The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-20 00:00:00

inemiting Ant

LONDON, MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 1845.

The opening of the New Steam Navy Dock at
Portsmouth, on Saturday last, ought not to be re-
garded in the light of a mere ceremonial in the
ordinary routine of official business. The object of
this great national work is to provide adequate ac-
commodation and facilities for the purposes of a na-
tional arm, which, from its comparatively recent
addition to the body of our naval force, and the
singular efficieney which has been already communi-
cated to it, is entitled to take rank, as the most im-
portant application of practical science to the art of
war that has been recorded in our times. Improved
gunnery in combination with steam propulsion marks,
assuredly, the most remarkable era in the history of
navigation. This combination supersedes an infinity
of simple elements of material force by material
force of far higher energy, and far less complexity
of action. The elements we speak of were subject
to the controlling power of many opposing or dis-
turbing causes, physical as well as mechanical. In
action, a line-of-battle ship the best built, equipped,
and sailed ; the best manned and the best worked—
that ever swam, through adverse winds, heavy
ground-swells, or calms, or violent currents, has
been frequently disabled from bringing her broadside
to bear, in spite of every manoeuvre which the
nautical science of her officers could suggest, or the
ready intrepedity of her crew was prepared to exe-
cute. For similar reasons, a ship of the first or
second class might be seriously battered and knocked
about, with considerable loss of human life among
her company, by a vessel of far inferior armament,
but having the advantages of the wind, or current,
&c., in her favour. So, too, after many brilliant
actions, the fruits of victory have been snatched from
the hands of our victorious sailors, not so much by
the superior sailing qualities of the enemy's vessels,
as by the skilful tactics with which the commanders
of these latter have improved the opportunities of
escape afforded them by a light and favouring breeze,
or other circumstances assisting their evolutions—but
either not aiding, or absolutely thwarting our own.
It is clear that the easy and certain motive power
wherewith steam can now work any ship, of what-
ever tonnage, so as to bring her up on any desired
board, and place her in any position which the
scheme of the commander's operations may have
assigned her (especially with the aid of that newly -
invented and admirable machine, the Foularton
screw-propeller, which can always, and in incredibly
quick time, get her head round), it is clear that,
with the mastery of this power, a revolution in the
whole art of sailing and fighting vessels of war must
inevitably occur. A steamer gun brig, in a calm, or
in a wind baffling to the course of her mighty anta-
gonist, might sail round, and down upon a formidable
80-gun ship, and work off again—with little or no
comparative injury to herself (owing to the imprac-
ticability of promptly wearing experienced by the
eighty), but, after knocking about the bows or the
stern of the latter with almost perfect impunity. The
new great steam-frigates will nut be susceptible to
the operation of such adverse and discouraging
chances as these. Their powerful machinery will set
them at defiance, and will annihilate, for the enemy,
the mere sailing probabilities of escape. In action,
the odds will be incalculably in favour of the heavier
armament, and more rapid and more certain evolu-
tions of the steam-frigate, whether for attack or for
defence, as compared with the sailing man- of-war.
We may instance, on this subject of armament, the
effective service of her pivot-guns and the prodigious
metal and calibre of the great guns of the Terrible,
about to be launched from Woolwich Dockyard. The
event of a contest between two war-steamers of equal
armament, on this colossal scale—and assuming them
to be equally well manned and officered—it is more
difficult, and more fearful as well, to contemplate.
One should imagine that mutual annihilation would
be the probable catastrophe of such a conflict. The
question here arises, is such an advance in our know-
ledge of the theory of destruction in maritime war-
fare so desirable, that it is expedient to reduce the
results of that knowledge into immediate practical
preparation ? This question we may decline to di--
cuss, either as casuists or as moralists. As practical
men, heartily desiring the establishment of uni-
versal peace, but deeply sensible of the constant
liability of nations to be involved in war,
we answer the question, without hesitation, in
the affirmative. We hail the inception of the Steam
Navy Dock, therefore, at Portsmouth, and the build-
ing and launching of such war steamer frigates
as the Terrible, as satisfactory evidences that our
Board of Admiralty recognises all its vast responsibi-
lity, in times like these, for the security and gran-
deur of the British empire, so far as these are
liable, at any moment, to be attacked through
our navy. We feel that the voice of huma-
nity, as well as the vindication of these great
interests, demands that whenever we may be, unhap-
pily, main embarked in a war, we should be ade-
quately prepared to abridge its term by the tremen-
dous efficiency of our armament. The best hopes for
the permanency of peace are identified with the force
and vigour of our preparations for war. The experi-
ence of the last thirty years has amply demonstrated
that England, of all the great Powers of the civilised
world, is most to be depended on for her sincerity, as
well as her strength, in the noble capacity of the con-
servator of national peace. But this post she would
not have occupied, had she not, under the late Go-
vet nment, so irresistibly shown, by ,her naval
demonstrations, her unquestionable condition to
meet the exigencies of any war. We are well
pleased, therefore, to observe her taking the lead,
among all the maritime Powers, in the march of pre-
paration for any such calamitous exigency as a war
that must be sanguinary, we fear, whenever it shall
come, but which it is well for mankind should not be
protracted. In this matter of constructing and
equipping, and providing accommodation for a war-
steamer navy, the first-prepared combatant will also
14e the best prepared. That advantage which priority
of preparation gives will receive its crowning security,
we trust, in the vigilant care of her MAJESTY'S Govern-
ment to continue making good that superiority of
progress which they have so well commenced, so long
r s the unscrupulous jealousy of some States, or the tur-
bulent and overbearing demeanour affected by others,
shall entail upon them the necessity of persevering
in the active exercise of a precautionary policy.

When the late Lord SYDENIIAM, as Mr. POWLETT
TuoMsoN, brought forward, in the spring of 1830, his
famous speech on the commutation of our taxation, be
felt the necessity for apprising his friends of his
reasons for not extending his scheme to any other but
those fiscal ;imposts which bore on the industrial
labour, or the foreign commerce of the country. Any
notices which, at any time, fell from him as to the
taxes collected itnmeai‘t!ly on landed property and
capital were but meagre and hasty ones ; as be would
not put upon record opinions on such topics which he
had not had the opportunity of carefully digesting and
confirming. It is probable that had the Right Hon.
Gentleman directed his inquiries, at the time, to this
branch of financial economics, his labours would not
have been less highly appreciated by the late Mr. HIJS•
xissoN, and by Parliament at large, than were his
plans for modifying the general principles and work-
ing of our fiscal system. Perhaps the most enormous
defects in that system, as it now operates on property
and capital, are the arbitrary application and the scale
of the legacy duty. A correspondent of the Times,
who subscribes himself "A Country Lawyer," has
handled this subject with equal clearness and ability.
In his professional experience of thirty years, he
tells us, he has heard repeatedly grievous impreca-
tions "on the framers of a law which presses heavily
on the middle classes, and leaves untouched the
great landed proprietors." He adds—" Many a sigh,
I have heard from the bereaved widow whilst
TOv,
ev she and her fatherless chil-
__
paying over the
dren could so ill spare." (\Y e remark, by the
way, on account of their singular 'aptitude for onr
purpose, that both this passage and that which we are
about to quote, raulatis mulandis, might have been

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