The Sun.
London, England, 1853-12-28 00:00:00

Captains on half-pay, or on nominal service. What
we need is a thoroughly efficient navy—every ship
equal to the work her size fits her for, and a body
of the best seamen in the world, willing to man
our ships when required to do so. At present we
waste a large portion of our Naval Taxes on useless
officers and worthless ships ; and then, to make
both ends meet, we so starve down the wages of
the seamen that the best A. B.'s run off to ''lme-
rica and elsewhere for the very simple and practi-
cal reason that in said America and elsewhere they
get better pay and better provisions than they
are offered in the British Service. Since a new
fleet is in contemplation, the only terms on which
it should be sanctioned are that with such new
force we have also a naval reform. Sir James
Graham is in the position to make the needful
changes, and he ought, for his own reputation's
sake, no less than as an honest minister, to take
proper steps for the purpose, He has an active
good Reformer, the popular Member for Middle-
sex, as a Secretary—a man•whom the public rely
upon to see all the justice done in these matters which
a Secretaryispermitted to do, and surely between a
Reforming First Lord and a Reforming Secretary
to the Admiralty we might well calculate upon
having, in the year before us, a good instalment of
naval reformation, as some set-off against certain
backslidings of the Cabinet in other matters. But
do not let any mistake be made. Naval reform
does not mean any cheese-paring that may weaken
the navy, but wise re-arrangements that shall give
us a - more efficient force by far than we have at
present, without (it may be) much extra cost.
What the country asks, and has a right to ask, is
a thoroughly efficient English fleet. Ships for the
Black Sea, ships for the Channel, ships for the
Baltic, if requisite. All these we ought to have for
the 6,235,4931. voted for the navy for the year
1853-4 ; more especially when we find the ,Navy
List published in January of the present year tell-
ing us that we have no less than 545 ships of war
—their names running all through the alphabet,
from the heavy Aboukir at Devonport, to the 100-
horse steam-ship Zephyr, then of Woolwich—all
built and paid for. Surely with a force of this sort
on paper, and with the sum of more than six-and-
a.quarter millions sterling voted for a single year's
pay, food, and repairs, we ought to be able to fit
out a fleet or two beyond those 'now in service.
Admiral Dundas has but comparatively few ships
of these five hundred and forty-five. Where are
all the rest ? There are some, we know, as usual, in
the Tagus ; but if we estimated the complement of
Channel and Mediterranean fleets together, at the
odd forty-five ships of war, we still have five hun-
dred vessels unaccounted for. Out of these let us,
if need be, have a Baltic fleet, and a good one ; and
if we are told that the whole five hundred will
not furnish such fleets as we ought to have afloat, or
that first class A.B. seamen and good gunners are
not to be had to man such additional fleets,
without a large increase of the 6,235,4931. Navy
Estimate of last year, let us, we say, have a com-
mon sense commission, such as the Czar recently
sent to overhaul his fleet in the Baltic. Let us
have the shams picked out and sold (they will
fetch a good price just now), and with the money
so gained, and the money saved by not manning
and officering useless hulks, and not keeping a
little army of half-pay lumber, let good ships be
built by contract, and better wages be given to
the seamen. Our marines, too, are a force of value
and importance. Let them profit by our reforma-
tions. We may get marines when we cannot get
seamen. Let us have more marines for our
money, and (we repeat) let Sir James Graham—
now a Cabinet Minister of considerable Admiralty
knowledge—inaugurate those important changes.
He should not try any cheese-paring, but such a
true liberal economy of the enormous resources
voted by the House of Commons as shall give
England what she should always enjoy—the un-
doubted mastery of the Sea. Whatever else
comes, let us maintain to the full extent the pre-
eminence of that force which has so long given to
Great Britain her position amongst the nations
of the earth—our Wooden Walls. But let our
endeavours to that end be wise ones.

THE STRIKES.
(From the Morning Herald. )
Lord Palmerston's answer to the memorial from
Preston will not do much for the adjustment of
the strikes. Perhaps his lordship did not intend
to do much, or to say much either. If so he has
succeeded admirably in his intentions. No ono
can blame him for venturing too far ; no colleague
can accuse him for pledging the Government to
any uncomfortable course of action. The electors
of Tiverton cannot call him to account for the non-
fulfilment of his promises, seeing that he has made
none ; and the working men of England, who chose
out Lord Palmerston from his colleagues because
they supposed that there were moral and mental
'qualities in the man which gave them hopes of his
sympathy, perhaps of his co-operation, cannot
hereafter condemn him for inconsistency. That
failing supposes something fixed and standing from
which the inconsistent has departed. We defy
any one to point out such a departure in Lord
Palmerston's letter ; for the most obvious reason—
there is nothing fixed nor positive in it.
Yet the letter is a kind one ; and more than
that, the letter is a long one—very considerably
long for an official letter—remembering, moreover,
who the letter-writer is. More than once, also,
the remarks of Jack Falstaff occurred to us during
its perusal : "He talked very wisely, and yet I
marked him not ; and yet he talked very wisely,
and in the street too." There is wise talk in that
letter, and plenty of it. If wise talk could heal'
the wound, Lord Palmerston would have been no
bad physician in the matter. These three quali-
ties do not often meet in a Ministerial document 7--
kindneSs, wisdom, and length ; yet they are found
here, and that in a combination more than remark-
able—kindness at no cost, wisdom that brings no
fetters, length that requires nothinc, unsaid. No
Minister less able than Lord Palmerston could have
accomplished such a feat ; none could have mean-
dered through so much print with so many expres-
sions of good will, and left nothing striking behind
him. It is only foolish sheep that lose their wool
in wandering through briars.
But we must try to reduce the letter to its real
dimensions, to its substance and its sinews, if there
be any, and they are shrivelled enough for such a
windy external. Putting aside a few rather strange
admissions for the present, the whole, after being
reduced to a kind of a literary pemmican, amounts
to these three propositions :
I. Strikes are a bad thing.
11. Government can't help you.
111. Therefore you must help yourselves.
If there be more in the letter, let some of our
readers show that more, and we will admit it.
Now, it does appear to us that something might
be gained in the way of clearness, and of brevity,
if we were to arrange these propositions as they
stand in the minds of the working men,
and, give
us leave to say, of the true governor. It will saveus a deal of arguing, something of weary penman-
ship, and a little impatience, by so doing. Thus
then, argue the men :
I. Strikes are a bad thing.
11. We can't help ourselves.

111. Therefore Government must help us. • •
Now, all the tales and romancings and dry rea-
sonings written by Miss Martineau,e
owners, or even by the ablest or l
economists, on the first of these propositions, might
well have been spared. No n one
disputes it—least of all the workeindgoumbetsn: nign the
name of all that is honest, let it not
this
strike,, sed
e without starvingfi r fire, f
thisthat
weather,the
twhooo a t
h, w
sickening wives and famishing eohi ldtre
n
sf
o t
as accounts show us, raking out the hog's-wash
withoutrd,
actually with
the morsels which the tables of the rich man's ser-
vant have rejected—in God's name let us not do
such a deed of hypocrisy, as to talk to these men
of the evil of strikes, as if they did not hear and
feel that evil more than we do ourselves—more by
actual experiment of flesh and blood than our.ima-
gination can conceive. What is their appeal to
Government but a confession of that evil—what is
their whole language but a confirmation of it ?
Pray let us leave, therefore, this topic, and come
to that which is the real point at issue.
" Government can't help you," says Lord Pal-
wo can't help ourselves," say the
merston.
say to both, " Have you tried ?" Gladly
men.
would we see the dispute adjusted, if it could be,
without the interference of. Government • because
the work would be done more thoroughly, more
fairly, and more usefully to all parties concerned
iu it. But if that cannot b; Government must
interfere. For what other' purpose does a Govern-
ment exist, if it be not to adjust that for men
which they cannot adjust for themselves ? •We
know of no Other use, no other functions of a Go-
vernment; and when M. Comte's philosophy comes
into vogue (no wonder that our modern econo-
mista are such admirers of his system), then shall
we need no Chancellors of the Exchequer, no Home
Secretaries, for everything will then do for itself,