The Sun.
London, England, 1861-03-29 00:00:00

organisation. "During the same period" (that is
between 1829 and 1859), the estimate goes on to
remark, " the total number of changes in those who
have managed [mismanaged ?] the affairs of the
Navy as members of the Board and Secre-
taries of the Admiralty, amounted to-
-103 !" And it is asked, later on in the
same impressive argument, " Suppose it should hap-
pen by the chronic neglect of some important ele-
ment of naval strength that any serious calamity oc-
curred, who of the 103 gentlemen who have shared
in the management of naval affairs would
be held responsible ?" Why it would be
precisely the counterpart in our maritime
system of that appalling breakdown in our "mili-
tary system which carried dismay and anguish dur-
ingthe Crimean war to all E ngland, and shook by the
mere force of those " horrible and heartrending"
revelations, the whole fabric of her MAJESTY'S
Government. It would be recognised here again
by sea, as it was then recognised by land, that while
practically almost Everybody was in fault—offi-
cially, Nobody was in fault. Only a calamity like
the one here alluded to as just possible in
the event of our maritime system being put
to as severe a test as our military system
was during that dreadful contest before Sebas-
topol—would beyond all comparison be more
perillous, however, jeopardising what is absolutely
essential for the vindication of our national inde-
pendence, the maintenance, namely, of our mari-
time supremacy. All this is so obvious in itself
that it has only to be expressed in
plain terms to be instantaneously reeog-
nised. Recognised as it is now, we re-
joice to think, far and wide through all England,
but particularly within the walls of the Legislature,
we are beginning to look forward at last with
something like confident expectation to the early
reconstruction of the Admiralty Department, and
to its rapid and permanent reorganisation.

If it be no easy task to put " the right man in
the right place," when the place is some civilised
capital, or trading port, with the language and
customs of whose inhabitants, hundreds, perhaps
thousands of our fellow countrymen are well ac-
quainted—how great must the difficulty be, when
the place is the far East, and the inhabitants have
nothing in common with us, but the primary in-
stincts of our nature and what springs from them.
In Paris, or Vienna, or Washington, it is frequently
difficult to place a representative who shall be at
once a thorough Englishman, and yet acceptable to
and trusted by Frenchmen, Austrians, or Yankees.
With Oriental peoples the difficulty must be yet`
greater. We have there no generally understood
international code to which appeal can be made;
the broadest principles of justice can alone be ap-
pealed to; for the details of tneum and Num differ
widely; and reason, if it attain at all the same
results in both peoples, seems to do as different
climbing plants do, some of which wind up their
support by convolutions contrary to the course of
the sun, and others by following the path he daily
travels. Lord STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE, through
long experience, and Mr. LAYARD chiefly through
natural tact, made themselves masters of the fear,
the respect, and the confidence of the nearer Orien-
tals ; and some of our more successful and vigorous
administrators and warriors in India have done
the same—occasionally, like NAPIER, in the shortest
time, by a kind of intuition of native character.
But a costly experience has taught us that the man
to deal ably and successfully with half civilised
people of different race, religion, society, ideas, laws,
and customs, from ourselves is not to be found

every day.
The reply, which we published yesterday, of Mr.
ALCOCK, our chief Consul in Japan, to the remon-
strance of the British merchants shows him to be a
man fullycapable of comprehending what is fair to
natives, as well as what is due to our own country-
men abroad. Lord ELGIN had taught our mer-
chants the same general lesson of respect for native
laws and prejudices, but it must be the resident
British authorities who alone can enforce it. Eng-
lishmen, especially young Englishmen, have, as we
all know, a peculiar pleasure in perpetrating some
violation of school rules or local restrictions, in a
sort of " devil-may-care" style, and almost purely
for the pleasure of the extravagance. " Boxing a
Charley," transposing signboards, wrenching off
knockers, a ride, or a drive, or carrying a gun
where no one is allowed to go, are the most pleasant
of amusements to lots of our lads ; and climbing
the Alps, shooting lions, tigers, or rhinoceroses,
and yacht-trips to " high latitudes," and shooting
walruses in Spitzbergen, follow a little later. They
are all, in their better aspect, a cropping out of
that love of adventure for adventure's sake which,
turned into its more regular commercial, political,
and military channels, has made us what we are
as a nation. Mr. ALeocx, we are confident, appre-
ciates this characteristic of his countrymen
as much as any of us; but he also
understands that it must have its limits.
With schoolmasters and policemen at home, our
young " sowers of wild oats" may settle as they
best can. The birch or a fine may, at the worst,
square the matter; they do not get us into inter-
national trouble. And as to icebound shores and
mountains, or the dangerous game of the desert
or the jungle, the worst is the occasionally pain-
ful loss of the too daring lover of adventure. Bad
enough that. Still it does not put fleets and armies
in motion. Mr. ALcocK, however, thinks the case
is altogether different if young Englishmen, or
older Englishmen, either offend wantonly the pre-
judices of semi-barbarians, or excuse and defend
such offence when given.

That Mr. Moss, the offender respecting whom
the dispute arose, was really guilty of violating a
known law of the country in which he resided, is
beyond disp'ite. Ho carried firearms in the day-
time without a license, and shot a goose; a wild
one, his apologists say, but there is much more
reason to fear it was the property of some Japanese.
The local police interfere. He cocks his gun to
resist them, instead of quietly going with
them to the Consul; the gun goes off, he
says, in the scuffle, which we may well believe ; ,
though the Japanese think otherwise, and a Ja-

panese is killed. The case eventually comes before
Mr. ALcocx, who sentences him to three months'
imprisonment at Hong Kong, from which sentence
he gets off, through some technical informality.
As the homicide was committed in defending him-
self, to say the best, from the consequences of an
act, illegal on the soil on which he stood, it would
seem perhaps, to ali of us in this country, that he
was leniently dealt with. For homicide of an
Englishman at home, under parallel circumstances,
his sentence would have been far more severe.
But, say the merchants who remonstrate, the
offender was by treaty not amenable to Japanese,
but to English jurisdiction, from which they deduce
two conclusions-Ist, that the Japanese have no
right to arrest art English offender ; 2d, that he
is responsible to our own authorities only for such
acts as would be offences by our laws. Mr. ALCOCK
denies both conclusions, arid does so on broad ap-',
international grounds. He denies that anything
but the humiliation of the most camPle#.o defeat
would ever induce any nation to r-
which permitted foreigners f make a treaty
,0
violate all their