The Sun.
London, England, 1868-10-20 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 20, 1868.

NAVAL EXPENDI7URE.

(PROM A CORRESPONDENT.)

CAPTAIN SHEItARD OSBORN'S speech on our naval
expenditure deserves fuller notice than we have yet
given it. It is one of the most remarkable election
speeches delivered this year. We have heard a good
deal about naval extravagance. The report of Mr.
SEELY'S committee has made us acquainted with the
way in which the public money goes. We have
laughed or stormed (accordingly as we read
the report after dinner or before) at ships
sold for £5,000 with their copper and machinery,
and the said copper and machinery subsequently
bought back, minus the ship, for £20,000. We have
been amused or irritated by the naïve admission that
the country would have been richer if it had burnt
its old ships than if it had sold them. We have
followed with more or less closeness the controversy
between the Liberal ex-officials and the Tory existing
officials on public expenditure. But all these dis-
cussions are merely about questions of detail.
They do not go to the root of the question.
We may get our ships built hereafter more cheaply
in private yards ; we may sell our old ships to men
who will not afterwards have the impudence to ask
us four times as much for a part as they gave for the
whole. But Captain OSBORN goes far beyond this.
He contends, not only that we pay more for our new
ships and get less for our old ships than we ought,
but that we have far too many ships, far too large a
navy. He denounces in the first place the supposi-
tion that the high seas are a British highway, that
England is bound to provide police for the ocean,
that Britannia has any more right to " rule the
waves " than any other Power has. The " patriotism "
which made us claim that superiority for our country
was really selfish arrogance.
Not only is the claim inadmissible ; we have no
longer the power to enforce it. One of the authors
of the " Essays on International Policy " declares
that scarcely a Spaniard ever lays his head upon
his pillow at night without thinking of Gibraltar.
Captain OSBORN does not argue with the essayist that
we are therefore as much bound to offer restitution
as we should think the Spaniard to be if he held
possession of Portland, but he simply declares that
Gibraltar is no longer of any use to us. He denies
that either that place or Malta are " keys " to
the Mediterranean. Steam has overturned that
theory, has opened the gates of the Pillars of
Hercules. Malta costs us a million a year. It is
probably as useless to us as Corfu was. If any
one in West Lancashire ventured to say that
these places ought to be given up he would
be told that he was "no Englishman." Nevertheless,
on the other side of the Mersey Captain OSBORN,
himself a naval officer whose courage, whose genius,
whose ability no one can deny, is bold enough to
make this assertion and to
challenge a denial. He
points out another source of extravagance—the large
armed force which we keep in our colonies and in
Ireland. He told an amusing story of the Irishman
who declared that they must have another rebellion
in Ireland because there had been no contract since the
last—a story which will explain a good many of our
" rebellions " in New Zealand, the Cape, and Canada;
and he called upon the Government to withdraw, or
at least diminish, the troops in these countries,
and make the colonists pay for such as they chose
to retain. This is a bold policy for anyone to
announce. It is not new, for Mr. COBDEN advocated
it long years ago. But it is new that a naval officer
should advocate it. When such a phenomenon is
seen, we may be sure that we are near the beginning
of the end—that we are near the realisation of a
policy which is, as regards economy, as much above
the reductions proposed by Mr. STANSFELD and Mr.
CHILDERS as these are above the cheeseparings of
the late Mr. HUME and Mr. WILLIAMS. One by one
the doctrines taught by Mr. COBDEN, and which
made him hated at the time, are being adopted. Free
trade and non-intervention have already been
accepted by Tories even. They will soon be com-
pelled to surrender " Rule Britannia." There will
then remain only equal electoral districts for them to
I receive, or perhaps propose as a mode of dishing the
Whigs.

MR. GLADSTONE A 7 NEWTON.

(FROM A CORRESPONDENT.)

Mn. GLADSTONE does not let the grass grow under
his feet. In six days he made four speeches, which
must have taken something like nine hours to deliver.
As specimens of oratory they vary considerably.
The finest speech—and it was one of Mr. GLADSTONE'S
greatest efforts—was that which he made at Liver-
pool ; the driest speech was that delivered at Newton.
Of course we cannot expect the most accomplished
orator to be always the same. It is, in fact, a part of
oratory to differ from time to time. Now he appeals to the
heart, now to the head, now to the imagination,
he makes passionate
anpopwealthsTo-daybrings forward incontrover-
tible statistics. Mr. GLADSTONE'S speech on Satur-
ttho_emor reason.rto-morrow
e day was of the latter kind. He began by pointing
out in what an anomalous position the country is
placed. On the one side is an Opposition which has
proposed a definite policy with regard to the Irish
Church; on the other is a Ministry which has no
policy at all. At first it denounced the
Opposition policy, and asked the country to
wait until the report of the Irish Church Commission
was issued. That report is published, and there is
scarcely a man who will venture to say one word
for it, or to contend that it ought to be made the
basis of legislation. This resource having failed, the
Ministry is at its wits' end. It has nothing else to
fall back upon. So Ministerial candidates go about
the country talking with imbecile vagueness of their
willingness to reform any abuses of the Irish Church,
but tell us neither how they would reform them, nor,
indeed, what the abuses are. The Commissioners
are certainly a little less barren of suggestions,
They propose to annihilate parishes which contain
only forty Protestants, and transfer their revenues to
other districts. Why they fixed upon forty, puzzles
Mr. GLADSTONE as it has puzzled us; and he has now
suggested the solution which we offered several weeks
ago—that the figure was chosen because it repre-
sents the Thirty-nine Articles and one over :
not a satisfactory solution, we admit, but the
best that can be offered. The revenues of these
unfortunate parishes where the population can even
now with difficulty " keep alive the lamp of the
Reformation," is to be transferred to populous Pro-
testant parishes where there is already plenty of
wealth, and where there is abundant oil to feed the
said lamp. remarkable application this of the
saying, "To him that lath shall be given, and from
him that hath not shall be taken away even that
which he bath." kgainst this policy Mr. GLADSTONE
protests. He calls it (4 spoliation." He declares that
the tithe rentcharge was intended for the individual
parish in which it was raised, and for no other, and
that to take it away from that parish will
be wrong and robbery. Here is a definite principle
which we commend to that fertile originator of "prin-
ciples," Mr. DISRAELI. There is no " hard and fast
line" here, like the "forty" of the Commissioners. It
is a definite foundation upon which to erect a policy
that shall be just and equitable.
The other great expedient of the Commissioners is
to 'sacrifice four bishops and nearly twoscore deans.
We do not imagine that any one will interpose
on behalf of the latter dignitaries ; but will
none of the staunch Churchmen who swear by
Mr. HAnny protest in behalf of the first ? Already
the Commissioners have been outbid. A pamphleteer,
who considers Mr. GLADSTONE a revolutionary,
proposes to reduce the bishops to one. He would roll
the whole episcopate into a single man. How this
dignitary is to discharge his episcopal duties in con-
firming, consecrating, ordaining, from Cape Clear to
Fingal's Cave, and in addition to spend six
months of the year in England as a spiritual
peer, is not explained—is, we suspect, not
capable of explanation. It would be well
for the supporters of an Episcopalian Church to con-
sider well what this proposition and that of the Com-
missioners amount to, They really mean the sacrifice