The Sun.
London, England, 1866-02-09 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIO JOURNALS.

TINIES.—The protracted disputes between Capt.
Cowper P. Coles and the Admiralty have been re-
cently brought to an unfortunate close. Capt. Coles,
as everybody now knows, is the inventor and pro-
moter of a new design for a fighting-ship, the prin-
ciple of which consists in mounting its battery in a
turret or turrets instead of placing it in broadside.
Some time ago the merits or capabilities of the inven-
tion were so far recognised that Capt. Coles was
taken into the pay of the Admiralty, and his skill
made available for the public service. It appears
that by a rule or tradition of the Department, the
officers employed in it are debarred from entering
publicly into controversies on professional subjects,
but Capt. Coles obtained a special privilege in this
respect, and was allowed to have " free liberty, by
means of lectures, models, publications, and other-
wise, to prove the great utility, value, and economy
of his invention of shield ships, by way of diffusing
and extending the reputation thereof, and to show
the value of the same, and the numerous ways in
which it may be used, worked, and extended for sea-
going ships, coast defences, and otherwise." That
a liberal use was made of this privilege our readers
will easily remember, but at the beginning of
last month Capt. Coles addressed to one of our
contemporaries a letter, in which he was thought
to have transgressed the bounds of propriety by
attacking the designs and performances of his own
colleagues in the service. Accordingly the Admi-
ralty called upon him to acknowledge or disavow
the publication, and when he acknowledged it—
indeed, the letter had borne his own signature—
proceeded at once to dismiss him from employment.
On the face of this proceeding it would be hard
to deny that the Admiralty was justified. The
letter in question did certainly exceed the limits de-
fined by the reservation above given. It was not
so much exceptionable in itself as inconsistent with
the writer's position. It may, perhaps, have been
inaccurate in some respects, and it was undoubtedly
aggressive, but it did not in these particulars trans-
gress the privileges which controversialists, in the
heat of argument, are art to assume. But Captain
Coles was an officer receiving Government pay, and
his attacks were directed against his brother officers
in his own department—the very men with whom
he was supposed to be co-operating for the public
good. They, moreover, stood absolutely debarred
by the rules of the service from all chance of self-
defence. They could not reply to their assailant,
nor meet his charges with any explanation or denial.
Their hands were tied, and therefore, whatever the
chief authorities of the Department might have
thought of the case themselves, they were bound to
protect their servants in general from the abuse of
a privilege conceded to one of their number. Capt.
Coles had not confined himself to the advocacy of
his own invention ; he had devoted himself rather
to the disparagement of other designs, especially the
designs of Mr. Reed, and had not been sparing of
his censures in describing the productions of those
who were employed with him, or the administration
of those by whom he was employed. Although,
however, we feel bound to make these admissions,
we think. the Admiralty might have accom-
plished all that was required by a less rigorous
sentence, and we are of opinion that Captain
Coles, under all the circumstances of the case,
was entitled to their forbearance. In short, look-
ing at the matter broadly, there was enough in
his position to excuse:irritability and discontent.
HERALD.—The opinion of an eminent Irishman
upon the state of Ireland at the present crisis of her
history must be deserving of the very serious atten-
tion even of those who are most inclined to dissent
from his views. It is instructive to us to have both
sides of every great question presented to us by ad-
vocates who put their case as strongly as they can.
Before criticising too severely the speech made by
The O'Donoghue last night in the House of Com-
mons we should remember that he is an Irishman
per sang, that he aspires to the leadership of what
may be called the national party, that he is the
avowed opponent of the present system of govern-
ing Ireland by Englishmen. A man of Irish descent
and patronymic, inheriting Irish traditions and
Irish sympathies, it would be absurd to expect of
him that he should regard the relations between
that country and this in exactly the same light as
an Englishman. He has been accused of making
treasonable Speeches, but his harangue of last night
was certainly no more treasonable than was the
statement of the Secretary of the Baptist Society,
that the Jamaica negroes are disaffected to the Go-
vernment. The gist of The O'Donoghue's speech is,
that the Irish are disaffected, and his assertion on
this point is so far of importance that he ought to
know more of the feelings of his fellow-country men
than we do. If Irishmen are discontented with Whig
rule, they are very much in the same position as

ourselves ; If they are tired of the union with
England, and wish to sever it, we regret that it
should be so, because the continuance of that
union is inevitable ; if they have tangible griev-
ances to allege and wrongs to be redressed, we
would wish to be informed of those grievances
and to be put into a position to redress those
wrongs. The speech of The O'Donoghue, in-
temperate as it was in parts, and exaggerated ill
tone, as might have been expected from him, does
not pis these complaints in any very novel light.
It is the occasion which gives it its importance,
the recognised existence of a widespread conspi-
racy of rebellion, which has been so far suppressed ,
by the strong arm of the law, and happily without
bloodshed. The O'Donoghue attempts to explain
to us the sympathy for these conspirators among the
lower classes in Ireland, by telling us that these
classes have been made disloyal by misgovernment
and a persistent denial of their rights. Ireland at
this moment is a " sick man," about the symptoms
of whose malady and the remedies to be applied to
it the doctors may perhaps differ, as doctors do.-
We have here a new prescription and a new line of
treatment recommended. Some of us may dissent,
in limine, from the theory upon which it is based,
but the fact that all other recipes have more or less
failed may, at all events, be alleged in behalf of the
new panacea. The Attorney-General for Ireland,
in his reply to The O'Donoghtie, contented himself
with denying, in general terms, that the misgovern-
ment of Ireland had anything to do with the ad-
mitted dislike of the Irish for English rule, or that
the Fenian conspiracy was the result of this feeling.
He had it all his own way when he defended Judges
Keogh and Fitzgerald, whose impartiality and mode-
ration have gained for them universal applause, and
in criticising suggestions put at haphazard by his
antagonist, such as the appropriation of the surplus
revenue of Ireland, whatever that may be, to Irish
purposes, and the tax to be levied on absentee land-
lords. After an evasive and lawyer-like speech, Mr.
Lawson left the question of Ireland very much.
where he found it. In the animated debate which
followed several Irish members laid various degrees
of blame on the Government, while Mr. George and
Lord Naas contended that the grievances alleged,
whether real or imaginary, had nothing to do with
the Fenian movement, which was of foreign origin.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer refused to admit
the affirmation of the proposed amendment to the
Address, " that a widespread disaffection " existed
in Ireland, the result of grave causes which it was
the duty of Government to remove. He assumed,
as he had no right to do, that this disaffection meant
Fenianism. What the mover of the amendment
urged was, that Fenianism sprang up from and grew
upon it as a fungus on rank soil. The Govern-
ment, Mr. Gladstone said, could not remedy the
evils of Ireland, because those evils were "inve-
terate." He would make no promise, and bind him-
self by no engagement for the future. The British
Government cannot deal with inveterate wrongs•
Ireland may have much to complain cif, but things
must rest as they are. The consideration of the
amendment to the Address proposed by The
O'Donoghue, the sting of which is that it lays all
the troubles of Ireland at the door of her Majesty s
Ministers, was postponed' by common consent to the
bringing up of the report, when the debate will be
resumed, and new combatants will enter on the
field.

The Shropshire Murder.