The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-12-04 00:00:00

Rough is our lay, though tru,

He who should hail thee with his song
Sits silent mid his much-loved mountains
Mute is the Laureate's tuneful tongue !

The Persian prayer be thine, dear baby—
As thou, a naked, new-born child,
Wailed at the moment of thy birth hour,
While every eye around thee smiled.

So through the course of life's long current
May it be thine thy way to keep,
nent of thy death-hour

That at t

Calm ma;

thou smile, while all around thee weep

CONTEMPORARY PRESS

ADVANTAGES OF STEAM IN
WARFARE.

NAVAL

(From the Standard.)

We have thought that it might be acceptable ti

some of our readers to have an opportunity of com-
paring Napoleon's unsuccessful enterprise against St.
Jean d'Acre with the late brilliant exploit of Admiral
Stopford, and we have therefore elsewhere copied the
account of the siege in 1799, from Sir Walter Scott's
life of the ex-emperor. It will be seen that the great-
est general of his age and country besiged the fortress
for fifty-two days, with an army of 10,000 of the best
troops of France, and:failed ; while an English fleet,
certainly not carrying anything like the same number
of men, carried the place after a cannonade of a few
hours. Claiming all the superiority for Englishmen
that the most inveterate patriot can demand, still this
contrast is too violent to be accounted for by any diffe-
rence between the military qualities of Europeans. We
must look for an explanation to the mode and means of
attack. We need not look long. The naval attack
brought to bear a broadside, or a number of broad-
sides, amounting to between 400 and 500 guns, whereas
the battering train of Napoleon did not exceed 30 ;
and how different are the circumstances under which
now a ship brings her broadside to bear, from the cir-
cumstances of land batteries. The ship may continue
or discontinue the fight at pleasure, and may in a mo-
ment change her position to evade any interposed ob-
stacle, or to take advantage of any favourable contin-
gency; the land battery is a fixture, the permanent
marl for a retaliatory attack. Nearly 200 years ago
the illustrious Blake discovered, and (at Tunis) proved
the advantage in this respect of naval warfare even
with sailing vessels ; but it was left to the use of steam
navigation to render the necessary success of naval
warfare complete. The only serious danger that ever
presented itself in the case of an attack upon a mari-
time fortress by an adequate naval force, namely, the
danger of being unable to withdraw from the land, is
now at an end ; and as the easy reduction of all the
Syrian fortresses in succession demonstrates, no city or
fort on the sea, how strongly however it may be forti-
fied, can count upon resisting a British fleet for 24
hours; consequently no coast is any longer Maccessi-
ble to a British military descent ; we may be said to be
on the confines of every maritime nation for all pur-
poses. of attack, though happily ourselves unassailable ;
and therefore, whatever nation having a sea coast shall
make war upon us must line that coast from end to
end with troops, or calzulate upon having the war upon
its own soil, and in a spot chosen at our own discre-
tion. Such are the immense advantages which the
new arm in war—steam navigation—has conferred
upon us, to keep them as long as we shall be able to
maintain our naval ascendancy.

THE TAKING OF ST. JEAN D'ACRE.
(Front the Morning Herald.)
The fall of St. Jean d'Acre is an event of no ordi-
nary moment.

In the first place, the feelings which that brilliant
achievement is fitted to call forth, differ from the mere
"effervescence of national vanity. The military renown
of a great nation is a portion—and no inconsiderable
portion--.-of its wealth and power. The fame of our
Nelsons and Wellingtons is, in itself, equivalent to the
possession of fleets and armies. In this sense, Eng-
land has gained much by the capture of St. Jean
d'Acre. England has proved to the world that the
breed of her heroic seamen is not worn out—that she
yet possesses naval commanders, who are no unworthy
successors to him who conquered at the Nile and at
Trafalgar—and that while the spirit of her navy has
not degenerated, the proficiency of her seamen in the
arts of offensive warfare have wonderfully increased.
The efficiency with which our guns were " served," at
St. Jean d'Acre, has, perhaps, no parallel in the history
of naval warfare.

The recent exhibition of England's prowess has
been made at no unseasonable time. We, amongst
others, have long marked with grief
and dismay, the
y Russia neglect, with which our navy has, years, been
treated. While France and have been silently
calling formidable fleets into existence, the navy of
England has been sustained, less by the care of
Ni'oth-
vernment, than by the historical recollections
which the English navy is identified. We make with
I
in no
statementspirit of party ; and our statement is
proved to be correct, by the fact, that thirty thousand
of the very best of our seamen have been for many
years serving in the ships of foreign powers. They
have left the fleet of England, because England has
refused to pay for their services at so high a rate as
foreign governments have been willing to do. The
impolicy of such a course on the part of the English
government is obvious enough—its injustice is equally
manifest. It is the policy of England to engage in her
service the best seamen whom the world can supply

nt such sea

offspring of the soil of England, to transfer

their services to rival powers. It is unjust, moreover,
for England to refuse such seamen higher wages than
any other country can afford to pay—unjust, because
England is the richest country in the world, and can,
better than any other country, pay a high price for
seamen of the first class.

That the navy has been, for many years past, ne-
glected, is proved, moreover, by the circumstance, that
at the present moment, the government is making
great and praiseworthy efforts to impart increased effi-
ciency to our fleet. If, however, there had been no
previous neglect of the true sources of England's
strength and security, the bustle that is now apparent
Majesty's dockyards would have been unne-

. imputed decay—in the naval
id was gradually generating in this
country a sense of insecurity. The sense of insecurity
on our part was accompanied by the exhibition, on the
part of foreigners, of a spirit disposed, to be aggres-
sive. The facilities that would attend an invasion of
England were familiarly discussed in Paris. They
were no less frequently, it may be presumed, canvassed
in St. Petersburg. Our coasts were unguarded. Our
dockyards were exposed to attack. Our ships were
rotting in ordinary, or were employed on service of
doubtful policy in remote quarters of the globe. Eng-
land, in short, seemed weak ; and to seem weak is too
often, in such cases, to prove weak.
As the exhibition of weakness was dangerous to
Tingland, so the recent demonstration that the navy of
;land is still the same navy with which Nelson
dunieved his deathless triumphs, is calculated to add to
the solid power of this country. As the insults offered
to the British flag—offered and tamely submitted to
—in the Black Sea, and on the coast of Mexico, tended
to bring us into collision with our most formidable op-
ponents, so the storming. of St. Jean d'Acre must tend
to inspire our enemies with a stronger desire than some
of them have recently manifested, to cultivate the re-
lations of peace with this country.
So far, we think it impossible to regard the recent
achievements of our navy with other than feelings of
unmixed 'satisfaction. Whatever may be thought of
the eastern policy of Lord Palmerston, his lordship is
-•_.11,1_ at all events, to the praise that may never be
",•"1.: am immediate success. Had the English
I

, or LI

cessary
The de(
strength of Engl

We are willing, in short, that "success" should be
estimated at its full value, in deciding on the merits
of any general course of policy; but let us guard
against the tendency to regard " success" as everything.
The God "Eventus" was not, in ancient times, denied
Divine honours ;—yet the justice of quarrels was, even
during the prevalence of paganism, referred to the de-
cision of deities of a higher order.
We have captured St. Jean d'Acre. We have dis-
sipated into thin air, the prestige that till lately invested
as with a halo the name of Mehemet Ali. We have,
in all probability, destroyed for ever the power of that
hitherto successful ruler; but have we done aught to
restore strength to the Ottoman empire ? We fear not.
We fear that the Sultan has been reduced to the rank
of a puppet ; and that the sources of the Turkish em-
pire's strength are irretrievably destroyed. " Reform-
ing" Sultans (of whom the present is the second) can
never, we fear, exercise the influence that once be-
longed to the veritable " fathers of the faithful." The
policy of these turbaned " reformers" is a series of out-
rages on those feelings, which, in their operation, im-
parted, in other days, their formidable power to the
successors of the Caliphs. If the supremacy of the
Sultan in Egypt is to be hereafter maintained, it must
be maintained, we fear, by the unceasing intervention
of England, or of Russia.