The Sun.
London, England, 1845-05-07 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 1845.

The House of Lords met at five o'clock.

The Church Building Amendment Act was committed.
Lord STANLEY took the opportunity of the presen-
tation of a petition by the Earl of Devon, on the subject
of the Land Commissioners (Ireland) Report, to assure
the House that the recommendations of the commissioners
were under the attentive consideration of the Govern-
ment; and that a Bill on the subject of giving compensa-
tion to the tenant fur any improvement he might have
made on the land, was in a state of forwardness, and
would be laid on the table shortly after the recess.
Lord BROUGHAM gave notice that he should move
that a certain Railway Bill which had passed the House
of Commons, notwithstanding 300 breaches of the
Standing Orders, should be referred to the Standing
Orders Committee when it came before their Lordships.
A short conversation ensued, which led to no result ;
after which the Noble Lord presented a petition from the
inhabitants of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, complaining of
the conduct of Mr. Michael Gibbs, and praying for a re-
vision of the law regulating vestries.
The Auction Duties Bill, the Sugar Excise Duties
Bill, and the Colonial Pa:, sengers Bill were respectively
read a third tiine.

The Privy Council Appellate Jurisdiction Bill passed
through Committee, and the House adjourned.

The House of Commons did not sit.

There was a great deal of good sense in the ob-
servations elicited from various Members of the
House of Commons on Monday night last, by Lord
PALMERSTON'S very able speech on the subject of
slavery, and the scandalous malpractices of the late
Spanish Govelmor of Cuba, General O'DONNELL. In-
deed we had ranked several passages in the several
speeches of ilfz. HumE, Sir C. NAPIER, Mr. WAR-
BURTON, and JJord P.:LMERSTON, for commentary;
but they led, though incidentally, to topics of still
nearer and more momentous interest, to which we
cannot, at a moment like this, refrain from adverting,
in preference to almost any other subject of political
interest.

The present state of the British Navy, at all times
a matter of paisarnount interest in our eyes, assumes
of late, from ceatain aspects in our external relations,
a character of the most profound and incalculable im-
portance. We had hoped, after the general concur-
rence with which, just before the resignation of
the last Government and the coming in of the pre-
sent, the opinions of the most experienced naval offi-
cers, both in and out of Parliament, were received, on
• the dangerous practice of sending out our ships of
war miserably undermanned, that we should not soon
hear again of a return, on the part of the Admiralty,
to the most impolitic and perilous scheme of retrench-
ment which was ever resorted to in the councils of a
power essentially the most maritime of any in the
world. From the fair and manly manner in which
Sir G. COCKBITRN has, from time to time, responded
to the applications and entertained the complaints of
some among the naval authorities in the liouse—espe-
ei•dly Sir C. .NAPIER, Captain Rous, Lord INGES-
T:IF, Captain Plen ELI., and the Hon. Captain BERKE-
LEY— we had entertained a confident ex-
pectation that the gross abuses and defi-
ciencies in various depf.:;rtments of the service,
which they bud indicated, would not be permitted to
continue or to recur. We are compelled to own
that we are equally surprised and grieved that the
question of Captain PECHELL, on Monday, should
have received no answer at all, or just the most un-
satisfactory one in the world, from the Second Lord
of the Admiralty. " IVhat had become," asked the
Gallant Captain, "of the fine men who bad passed
through that excellent establishment, the gunnery-
ship at Portsmouth ?" Now, it would have really
been desirable to learn specifically how end where
the gunners and seamen instructed in the Excellent
had been distributed. The more diffused the better,
we should say, for the service. But all that we can
collect from Sir GEORGE COCKBURN'S answer is—
that the navy never possessed finer men than at pre-
sent ; a vague generality that does not at
all meet the question. Have they been paid
off, or drafted into some of the Admiralty's
experimental services, to be disgusted with
a cruise in some of the Surveyor of the Navy's
bad ships, where the best of seamanship is requisite to
work the most unmanageable craft? Captain BERKE-
LEY stated that he could assign the reason why the
navy was not, could not, and would not, be manned.
It was that the entries of men were made for parti-
cular ships—not for the service generally. Why had
there been so much discontent among " the men en-
gaged under Captain LOCKYER in the Albion ?"
(This is the large ninety-gun two-decker on which
we have so often had occasion to animadvert in re-
spect of her vicious construction, that will not allow
her, in bad weather, to open her lower tier of ports at
all, and whose rolling and pitching, in heavy seas,
renders her one of the dampest and most uncomfort-
able vessels in her MAJESTY'S service, although one of
the crack productions of Sir IV. SYMOND'S school.)
Captain BERKELEY further asked why a large ship's
company were sent to sea with an insufficient
supply, especially as an experimental squadron ?
He said, too, the men were disgusted with sere it g
in an experimental squadron, for this reason—they
saw that they had work to do which precluded them
from anything like rest. Why what a device was
this for accomplishing the objects of a squadron of
evolution and experiment, where, in the first place,
a full complement of men is indispensable to the
manoeuvres to be executed; and, in the second, the
most perfect good understanding between officers and
men is an absolute element of the service. If the
ships were undermanned, as a matter of course the
crews were overworked; and at a period of all others
the most exigent of alacrity and cheerfulness in those
crews, they were goaded, as it were, to the extreme
of discontent. Are we to suppose Captain BERKELEY
in earnest—and how can we refuse to believe that he is
so—in in
men, dmisgivings as to the conduct of
n
with America, are founded
o ad
in adding
e v thaten t anyefa
war
on the notoriety of the fact that, if such a war were
now to break out, our ships must proceed to sea so
miserably undermanned, that they would have no
ground for reasonable expectation of success in a
competition to be waged under circumstances of
similar inequality and disadvantage to those of our
last naval warfare with the Americans. That such a
defective system should even have been contemplated,
is alarming enough; but that alarm is at least alle-
viated by the distinct pledge. it called forth from Sir
GEORGE COCKBURN, " that there was no intention to
ws
hhoiul we d he ev e
rregmo ation esde a iwni
tho
nffincteb, e
innog
restrict the complement of sea-going ships, and that,
of o
mannedu r navy.
properlyship
As for the experimental squadron, the object was
rather to try the ships
than the men." Granted ;
but by allotting to the most severe duty an inferior'