The Sun.
London, England, 1844-09-07 00:00:00

TO THE WORTHY
..„..
GENTLEMEN,
THE result of this Day's Poll, while it testifies your
great kindness towards me, calls for a renewed expression of
ntS' warmest gratitude towards you. If anything were wanting to stimu-
late me to ti.e due pertl.rmauce of the importart duties of the office to
which I aspire, it would be Ram' in tlt protection you are , xtendi.ig
to me In the very peculiar situation in which I have been placed by
my opponent in this most vexatious contest.---1 have the ho::our to
be your most obedient and devoted servant,

AND INDEPENDENT LIVERY OF
LONDON.

ANTHONY BROWN

Guildhall Hotel, Sept. 7, 1844.
STATE O 1 THE POLL 'PHIS DAY AT TWO O'CLOCK
, Brown- 1,702
11ePPel•
• -..-• Majority for Brown .....

NEW .WORK I$Y CAPTAIN MAHRYAT.

most jesuitical shape ; they were drawn uplby Tory
functionaries; and but for the admirable exposition.
of Lord DENMAN and his colleagues, Mr. O'CONNELL
and his friends would have been left to linger in
prison on the verdict of a jury, which every man of
common sense and honesty now admits was not pro-
perly constituted. However, the wrong is redressed,
and we rejoice to find that it gives the old oppressors
of Ireland such annoyance.

In the reply of Sir ROBERT PEEL on Thursday af-
ternoon to the „questions of Sir CHARLES NAPIER
and Mr. Tmossas DUNCOMBE, we are bound to as-
sume that the Premier stated with perfect sincerity
his conviction that the French and English Govern-
ments had arrived at an amicable adjustment of the
causes of offence—the somewhat threatening differ-
ences of opinion—which had arisen between them
in connexion with the affair at Otaheite, and the
bombardment of Tangiers and Mogadore. But as the
Right Hon. Baronet absolutely declined to enter into
any particulars of the terms or conditions on which
our neighbours have consented to give us satisfaction
for what he has himself denounced as " a gross out-
rage," in the Otaheite affairs, we have no better
guarantee for the fact than his own impressions of
the cordiality and frankness of the French Cabinet.
We may be allowed, therefore, to return to the con-
sideration of the existing state of our navy, as if
all hazard of a contingency that might call, abruptly
and soon, for its efficient services, were not, of neces-
sity, concluded by the convictions so avowed by Sir
ROBERT PEEL. In doing this we shall not appear to
impugn the good faith of the French Ministry, but
we shall act on the strength of the old maxim, that
" the timeliest wisdom is the best." Now, we desire
to direct the attention of the public—(for all appeals
to the intervention of the official and'Executive autho-
rities on this topic have hitherto proved unavailing)—
to the disgraceful manning of our ships, and the in-
evitable tendencies of the system at present pursued
by the Admiralty, to increase and aggravate the dis-
organisation of her MAJESTT'S navy. Some of our
readers may object to the frequency with which we
recur to this topic; but a sense of its vital impor-
tance and our own duty compel us to this proceeding,
and we have no doubt will be found to justify us in
acting on that impulse. And it is evident that, of
all the objects of a policy of precaution and foresight,
the efficient manning of our ships of war is precisely
that on which, "to be wise after the event," must con-
stitute the most ridiculous as well as the most pitiable
—the most deplorable as well as the most absurd—of
predicaments. To set about making provision for the
proper manning of ships after they should have been
actually sacrificed, or too disabled to carry their ade-
quate complements from the weakness of their crews,
would exceed in ex post facto impotency the late
sagacity of him who, carefully affixed a leek non his
stable-door after his steed had been already carried off
for want of one.
It is to be remembered that France is neither the
only, nor the most formidable, competitor with which,
in an event that we put, for out present purpose,
quite hypothetically, our navy would have to contend.
We lately showed that, excepting one or two line-of-
battle ships, and a frigate or so on the coast of South
America and on the 'West India station, one other in
the Pacific, and, we believe, a few frigates of the
larger and smaller class in the Chinese seas and the
Indian Ocean, our force in line-of-battle ships was
miserably deficient, assuming them even to be fully
manned. Their total is soon reckoned. At Lisbon,
the Caledonia, 120 guns—but she ought to be the
flag-ship of the Admiral in command at Plymouth!
On the coast of Morocco, the Albion, 90 ; in the
Mediterranean, the Formidable, 80. Besides these
three abroad, we have at Portsmouth, the Queen,
110—but she ought to be at Sheerness, where she
ihould be bearing the Port-Admiral's flag ; at Ply-
mouth, the St. Vincent, 120—but she ought to be the
flag-ship of the Admiral at Portsmouth. At Chatham
Ind Sheerness, none; at Spithead, the noble flag-ship,
Colling wood, 80—but she has taken out what the de-
nizen's of the Queen's Bench Prison used to call a
" rule "—and although returned in the naval muster-
roll as one of the home-station flag-ships, she is
making a little run presently for the Pacific. Thus we
have, for Europe, cis et citra the Straits, three line-of-
battle ships in commission ; at home, six ; whereof
one—the Queen, doing duty for Chatham, Sheer-
ness, and Portsmouth, all at once, has but half of her
proper crew! A Correspondent of the Times, who
signs himself " Tom Tough," in a well-written letter,
illustrates the system of bungling, improvidence, and
invidiousness on which, what we shall take leave to call,
the business of dispersing, discouraging, and disgust.
ing the seaman force of our navy, is carried on. This
sailor complains as one of those suddenly thrown out
of employ by late reductions in the navy, that, for the
last three months, from 500 to 600 prime seamen
(" able men," in the technical as well as ordinary
sense of the phrase), have been starving about the
purlieus of Portsmouth; vainly awaiting the commis-
iioning of the experimental brigs ;—that numbers of
others who have been, all their lives men of wars,
,nen, after pawning all they had for mere subsistence,
')ave been compelled to go into the merchants' ser-
vice, not a few into that of America.
Let us pause, here, to consider the hardship to which
this great, but ungrateful naval country, subjects those
'wave fellows, from whose undaunted intrepidity and
sever-tiring energy she derives so great a portion of
her grandeur and power in the array of nations. The
very zeal they display in her service, their matchless
activity, coolness, and resolution in the discharge of
their professional duty, by expediting the achievement
)f victory, if engaged on war duty, or the completion
)f any given service assigned to them in time of
peace—work to their own disadvantage. They are
paid off with a rapidity proportioned to the vigour of
their operations; and then, too much after the fashion
adopted with those whom Byron calls
The tools, the brokenagols, which tyrants cast away,"
they are left uncared for—unprotected against those
)nly dangers, the dangers of being ashore, against
which they know not how to defend themselves—un-
provided for against the wretched destitution of that
wriod at which their confirmed habits of a sea life, and
:heir ignorance of all others, leave them the despoiled
tnd helpless prey of all the arts wherewith the most
iefarious fraud and wholesale dissipation, surround
ind overwhelm and ruin them in the first days of their
,naction on shore. Why should we not provide
.sylums and a moderate sort of half-pay for these
ine fellows, and thus accomplish at once the two in-
valuable ends of saving them from those sensual and.
legrading habits into which, at present, they are apt
to plunge with a sort of reckless desperation—in the
very despair of doing any good for themselves, or find-
:ng themselves better off by abstaining from them;
—and of having always in hand as it were—at our
call—in any emergency—a permanent reserve of able
inen, from whom certain proportions might be drafted
into our ships of war, and incorporated with a suffi-
Aent number of newer or younger hands to com-
plete their respective compliments ? The very ex-
>ense, even, of such a scheme, would scarcely exceed
chat entailed by our present clumsy, impolitic, and
inadequate modes of advertising, bounty-giving
gimping, sending round steamers to pick men up in
iutports—and, worst of all, occasional impress-
nent. But the result would be to get able hands
nstead of raw landsmen—expert sailors, accustome 1
:o handle great guns as well as sails—and to render
he service so popular and desirable, that every un-
.mployed able hand should be volunteering to enter
m the first vacancy which might offer. In this way
we should assuredly revive the enthusiasm of the
brce (which was only equalled by its never-failing
laring), that imparted their brightest lustre to the
laurels of DUNCAN, and ST. VINCENT, and NELSON.
We should hear no more of British seamen fighting
under other colours than those of their native country,
Or that country wants but one tie more irrevocably
0 attach the bravest of her sons to her ser-
aee and her vindication, and that is, the
msuring, not alone for their old age, or for
he physical disability, resulting from wounds and
injuries sustained in her' cause, but for those seasons
,f enforced and reluctant retirement from active ser-
. ice, some certain, though small, provision for their
subsistence. The charge upon the country for such
provision ought not of itself to stand in the way of the
tdoption of some such plan ; for, in the meanwhile
iThat are the dangers we are incurring in the absence
,f any such arrangements ? The writer we have
iuoted from above, remarks, on the entry of 100 sea-
nen on the dockyard-books, in lieu of 100 labourers,
hat good seamen, accustomed to an active life and
ever-changing scenes, would soon grow weary of
'uch occupation as this plan opens to them. He says