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

:,,.:.'::trienlins 1:'11111t

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MAY-7, 1845.

The4louse of Lords met at five o'clock.
The church Building Amendment Act was committed.
LordSTANLEY 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-
; and that a Bill on the subject of giving compensa-
tion to the tenant fur any improvement he might have
La-ide 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
13d,, and the Colonial rtv.sengers Bill were respectively
read a third time.

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
1-louse of Commons on Monday night last, by Lord
PALMERSTON'S very able speech on the subject of
ilavery, and the scandalous malpractices of the late
Sp:inish Governor of Cuba, GQneral O'DONNELL. In-
deed we had marked several passages in the several
peeches of Mr. liumE, Sir C. NAPIER, Mr. WAR-
BURTON, and Lord Pi.LMERSTON, for commentary;
►nit 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 :natter of paramount interest in our eyes, assumes
of late, from certain 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. COCKBURN has, from time to time, responded
to the applications and entertained the complaints of
some among the naval authorities in the House—espe-
ei..lly Sir C. NAPIER, Captain Rots, Lord INGES-
Tnr, Captain PECHELL, and the Hon. Captain BERKE-
LEY—we had entertained a confident ex-
pectation that the gross abuses and defi-
ciencies in various departments of the service,
which they had 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. " What had become," asked the
Gallant Captain, "of the fine men who had passed
through that excellent establishment, the gunnery-
ship at Portsmouth ?" Now, it would have really
been desirable to learn specifically how and 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 drisfted 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 Lt lost unmanageable craft? Captain BERKE-
LEY stated :that he could assign the reason why the
navy was nsa.t, 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 sos 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:sin her MAJESTY'S service, although one of
tL'e crack productions of Sir W. SYMOND'S school.)
CeTtain BI:RKELEY further asked why a large ship's
coin oany were sent to sea with an insufficient
supply; especially as an experimental squadron ?
.
said;, too, the men were disgusted with sersirg
had work to do which precluded them
in an ea iseri,rnental squadron, for this reason—they
like rest. Why what a device was
f!.ral th2antytt,l3beiyu
this for ace !ornplishing the objects of a squadron of
evolution atai experiment, where, in the first place,
a fall complement of men is indispensable to the
mamnuvres t o be executed; and, in the second, the
most perfect:, .good understanding between officers and
men is an aibsolute element of the service. If the
:hip; w...re 'undermanned, as a matter of course the
cress s were, ( werworked ; and at a period of all others
the rne'.:t ex igl •nt of alacrity and cheerfulness in those
e:ews, they -sr 'ere goaded, as it were, to the extreme
ci disecntent,. Are we to suppose Captain BERKELEY
in earnest— it d how can we refuse to believe that he is
), that any misgivings as to the conduct of
our men, in the, !vent ofa war with America, are founded
on the notoritet T of the fact that, if such a war were
now to break o ut, our ships must proceed to sea so
mio.a•ahly taue ermanned, that they would have no
t 1• - I for isonable expectation of success in a
, Min(
competition to be waged under circumstathes of
I,ilWar incanial ity and disadvantage to those of our
Last naval warf ire with the Americans. That such a
(lc fecti ve sy:l at a should even have been contemplated,
is alauning e z jugh; but that alarm is at least alle-
viated by the c 'istinct pledge it called forth from Sir
G notice COCKI :URN, " that there was no intention to
shoal, restrict the covr .plement of sea-going ships, and that,
while he renal fined in office, no ship of our navy
r ever g
xptoersiemaeNnVtitahlosUgtubaedirnogn,prtohpeerolyb
object was
As o there
rather to h. y the ships than the men." Granted ;
but
by allot Ling to the most severe duty an inferior