The Sun.
London, England, 1859-04-16 00:00:00

" I am going to my banker for money, and am
about to begin to distribute it." " I have had -to
advance 40,000 f. from my own pocket," and so on
had been written by him, but that such state-
ments were not true. M. Sebille, 31. Ansiaux,
M. Ghislain, and M. Lucas (the latter is in custody
on a charge of forgery), and some other persons
gave evidence proving that the prisoner had re-
ceived the 30,000 f. and the fifty I,ooof. shares on
pretext of bribing, but had appropriated them to
his own uses. After hearing pleadings in support
of the prosecution, in the course of which it was
stated that Beaumont-Vassy and. Sebille had.
endeavoured to make the War Department give
3,500,000 f. for the saltpetre patent, though it
had only cost 500,000 f., and after hearing counsel
for the prisoner, the tribunal condemned him to
two years' imprisonment, 3,000 f. fine, and ten
years' interdiction of civil rights. Sebille, Ansiaux,
and Ghislain, who had been concerned in the salt-
petre patent, prayed the tribunal to condemn
Beaumont-Vassy to pay the damages, but the tri-
bunal refused. Not a word was said at the trial of
the appearance of an individual, dressed in uniform,
purporting to come from the Minister of War for
the purpose of deceiving the shareholders, as was
rumoured at first.

NAVAL EXPENDITURZ

(From the Times)
The great dockyard mystery is gradually getting
clearer. We begin to see daylight in the matter.
The reports made on the subjeCt have been so
cop!ous and so plain that we can now, at any rate,
tell where and how the money goes, though
whether it ought to go at such a rate is still a
question for consideration. When Lord Clarence
Paget brought the case to a definite issue the other
day by comparing facts with figures, he averred
that some 25 per cent. of the money voted for the .
construction and maintenance of the fleet during
the last ten years had vanished without leaving
any result. He put the aggregate provision made
by the votes at £19,000,000, and the money's worth
actually discoverable at no more than £14,000,000,.
so that a balance of £5,000,000 remained unac- -
counted for. Sir Baldwin Walker, the Surveyor of
the Navy, took up these figures, and now claims to ,
account without reserve for every sixpence of the -
money. The committee appointed,by the Treasury
to inquire into the Navy Estunales and their results
have also produced their statements, and from these
and other explanations together we can at length,
we hope, put the public in the right way of unra-
velling this desperate enigma.
It is strange enough to • observe on the very
threshold of. the investigation that Lord Clarence •
enormously understated his own case. Read by the
only light he could find for the purpose; it was, in
reality, infinitely stronger than he made it out to be. •
The money actually voted was very much more, the -
money's worth producible very much les, than he •
thought. The aggregate sum voted for the purposes
in question was not £19,000,000, but .£22,000,0b0S
whereas the actual outlay upon new shiiis, instead
of being £7,000,000, as he. estimated, was Only
£5,000,000;• and though in another item he -had
made a mistake in an opposite direction, and had also
Itikett no account of 1'2;000,000 Worth of - ships .!:
.and paid for by• contract, the._ gros deficit,
according to his principle of calculationlT2B really s
nearer ten million: • than five. -.How,- then, is Mt, • •
this • to be
.squared Why, exactly as We. -pre-,
dieted at the time. The balance Went in,anin4,4,
of expenses for Which Lord Clarence had su4s no
alloWance, and which,,irs very. nobadv could
ever have imagined.. He had -allowed for the fair'
wear and tear of Ships in eoinmissim a goody- sum'
of some £0,000,000, and probably_ thought. tlifit: 1"!•.:
in that item-he had covered mOst‘ .thci-.*;
gencies" very reasonably. It turns out, hov.-ever,
that he was a round million short of the mark even '`.
in the immediate- reckoning on this while
besides this there arc items , • without Lad,
for which he took no thought, but all of which •
figure to terrible purpose among the incidental costs .
of the-fleet.- -The mere expenses of moorings: and
dockings, of Crane-a, capstan's, and lightersi .of re--
ceiTing and delivering stores, and. of dealing With '
the transport of stores generally; is barely cov,C.red
for the ten. years' -period by an • allowance of '• • -
.1:2,500,000; and there are further "incidentalsk-
'oenses" amounting to 5C156,000 more. Then, there
are foreign yards to be considered as well as those
at home, and these -establishments. spend „
million of their own in " repairs, &e." As to
stores, the outlets, ordinary and extraordinary, for
these supplies are wonderful.. They are sent to.
foreign yards or stations e they are purchased by
naval commanders or British Consuls, and the bills
sent home, or they are supplied to other depart-
ments of Government. Nearly two millions' worth
was overlooked in this way. Finally, whereas
Lord Clarence valued the stock in hand, over and
above its amount in 1848, at only half a million,
Sir Baldwin puts it at a million and a half. Alto-
gether, there- -is no doubt the expenditure of
£22,000,000 is, in a general way, vouched for end -
explaned. Lord Clarence had no Mc a of the amount
of 'sundries;" in fact, nobody had, as the, clue itself •
proVes ; for, unless the consternation had been uni-
versal, we should never' have got these inquiries.
Well, but how does it happen, speaking roundly,
that things have come to such a pass, and that
they are so mach worse here than in France,
where greater average results have been secured, at
least in certain departments of the fleet, for a
smaller aggregate outlay ? This riddle also we
will endeavour to explain ; and in doing so we '
will borrow an illustration which will be tanailiar
to most people. Let us suppose that two towns
or parishes have each a public library supported
by some species of fund, subscription, or endow-
ment ; that one establishment has 1,000 volumes,
with a limited circulation ; and that the other has
2,500, with a brisk demand and a good deal of
business. At the end of ten years let us suppose
them to compare notes, and to find that the larger
librar of the two, with a larger annual endow-
ment,-had bought fewer new books and had Made
fewer acquisitions than the other. The explana-
tion would be this:--That what with. bind-
ing, mending, repairing bookcases, extending
reading-rooms, transmitting and receiving books,
and other such incidental charges, almost all
the funds of the larger establishment had been
consumed, whereas the smaller, having fewer
volumes to deal with, fewer customers to consult,
less business to transact, and less wear and tear
to make good, found itself at last with a greater
balance disposable for solid investment. That, in
a feg words, is the story which the committee's
report discloses. Ships are built, just as books
would be bought, only with the margin of
funds remaining after current expenses have
been defrayed. The French navy is the smaller
and more manageable establishment. France
has not so many ships in commission, and conse-
quently not so many ships to fit out or repair,
nor so much wear and tear to supply. This
work of fitting, advancing, repairing, and so forth,
constitutes the chief and most costly demand upon-
the resources of a dockyard ; •its amount is
governed, of course, by the number of ships in
commission, and therefore the number of ships in
commission determines the proportion which Ihe
visible product of a dockyard represented in new
vessels will bear to its expenditure upon the cur-
rent tasks of the day. It is calculated that even
in France the margin available for increase of
force -would not much exceed one-fourth of the
total supplies provided, hut in England the pro-
portion of the surplus to the aggregate would he
much smaller, and this it is which explains the
• otherwise incomprehensible fact, that France,
though far behind us in expenditure, has come so
near us in particular results.
We are hot disposed to cavil at these rspre.§en•
tations. So for as they go, they probably convey a
1o
i .s
elucidationei:rrrpeicetxed e N.: bo
doyf thean
d n puzzleone
morewhich
tliilaasa
a longssoi
themselves. •liret there is,
a grave point re-
the opening of our remarks,
as we observed . at
maining for consideration still. Assuming that ,
really swallow
naware,
wdea up
nrte
a: thisthat
ma
-t
whole outlay, are we bound
withoutalso reason ? We
largefittings
proportion repairs,
f&tel ,e
ds areaid .
•
fully
pens
sta,on, assumeeriep ant etoeutrrhdr
eeo
readers
eea
as
vouchers of 'some kind would be produced for all
where of malversation or foul play. But
the money expended ; indeed, there was no sus-
is.cnioot the
sus-
picion anYnecessit y for fittings and. repairs some-
times gratuitously created? One great complaint
has always been, that ships in the -most perfect
order are sent into a dockyard, to be pulled to pieces
one week, and put together again 'the week after, :
so that the labourers have work made for them
twice over. Such a system would allow the autho-
rities, no doubt, to produce regular accounts of
money expended, but it would not follow that
the expenditure itself was reasonable. On one
point we are bound to say that Sir Baldwin Wal-
ker advances a strong ease, for his statement
certainly represents the outlay upon the architec-
tural transformation of ships as anything but con-
siderable. On the other hand, however, the cost
of " fitting, repairs," &a., is vastly bey end even
the popular conception of the charge, and this is
the identical point on which the great weight of
suspicion was invariably thrown. People alwa3-s
fancied that a ship was made and remade too
often, not only in construction, but in equipment
for sea. The waste on the former head turns out
to be small, but on the latter the outgoings are
ve.
tremendous beyond belief. Are they at!so
ca.a.
us for
able ? That is the 'question which s
,