The Sun.
London, England, 1859-03-08 00:00:00

THE SUN.

TUESDAY. MARCH 8, 1859.
The manner in which the lonian difficulty has
recently terminated at Corfu reflects discredit alone
upon the lonians themselves. They have them-
selves alone wilfully thrown away a priceless
opportunity. That opportunity was nothing less
than the power, voluntarily proffered for their
acceptance, for the working out of their own
reforms in their own Parliament, under the super-
vision of the Lord High Commissioner, as
the representative of the Protecting SOTF-
REIGN. This tendered privilege they have per-
versely set aside, not merely with disdain, but
with an air of contumelious and insolent indifference.
They have brought affairs by this means round
once more to the actual starting point. All the
turmoil, anxiety, and agitation of the last four
months go for nothing. Not a single abuse has
been got rid of in the meantime. Nothing, abso-
lutely nothing, has come of all this popular efferves-
cence—literally nothing, goad, bad, or indifferent.
A preposterous appeal has been transmitted from
Corfu to the Queen Protectress—coolly beseeching
her MAJESTY to forego the rights of Sovereignty
over the septinsular republic entrusted to the
guardianship of the British Crown forty-four
years ago by the united Powers of Christendom.
This extravagantly absurd request has—as a
matter of course been declined definitely
and peremptorily. Magnanimous efforts have
been made by the English Government to con-
ciliate the lonian people and the lonian
Parliament so far as to induce them to undertake
themselves the delicate and difficult office of the
revision of their hitherto anomalous and ill-work-
ing Constitution. All in vain. The Hellenic
agitators have only shown themselves to be
more and more irrate, insolent, and implacable.
Whatever advances have been made have been
repelled. Whatever suggestions have been offered
for their consideration hate been refused. Sir
Jolly YOUNG failed, through no lack of assiduity
in his efforts, to disentangle the complicated knot
of -the lonian difficulty, woven and ravelled into

many gordian involutions long anterior to his
nomination as Lord High ,Commissioner; Mr.
GLADSTONE, first of all, as his colleague,
and afterwards as his succeessor, found
even his elaborated endeavours to solve the
problem of Hellenic discontent, baffled, if that
could possibly be, even yet more summarily,

yet more provokingly, The upshot of all being
that after all that, has been said and done of late,
affairs revert at Corfu to the status quo ante jur-
yium !—for it has literally been nothing more
dignified from first to last than a squab-
bling jar and wrangle. The customary
biennial session began just a week ago,
according to usage, on the Ist of this present
month of March. By the arrival of midsummer,
it will, as usual, have been brought to a conclusion.
Arid, then, for a period of nearly two years his
Excellency the newly appointed Lord High Com-
sioner will have it entirely to himself to initiate and
inaugurate whatever reforms may appear to him to be
in any way most desirable, without being for a
moment embarrassed during the interval destined
to elapse between the two sessions—the session of
1859 and the session of 1861—by the perversity of
a disingenious and impracticable legislature.
Sir HENRY STORKS gave fair warning to the
lonian Assembly of what would be the inevitable
consequence of their own final perversity in re-
jecting the proposals of reforms submitted to their
consideration by his right hon. predecessor. His
Excellency acknowledged that he received with
regret that refusal of the Legislative Assembly,
brought to him by the President (FLAmßunrAsi),
at the head of a deputation of the representatives
—adding significantly, " I believe a change in the
existing system would have strengthened the
lonian Government and lightened the burdens of
the people." Reminding the members that the
question already answered by her MAJESTY, Nthe
Sovereign Protectress of those States—namely, the
extravagant question about Greek annexation—had,
by reason of that Royal answer, been finally settled/
insomuch that it has become impossible to enter

upon it again " at any time or under any circum-
stances"—His Excellency added this expressive
intimation :—" My duty is to observe the Consti-
tuion and enforce obedience to the laws. I
shall never be found wanting in the dis-
charge of it." And further, "As the as-
sembly has refused its aid to England on this
occasion, the whole responsibility now rests with
that body." Sir HENRY adding yet more this
important declaration " Deprived of the sup-
port which the assembly might have given
to me, I shall, in prosecution of the bene-
volent intentions of the Protecting Sovereign,
labour in the work of improvement by a free exer-
cise:of the powers which the Constitution has placed
in my hands." And those powers ? The history of
our four and forty years' rule over the United States
of the lonian Islands furnishes us with abundant
testimony that whenever a Lord High Commis-
sioner so pleases they may be stretched con-
stitutionally to the utmost limits of a military
despotism. A soldier like Sir HENRY STORKS vjill
know how to wield befittingly the viceregal
sceptre entrusted to his safe keeping--a magical
sceptre, none the less invested with a heavy re-
sponsibility, because, at any moment, at the will

and pleasure of its holder, an olive rod, or a rod of

ron.

The announcement made on Friday evening in
the House of Commons, by the right hon. baronet
the First Lord of the Admiralty, in answer to the
inquiries addressed to him by the noble lord the
member for Woodstock, cannot but be accepted at
once as in the highest degree satisfactory. It is the
intention of the Lords of the Admiralty to have a sepa-
rate naval station for the defence of the Australian
Colonies. The design was originally that of Lord
AUCKLAND—and that design is at length to be
realised. Negotiations have already commenced
with the Government of Sydney with a view, to
the establishment in its immediate neighbourhood
of this independent command. An island called
Garden Island, situated in Sydney Harbour, is
about to be appropriated by the Admiralty for the
reception of stores for the benefit and assistance of
her MAJESTY'S vessels in these seas. Meanwhile,
as an indication of the solicitude felt by the Lords
of the Admiralty under the present Administra-
tion, to do whatever may be most advisable for
the protection of British interests at our
antipodes, it will be sufficient to note that whereas
on the advent of Lord DERBY'S gabiTtet to power
only a twelvemonth since, the whole of our naval
force in those seas amounted to just one vessel, it has
within this year been increased to an efficient
SQUADRON of four men-of-war, two of them
moreover being screw steamers ! There is obviously
no apathy in this matter to be charged against the
existing Government. Even as far as provi-
sional arrangements have yet proceeded, enough
has been already accomplished by Sir JOHN
PAKINGTON and his colleagues at the Ad
miraltv

to relieve their lordships from
e weight of any such accusation. Indeed, Capt.
LAURIE, the commanding officer of the squadron
already specified, has but very recently written to
the First Lord of the Admiralty, as Sir JOHN him-
self intimated to the House on Friday, assur-
suring the Admiralty that in his (Captain
LAURIE'S) opinion that squadron was amply suffi-
cient for any emergency which could arise within the
colonies. Nevertheless, excellent though all these
arrangements are in themselves, they are avowedly
only temporary—they are merely makeshifts
for the time being, until the day-dream of
Lord AUCKLAND, the substantial project of
Sir JOHN PAKIN—GTON shall have been actually
realised. The squadron of four men-of-war under
the command of Captain LAURIE, the occupation
and appropriation to Admiralty purposes of Garden
Island in the harbour of Sydney, are merely antici-
patory of the organization in the Australian Seas
of an independent naval establishment. Though the
arrangements
.at present are in their infancy, says
Sir JOHN PAKINGTON, "I mention it to show my
noble friend that we are not unmindful of the
necessity of having some naval establishment in
those seas, and I hope that it will soon be so far
matured as to meet all the requirements of our
fleet." Indeed, the First Lord added immediately
afterwards explicitly in so many words, " The
Board of Admiralty have come to the
that the Australian colonies ought not to be nomi-
nally attached to the India and China station, and
we therefore propose to make it an independent
command." The
little dater during this
discussion on Fridayll' a
evening, I\lr. BRIGHT, in a
nc a
r aletpol
burst of vituperative eloquence
otn
altogetherio never fo le d -
u
l
for, repudiated the notion (a notion
moment entertained by the Government) of "loading

the industry of the people of England for the pur.
pose, whether of protecting our rich and prosperous
colonies, or of merely gratifying the taste and
sentiment of persons living atthe other' side of the
world." Let us go on in this way, said the hon. member
for Birmingham, adding as we have done during the
last twenty years
_at the rate of £10,000,000 or
£12,000,000: per annum to the expense of our mili-
tary and naval estimates, and we shall have
an opportunity of witnessing that " ugly rush,"
spoken of the other evening, by the Right
Hon. Member for Oxfordshire ! " It is one of the

most monstrous things ever heard of," said Mr.
BRIGHT, " and probably has never been dreamt of
in any country but this, that we should have an
extended empire, abounding in colonies, such as
Canada and Australia, where the people are in-
finitely better off than we are, and yet should con-
tribute not a single farthing in any shape either to
the sums necessary for paying the interest of the
national debt incurred in past wars, or for the naval
and military service of the home country. If ,they
are to be parts of the empire, and allowed to demand
military succour, I do not say even in time of war,
but in time of peace—regiments upon their shores
and fleets upon their waters—l say every farthing
of the cost they ought to defray themselves." Well
—happily for the Imperial exchequer, happily for
the over-taxed people of the United Kingdom—all
this is pretty much the feeling of our administra-
tors. Scarcely has Mr. BRIGHT resumed his seat
after this rhetorical outburst of economic and
patriotic indignation, when the Colonial Secretary
rises for the purpose of uttering a few quiet and
pithy words of commentary. "The Hon. Member for
Birmingham," said Sir BuLwER LYTTON, " has not
perfectly comprehended the overtures made to the
colonies with respect to the expense of their naval
and military defence. In 1856 Sir Wm. DENISON
proposed a plan for the naval and military defence of
Australia. According to that plan he proposed that
the colony should be at all the expense of the naval
force required for purely colonial defence, and
that the Imperial Government should pay the
cost of what was necessary for imperial pur-
poses. In fact," added the right hon. baronet, "it
has been the object both of my predecessors and
myself to urge upon the colony the necessity of
contributing largely towards its defence." Rational
economists, and enlightened statesmen, as well as
naval and military men, are all, long since, agreed
about this. They are agreed as perfectly as they
are also happily long since agreed, that it is no
false economy to maintain in time of peace efficient
naval and military establishments. Mr. BRIGHT,
of course, is an exception, So also are those
who sympathise with his peace-at-any-price fanta-
sies. But rational economists we maintain are
altogether of a different opinion. They recognise,
the wisdom of acting up to the recommendation of
the old adage—Si vzs pacenz para bellum. Hence
it is in the interest of peace that, according to the
heroic motto of the NAPIERS, we should be " Ready,
aye Ready." Hence it is with a view to the main-
tenance of peace that QUEEN VICTORIA, in her
Speech from the Throne on the re-opening of Par-
liament, announced the prospective reconstruction
of the Royal Navy of England—and upon the
occasion of her MAJESTY'S first levee this season,
with her gentle womanly hand, she gave the
knightly accolade to Sir WILLIAM ARMSTRONG,
the inventor of that terrible rifle cannon, which is
the deadliest implement of war yet contrived by
man ; and for the manufacture of which, as rapidly
as possible, unlimited orders—still in the interests
of peace—have emanated from her BRITANNIC
MAJESTY'S Government.