The Sun.
London, England, 1846-11-14 00:00:00

ROYAL MARINES.

Appointments—lnv consequence the promotion of
Brevet Major Wilson, Assistant-Adjutant General,
Royal Marines, to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in
that corps, the appointment he has so long held in the
Royal Marine Office, New-street, Spring-gardens, has
became vacant. Captain Thomas Wesley, Royal Marine
Artillery, has been appointed Assistant-Adjutant
General, vice Wilson, appointed to the Chatham divi-
sion, in the room of Lieutenant-Colonel Fergusson, pro
moted to second Commandant of the Plymouth division.
Second Commandant Thomas Aslett, of the Plymouth
division, is appointed to the Portsmouth division, as
Commandant, vice Jones, promoted to Major-General ;
and Colonel Mercer, second Commandant of the Wool-
wich division, is promoted to be Commandant of the
Plymouth division, vice George Beatty, Major-General.
Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Swale is promoted to the
second Commandantship of the Woolwich division.
These steps in the Royal Marine corps are conse-
quent on the promotion of Colonels Jones and Beatty to
the rank of Major-General ; which also promotes first
Lieutenant George A. Ayles, and first Lieutenant and
Adjutant Gascoigne, of the Chatham division, to the
rank of Captain ; and second Lieutenants Walter Bur-
nett Haberfield and Thomas C. Gray, to the rank of
first Lieutenant, in the corps of Royal Marines.
PORTSMOUTH.,. Nov. 12.—1 t is the intention of the
Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty that in future
the engineers in steamers shall mess in the ward-room,
and be considered as ward-room officers. Mr. Baker, of
the Victoria and Albert yacht, and Mr. Brown, of the
Bee steamer, tender to the Excellent, have already been
apprised of their position. The alteration is most cre-
ditable to the board, as most of the engineers are highly
educated men.
u Captain
ADMIRALTY CHANGE.—It iS rumoured t-at
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the future rank as Major-General the Army, which
he first entered in 1798.
LONDON AND SOUTH-WESTERN TERMINUS,—.HUN•
DERFORD.-BRIDGE.-Th e desirableness of getting the
extension of the London and South-Western Company's
line to Hungerford-bridge carried out with the greatest
practicable expedition is said to have been one of the
leading topics under consideration at the recent meet-
ings of the directors, and, from the arrangements
which are making, and the facility with which they are
obtaining griund in cases where they anticipated
vexatious obstructions and delays, they are now con-
fident they will be able to take up and put down pas-
•nzers at Ilungerford-bridge by June or July, 1848;
• in little more than a year and a-half trotn this
is calculated that in another year and a-half
to.complete their further extension to

:hat IN
date; and L.
they will be 44.
London-bridge,.

THE NAVY.
(From the Times.)
A letter signed " Navalis," in our paper of" yesterda3r,
expressed a ,dissatisfaction, which is probab,:r general
amongst the members of the writer's profession, at the
reduction of complements which all ships of war are
forthwith to suffer. The intimation, however, of this
determination on the part of the Admiralty was not the
only remarkable piece of information contained in our
naval intelligence of that day from which our correspon-
dent extracted the subject of his comments. If our

readers had looked carefully over the column in question,
they might have observed several statements bearing
rather a striking relation to each other. It was there
reported that the Vengeance had great difficulty in en-
tering any seamen; that the Penelope was in similar
straits; and that the Victory had been almost drained of
her crew to supply sea-going vessels. Yesterday, too, we
announced, in our intelligence from Portsmouth, that
the Mercury tender had left that port for Plymouth
with " one supernumerary." And at the moment
that we were presenting the public with a record of
Lieutenant Green's services and rewards, it was openly
stated that the Admiralty had been involu,ltarily
driven to the proposed reductions as regarded the
officers in consequence of the " difficulty experienced
in finding lieutenants to serve." Few persons will have
any trouble in putting these facts together, and extract-
ing a moral .for themselves. That lieutenants should
p notris
eb,eceoanssi
considering
procuredring tbe pricew il will
offeredha r d l y
by
a matter
ye
a grateful
country
sur-
prise, ur -
tor their lives and labours; nor is the appearance of the
bargain much bettered by the fact that, instead of the
honourable and useful services on which Lieutenant
Green had the gratification of gratuitously expending
his strength, an applicant for employment would now be
almost certainly dispatched to the Gulf of Guinea, there
to consume his health and his ardour in a task promising
danger in abundance, but which he can hardly represent
to himself as a patriotic service of his country, except by
a most liberal interpretation of the phrase. The
western coast of Africa seems as serviceable to our
navy as the northern coast is to the French army. A
superfluity of professional zeal can be admirably expended
in the plain of Algiers er the Bight of Benin, and any
troublesome tendencies to activity or enterprise may be
effectually counteracted by the prospect exhibited of their
issue. Connected—and very inconveniently too—with
the circumstances to which we have been alluding is the
report which was partially current not many days ago
concerning the immediate equipment of a strong squadron
of line-of-battle ships and frigates. That this rumour is
incorrect may be very true, but the condition of Europe
and our relations with foreign Powers have experienced
such alterations since the last session of Parliament as
to leave it at least possible that a speedy augmentation
of our force afloat may be considered desirable. And at
such a crisis what will be our condition ? There are
ships enough in Portsmouth harbour to fight another
Trafalgar—there are guns and shells enough at Wool-
wich to sweep the Channel like the ditch of a fortress—
there are steamers enough in our royal and mercantile
navies to blockade the ports of the Atlantic and the Me-
diterranean from Dunkirk to Toulon—but when we
come to bring these powers into action it is found that
we can hardly man an eighty-gun ship ! If the destina-
tion of the Penelope be considered as rather damaging
her attractions, the same excuse cannot be alleged of the
Vengeance ; yet here is an example of the resources sup-
plied by the present system immediately under our eyes,
at a period when rumour proclaims, and reason suggests,
that we may speedily have to put these resources
to a very trying proof. We do trust that the reduction
of ships' complements may not be a necessity imposed on
Government by the deficiency of ready volunteers, but
we must express our regret that the measure should
have been adopted on any principle or from any cause
except that of its avowed expediency. It has been a
question, though one admitting perhaps of an easy solu-
tion, whether a very strong crew was not liable to more
severe losses in action than a less crowded vessel, and
we can understand a reduction confessedly proceeding
on this principle; but an involuntary diminution of the
complements of our ships must argue a mal-arrangement
of our resources, or a miscalculation of our means. No
Minister need for a moment hesitate to demand a vote
sufficient to man, fully and effectively, by fair means and
on honourable terms, as many vessels as the credit and
interests of the country may be shown to require. But
is it not now abundantly clear that our present system
is utterly unequal to any emergency? Admitting that
seamen are naturally less numerous in time of peace—
that the prospect of active and honourable
service would allure hundreds of excellent hands—
that war would release the crews of many a
merchantman—and that the coast-guard and the
yachtsmen would form a very pretty little reserve—yet
it must be obvious that this increased supply would bear
no kind of proportion to our increased demand. Three
ships of the line we might thus, perhaps, turn out splen-
didly in a week or two, but what is to be done with the
next ten or twelve ? We fear that our old system of
impressment is counted on with complacency by Govern-
ment and with resignation by naval men as the expe-
dient by which carelessness is to be compensated and
forethought supplied. Our condition then will be this;

—Presuming matters to proceed in the most favourable
manner, we shall tyrannically seize upon the services of
thousands of our countrymen whose free aid we were
neither prudent nor liberal enough to engage ; we shall
hand these captive victims over to their respective
officers, who will necessarily have to subdue the
ignorance, obstinacy, sullenness, or vicdictiveness
of such a class by arbitrary and repulsive
means ; and at length, when lashes and labours have
formed a passable crew, we shall send them to face
death for our honour and glory. This is the most favour-
able issue that can possibly be prayed for from our ad-
herence to the ancient system. If we can discover and
seize our victims, if we can crush them into shape, and
if we can escape a mortal struggle till these prelimi-
naries are completed, we have then got everything we
could have hoped. But, suppose the course of our in-
justice to run a little contrary—suppose the more eivi-_

lized state of public opinion to revolt and rebel at acts of
daily oppression and brutality which it passed unheeded
forty 3 ears ago—suppose the improved condition of the
individual seaman to interfere materially with the pro-
jected discipline—suppose common cause to be made
with the sufferers in these nightly razzias—and suppose
the energy, strength, and discipline of the enemy to
allow us no such law and license as in past generations
we enjoyed—what will be our condition then? And
which is the more probable of these hypothetical alter-
natives ? We have never been inconsiderate alarmists
on the state of our navy ; we believe our resources to be
unbounded both of men and means, but it is strange that
successive Administrations, while so laudably organizing
the latter of these requisites, should so pertinaciously
conspire to neglect the former.