The Sun.
London, England, 1849-11-22 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1849 j

A wonderful amount of parade is just now being
attempted by the naval authorities respecting what
they are facetiously pleased to call the expedition
evinced in manning and fitting out British vessels.
Occasionally, it is true, when the voice of popular
displeasure at the indolence and mismanagement per-
ceptible in the maritime service becomes too audible,
spasmodic effort :are made to assuage the general
indignation. Of late this has been conspicuous.
Several vessels have filled up their necessary compli-
ments within comparatively brief intervals. In the
Leander, for example, 500 men within thirty days
were entered; a similar period enabled a crew of 200
to be drafted into the Firebrand, an equal number to
be passed into the Encounter, and 160 to be collected
together in the Cormorant. About a month
after its pendant was hoisted on board the
Spiteful it obtained its complement of 160 men, and
proceeded up the. Mediterranean. Precisely the same
amount of crew was assembled, in twenty-five days,
on board the Scourge, and on board, likewise, of the
screw-steamer Conflict, lying off Devonport. Yet,
with all these energetic endeavours which are made,
every now and then intermittently, the service is
compelled to languish in consequence of some rational
and really economical arrangement for the retention
of those able-bodied and efficient seamen who are
scattered abroad upon society every time a ship is
paid off, on returning from a foreign station. Nay,
simultaneously with the recurrence of such
circumstances as those just enumerated, the
public is made aware of some grievous mismanage
ment, like that witnessed at present in regard to the
manning of the splendid eighty gun man-of-war, the
Superb. As recently as the 14th of this present
November, that magnificent vessel was, by 180
mariners, short of her required complement of 750,
although for eight or nice months she has been lying
off Spithead, while hundreds, or rather thousands, of
prime first-rate seamen have been from week to
week disbanded in her immediate vicinity. Conse-
quent upon this lamentable carelessness, stupidity, or
procrastination, she is now compelled to take whatever
men coma to hand, good, bad, or indifferent, and to
scrape the necessary increase together with a "hurry-
scurry" of the most ominous description. To
obviate henceforth the ceaseless repetition of these
evils to the service it is incumbent upon the authori-
ties at the Admiralty themselves to take the initiative
in the way of innovation and improvement ; other-
wise the task of effecting the changes now altogether
inevitable will devolve immediately upon the Par-
liament. Professional men are proverbially jealous
of the interference of non-professional men in the
alterations introduced into their respective depart-
ments. If the naval authorities, therefore, are really
solicitous to retain in their own hands exclusively
the conduct of their own service, we would
certainly commend to them the advisability of exa-
mining how far changes are demanded in its organi-
zation ; for most assuredly come those changes will
—either from the Admiralty itself, or from the
wholesome pressure from without, or from that
instinctive intelligence from within which has not
unfrequently been evidenced by the Legislature.
The grievance of the present system, or rather we
should invariably say, of the present want of system,
has become altogether too glaring to be endurable.
Common sense, right reason, a moment's considera-
tion, alike assure us that no course more effectually
than the one hitherto pursued for the purpose
of manning the navy could entail greater expense
or more intolerable difficulties upon the country, a
larger amount of anxiety. and annoyance upon the
officers, or a more pitiable degeneration upon a class
of men whose efficiency should be our pride, whose
esprit de corps should be our boast, and whose col-
lective vigour and unremitting activity should be the
themes of our national glory and exultation.
Another evil, of a very different description, is at
the same time visible in the general conduct of the
maritime force of England. Those who are familiar
with the condition of this great service—the principal
souse of our national greatness, the chief instrument of
our national defence, and the sole guarantee for the
conservation of our naval supremacy—will not be
slow to conjecture that the evil to which we are now
making allusion is that which is, without question,
sufficiently manifest in the construction of the vessels
constituting the British Navy. It appears :to us, it
must appear to any rational observer, that the habit
has too long prevailed of permitting naval officers to
exceed, with overmuch temerity the due limits of
their very responsible and very distinguished profession.
To subject the labours of shipbuilding to the superin-
tendence of a man simply because he happens
to wear a blue uniform coat
appears to be ratahnedr an
couple of epaulettes,
ingenious method of embarrassing the difficulties of a
science of itself sufficiently onerous and intricate, and
a capital contrivance for frittering away much ability
and no small amount of the public moneys. In illus-
tration of our opinion upon this point, it may prove
somewhat appropriate to apply to the argument before us
a passage penned upon a very different subject, namely
upon the Civil Disabilities of the Jews, by no less
distinguished a writer than the essayist, poet, and
historian MACAULAY. It will be seen at once that
in the subjoined paragraph our author has evidently
taken asi ,Ilia text the somewhat hackneyed motto
sutokLidtra crepidam. He says—" The points
of differend between Christianity and Judaism
have very, Fich to do with a man's fitness to be a
bishop er pibbi; but they have no more to do