The Sun.
London, England, 1859-07-30 00:00:00

Then there Were-
thisortifications of nrsenals, and these
hoped the commit tsion would only recommend so much of
were required in country to a limited extent, and he
this kind of fortificettion as was absolutely required. The
third class of fortifications was those in the interior of a
He believed such fortifications were uot wted
co.
inuntry Englan.d, though in saying this he was opposing the n
opi-
nion of the late Duke, of Wellington, who thought that
works should be erected at Reigate, 0,,,t Croydon, at
If
Brighton, and the most vulnerable parts ox the coast.
these works were erected we should have to :nail them,
and therefore he was anxious that the fortifications our
dockyards should be limited. He believed that gigantic for-
tifications were projected for Devonport. He hoped that
the Government would weigh the matter well before they
incurred such an expense. The projected works at De-
vonport would require a garrison of 40,000 men, and where
were they to be found ? We had at the utmost on paper
110,000 men of all descriptions of troops. If 40,000 men
were required for Devonport, 30,000 would be wanted for
Portsmouth, which would make 70,000 for these two ar-
senals alone, while Portland and Plymouth and others
would also require considerable garrisons. The right hon.
gentleman had talked of our not having a large army, and
we certainly had not. We were going to defe our com-
mercial harbours, but he hoped that would be undertaken
by persons on the spot, as we had not troops for the pur-
pose. Whatever the Government determined to do after
they received the report of the commission he hoped they
would do rapidly. As to the mode of defence into
.which
the commission was to ineegre, was it to be maritime or
military, or a combination of both ? He did not think
slightly of volunteers, for he believed that, well-trained and
armed, they would be a most efficient force in aid of mili-
tia and troops of the line. He, as an old soldier, would re-
commend the Government to trust to the navy, and not to
allow that force to be reduced to too low a scale. We
could not depend on a rapid manning of the navy in case
of emergency, and the men ought not to be hastily dis-
charged.
Sir C. NAPIER said with reference to thedefence of ou
arsenals, Portsmouth: could only be taken by " coup-de-
r
main," and by a fleet running into the harbour, which was
too shallow for large ships, and the entrance to which
might easily be blocked up by two or three sunken vessels,
As to fortifications at the Isle of Wight or in the vicinity
of the Needles, they would be of no use. Fortifying Gos-
port was also of no use, as it would only prevent its being
taken by surprise. During the last war, when we had all
Europe, and America too, against us, who defended the
country? When the great Napoleon threatened us with
invasion, we trusted to the navy ; and in the narrow seas,
although it was a difficult service, hardly a ship was lost
that was employed in the blockade. We had got into the
state in which we were because we had not adopted steam in
our navy as soon as we ought: In 1848, when he com-
manded the Channel squadron, the first line-of-battle ship
—the Blenheim—was fitted with a screw, and though she
was a very inferior ship, on the first day she joined she went
towindward of the whole fleet. This keiceess was reported
to the Admiralty, who did not go on adopting gteampower.
Three other ships, which were afterwards fitted with
screws, were found to answer as well as the Blenheim.
Why did the Admiralty not go on further with that kind of
ship ? After the expedition to the Baltic in 1854, the
French had only one screw ship of the line, but now they
had got 33. But it was not ships alone that were neces-
sary—men were required, and it was a great error, afte
the Russian war, to pay off so many men, who got dis-
r
gusted with the service, and we had been now for two
years trying to get some of them back and could not. The
French had an excellent plan of getting their fleets ready
for sea. When they talked of reduction they took a few guns
out of the ships and sent the seamen into barracks, and
when they wanted to call them out they were at hand, men
and officers, all told off for their stations, and in forty-eight
hours they were on board the ships just as they were
before they were paid off. The honourable and gallant
gentleman here referred to some statement of Sir Charles
Wood when First Lord of the Admiralty as to the manning
of the French fleet, and said that Admiral La Susse
had stated that the French had a reserve of 50,000
sailors and could make up the number to 90,000.
Whsit was our present state ? We were told that
we had 26 sail of the line, full-manned and fit for service.
But that was not the case. We had 14 sail of the line in
admirable order and manned, but no more. We had only
seven sail of the line in the Channel fleet, and since it had
been created it had not been a month at sea. That was not
the way to train officers and men for service. The officers
and men were not to blame, but the Admiralty was for al-
lowing the ships to remain so long in harbour where, though
a good deal might be learnt, yet no proper and thorough
knowledge of their duties could be learnt by the men and
officers. In the war just ended the French fleet had had
good practice in carrying troops to and fro. Our fleet had
no practice because we could not man our ships. Now was
it not a disgrace to our country, a disgrace to every govern-
ment and every Admiralty board, that here in 1859, after a
peace of so many years the British fleet could not be manned
even by the offer of a bounty ? As Mr. Tierney once said,
" Give me a full exchequer and a well-manned fleet and I
will defy the world." If we had that there would be none
cessity for spending enormous sums upon the fortifications
which could not be completed for so many years. It was
not likely that an enemy would choose to land exactly where
our fortifications were built. Were we going to fortify Tor-
bay, and the whole of our southern coast ? The truth was
that if France once obtained the superiority at sea, this
country would net be worth six months' purchase. If we
had not the Channel for a ditch between us and France,
should we be satisfied with an army of 600,000 men opposite
us whilst we had only 110,000 men for the defence of Eng-
land? France had preyed in this late war that she could
transport her army by water as well as by land, conveying
half her troops from Marseilles to Genoa, a distance of 150
miles. It was true there was then no enemy at sea to op-
pose her on the way, but if once she got command of the
Channel she could do the same again. He therefore hoped
we should go on building ships in every dockyard, and not
be induced to desist by any professions of a reduction of the
French forces until we saw that France really had disarmed
a large party of her army and of her fleet, and that she was
paying off and unrigging her ships, and after that was done
we might feel safer, and might ourselves do the same.
Mr. COBDEN, who was loudly caned for, said h.. could
not pretend to throw any light on the technical questions at
issue. But he observed that this matter had now arrived
at a stage where the old appliances and remedies were of no
use. We had voted this year 261 millions sterling for our
defences, of which 12± were for our navy. Together we
had voted for our defences twice as much this year as was
voted in the year when he first entered that house, and
three times as much this year for our navy alone as was
voted in 1335, when Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wel-
lington were at the head of affairs. And now his right hon.
friend (Mr. Horsman) came forward and said that we had
not yet a minimum of an establishment, and that we must
set every public and private dockyard at work to increase
it. It was quite evident, therefore, that we could not, by
voting any amount of money and going on in the same
course, bring ourselves into a satisfactory position. He
(Mr. Cobden) would therefore suggest whether there might
not be another view of the question—whether gentlemen in
a state of panic and alarm might not have exaggerated the
case, and fallen into some hallucinations about the danger
impending over us—whether they had not altogether mis-
taken the evil with which they had to deal ? Now, he had
been for some time past out of the reach of blue books, but
two days ago he stumbled by accident on a document ori-
ginally prepared for the information of our Government,
which gave a description of the comparative force of the
English and French navies. He confessed that he had
read that paper at first with some incredulity; and if he
had not within his own recollection an incident which oc-
curred seven years ago, he would not now venture to quote
the statistics of that document, after what he had heard
said of the awful preparations which had been made in
France. The incident he alluded to was this. Seven
years ago, in 1852, when the panic of a French invasion
raged as much as it did now, if not more, he laid a wager
with a general officer, who had ever since been paying ten
guineas a year to the Manchester Infirmary as a penalty for
his rash adherence to an association which he (Mr. Cobden)
had ventured to call in question upon this subject. To decide
that controversy, he (Mr. Cobden) applied to the French go •
vernment for information, and got a statement of the naval
budget of France for that year, which he placed in the hands
of several gentlemen having the control of influential organs
of public opinion, and one of those gentlemen, who was now
sitting in the House of Commons, and who was the pro-
prietor of a great journal in the North of England, made
use of that information honestly to stem the torrent of alarm
and apprehension which then prevailed. He remembered
also that his hon. friend the member for Dumfries wrote to
the French Minister of Marine, M. Duces, whose reply was,
"In answer to your newspapers accusing us of menacing
naval preparations, I will state that I have not added a
boat to our marine, or a gun to the armament of our ships."
Remembering these incidents, he would venture to quote
the document which he had mentioned, in reply to his right
hon. friend below him who now spoke of the French as hav-
ing made " gigantic preparations for the invasion of a coun-
try which was a great naval power." Now what did this
document show ? The only salutary treatment for such a
fever as now affected many persons in and out of that house
was a cool investigation of the facts of the case. He had had
an opportunity of reading over this statement with the aid
of a few friends who were well acquainted with nautical
matters. He found that in this report, published by our
own Government, having been drawn up confidentially for
their information by a committee appointed for the purpose,
there was a comparison of the French and English navies,
showing what they were in 1852, when this awful panic
prevailed before, and what they were in 1858. Now, if the
house would be a little calm, he (Mr. Cobden) would state
the results of that comparison. It was admitted that the
French had a show of superiority in steam frigates, whilst
we had a considerable superiority in screw line-of-battle
ships. (No, no.) In line-of-battle ships, built and build-
ing, as against the French, built and building, we had a
superiority—he believed we had ten line-of .battle ships more
than the French, without including the blockships, which,
he was told, were serviceable. In the number of frigates, the
French navy was somewhat superior to the English, but
there was the rest of our navy, not to beleft out of the com-
parison, consisting of the corvettes and sloops, and all those
vessels which, according to the opinion of the wisest
persons upon naval affairs he had been able to consult,
were the most effective of all. The Americans were build-
ing nothing but corvettes, and they said those were the
most serviceable vessels in case of war. Now, in 1852,
England had 176 war steamers, and in 1853 she had 461
war steamers. This was an increase of 288 in that period.
The French in 1852 had 122 war steamers, and in 1868 they
possessed 264 war steamers, showing an increase of but 142
against our increase of 288. Our increase had therefore been
just double the increase of the French in the number of
steamers. In 18.52, moreover, the English navy had 299
sailing vessels, and in 1858 we had 296 sailing vessels, show-
ing a diminution of three. The French in 1852 had 258 sailing
vessels, but in 1858 they had only 144, showing a diminution
of 114 in the number of French sailing ships, whilst our
number had diminished by only three. The reason of this
was that the vast increase spoken of in the number of the
French screw steamers had arisen from the conversion of
their sailing vessels into steamers. Wo had been going
through the same process with our sailing vessels, but at
the same time we had been building other sailing vessels,
whilst we had converted more sailing vessels into steamers