The Sun.
London, England, 1867-03-15 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES. —lf ever there was a needless and futile
discussion in the House of Commons it was that
last night on the question whether Lord Henry
Lennox, the Secretary to the Admiralty, should be
allowed to move the Navy Estimates. The state of
things was this. The time had come when these
estimates ought to be produced and considered, and
there was the more reason for avoiding delay as
everybody is aware that after next Monday the
Reform Bill will occupy all the time on this side of
Easter. Now, the late First Lord of the Admiralty
having accepted the War-office, and being
succeeded by Mr. Corry, it happened that last night
neither of these gentlemen had a seat in the House.
Mr. Corry, having been eight years away from the
Admiralty, might be excused from bearing a part in
the debate, if even be had been re-elected ; he
certainly could not be accurately informed of the
details of what has been done during the time the
present Government has been in office, and of the
arguments by which they justify their present Esti-
mates. On the other hand, Sir John Pakington,
if he had a seat in the House, might probably be
objected to, as General Peel was objected to the
other night, on the ground that he is no longer the
responsible Minister, but only an amateur giving a
voluntary assistance to a department of which
he is not the Head. Under these circumstances
the Government took the perfectly reasonable
course of committing the annual naval statement
to the Secretary of the Admiralty, who is
necessarily acquainted with all that has been done,
and is admitted to be perfectly competent to deal
with the subject. The Secretary of the Admiralty
is the recognised representative of the department
in the absence of the First Lord. He is generally
supposed to be more thoroughly acquainted with
the details of business than the First Lord himself,
and yet before Lord Henry Lennox could rise to
make his statement Mr. Gladstone objected to the
proceedings. Prefacing his remarks with the ob-
servation that the discussion was this year of unusual
importance, which probably has been said every
year within living memory, he objected that there
was in the house of Commons neither the Minister
under whose responsibility these propositions were
prepared, nor the Minister under whose responsi-
bility they were to be carried into effect. For this
reason he demanded that the subject should be put
off till the middle of next week. We cannot but be
astonished at such an objection from the leader of
the House under the late Government. It is but
the other day the House had to complain that the
very thing which the present Government is blamed
for doing once, on absolute necessity, was done for
several years together by
.their predecessors. In
Lord Palmerston's Administration who was the
First Lord of the Admiralty ? The D uke of Somer-
set, who sits in the House of Lords. Who was the
Secretary of War ? First Lord Panmure, then
Lord De Grey, both in the House of Lords, and
only in later years Lord Hartington. These two
great Departments, which administer the mass of
the national expenditure, were represented in the
House of Commons only by Secretaries. in the
empyrean of the Upper House sat the First Lord at
the time when the fiercest storms raged about the
Secretary below on questions of expenditure, on the
qualities of iron plating, on turret-ships and gun-
boats, on the supply of seamen or the transport of
troops. During the last few years we have made
the greatest revolution ever effected in our Navy.
The cost has been enormously increased ; the size
of vessels has been magnified till frigates and even
corvettes vie with the line-of-battle ships of only
a few years since. Shape has not been less revo-
lutionised than dimension ; scarcely has oneinven-
tion established itself in public or official favour
than it is superseded by another, and people sus-
pect that the money spent on the last irresistible
machine of war has been purely wasted. At such a
time, if ever, the First Lord, as well as the Secretary
for War, ought to have been in the House of Par-
liament, which represents the tax-paying public,
and controls, or aught to control, the national ex-
penditure. The late Government, amid she mur-
murs even of its own followers, denied this claim,
and year after year the Commons had no informa-
tion save from Secretaries, who, however able and
painstaking, could not speak with authority, could
propose nothing that had not been sanctioned in
another place, could assent to nothing without a
few days' interval to advise with their superiors,
who, iu short, were entirely void of that power and
that responsibility the absence of which Mr. Glad-
stone will not excuse for a single day. The present
Government have paid the House of Commons the
compliment of placing it in the Ministers who are
at the head of both the Army and Navy. This, we
hink, ought always to be done. The cost of war-
like armaments is immense and increasing. There
is a painful distrust of the whole, system of both
Departments in the mind of the nation. As soon as
the excitement about Reform is over, and the coun-
try turns again to details of practical administra-
tion, there will be a more searching inquiry than
ever into the traditions by which costly squadrons
are kept cruising at the other side of the world, and
regiments doing duty in distant colonies which have
no foe to fear. The Conservatives have shown that
they recognise the importance of these matters by
giving the representation of the two Departments
to members of the House of Commons. It is there-
fore, all the more ungracious to make much of the
temporary absence of the First Lord, and to wish to
silence the Secretary, especially since it is certain
that Mr. Corry can hardly make himself master of
what has been lately done so as to speak with autho-
rity in the forthcoming debate. IVe cannot conceive
that any inconvenience would have resulted from
debating in the usual manner, as if Lord Clarence
Paget, instead of his nephew, who had just sat
down.

Pose.—lt is not an enviable condition of mind
that would be disposed to cavil at the determination
of the French Government to confer on M. de La-
roartine a substantial mark of the national gratitude
for important services rendered to his country, as
well as of national respect and even admiration for
his brilliant literary genius. It is a fact beyond dis-
pute that, through the vicissitudes of a long career,
M. de Lamartine, whether as an author, an orator,
a poet, or a statesman, has shown an ability of
which any country might be justly proud in one of
her sons. The literary and public career of M. de
Lamartine extend over a period equal to the term of
many a busy life, and date from more than half a
century ago. Even since he retired from politics,
near 17 years ago, when he had attained the age of
60, he has produced four great historical works
which alone would have sufficed to establish an or-
dinary reputation. But though his old age has
been occupied with prose, his youth was devoted to
poetry, and it was his " Meditations Poetiques,"
which, published near 50 years ago, first rendered
him famous, even at a time when there were far
greater poets in the world as competitors than any
we have seen since they ceased to write. M. Marie
Louis Alphonse Prat was born in the year 1790, at
Macon. The name of Lamartine he derived from a
relation—an uncle on the mother's side—from whom
he inherited a large property. Though his father
was an officer in the army he does not appear to
have entered the service, which in those days
attracted and absorbed almost all the energy, am-
bition, and genius of France—the army being a
thoroughly national one, in which any man could
rise-from the ranks by dint of sheer merit to the
highest rank and dignity in the State. Political
considerations may probably have had something to
do with this. It is not a little singular that the ma-
ture fecundity of M. de Lamartine's literary genius
in his old age forms a somewhat striking contrast
with the absence of precocity in youth. Although
his working life has ranged over nearly half a
century, it was not till he was near 30 years old
that he began to write. It was during
M. de Lamartine's second tour in Italy,
about 1818, that he began to compose his first
poetical work, which was published a couple of
years later. It may be almost said of him as was
said of his greatest poetical contemporary, that he
awoke one morning and found himself famous. He
subsequently obtained an appointment as Attache
to the French Embassy at Florence, where ho re-
sided for some time, after which he was removed to
London in the capacity of Secretary to the Ambas-
sador at the Court of St. James. It was while re-
sident in London that he married an English lady,
named Birch whose death, four years ago, cast a
gloom over his declining years, and greatly tended
to increase the sufferings which his own serious in-
disposition entailed upon him. As his second work,
the " Harmonies Poetiques," was not published
until an interval of nine years had elapsed after the
appearance of the first, it will be seen that not only
did he begin to write later in life than most authors,
especially poets, but that his productions did not
come forth with anything like the frequency they
have done of late. From London M. de Lamartine
proceeded to Florence, this time as Charge d'Affaires,
and about 1829 he was chosen a member of the
French Academy. His subsequent diplomatic ser-
vices were rendered as Minister Plenipotentiary to
Greece, and as Minister for Foreign Affairs during
• the short interval which he held that office under
the revolutionary Government of 1848. It was in-
deed the nart he took at that crisis which consti-
tutes the most important of his public services in
maintaining the cause of order. That he was able
to do this was chiefly owing to the great powers he
had acquired as an orator, and to the influence
which the liberal views he had professed gave him
among the people. It was due to him that the na-
tional tricolour was preserved as the flag of France
instead of the red flag of the Social and Democratic
Republic. We have now reached the most itnpor-
taut part of his public career, and it is requisite to