The Sun.
London, England, 1860-06-13 00:00:00

Commence at 7.

ROYAL PRINCESS'S THEATRE.--
Lessee, Mr. A. Harris.
THIS EVENING, HAMLET. Mr. Phelps.
• To conclude with THRICE MARRIED. Mr. Meadows,
Miss C. Lederer', &c.

is similar to that of Austria"—those cheers w ere
renewed. While any explanations as to the reply
likely to be given by the English Government
was wisely enough deemed by the noble vif icount
to be absolutely superfluous ! The result to the
King of NAPLES and his Government—to use the
phrase of the reporter—" may be more easil y ima-
gined than described !"
Before closing these remarks we would earnestly
direct the attention of those among oux readers
who are now closely -watching the progress
of events in Southern Italy-:—to facilitate
their appreciation of the force 'and rela-
tive bearing of those events by as frequent
reference as may be practicable to maps of reliable
authenticity. One of these—specified in the foot-
note*—has but just now made its appearance, a
map of notable clearness and accuracy, reduced
from the surveys of Admiral SMYTH and the Neapo-
politan Government.

* Maclure, Macdonald, and Macgregor's Map of Sicily :
with enlarged plans of Messina, Palermo, and Syracuse.
Price Is. London : Stanford : 1860.

Attention has at length, we confidently trust,
been directed effectually to the long "vexed ques-
tion " of our Colonial Military Expenditure. It
will be in the remembrance of many that a Com-
mission especially organised to inquire into this
subject was appointed about a year since at the
instance of the Right lion. JONATHAN PEEL, late
Secretary of State for War under the Earl of

DERBY'S Administration, The Commissioners
have sat since then " many a time and oft," have

entered vigorously and determinedly upon the
labours of their investigation, and have at length,
after mature consideration, drawn up those reports

which have been very recently laid before Parlia

mcnt. Their "reports," we say advisedly, for the
inquiry has been conducted to a conclusion so con-

scientiously that actually two reports, instead of
the " one " customary document, will be found by
the general public to have resulted from the per-
severing and protracted toil of the Commission. A

minority of one—Mr F. ELLIOTT to wit—somewhat
reminding us of the " procession of one" formed by
the stately and awful Mrs. HOMINY in Martin
Chuzziewit—having supplemented the collective
report of his colleagues (the majority) by a second
enunciating his own individual opinions in regard
to the particular problem under examination.
Combining these two important reports, however

as the optician combines the lenses in the forma-
tion of a telescope, we seem to get nearer to the
remote and scattered subjects under scrutiny—
examining each in turn with a more distinct appre-
ciation of all of them together, and with a more
vivid apprehension of facts hitherto in many in-

stances but dimly seen, some of them even to the
generality but little more than faintly conjectural.
It is—in consequence of these double reports of
the Commission set on foot by General PEEL—
distinctly recognised at last, how urgent the
necessity is now thrusting upon us continu-
ally with increasing force, the long suspected but
at length sufficiently obvious requirement for some
total and immediate change being adventured upon
in the matter of our colonial military expenditure.
For, what are some among the principal facts and
figures now flooded upon this question through the
inquiry of these commissioners ? It appears, then,
to begin with, that the military charges for her
fifty colonies cost England upon the year 1857-1858
precisely £3,968,599, or very little short indeed of
the round sum of £4,000,000 sterling. In other
words, we paid then during the narrow compass of
a single twelvemonth for the defence of our
half-hundred colonies over one entire quarter
of our enormous military expenditure of
£15,000,000. And how much, it may be
asked, out of these £4,000,000 paid down
for the military defence of those fifty British colo-
nies, how much of those £4,000,000 was contri-
buted within that year (1857-1858) by the colonies
themselves ? How much ?—not .£400,000 ! To be
exact, just £378,253 Here is the root of the
whole difficulty. Here is good ground to work
upon in the grand new cause of retrenchment.
Do we complain of the monstrous outlay yearly
during a time of peace, the extravagant and prodi-
gal disbursement of £15,000,000 per annum upon
our military establishment ? Here is a ready means
opened to us for the lightening of those particular
" fardels" of ours by an odd million or two. For
it is perfectly obvious by this time to the people as
well as to Parliament, to the Commons themselves
as well as to the Commissioners, that while it is
of course our duty and interest to support a
struggling colony in its infancy, the duty of its
military defence devolves after a while from the
old mother country to the population of the parti-
cular colony called by her protective influence into
existence. There is no reason why the vast majo-
rity of the new colonies should " not" hence-
forth be required to defend themselves. There
are divers good reasons at once add Liftable
to prove that they "should," and to prove
this to demonstration. These reasons are many
of them given succinctly and overwhelm-
ingly in the reports of the Commissioners. To
those reports we may take an early opportunity of
reverting. Here at any rate we particularise a few
out of our fifty colonies, which may be treated dif-
ferently, inasmuch as they are of a wholly excep-
tional character. These are, however, in simp,e
truth, little better than military strongholds, "gar-
risoned," rather than peopled, with colonists. Our
enumeration of a few amongst them will testify at
once the accuracy of our description in this parti-
cular. Gibraltar for example, and Malta, the three
hundred islands of " the still vexed Bermoothes,"
and the rocky cone of St. Helena. Yet upon the
military defence of these garrison -colonies there
was spent during the year already specified more
than one-fourth of the dreadful aggregate of
£3,968,599—in other words, a round sum of
£1,166,903. And of this £1,166,900, there was no
more than the small sum—what MONTAGUE TIGG
would call "the ridiculously small amount"—of
£25,855 contributed by the garrison colo-
nies themselves. Even under this one ex-
ceptional class, therefore, there is " room
and verge enough" for improvement. Haw much
more, however, is there under all the other classes of
all the remaining British Colonies, towards the
military defence of which, during that one year,
'57, '5B, there was contributed nearly £3,000,000—
something, at any rate, over £2,800,000. Not one
sixpence of which, in point of fact, need have been
required from the Imperial coffers of the old father-
land. Eighty years ago the grandest of all our
British Colonies signalised thenceforth a truth,
utterly beyond the chance of ever being gainsaid
with impunity by our Government—the truth
enunciating the just principle that the mother
country had no right to fill her own exchequer by
taxing her remote dependencies. As a pendant to
that great truth, to that just principle, chivalrously
maintained at the point of their good swords by
WASIIINGTON and his compatriots, in the renowned
American War of Emancipation—might we not
wisely now proclaim a principle quite as just in
itself ? Might we not echo back upon our colonies as
important a truth in its way—namely, that Eng-
land ought not longer to be held almost entirely
responsible for the military defence of our colonies,