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

NOES-39.

Bass, M. T. James, Edwin Smith, Augustus
Bright, J. Kershaw, J. Staniland,-31.
Buxton, C. Lawson, W. Stansfeld, J.
Coningham, Wm. Leatham, E. Sullivan, M.
Crook, Joseph M'Cann, J. Tomline, G.
Dalglish, Robert McEvoy, E. Westhead, B.
Dillwyn, Lew is L. Monson, W. J. White, Jas.
Douglas, Sir C. O'Donogliue, D. Wilcox, B. IV.
Fermoy, Lord Padmore, R. Williams, W.
Greene, Capt. J. Peto, Sir M. Willoughby, Sir IL
Gurney, Samuel Pigott, Francis Wyld, James
Hadfield, Geo. Pilkington, James TELLERS.
Hennessy, J. P. Shelley, Sir J. V. Lindsay, W. S.
Hodgkinson, G. Smith, J. B. Berkeley, H.

FOR7IFICATIONS AND WORKS.

We must all of us feel obliged to Mr. Bright for his en-
tertaining review of the projects afloat for the defence of
this country. It is perfectly true, as he says, that every-
body who may be supposed to have a voice or the least in-
fluence in these matters is overwhelmed with sug estions
and schemes, generally on a colossal scale. It is quite true
that men who might be supposed from their profession to
know how countries can best be attacked and defended think
it necessary to fringe our shores with guns of large calibre
ever pointed at the offing, with men ever ready to work
them. It is equally true that others propose the most enor-
mous estimates for our Army and Navy, and seem to as-
sume that England is to merge every other consideration,
and even to give up all hope of adding to her people or her
wealth, under the desperate necessity of defending what
she has against the foe that has not even appeared. Of all
this we are painfully aware, and, if we differ at all from
Mr. Bright in our opinion of these lucubrations, the differ-
ence is that he has thought it worth while to get them up
thoroughly, and furnish the house with full abstracts,
whereas a glance had convinced us that they were not
worth the most cursory perusal. If the object was to create
a general impression that a mar, or even a good many men,
might have an extraordinary delusion on this or any other
subject, Mr. Bright has succeeded in proving what no-
body doubts. At almost every dinner table within this me-
tropolis for the last dozen years there has been at least
one man who thought our only chance was to double
or treble the Navy or the Army. But the existence of a
hundred wild schemes is no argument against the hundred
and first, especially if it is distinguished from them all by
its modest and practical character. One medicine may be
salutary even if a hundred are poison. There may be one
honest man even in the midst of a hunched rogues. One
statement may be true though many statements are not.
There maybe a goodplan for the drainage of Loudon, though
many plans have been chimerical. There may be such a
thing as a sound speculation, though many which pre-
tended to this character have brought their victims to the
Gazette.
Indeed, we may see in Mr. Bright's sweeping tirade
against defences of all kinds or sorts, except only Volun-
teers, the very foil necessary to set off the moderate and
well-reasoned propositions of the Royal Coinmissioners.
He fires away an imaginary attack on some imaginary pro-
position. He runs a tilt against an army of windmills in
the shape of pamphleteers. In his imagination the mules
are camels. He attacks the Report, not for what it is,
though he calls the writers all sorts of names, but for what
it is not, and for what it has, in fact, deliberately rejected.
The public anticipation, always apt to be hazy and care-
less, erred in the very direction taken by Mr. Bright's
speech. It forgot even that special instructions hadd-been
given to the Commissioners. So schemes were rife for the
general defence of the country, as if it was to be walled in
and battlemented, or surrounded with ditches. Mr.
Bright has supposed this, the general idea, to be
overthrown. It scarcely ever occurs to him that the
commissioners have not advised acontinuous fringe of artil-
lery round the island; they have not recommended a large
increase of our army or our navy ;
they have not recom-
mended a fortress at Guildford, or a circle of 50 forts round
the metropolis. They have simply advised that the exist-
ing fortifications at our dockyards and chief harbours of
refuge shall be brought up to the requirements of the pre-
sent time. If the commissioners have discriminated be-
tween the unpractical and the practical, between the infi-
nite and the finite, between grand fortifications along the
whole shore and additional protection for the receptacles of
the national ships and property, it is rather hard that they
should be condemned, not for the wheat which they choose
but for the chaff which they reject. Mr. Bright scarcely
condescends to notice the propositions of the commission.
Th'ey are, indeed, too humble for so grand a declamation.
If he offers any criticism upon them, it is that, after all,
they are insufficient, inasmuch as dr. Whitworth would
undertake to throw molten iron into Portsmouth from a
distance of six miles. If that is all that Mr. Bright has to
say about the particular works of defence recommended,
we must add his unbiassed testimony to the moderation of
the report. But as, in everything, Mr. Bright is against
defences altogether, except in the form of Volunteers, we
are left to conclude that in his opinion the right way of
dealing with Portsmouth, and all our other works of de-
fence, is to let them fall to ruin, to let the cannon sink into
the ditches, let frost and rain do their work, and eventually
convert the whole into gardens.
The House of Commons has pronounced by a very de-
cisive majority in favour of the resolution. That, of course,
we expected, and Mr. Bright would also expect. If he is
not satisfied with this decision, as most likely he is not, we
wish that the appeal could be made to the Volunteers, who,
we are told, are the proper defence of the country, and the
true constitutional army. Would the Volunteers rather
discharge their rifles from behind breastworks, or in the
open field? Would they rather stand behind the battle-
ments of Portsmouth, and in redoubts a mile or two in
advance, or among the marshes of Hayling Island and the
Downs of the Isle of Wight? Were they to find them-
selves in a country town such as Chichester, or a coast
town such as Brighton, with the immediate prospect of
being attacked by invaders, would they not take measures
to intrench themselves and fight under cover? We can
onl say that not only all the bravest Volunteers, but all
y
the best soldiers in the world, have done their best to eco-
nomise life by the use of such fortifications as it was in
their power to make: Romans, Normans Americans, our
own soldiers in India,. tne. Sikhs and Rindoos opposed to
us, and even the natives in New Zealand, have all fought
with earthworks and Pallis---adee, as well as with swori and
spear and rifle. They sever despised these humble appli-
ances. Bunker's-hill was fought with breastworks.
Garibaldi, with 2,00% beat 12,000 Austrians, by the aid of
a hastily-formed earthwork. The great loss we suffered at
Ferozeshah was owing to the Sikhs having run up a breast-
work which our cavalry eventually gallopped over, but
which answered its purpose. The soldiers who have run,
up works of defence in a night or an hour would not have
been too proud to use works already made ; and if they had.