The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-09-10 00:00:00

our disposal, from the " correspondence" on the
subject recently published, by order of the House
of Commons. We have also to some extent, made
known our own unprofessional impression of the
value of the inventions in question, and the treat-
ment received by the inventor in his efforts, with
safety to himself, to bring them experimentally to
test before the various parties appointed for the
purpose of adjudicating upon their merits and prac-
ticability. We have been candid in doing this;
and we feel confident that our comments upon the
temper of a letter referred to in our last, and in
which our representative, Sir Howard Douglas, was
spoken of by Captain Warner with a considerable
degree of asperity, will be received as based upon
a desire to do equal justice to both; and that whilst
defending an honourable man, accused of over
strictness and something even more, in the dis-
charge of an onerous and most responsible duty, we
are perfectly willing to consider and regret the po-
sition of Captain Warner at the time of these en-
quiries, and to make due allowance for any ordinary
degree of warmth of temper which it might have
called forth.

Bearing in mind, then, the whole circumstances
of the case, we must repeat our conviction expressed
in our last that, not only towards Sir Howard
Douglas, in his letter of the 28th ult. addressed to
the London Times, but to other officers, with whom
he has been brought into conduet, Captain Warner
has shewn a degree of hastiness very unwarrantable.
It was entrusted to these officers—men distinguished
in their profession—to investigate into the merits
of newly discovered powers, unknown to science,
and upon which they were told that the fate of their
country depended. These powers were to be pur-
chased by Government, in the event of a favorable
result of the investigation. Such, at least, was im-
plied, although expressly repudiated as a necessary
conclusion of that favorable result; and the duty,
therefore, of the investigators was to exercise a de-
gree of jealousy and care amounting even to hardness
of belief. Captain Warner, in many parts of this
correspondence, admits the power of his inventions
to be surpassing credibility. He permits no near
scrutiny, in case of experiments being made. He
has his secret to keep until Government consents to
purchase it. The officers commissioned by Govern-
ment have to satisfy themselves that it is worth
such purchase, from the meagre opportunities of
testing it, which the circumstances of the nego-
ciators and the cautious inventor permit. It is a
fine game of fence—a quashi-diplomatic treaty, car-
ried on at "a long range"—a duet in which one of
the performers wants to look over the other's score,
whilst that other is ever and anon crying " hands
off"—

" Prom! oh procul
Este profani !"
With this view of the case, firmly impressed upon
us by the correspondence itself, we cannot but think
that Captain Warner has been injuriously hasty and
extremely unjust towards Sir Howard Douglas in
his letter to the editor of the Times, accusing him of
unfairness in his conduct of the nego,tiation, and
misrepresentation in his speech of the 31st July
last, in the House of Commons. He states that
Sir Howard had given to the house only such a
portion of the correspondence between them as told
against himself, and had snppressed what was fa-
vourable. Now, we must say that an attentive pe-
rusal of the parliamentary paper has conveyed to
us no such impression. It has convinced us, in-
deed, that before none of the commissioners has
Captain Warner been submitted to a more searching
investigation, and before none doe's he appear to
less advantage than before Sir Howard Douglas and
Sir Byam Martin. Nothing but a satisfactory ex-
periment would suffice to convince any man, read-
ing the minutes of that examination, (to be found
at page 19 of the correspondence, under date of the
19th April,) that the invisible shells of Captain
Warner, insisted upon by him to be first tried, were
practicable in their working and safe to these work-
ing them. Nowhere has Captain Warner dealt
more largely in unsatisfactory assertion that in his
communications with these officers.

An injurious intimation is attempted to be con-
veyed in Mr. Warner's letter, that Sir H. Douglas
had startled him, during the negociation, by the
inquiry, when upon the subject of remuneration,
" What is to prevent my asking £400,000 of the
Prime Minister? After you have put me in pos-
session of your secret, I shall be as formidable as
yourself." Ac'ording to the printed correspon-
dence, however, Sir Howard made no such startling
remark. In questions 73 and 74 of the proceedings
of the 19th of April, Captain Warner having stated
that "one man in every fleet" must be in the secret,
it is asked (and we may remark that the questions
in this examination were put from written notes
previously prepared, and put too by Sir Byam
Martin, the Chief Commissioner,)—" If this be the
case, the secret would no sooner be bought than it
would be lost, unless the Government gave £400,000
to every person who may become acquainted with it,
&c. Perhaps you may suggest some way of secu-
ring the secret which does not occur to us ? "—and
the want of any apparent ability on the part of
Captain Warner to suggest such plan, was the in-
ducing cause of the Commissioners' discountenan-
cing as useless any investigation of the merits of
the shells, and expressing a wish to proceed to the
trial of the " long range." This attack, therefore,
against the honour of Sir Howard Douglas entirely
fails, and is anything but creditable to the party by
whom it was made.

Captain Warner proceeds in his letter to state,
that " Sir Howard Douglas, in a peremptory man-
ner, said I must disclose my secret agent, and ex-
plain its nature, properties, and composition, as well
as the plans of putting it in operation." Through-
out the printed correspondence we can find no such
peremptory demand. On the contrary, Captain
Warner was repeatedly told that •no portion of his
secret—nothing that would endanger his secret was
sought. The commissioners insisted upon satisfac-
tory trial of his powers, unconditioned as to subse-
quent remuneration; and upon this point, and this
alone, the negociation was broken off.
We readily allow that throughout the affair, on
the part of Sir Howard Douglas, much strictness
was observed—much precaution against possible
detection, by which the country might suffer pecu-
niarily in case of the purchase of Captain Warner's
powers. But we must in justice say—we have al-
ready said that the negociation between Captain
Warner and Sir T. Byam Martin and Sir Howard
Douglas was unsatisfactory, so far as the captain's
replies were concerned—that the previous evidence
taken, and, of course, in the possession of these
officers, was equally so. Upon the subject of the
long range, for instance, the answers to questions
respecting its powers (No. 18 to 23) bear the une-
quivocal interpretation that it is a projectile, at all
times capable of application. Admiral Owen, how-
ever, to whom its powers had been explained by
Captain Warner, describes it as an engine by which
any place or any squadron could be destroyed "of
which he had the weather gage"—a description cer-
tainly far from satisfactory, as taking from it all the
utility of a projectile.
We must here leave the subject. Our only mo-
tive for entering into its discussion -further than we
had already done, was to protect the character and
conduct of Sir Howard Douglas, in that part of the
long negociation which was managed by him. We
trust we have clone that, and we leave the question
of the real merits of the inventions of the captain to
abler hands.

We gave in our last publication the substance of
an opinion, taken upon a case submitted to counsel
through the Town-clerk of Liverpool, defining the
relative powers of the Witch Committee and the
magistrates, in respect to the dismissal of members
of the police force. In another portion of our pa-
per we give to-day both the opinion and " the case"
itself. The public will judge of the fairness of
the one and the legal correctness of the other.
The known ability and leaning of the Town-clerk
will be a sufficient warrant of the former; the emi-
nent legal names of the counsel consulted will be, to
most minds, a guarantee for the latter.
It would appear, however, that the distinguished
lawyer, who presides in the Police-court of this
town, (and upon the legality of whose acts, and
those of the magistrates, upon a recent occasion,
the opinion in question pronounces,) has thought
fit to dissent from the correctness of such opinion ;
and at a special meeting of the magistrates, held at
the Town-hall on Friday last, some extracts from
which appear in our columns, the same learned
functionary proceeded to lay before his brethren of
the bench, and the public, at great length, the
grounds upon which he has arrived at such a con-
clusion. To this statement, elaborately drawn
—written, and read to the meeting, because u
" he
thought the occasion was one which called fora very
wise and cautious discrimination"—we propoie now
to direct the attention of our readers.