York papers which we
have received have no military value whatever.
They state :

"There has been no change in our position since
my last. It continued to rain hard all day yester-
day and last night, and one can form no conception
of the depth of the mud, unless they chanced to
visit Virginia during the latter part of the winter.
The experience of the army thus far on the 'sacred
soil' has been anything but a pleasant one. If we
remain much longer in this mud hole, we shall lose
more men from disease than we would by storming
their batteries at the point of the bayonet. We have
counted thirteen batteries on the river, besides some
they are said to have at the back of these, and they
undoubtedly have a large force to defend them.
Several Southern gentry have come in and taken
the oath of allegiance, and requested our General to
place a safeguard' over their property, which was
being appropriated by our troops. I believe their
request has been granted in every instance, although
I think the loyalty of some of them is very ques-

tionable. One of them has five sons in the rebel
army. He tells the same old story of being a Union
man, and his sons were forced into the army. The
rebel gunboat Teazer keeps a constant watch on our
movements, moving backward and forward in the
James river, near the mouth of the Warwick.
Whenever she catches a glimpse of our pickets, she
runs up and salutes them with a few shells. She is
a small boat, and carries only one gun that we can
discover. It would be well for some of our gun-
boats to teach her better manners. As near as can
be ascertained, the force opposed to us at this point
is 43,000, and they are being constantly reinforced.
General Peck discovered the camp fires of eight new
regiments on our left last night, and we can hear
them cheer upon the arrival of every new regiment.
" The exciting event of the day has been a balloon
reconnaisance by General Fitz John Porter on a
scale of rather larger magnitude than was intended.
At five o'clock in the morning General Porter took
his place in Professor Lowe's balloon. He supposed
the usual number of ropes were attached to it,
whereas there was only one, and a place in this,
as was afterwards ascertained, had been burned by
vitriol, used in generating gas. Taking his seat in
the car, unaccompanied by any one, the rope was
let out to nearly its full length—the length is about
900 yards—when suddenly snap went the cord and
up went the balloon. This was an unexpected part
of the programme. The men below looked up with
astonishment, and the general looked down with
equal bewilderment. ' Open the yalve,' shouted