The Sun.
London, England, 1860-08-03 00:00:00

said that Ireland and that part of the kingdom should not be
left with less than 30,000 infantry. These gentlemen might
know something about military matters, but everybody did
not know that a great number of the pamphlets published in
France in reference to this. country were pamphlets pub.
lished by a certain party who believed that the best mode
of overturning the present dynasty was to beget first dis-
trust and afterwards war between France and England.
Probably many gentlemen who then heard him believed
that the French Emperor by the present law could prevent
any of these pamphlets being published, but the fact was
that it was only by outstepping the law that that Govern-
ment could interfere with a pamphlet before it bad been
published. It was not so with newspapers. A newspaper
could be warned, and, after three warnings, suppressed, but
there was no such law with regard to pamphlets ; and the
miserable pamphlets issued from the Paris press, and quoted
as proofs of the hostility of the French Government to Eng-
land, were the productions not of persons in favour of the
French Government, but of those who were anxious, as he
had just remarked, to create first distrust and then war be-
tween France and England, with a view of overturning the
present dynasty and setting upon the throne some member
of the two branches of that family now in exile. t
Colonel Mackintosh said there must be a fort at
the north of London, covering Hampstead and High-
gate, and he added, what might be consolatory to the hon.
member for Lambeth if he happened to live on the other
side of the water, that the north could be much more.
readily defended than the south, inasmuch as the bridges
could be broken down and the river rendered impassable.
(A laugh.) He did not find in the proposition made by the ,
noble lord at the head of the Government that these recom-
mendations were adopted, and therefore as the noble lord
himself was not a great military authority, and in politics;
was very frequently mistaken and in error—(laughter)—lse
must beg leave to form his own opinion upon a question ire
reference to which there were so many councillors. II had
in his possession two or three more extracts similar to those
from which he had already quoted, and as they were from
the writings of persons important as military nem lie
thought he was entitled to ask the Government wb o was the
authority they followed, how far they went, and how much
they would expend in the impossible object they had in
view ? Gen. Sir R. Gardner, an officer well acquainted with
fortifications and who was only the other day Governor of
Gibraltar, though he certainly had not shone with any
lustre as a statesman and a governor, said in a pamphlet
which he had sent about most industriously, that an ex-
penditure of twenty millions would not be sufficient for the
additional fortification required. Lieutenant-General Ken-
nedy, in a new edition of his pamphlet, proposed to fortify-
London by surrounding it with a line of forts, each armed
with 40 guns and with 500 men, extending in a circumfer-
ence through Hammersmith, Wormwood Scrubs, Willes-
den- green, Hampstead, Tottenham, ever the River Lea, to
Deptford, Norwood, Streatham, and Wandsworth. A
writer in the United Service Magazine, who he presumed
combined the authority of the army and naey, said in a late
number, " The steam navy alone required should consist of
no less than 1,056 vessels of all sorts of which we are at
present deficient ; 101 screw line-of-battle ships, 6 block
ships, 74 steam frigates, 67 steam corvettes and sloops, 7
floating batteries or rams, 268 gunboats, and 86rnortar ves-
sels." Now . that was published in the United Service
Magazine, a periodical read in military circles, and pre-
sumed by the editor not to be absolute idiotcy,
or else it would not have been published. (Laughter.)
Another writer in a pamphlet headed, " Invasion rendered
impossible, by a member of the Royal Naval and Military
Institution," proposed to place permanently along the open
beaches, at the mouth of the rivers, all round our great road-
steads, and in front of all our sea-coast towns, long 32
pounder guns, at a distance of 30 yards apart. (Laughter.)
No doubt, if the noble lord at the head of the Government
had proposed something like this for a long extent of coast,
many men who now laughed would have thought the pro-
positions the height of wisdom. (Laughter.) The scheme
would give sixty guns to every mile, and each 'gun was to
be manned by one captain and ten men, the men to cousin
of paid volunteers from the towns and villages on the coast
and a few miles inland. Assuming that there were 300
miles of coast line in Great Britain that needed defending,
13,000 guns would be required, with 18,000 captains, and
180,000 men. M. Brialmont, who published a History of
the Battle of Waterloo; or, a Life of the Duke of Welling-
ton,. whose father was' a great authority, and supposed to
be the eldest officer in Europe, said there must be an enor-
mous increase of the fortifications of Chatham, a new for-
tress at Guildford, and a great depot, with a vast entrenched
camp at Croydon, adding that these works, with the re-or-
ganisation of the Englis'a army on the basis of the con-
scription, would render England invincible at home. M.
Brialmont's plan also involved the augmentation of th e
standing army, and the erection of a grand strategical
pivot in the south, in the neighbourhood of London. He
now came to the proposition of the commission. The come
missioners said very early in their report that " having
carefully weighed certain foregoing considerations, we are
led to the opinion that neither our fleet, nor our standing
army, nor our volunteer force, nor even the three combined,
can be relied on as sufficient in themselves for the se-
curity of the kingdom against foreign invasion." Their
report proceeded upon a desponding principle through-
out. They assumed that there would be some
grand combination of all the maritime nations of
the earth against England, but if we pursued a
policy of justice and courtesy in dealing with foreign na-
tions he (Mr. Bright) believed that a combination of the
great maritime powers against this country was absolutely
impossible. The commissioners talked of a a sudden naval
combination, but there could bet none. How long did it take
to negotiate the smallest and most inconsiderable matter ?
We learned here by every day's post, and sometimes befove the
hand of the clock had marked here what it had marked
eastward, the negotiations, and plots, and conspiracies
which were being hatched in the courts of Europe, and yet
these seven men talked about a sudden naval combination
among the maritime nations. The right hon. gentleman.
who had just addressed the house said nothing could be more
carefully drawn and better considered than this report, and
yet he (Mr. Bright) declared without the slightest hesita -
tion that he had never read anything of an official cha-
racter so utterly incoherent, illogical, and absurd.
(Laughter and cheers.) They said that with the powers
of concentration steam now afforded, a force could
be assembled before daylight upon any point selected
for an attempt and thrown upon the shores in two or three
hours. That was just the sort of twaddle, just the sort of
stuff which filled up the columns of the Morning Adver-
tiser. (Great laughter.) He could scarcely conceive how
seven gentlemen—major-generals, admirals, captains,
F.R.S.'s, and everything else, could offer to the Queen and
Parliament a report containing such monstrous absurdities.
(Laughter.) They went on to say that without secure forts
behind which the fleet could find refuge in case of disas-
ters, certain things must occur. The whole report pro-
ceeded upon the assumption that nothing was to be met
with but disaster. We might for 300 years have had
nothing but naval disaster in our history to justify the tone
these gentlemen took. (Hear, hear.) They said, with an
attempt at fairness which made the thing much worse,
" Doubtless the defence would be somewhat aided by the
railways and telegraphs." When they wanted to say
what France could do they related the powers of her steam-
boats, railways and telegraphs, but when they wished to
say what we could do, they simply said, " doubtless the
defence would be somewhat aided by railways and tele-
graphs." The whole thing was a foregone conclusion, and
the commissioners need not have stepped beyond the
threshold of their own office to have considered their re-
port. On the contrary, they might have gathered all these
absurd paragraphs from any newspaper in London, without.
any scientific inquiry at all. (Hear, hear.) The noble,
lord had inserted in the resolution " works to protect th e
harbours of Dover and Portland." But the commissioners
said the defences of Dover were worth very little, and if
they did not happen to be there, they did not know that
they would reoemmend any expenditure at Dover at all.
Consequently we had fortifications which did not defend
any one, and for which there was no necessity, and we
were to be put to an expense of £350,000 in adding to
them. (Hear, hear.) It was said now that Dover was to
be made a harbour of refuge, it was more necessary to have
these defences, but why should harbours of refuge be de-
fended as if ships entered them for the purpose of making
them their permanent abode ? With regard to Portland,.
the commissioners said there was no naval establish-
ment there, and that so far as they were aware, it was
not intended to form one ; and yet they proposed to expend
£630,000 in the defence of the roadstead and harbour of
Portland. He wished that some gentleman accurately in-
formed upon military matters could have gone through the
evidence given before the commission, so as to have given
to the house a picture of its gross and ludicrous
inconsistencies. A Colonel Bingham was examined, who,
said the Government would require for these works 72,000
trained and 108,000 untrained men, making 180,000 ate' -
gether. He further said that there were required for rile
defence of the dockyards, towns, and batteries on the 'coast
more than 3,000 guns, but he told them at. thtetaseenv 'e time
an arsenal.
that at present there were not men sufficient eork the
Maitland,
1,000 now existing. Then again Admiral
latSne
Captain Sullivan, and others told themn forts could
frankness, mean, of great
in tb.e present state of
geintgaobilidtyesantrop
prevent iron-plated ships
Sir J. Burgoyne, of Undoubted
army 4tohemifileesld;
Portsmouth
gunnery it would honesty and
from 30 to
lines
ran bgemgimpossible to defend
He and
(Mr.
he.r.
Bright was talking the other day to a gentleman who did
wouldwithout
rather trust to an
not seem to be much in favour with the Secretary for War,
but who was for all that the greatest machinist in England,
Mr. Whitworth, of Manchester. (Hear, hear.) That gen-
tleman told him that he would undertake to throw a 701 b.
shell filled with molten iron six miles. (Murmurs.) The
statement seemed to startle hon. members ; Mr. Whitworth
said he believed he could accomplish seven miles, but he
would guarantee six. The whole system of warfare was,
in short, about to undergo a change as great probably as
that which took place when gunpowder first began to be
used. (Hear, hear.) And yet they had a Government into
its fussy activity—(laughter and cheers)--not daring
an.
tell the people the truth, but rushing every day t
extravagant expenditure, though they know that is in
twelve
months all they now did 'would be of no e ffect. Yet,
forsooth, they claimed to be great patriots, turd told people
that they alone knew what was for tbe interest of
trade. Of Cowrie 110 Mr. knight) 49't kill"' tit