The Sun.
London, England, 1870-12-26 00:00:00

OUR. IRONCLAD NAVY.

Mr. Qorry has made some remarks respecting Mr.
Childers' Minute on the loss of the Captain. He says
that the latter has given a moat erroneous impres,ion
of his policy by saying that his predecessor in office
had hot purposed to construct any new ironclads.
Mr. Corry declares on the contrary that in a memoran-
dum he, left on his retirement from the
Admiralty he said that it would be ,necessary
to make increased provision for building ironclads,
to put our navy on an equality with otlier nations,
but having done so it would be unwise to lay down
any additional armoured ships at a time when the
applicability of the turret principle to seagoing ships
was so soon to be tested by the trials of the Captain
awl the Monarch; whch it was then expected would
have occurred in the following year. Mr. Corry ig
glad that be refused to build repetitions of the
Captain before a trial had been made of a vessel of
that class.
THE SCHOOL BOARD ELECTION.

Mr. Potter, in a letter to Mr. Forster, M.P., pro-
tests against the decision of the Education Depart-
ment not to inquire into the irregularities at the late
election for the School Board in Westminster. Mr.
Potter was defeated by a narrow majority,
and he believes that but for these irregu-
larities he might have been success-
ful. The Education Department tells him
that he may apply to a court of law. To this Mr.
Potter answers :—" I venture to submit that mine
was one of the cases which the 33rd section of the
Act is peculiarly fitted to meet, and that a Govern-
ment proressedly so anxious to benefit my class
should he willing to take both the trouble and re-
sponsibility of seeing my claims investigated. The
result is that I am subj ecte 1 to an injustice. I must
either prepare to undergo the expense of contesting
one seat with five occupants, all supporte i by
wealth, or run the risk, in the event of failure, of
paying five sets of costs."

POSTAL COMMUNICATIONS.

Great complaints are made in Havre of the

d ficiency of postal communications. They can only
receive mails from the interior after great delay, and
news is sometimes longer in coming from Mar-
seilles than from New York, while the senders at
Havre are in blissful uncertainty when their
o-vn communications with the outer world reach
t! eh. destinations: The trade between Havre and
England is of great importance, and even at the pre-
font moment it is greater than the English trade with
a ;y other French p rt, possibly from the large number
o: English residents in the town. For some unexplained
reason, however, the London office has refused a
small subvention for the establishment of a daily
service from Southampton. It continues to send
the greater part of the letters ani newspapers for
Havre by Calais-and Dieppe, and they have conse-
quently to pass through the invaded districts, which
uses great delay. The mails going via .Southamp-
ton aro the only ones to be relied on, and these arrive
but three times a .week, so that it is not surprising
same irritation should exist.
THE DATE OF CHRISTMAS DAY.

Of course it woull be out of the question to alter
tl:e date of Christmas Day now. 'We have passed
too many merry Christmases for that; still it may be
worth while calling attention to an ingenious theory
referred to by a writer in a sporting contemporary.
Ile assures us that we are altogether out of count
when we imagine that the Nativity of the Saviour
took place in December. The exact date, everyone
koows, has long -been a matter 01 dispute, but
spe,mlative and learned men, Sir Isaac
Newton among them, have doubted the fact
of the shepherds watching their flocks by
night" in the fields at the height of the rainy season
iii Judma. Spending a night in the frost doubtless
would be thought a hardship in England, but remain-
ing on a damp sod under a constant downpour of
radii would be awful. It will be a pity if the discre-
p mcy of date be allowed to cause a laugh at us when
the New Zealander arrives. •
OUR COOKS.

If there was one thing more than another in our
domestic life we were beginning to pride ourselves
upon, it was the improved morality of our cooks.
We had begun to suppose that the additional
duties thrown on the police, and the higher
class of intellectual efficiency demanded of
them had, among other circumstances, tended to
a change iu kitchen management which had in turn
e!evated the independence of the servants and caused
cooks especially to look more careinily after their
general business and their own conduct. It
would seem that our hopes are premature. Not a
week since we referred to a little adventure at Put-
ney, where an hon. and rev, vicar had to apply hy-
dropathic principles in attempting to impress a sense
of sobriety on his cook. We have now to
record that anJther follower of the culinary
tut has been sent to 'prison for three
m ails for an even more serious offence than her
Putney contemporary. This woman, it was shewn,
being intent on getting settled in life, engaged a
room in the house adjoining her master's. Anxious
to furnish the chamber, she deliberately and calmly
passed over the garden wall four chairs, one table,
sheets, blankets, cloths, and other necessary require-
ments, all the property of her master.