The Sun.
London, England, 1868-10-13 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

'The Times notices that but one material defect is alleged
against Captain Moncreiff's system. It affords, it is
•aid, no protection against " vertical firing." As the
Moncreiff gun-pits are at present constructed, the top,
from which the gun rises, is wholly uncovered. A
shell, therefore, accurately fired from a mortar might
be dropped vertically into the pit, and of course would
Inflict terrible destruction. Now, in the first place,
even admitting this danger, Captain Moncreiff
will still have effected an enormous advance on
the present system. In order to guard against
shells in our existing fortifications we not only
Luild up a wall in front, but construct a strong roof over-
head, and the gun chamber thus protected becomes a case-
mate. We have, therefore, two weak points—the front
and the roof ; but of these two, even at the worst, Captain
Moncreiff absolutely annihilates one. lie removes all
danger in front, and leaves us with only the roof to pro-
tect. In a word, if vertical firing be a danger to Mon-
creiff's system, it is equally a danger to every other
system ; and if we can construct a roof over a raised
battery, we could equally construct a roof over a sunken
battery. As to the tactical results which may be
expected from this invention, it will be obviQus how
momentous must be the effect on the movements of an
army of the circumstance that all the enemy's guns and
batteries may be completely:hidden ,from view. A regi-
ment may be marching over a slightly undulating ground,
or even over a level plain, unsuspicious of anything but
a perfectly unbroken surface, when suddenly a hundred
heavy pieces of artillery may start from the earth as if by
magic, and deliver the most accurate and most deadly fire.
We have heard of masked batteries, but under this system
every gun in position may be masked. In fact, every
undulation and every hillock in a defended position may
become a battery, at once more secure and more powerful
than the Plymouth. Moreover, two or three guns under
this system may be made to do the work of several. The
effect of an embrasure is, of necessity, to confine the range of
a gun, but under this system a gun will range round all
the points of the compass. Consequently, the whole fire of a
dozen guns may be successively concentrated upon any
single point within their range, and great economy may
thus be effected in the number of guns required. It was
conclusively shcwn at Shoeburyness the other day that
the movements of the gun may be effectually directed by
a single word of command from an officer outside the pit.
It would be as easy to direct ten or twenty guns at once
as to direct one, and 'the fire of a whole battery, there-
fore, would be under the instant control of a single
officer.

Upon the North Schleswig question, the Standard
admits that,rof course, Prussia ought not to do anything
which she is not called upon to do in honour,merely to satisfy
France. No one would think of asking such a thing from
her. But in this matter she is decidedly and incontestably
in the wrong. She has pledged herself to restore North
Schleswig to Denmark, and she puts off the fulfilment of
the pledge because Denmark is weak and must wait her
pleasure. We trust that when Count Bismarck returns
to Berlin he will settle this paltry, yeVangerous question.
Prussia is secure enough to spare a couple of hundred
thousands of unwilling subjects ; strong enough, without
asking any guarantees, to ensure justice to any Germans
who may be included in the retrocession ; and strong
enough, too, to do an act of justice and honour without
having it attributed to foreign pressure.

Speaking of retrenchment, the Daily News says the
people of England are chiefly taxed for their army and
navy. It is in these departments, if anywnere, that
retrenchment must be effected. The charge against the
resent Board of Admiralty is, that in the year 1867 they
spent half a million more than their predecessors had
done, and that they wasted what they spent ; in fact, that
they threw the money into the sea, not in the
form of useful armour-clad fighting ships, but in
that of weak, slow, small, unarmoured vessels, fitted
rather to run than to fght, and not very well
fitted for running. Lord Henry Lennox has combated
this assertion, and he has done so by confounding
estimates with expenditure—what the Government thought
of spending with what they actually did spend. The
excess of half a million which the estimates record is for
shipbuilding generally, without distinction of armour•
plated or unarmoured ships. Lord Henry Lennox takes
advantage of this ambiguity with a skill which shows
that he has been in some respects an apt pupil
of Mr. Disraeli. Unfortunately for his argument,
the same tactics have not been practised by his chief
at the Admiralty, who is a statesman of an elde;
school—a disciple of the late Sir Robert Peel. MIS.
Corry has republished in a pamphlet the speeches which
he delivered last session in reply to Mr. Seely,
and in proposing the navy estimates. From his
statements it appears that the expesuliture on unarmoured
ships was in 1865.6, the year of Liberal estimates and
expenditure, £360,619, and in 1867-68, the year of Con-
servative estimates and expenditure, £020,333. That
is to say, the present Board of Admiralty has spent on
vessels admitted to be useless half a million odd more
than its predecessors. This was the original charge made
by Mr. Stansfeld. The magnanimity which " disdains
the lose of nicely calculated less or more " may be very
imposing, but it is out of place in a Government depart-
ment. It is satisfactory to find that the emulation of
rival statesmen is taking the direction of a competition
for the credit of efficient and economical administration.

The Standard says the Conservative party owes it to
Oxford university to bring forward the best candidate it can
furnish ; especially as, if rumour speak the truth, the
Liberals intend to put forward the very best men in their
ranks. It would be a terrible mistake—a political sin—in
any Oxford Conservative or Churchman to vote for Sir
Bounden Palmer. His return would be accepted as an
evidence that Conservatism had lost its hold on the uni-
versity, and consequently on England. It would be a sore
discouragement to the good cause, a sinister triumph far
the cause of evil. True that upon the Church question
Sir R. Palmer differs from his party. But he differs
Father on practice than on principles ; he would accept
eisestablishment; it is only disendowment which, as a
'awyer and an honest man, he feels to be an iniquity that
he cannot sanction. He can renounce and sacrifice -the
interests of Protestantism ; it is the rights of property
that he refuses to betray. While, therefore, we entertain
sh© highest respect and admiration for Sir Bounden
Palmer ; while we admit him to be an honour to the
university and an ornament to the House of Commons ;
while we reverence his political courage and unselfish
loyalty to principle, we should regard his return for the
University of Oxford as little less than a national misfor-
tune, and those who might contribute to it as having
grievously mistaken their duty to their country and their
Church.

The Herald is by no means of opinion that there is not
a cure, and a complete cure, for the undoubted evil of
university extravagance—that there are not principles
which, if properly exercised, might regulate with infallible
accuracy the relations between tradesmen and under-
graduates. The world of the university being a kind of
model of the world without, why should not the same
laws as those which characterise the dealings of trades-
men with their customers in ordinary life be acted upon
there? A tradesman in an ordinary way will not give
you unlimited credit unless you are able to produce
some satisfactory guarantee of substantial income.
If undergraduate extravagance is to be checked, it must
be an open recognised fact that those who pander to it in
the shape of tradesmen shall be fully aware of what they
are doing; in plain words, that those who sell should
come to consider it a bounden duty previously to inquire
into the worldly condition of those who buy. Why
should Oxford be the only town in which the ordinary laws
of commerce should labour under a chronic suspension ?
If the Oxford tradesman could but once be made
thoroughly to realise the fact that he trusted each under-
graduate customer at his own peril, and if the decisions of
the law in any suits for the recovery of debts contracted
during the university residence were to enforce this fact,
little more would be heard of the temptations to extrava-
gance at Oxford.

Apart from the legal merits of the question, there is,
says the Telegraph, something peculiarly striking about
the way in which "the Countess of Derwentwater " has
chosen to assert her fancied rights. That a century and
a half after the beheading of the rebellious Earl and the
confiscation of his property, a descendant of his should
claim to be the heir of his dignities and estates, is a strange
enough fact in itself. And a touch of the picturesque is
given
to the legal contest by the lordly way in which
the lady took possession of the ruined family mansion,
aild in which, when thrust out by the unsympathetic
law, she encamped under the greenwood tree on the
ancestral estate, declaring that she would die on " her own
laud" rather than leave it in the hands of the Commis.
sioners of Greenwich Hospital. The Chancery suit has
begun in the woods, in a semi-feudal fashion. The
1-1 1 manifestly been told on legal authority that her
a. 3 las
claims are valid,' and it is easy to see why a strong,
fervent temperament should be aroused to the
most determined course by the thought of wearing
a proud name and owning a great estate. Nor,
when the law of attainder is manifestly bad, and when
a shadow of right thus rests on the lady's claim, is it
possible to regard her struggle without some sympathy.
Quite apart from all technical speculations, the encamp-
ment at Dileton is a visible protest against a law which is
not defensible. The right of the Crown to the lands and
chattels of convicts eiepends upon no uniform rule, but
is subject to many arbitrary exceptions. For instance,
attainder for murder. or treason disinherits the
heir, but attainder for other kinds of felony has •
not the same operation. It is impossible to justify these
distinctions by any satisfactory reasoning. They are
capricious and artincial, and the existence of them suggests
that the law of forfeiture is fundamentally erroneous. It
was the creation of a cruel age ; it applied to a state of
society which no longer exists ; it is as much out of date
as the headsman's axe, and we may hope that at no remote
day it will be abrogated altogether,