The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-04 00:00:00

Stage Manager. Mr. R. Phillips

CANTERBUR Y HALL CONCERTS.-
EVERT EVENING.—The :Talc of Verdi's Opera of
MACBETH (now first made public in England at these Con-
certs).

And a Grand Se!ection from Meyerbeer's new opera of
DINORAII.

Comic Vocalists -Messrs. Georcre !Tolson (the Irish Come-
dian and Mimic), W. C. Critehfield, and E. W. Mackney.

Several interestin.; Pictures are added to the Fine Art‘
Gallery. The suite, of Halls have been re-decorated and
beautified. and constitute one of the most unique and brilliant
sights of the metropolis.

- -
ROSA BONFIE UR'S celebrated PICTURE of the HORSE
FAIR is now added to the already magnificent Collection of
Paintinf.Y,s in the Canterbury Hall Fine Arts Gallery. The
gallery is opei from 9 am. till 12 p.m. Admisaion, Six-
pence.

THE WEATHER.—SuN OFFICE, NOVEMBER 4.
THEAMOMETER, IN THE SHADS.
55—highest since noon yesterday.
50—lowest this morning and during the night.
54—this day at noon.

BAROMETER-29.13.
WIND, South-Easterly ; fresh, with continuous rain and
muggy weather.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THIS DA.T.—Morning, Bh. 36m.—Afternoon, 9h. 14m.
To-Moituow-Morning, Oh. 50m.—Afternoon, 10h. 241 h.

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THE SUN.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1859.

As forcible and sensible a speech as we have for
some time past read was the one delivered by Mr.
CAIRD on Tuesday last, to his constituents, in the
Corn Exchange at Dunfermline. The hon. gentle-
man, in the course of that address, brought toge-
ther a number of facts and figures, often before
now loosely quoted, but seldom if ever arranged in
a cluster so irresistibly argumentative, in demon-
stration of the sore need (now for a long while
pressing upon us) for a wise economy and a judicious
retrenchment. Not one sixpence are we disposed
to grudge in the furtherance of our national de-
fences. But occasionally the thought will force
itself upon the taxpaying and toilworn millions of
England, whether the cost of our army may not be
after all somewhat exorbitant. Particularly when
there is glaring upon us the indisputable
fact that we are paying annually very
considerably more for the maintenance of our
army of 122,000 men, with a militia force of 50,000,
than our neighbours across the Channel pay for a
gigantic military organisation, comprising within
it 500,000 of the finest soldiers in Christendom.
Another and a very startling demonstration of the
prodigality of our expenditure in the way of mili-
tary disbursements, the member for the Stirling
district burghs mentioned on Tuesday namely,
that "During the last two years of the war with
Russia, when both countries were putting forth
their strength, though in numbers of soldiers the
French greatly exceeded us, the total charge for
our armaments was £89,000,000, while that of the
French at the same time was only £36,000,000
Now," observed Mr. CAIRD, " if in two years we
absolutely threw away £50,000,000 more than the
French in doing much the same work, it seemed
reasonable to conclude that this wa.i the branch of
the national expenditure in which a great saving
might be made." At the same time the hon.
member acknowledged, or rather, we should say,
insisted, that any attempt at reduction in our
expenditure upon the army ought to be made only
with the utmost possible degree of circumspection.
There is not a rational man in England but must
be forcibly impressed by the consideration of the fact
that we are annually spending in one way or an-
other in the conduct of the Government of these
realms somewhere about £70,000,000! The rate
of increase in our expenditure having, moreover been
latterly most alarming ; insomuch that, as Mr.
CAIRD reminds us, " within the last six years the
annual expenditure had increased by upwards of
£10,000,000, and he could not anticipate
any material diminution for many years to
come." Altogether the hon, member went on to re-
mind his constituents and through them the country
at large on Tuesday " X 50,000,000, or five-sixths of
the whole, were comprised in the two great items
—the interest of the national debt and the cost of
the army and navy. The interest of the debt was
.E25,000,000—X12,000,000 a-year more than that of
France, and borne by a people one-fourth less
numerouv. Sir ROBERT PEEL in 1843 reduced
this burden by £2,000,000 a-year, but, except by
the falling in of terminable annuities, there was
little chance of a further reduction being for some
time made." Whereupon it might have been re-
arded as almost superfluous to add that—" It was
the cost of the army and navy that the recent

great increase had. taken place." But it was not '
by any means superfluous under the circumstances
for a liberal member like Mr. CAIRD, aldressing a
thrifty constituency like that represented in the
Corn Exchange of Dunfermline on Tuesday, to add
thereupon immediately and earnestly, " Now he
desired here to guard himself against the possi-
bility of misapprehension, for, whatever the cost
might be of defending the country or maintaining
its honour, he believed the stake to be worth it a
hundred times over." Whereat the hall rang with
cheers expressive of cordial ac piescence " But,"
continued Mr. Cnity (and. surely with sufficient
reason), "efficiency might be had without sacrific-
ing economy, and when he compared the total cost
of the French army and navy with ours he could
come to no other conclusion than that in those
great public departments in this country there was
monstrous waste and extravagance." And then
comes the contrast already referred to, as drawn
by Mr. CAIRD, between the cost of our English
army of 122,000 men and the cost of the great
French army of 500,000 ! Followed by that allu-
sion, if possible, still more convincing in its way,
the pertinent allusion to the total charge upon the
French armaments during theßussian war, amount-
to £36,000,000, whereas the total charge upon
our own armaments, during the same interval,
reached, as we have seen, and long since felt very
bitterly, the frightful aggregate of £89,000,000—
only eleven millions short of the scarcely conceiv•
able sum of £100,000,000 ! It has been already
observed, however, that Mr. CAIRD, though an
advocate for economy in our expenditure, is still
more earnestly an advocate for increased expendi-
ture, if need be, in the revision and re-organisation
and extension and general improvement of our
system of national defences. He even goes so far
as to say, "Beyond all considerations of economy
we mug make the country secure from the risk of
invasion, the advantages of our insular position
having been greatly impaired by steam." And while
opposed, like the rest of us, to a large standing
army as incompatible with a free constitution, he
is heartened by the assurance given to us by the
most competent military authorities, " that if we
had a regular army large enough to withstand the
first shock of invasion, there would be time enough
for the whole country to rise like one man in its
defence." So heartened is Mr. CAIRD by this con-
fident opinion of competent military authorities
that he hesitates not to declare his conviction that
" if we had avolunteer force of 300,000 practised rifle
shots in the British islands no foreigners would dare
to trouble us." Subsequently, Mr. CAIRD reminds
his constituents—" Exactly 100 years ago there
was an invasion panic in this country, and we
actually imported foreign mercenaries to help to
defend us. But," he goes on to add, rather in a
tone of manly conviction than of boasting, " small
comparatively though our army was, no man in this
country for a moment now dreamt that we could
not defend. ourselves." It is the feeling, more or
less strongly realized, of the whole mass of our popu-
lation. And, assuredly, while such feelings are
rife amongst us, there can be no cause whatever for
panic, though there may be, as there undoubtedly
is, every reason for preparation.

Scarcely has the Coroner's Jury commenced its
melancholy labours down at Moelfra, with a view
to the discovery, if possible, of the precise causes of
that frightful destruction of human life through
the deplorable shipwreck of the Royal Charter,
than new disasters of a like kind, though
happily, far less destructive, come flashing to
our knowledge through the electric wires
from all parts of our coastline. One fearful gale, or
rather hurricane, has succeeded another with a
rapidity weniight almost venture.to designate unpre-
cedented. They have hardly completed at LLOYD'S
the full catalogue of the first series of calamities, of
ships wrecked, ships foundered, ships grounded,
lives lost, and property destroyed—vessels to the
number of upwards of 150, lives to the number of
nearly 500, property to the aggregate amount,
in specie or the precious metals alone, of more
than £soo,ooo—when another, fortunately this
time a lesser list, has forthwith to be commenced.
Out of these disasters, however, we may draw,
thank heaven, some deductions replete with conso-
lation. There is that last wonder of the
world, our magnificent ocean steamer, the
Great Eastern, which has thus been triumphantly
tested to the very uttermost by a suc-
cession of tremendous gales or hurricanes.
Through this double ordeal the leviathan of the
deep has passed, we repeat, triumphantly. No ill
whatever has befallen her in consequence—she has
weathered the storms that have blown upon her
with boreal fury—after having been threatened
with destruction by the accidental shutting of one
little trumpery stopcock. This, surely, is some-
thing gained to us through these otherwise most
lamentable hurricanes. The Great Eastern not
only rides through the first dreadful gale off Holy-
head, while the unfortunate Royal Charter, with
upwards of four hundred souls, is crashing to
destruction upon the rocky coast off Point
Lynas, and while the shores of our whole island are
strewn thickly with the debris of 150 shipwrecks
more or less disastrous ! But upon the morrow,
almost in the midst of the later gale, the
Great Ship steams majestically, in defiance of roar-
ing wind and rolling waves, from Holyhead
back to Southampton. She is seen at 8.30 this
morning off the Isle of Wight—at a quarter past
nine off Warner Light, steaming towards the Solent

—five minutes later, passing through Spithoad—
and at 10.45, within a mile of her own mooring
ground, in Southampton Water, with steamers
going out to welcome her arrival, and with a
salute of seventeen guns firing from the
Platform Battery, by way of greeting her
on her return to her former destination !
A better opportunity, or rather sequence of oppor-
tunities, could hardly have been wished to con-
vince us of the extraordinary powers of resistance
peculiar to this gigantic and wondrous specimen of
naval architecture.

Another source of peculiar satisfaction dis-
coverable among the records of this stormy
weather off the shores of Old England, is
the notable and glorious riding out of the
first great gale by our newly-created Channel
Fleet. The hurricane coming on suddenly, sur-
prised that gallant cluster of line-of-battle ships—
surprised them so suddenly that they began, among
otherpieturesque but perilous manoeuvres, to drive
over the raging waters of the Channel in critical
vicinity to, and with critical velocity past, the
Eddystone Lighthouse. It is no unparalleled
circumstance, of course, for a British Fleet or
a British squadron to survive, without the loss of a
spar, a gale, or hurricane that has strewn the coasts
with the evidences of its destructiveness. But in
respect to this recent and none the less glorious
surely, because bloodless, achievement of our
Channel Fleet—it must be borne in mind
that it is a Ilea which has but just
now been abruptly summoned into existence,
insomuch that its late victorious passage through
its conflict with the elmnents is really and truly to
all intents and purposes its inaugurative triumph.
Added to which, it is the first great Channel Fleet
England has had sincq the introduction and organi-

zation of an entirely new system of
naval architecture, and for that matter,
also (to a very great extent), of an entirely
new system of navigation. Iron-built vessels,
impelled by steam power, acting through the screw-
propeller, have militated nothing from the perfec-
tion of seamanship distinguishing the Royal Navy
of Britain among all the navies of all the world.
How sang glorious CHARLEY DIBDEN, the Bard
of the British Tar 9

D'ye mind me, a sailor should be every inch,
All as one as a piece of the ship I"

And what the tars were in the days of BLAKE or
of NELSON, they are now, with all these magnificent
new-fangled ievices in aid of seamanship, the steam-
engine, and the screw propeller ! The late gale has
proved signally and incontestably that our sailors are
in not one iota degenerated ! That they are naviga-
tors worthy of their heroic forefathers—with all the
immense advantages accruing-to them from the pos-
session of auxiliary scientific powers that their
dauntless forefathers never dreamt of. Such was,
such is, the Royal Navy of England. Esto per-
petua !

SIR WM. NAPIER ON THE STRATEGY
OF LIGHT INFANTRY AND RIFLE MTN: