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    27 4 T HE LE ADEE . [ Nqo 466 , February 2 $ , 1859

    Untitled Article

    ever other nien may believe are no' more exempt from the general infirmity than the most ove-sick maiden ; they are for ever , hurrying into action , and for ever learning , after a short time , though they never repent , that they have done -wrong . If they do not interfere with private pursuits , and the instincts or impulses of individuals , little hamlets , crowded cities , and great nations are sure , some how or other , to foe , on the "whole——if * not at all . times abundantly—reasonably well supplied with subsistence and all the comforts and

    necessaries of life . They have no confidence , however , in the natural instincts or impulses of individuals ; they cherish a disgusting mistrust of human nature , and an overweening confidence in themselves arid their regulations and they have limited the iramber of tradesmen in towns , forbade the exports of native productions , to secure the supply for the home market , or prohibited the imports of foreign produce , to eneoiuage home growths , only to learn that they have , by their interference , lessened ^ the quantity of food and starved sonie of the i > eople . What is true of the common markets is equally true of the services of inen .

    iNotlung is now more certain tlian that the amount of population everywhere will always be fully equal to the amount o £ subsistence . This great general truth is applicable to every particular ¦ employment . Every , remunerating work finds hands to do it . Whoever can pay for labour is sure to have labourers . The railway contractor , the mine or colliery undertakerj never has a doubt of finding Ilarids , if he can only find - funds to pay them . Human . life , like every other species of life , is sure to be fbimd wherever it can subsist . Our legislators have been ignorant of this great

    fact , and have endeavoured to provide men for the public service as they endeavoured to secure a supply of corn , and the nation is now suffering from a Want of . seamen , and has been suflering for many years , because the Legislature would no more trust the supply to the . impulse of individuals than for a long period it would trust the supply of corn . "The derangement of the markets for food , before we had free trade , and for seamen , during many years , arc due to the same cause —^ the ignorant impatience and interference of the Legislature with the instincts and impulses of individuals ;

    Under the influence of such paltry motives , our a'ulers woiild never trust the seamen to serve the tcountry for adequate pay . When they required tihem—though no employment than the sea is more attractive to youth—they impressed them , they stole them , they flogged them , and treated them as Spaniards now treat the Africans . The plain and necessary consequence was , that men , when they could obtain subsistence elsewhere , or by any other means , seldom voluntarily entered the navy . Officers can be obtained to any number , but not men . The whole secret lies in the fact that the seamen have always been treated by the Skate like slaves .:

    and such not being the . condition of the rest of the people , they had too much good sense to - degrade themselves . With an inexcusable negligence , or with a most contemptible conceit that the State cannot possibly be in error , her Majesty ' s Commissioners for inquiring into the best means of manning the navy—the Earl of Hardwicke , the Marquis of Chandos , Edward Cardwell , TV \ Fan * ehawe MartLi , J . D . H . El phinstone , John Shepherd , and Richard Green , with II , O . Rothery as Secretory— -have taken no other notice of this enormous error and wrong and nil its consequences , in the report they have just issued , than tlias : — " 82 . The evidence of the witnesses , with scarcely

    an exception , shows that the system of naval impressment , as practisod in former wars , could not now be successfully enforced . We speak not of any objections to that system which may exist in our minds on the score of humanity or justice , nor of the political excitement to which , in the opinion of eome witnesses , the revival . of that system would give rise , nor of the strong and determined opposition with which , according to others , it would be met > wo speak rather of difficulties arising from the altered circumstances of the times . The sailor ¦ who wished to avoid impressment would have much greater facilities than formerly for desertion in foreign ports , and for escape after his arrival at home . "

    They see with reluctance , apparently , that the old crane committed by the State cannot now bo renewed—impressment e , an no longer be employed ; but they discard all consideration of its consequences , as if the " heart never treasured * up a wrong , " and every generation forgot aU that was

    hallowed and great in the feelings of its predecessors . What distinguishes the nayal service from civil services is the comparatively small wages—r-the constraint of a master who is all powerful arid , therefore * never just-r-the irksomeness of naval discipline , and the total deprivation of liberty . All these are not more necessary on board ships to secure efficient service than in the Queen ' s dockyards or in the Government offices ; they are relics of old wrong . Officers cannot get over the notion inherited from it , that only by coercion can they command services ^ and , coercion they still employ .

    We want men for our fleet . Why should men enter the navy to be flogged like hounds ? The day before the report of the Commissioners was published , a return appeared of the men flogged hi the navy . 1 , 087 seamen , marines , and boys , were flogged in her Majesty's ships in 1857 , and on these 35 , 847 lashes were inflicted . In the five years 1853-57 , 5 , 823 persons were flogged , and no less than 182 , 779 lashes inflicted . The bulk of these punishments , or more than 90-100 ths , were inflicted quite contrary to the i > ractices of civil life—without any trial—without even the investigation of a courtmartial- —and at the discretion or madness of the commanding officer . A great number of these punishments was inflicted for

    mere disobedience- —as if a housewife were to slap her cook ' s , face every time she neglected to put the kettle on at the proper time ; or" a farmer were to cudgel his ploughman for letting the plough stand still ^ far half an hour : or they are inflicted for insubordination- —as if a master builder were to knock down the journeyman who ventured to dispute his orders . And being- so inflicted at the mere discretion of inferiors , - they constitute an irreconcilable difference between the navy and all civil employments . They are quite sufficient to account for the otherwise strange fact , that the Royal Navy , of all human employments , never can get men . to . consume the subsistence there provided .

    Of the leading "cause of the navy wanting menthe remnant of old wrong , and itself a barbarous cruelty— -the Commissioners take -no notice , and do riot , therefore , recommend it to be removed , as the only certain method of at all times procuring men for the fleet ; , They content themselves with recommending an increase in the quantity of provisions allowed to each seaman ; a free supply of bedding and mess utensils ; a facility of alloting wages ; more equable payments for good conduct ; more free promotion for petty and warrant officers who are to receive , when promoted , a sum of money for an outfit . All , these and similar recommendations are very good in their way , but

    they are all matters of very trivial importance compared to the means of removing the repugnance which men now justly feel to enter the navy . Without volunteers , and as many as the State requires , such regulations are empty ftmns . They are vain and worthless—mere skeletons without life . Of the real impediment to getting men , the CommissionersT—whose minds are imbued with the old fogy ism of the last ccntury- ^ take no notice ; and they content themselves with almost deploring the necessary cessation of the barbarity which has . Jonpj deprived , and the consequences of which still justly deprive , the state of the services of its best and ablest defenders .

    No one can deny the necessity . oftraining , and organising seamen for warfare , but they xnust fir " st be had . At the same time it is plain that England cannot find her safety in organisation alone , as is now recommended . Other nations can organise as well as England , and it is becm \ se one great nation is supposed to have organised more successfully than she lias , that we are now called on to make additional exertions . To rely on organisation is to do as France does , and , lamentable to say , is to borrow ideas from her , and admit that our navy is inferior to hers . Supposing it true , that we must

    depend on organisation ^ on reserves , on marines , and not on the free services of our skilful maritime population , wo must admit * that our naval supremacy has come to an end . The source of our superiority , which never -was organisation , is dried up . The sinews of our strength arc outr—we are inferior to our neighbour , andslittll have to oontend against a more numerous people with reeouroos njore at the coimnaud of a resolute chief . It will be a fatal error if we rely , as recommended by the Timqn and the commission , on organisation , instead of on the voluntary and zealous services of the skilled maritime population of the ompiro .

    The state will get plenty of seamen , and from all parts of the world , when it p _ ays thein well and treats them well . Till it does this , it does not deserve to have them ; and we may be assured it will not get them . Without touching , the existing wrongs , the Commissioners recommend a considerable increase of expense— -598 , 821 / . a year—calculated pn the number of seamen now required . Admitting that the recommendations of these further allowances , and the plans for a reserve pf seamen , to be in themselves useful , unless the character of the navy be cleared from the foul stigma which it now bears ,

    the expenditure will be useless . It is the duty , therefore , of every patriotic and every philanthropic member of the jlouse of Commons to refuse his consent to this increase of expense , or even to withhold his consent from the naval estimates , witliout first obtaining a pledge that flogging in the navy , at the discretion of commanding officers , shall be abolished . Many minor reforms would naturall y flow from this , which would in a short time make the Royal Navy more attractive than any common employment , and secure it plenty of men , as long as men were to be found in the country .

    Untitled Article

    RUSSIAN TRADER-STRUGGLES , AND BUBBLES . It has been the misfortune of Russia to-have been thrust prematurely into the conflicts and sti-uggles of European civilisation ; and after having beheld the spectacle of a people- —who , - on the whole , were little more advanced than Zulu Cadres—forced to become a powerful military empire , we now witness an equally artificial effort to make them , by a quick process , into a great industrial race . We triist that this last attempt may meet with all practicable success , but we cannot shut our eyes to the probability that financial ' -difficulty and . disappointment will be the lot of a host of premature schemes . It is the man who shows the value of the education of the child , and in like manner the existing condition and capacities of . Russia must prove the red worth of the system of government . administered by Nicholas and his predecessors . The accession of the present Emperor gave the signal for a great outcrop of industrial speculation . Tlic partisans of military pomp and aggression went out of favour , and power tlirougli the ill fortune , of the Crimean war , and an exhausted country was prepared , to applaud' and support the peaceful projects of the new Sovereign . New projects and new companies igprung up by the score— -some , for railways , some for navigation , some for commerce , some for manufactures , some for the educational object of printing cheap books in the Russian tongue . The first

    difficulty arose from the want of a middle class , and the second from the awful state of dejnwlation in which the licentious , superficially polished nobles had kept tlieir wretched serfs . Adventurers from all countries wereready tooffer their services and their schomes v bxit as the condition of Russia hiid offered small inducement for the better class of industrial emigrants , most of the foreign candidates fur employment were of a light-fingered sort , and in most cases the best thing to be done was to accept the aid of sons of ministers , relatives of officials , and officers of the army , many of whom , up to tho rank of generals , were no longer wanted by thy Stnte , and found themselves 'thrown ijpon the world to starve or live as the fates mig ht decree These gentlemen had received more or less instruction in

    the official arts of peculation , but of business , as a broad honest fact , they were for the most part entirely ignorant . Even good schemes under such management must be in a perilous condition , and bad ones be likely to make a rapid j ourney cm the road to ruin . The condition of the peasants aggravates these difficulties , for when works have to be carried on away from a few of the larger towns , skilled laboxir can only be obtained by transporting it from enorhave

    mous distances . The liussian peasants considerable powers of imitation , but millions oi them liave never seen the elementary conveniences of life , while the structure of their hovels ana riietUods of agriculture are so rude a » to mdiewto the appalling gulf of ignorance that separated them from the country people of any , civilised »> ui « . Those circumstances show that soi'ious dangers bqsot the various industrial projects now struggling into being , but tho financial qu estion is even more important . Companies have uoon oteaim

    started without ) reference to tho amount «* likely to bo obtained , and numbers of HhiiroJioWoia stUl labour under tho agreeable delusion that mey

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 26, 1859, page 274, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2283/page/18/