The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-11 00:00:00

rr E S lIN.

LONDON, -WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, IE6O.
Our national defences ought certainly to be now,
at length, in an efficient state, seeing that upon
them alone we are expending in a year of Peace
very nearly half of our enormous annual outlay of
I:70,000,000 ! With such a lavish expenditure as
this upon our military and maritime services, there
is no longer any excuse left either for the authorities
at the Horse Guards or the Board of Admiralty—for
the War Secretary or the Chancellor of the Exche-
quer. Thirty millions sterling we know full well
is the stupendous amount set apart during this year
of grace, 1800, for the payment of all the expenses
incurred within the twelvemonth, for the support
of the Royal Navy, of the QUEEN'S Army, of the
Militia, the Yeomanry, and the Volunteers. Thirty
millions of pounds sterling ! Consider the actual I
significance of that almost fabulous amount. It is
as. if each man, woman, and child in the three
kingdoms had paid down sovereign a-piece for the
defence of. these islands by sea and by land.
Thirty millions
sterling ! -Why it is like the
dream of that cruel old miserly hunks, THELUSSON
—that wicked dream that haunted his imagination,
and that was never to be re r
fortune of several millionsarealised—{he dream of a
multiplying (for some
unborn heir), by interest an
P interest,
slowly, slowly, year by year, tbroululind dreadful-
series of neg!ccted generations! What 'l:lttur
Will vainly aimed at in effecting this accumulation''°
.N's
through an awful lapse of NI astedtime—is here
done to hand, nominally, for the good, or rather
for the salvation of the nation, is here done, we
say, to hand as it were in a twinkling by a few
votes of the House of Commons in Committee !
Here ;is the scarcely conceivable sum total of
£30,000,000 set apart for the support of our land
and sea forces during a single year, and that year a
year of pee'ce, viz., this current year of grace 1860.
NOW, at 'oast underthese eircumstances,our solicitude
as to the teciency of our national defences ought

can.

to be set at rest. Now at length we ought to feel
.ontented as to our insular security.. Particularly
when we remeitber that never before was such a
mr - tur this set apart during a year of peace
for the support of the army and navy of England.
Remembering, too, that our vast and scattered
colonies are all in a state of profound tranquillity.
Remembering that the Indian mutiny has long since
been suppressed. Remembering that during the
last four orfive years we have been engaged in no
European war whatever : and that the only war-
like expedition that we have actually now " upon
hand" is the exceptional war (upon which we have
scarcely yet embarked) with the Chinese. Remem-
bering all these things, and remembering that it is
thus, as we have said, during a year of Peace, that
we have munificently set aside for our army and
navy the magnificent sum of V 0,000,00
we are justified, surely, in at last looking for
something like efficiency in our National Defences.
It is notorious, however, already, that we are
still far, very far, removed from the time when
those defences can be pronounced in a proper state
of efficiency. We have, at last, it is quite true, a
Channel Fleet—that First Essential ; and what is
more, a very noble Channel Fleet. This, however
—thanks to Sir JOHN PAKINGTON'S, and not by
any means to the Duke of SOMERSET'S administra-
tion of affairs at the Admiralty. We have, again,
had enrolled all over the country some 80,000, or
from that to 100,000 rifle volunteers. No thanks
whatever, in this instance, either to any member or
members of the existing Government. Thanks
rather to the spontaneous patriotism of all ranks
and classes (below the highest, and above the
lowest) throughout our industrial and enterprising
population. The daring rivalry, moreover, of Sir
WM. ARMSTRONG and Mr.WHITWORTH has necessi-
tated, or is necessitating wonderful improvements in
the character of the ordnance making up the aggre-
gate of our formidable artillery. But apart from
these adventitious and fortuitous aids, can it be
said that the nation is obtaining anything like the
worth of its money from the administrative energy
and patriotic co•operation of the responsible mem-
bers of the Government ?

We pronounce our opinion upon this
point quite deliberately and quite advisedly,
when we say absolutely and positively that
—it cannot. Neither the army, under the
conduct of Mr. SIDNEY HERBERT, nor the navy
under that of the Duke of SOMERSET, can be said
to give promise of expanding into due efficiency
considering that the present year is a
year of peace, and that during this year of peace
they are empowered to spend upon the two services
altogether the enormous sum of £30,000,000.
All which lack of adequate enterprise is
mainly due, we, in our heart of hearts
believe, to the pound-sparing, shilling-grudging,
penny-saving policy of that model financier, our
present verbose and frightfully experimental Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer. Mr. GLADSTONE is pretty
well known by this time to be about equally domi-
nant, at the present moment, in the Cabinet and
in the House of Commons; and Mr. GLADSTONE,
formerly one of PEEL'S boys, is now in the new
political and intellectual phase of his character, the
faithful disciple of the peace-at-any-price apostles
of the Manchester School, et hoc genus oinne. It
behoves the nation to be at length on the alert,
however, and to insist coute qui coute, to insist ab-
solutely and inexorably, that England should, at
least in the matter of her defences, have a quid
pro quo for her £30,000,000.

The long despatch from Mr. LEWIS CASS to Mr.
DALLAS, the American Minister here, in reply to
a note of Lord MALMESBURY'S on the slave trade,
calls for a few remarks. According to the declara-
tions of Mr. BUCHANAN, in his last message, in-
tended to quell the madness of Southern men who
desired to resuscitate the slave trade, the American
Government is sincere and earnest in its wishes and
efforts to put down this accursed traffic. The Pre-
sident appeared to assign bona fide reasons for
decided hostility to the African slave trade, we
think so the more because most of them were
purely selfish reasons. We may assume, therefore,
that his secretary, Mr. CASS, shares the sentiments
of his chief, and that the reservations of rights
which appear in his letter arise out of what have
become almost unreasoning traditional aversion to
conceding anything most remotely resembling the
old and steadfast claim to " the right of search."
It will be remembered that Lord MALMESBURY
renounced distinctly this right, and that afterwards
Lord ABERDEEN declared that he had renounced it
long before. The dispute seemed to be left in this
position—that if a vessel hoisted American colours
a British cruiser would examine into her nationality
on his own responsibility. If she turned out to be
an American vessel, it was conceded that if there
were reasonable grounds of suspicion, and the visit
were fairly conducted, it would not be easy for
any nation to found on this any ground for
serious reclamation. Most unfortunately, the
slave traders almost all prefer to hoist the
flag of our very touchy Yankee cousins ; a
British commander must, therefore, submit to
being befooled by the simplest trick in the world,
or he must run the risk of affronting the sovereign
mob of the North, and the furious slaveholders of
hardly'lo
13 t the South, and. through them the quadriennial Go-
Ne*Tllll e Il
doubt
u which
ht a the exists mbe yn theirnf will.sufficient e d
Wur
ceateioann
and ability to form the administration of the United
States are honestly opposed to what disgraces their
country in the eyes of the eiviliSed world ; but they
must, if they would exist, tickle the •
prejudices of
the mob, and do the bidding of the south.
To this we attribute all that seems so ti • mid and
special pleader like, in the letter of Mr. CASS. He
can hardly deny that a right of visitation of sus-
pected vessels is essential to the suppression
of the
traffic ; yet he will not fairly concede it. He runs
off with the statement, that by the laws of the
Union the slave trade is piracy; but then he says,
re them to be, you must not
pirates, though we declare
treat them as what our laws make them; on the
contrary, he goes on to prove that there is a wide
difference between the slave trade and piracy ! All
this strange inconsistency is indulged in, merely to
avoid conceding, unconditionally, the right to
examine and deal with suspected ships. If they
are but American slavers, though the fact may be
obvious, they are to be let go again for the few and
sluggish American crusiers to catch them if they

Mr. CASS makes a strong point of our influence with
Spain. He acknowledges that by the ASHBURTON
treaty, the States are bound to join in representa-
tions on the subject of the slave trade to any
Power which seems to connive at it. He would
therefore be willing, were it of any avail, to join
in such representations to the Spanish Government.
Cuba is the only slave mart for slave-traders now
in the world ; Spain is abundantly able, from the
force she maintains in Cuba, to put a stop to the
slave trade there. It may be that the military
strength of Spain in Cuba is greater than the Pre-
sident, of Ostend celebrity, and other American
annexationists wish. They wish, at least, that
Great Britain should taunt Spain with that coun-
try's unfulfilled engagements to us, and the ample"
means she has to fulfil them. Mr. CASS reminds