The Sun.
London, England, 1854-11-08 00:00:00

THE USE OF MECHANICAL SKILL.

The superiority of one nation over another consists in
its knowledge and its skill. Our 28,000,000 people,
having at their command innumerable instruments and
machines, are in reality more powerful than the
65,000,000 Russians who have only very few such in-
struments and machines, and are without the skill and
knowledge necessary to make them. The English an-
nually create more wealth than all the Russians. The
wonderful success of the Europeans on the continent of
America was not due to their numbers, but to their
knowledge of gunpowder. In relation to the Russians
we possess in our mechanical skill a similar superiority.
Have our Ministers made any use of it ? Very little.
They have stuck to the old routine, and have used only
armies and navies pretty much as they were organised
half a century ago. They have gone to battle, as it
were, with clubs and spears, after fire-arms were in-
vented. They have not thought apparently of applying
the arts they see around them to insure success in the
Crimea. Railway engineers have got instruments fer
crushing rocks ; the rudest navvies, when set to work to
crush rocks or move masses of earth, and immediately
improvise a railway, however short and interrupted ; yet
powers like these seem net to be used by the army, and
the most important operations are delayed for want of a
short road. Ministers seem to have sent to the Crimea
only ordinary pioneers and artificers, with imperfect
tools, and have attacked the rocks of the Crimea as dis-
advantageously as they have attacked the Russians. A
ship-load or two of navvies, with their implements, as
well as more military force, are required in the Crimea.
There is at present no excessive demand for the labour
of such men or engineers in England. There are no
great lines of railway constructing, no great suspension
bridges making, no excavation going on under the
Thames, no conquests of nature in progress, occupying
all our skilful men. Ministers, earnest and zealous in
bringing the great undertaking they have begun to a
successful conclusion, would have used the mechanical
skill of the nation for the purpose. Had they formed,
as was their duty, a clear opinion of the work to be done
at Sebastopol or Cronstadt, and had they consulted the
Stephensons, the Brunels, or the other depositaries of
the mental powers of the nation, bow they were to ex-
ecute it, would it have been still to do ? Granite walls

are of a measurable strength, the force necessary to de-
stroy them Can be known to a pound ; the means of
bringing that force to bear on them can as surely be de.
vised as the means of suspending in mid-air the Bri
tannia-bridge, or boring a channel under the Thames ,
but the Ministers, instead of devising these means, or
calling on skilful men to devise them, sent to the Baltic,
according to the old routine, a great many large two and
three-decked sailing and unprotected ships, which could
neither be carried close to the granite walls, nor be re-
lied on4when close, to do the work assigned them before
they were themselves destroyed. The Ministers and
f
the Admirals scarcely went one hair's-breadth out
doi.
the old routine. They did not even provide or
nary gun-boats, much less destructive machines,easilymoved, that should be indestructible by f
me-
chanical powers of the Russians. The tdhifeitahiaierterne
and to our vast national power, the disraeftaacked. The
magnificent that Cronstadt could not even be disheartening,
magnificent fleet returns home, having accomplished,
after a vast outlay, next to nothing, the commanders
and crews soured and grieved, and the nation disap-
pointed and annoyed.
If they did not mean to
the BalticattackCrenstwaodat,ldonheahvealefhoff.
the large fleet employed in
ficed to keep the Russian fleet in harbour, and to block-
if they did mean to attack it,
ade all the Russian ports ,
they employed a force not adapted to the purpose, and
inadequate to effect it. In either case, from adhering to
routine, or from being ignoranthvaeduring the summer mis-
of the immense power at
their command, they .
navy the Baltic, with which they
employed a large in
might have transporteda large additional army to the
Crimea, and effectually overwhelmed the Russians. By
adhering
to old principles, and following old routine,
theyliave failed to develope and apply the national re-
sources, and have not obtained the success which-the
nation has a right to expect. Nicholas is making great
preparations to continue the war, and again become the
assailant. Let them not again lose time and opportu-
nity, but at once plan how they may bring, in conjunc-
tion with France, the whole strength of the two united
nations to bear on some one point, and demonstrate the
superiority, of our knowledge and our skill.—Daily
NOM.