the Chief Constructor, who is the real planner and builder of our men-of-war, but who is responsible to no one but his immediate superior, the Comptroller, for the due execution of his duty.

How does this work? The country requires a change in the class of ships for its sea-service. The First Lord of the Admiralty, much distracted with other State affairs, at last finds time to yield to the necessity. He and a colleague, with the Secretary, having duly consulted the Treasury (if the expense be not provided in the estimate), desire the Comptroller to prepare drawings which shall carry out their views, and the Comptroller turns the matter over to the Chief Constructor. The vessel is designed, possibly on a good plan, and the Comptroller reports to the Board. Then begins the difficulty. The six Lords have each individually assigned to them certain fractions of duty at the Board. For the due performance of these duties the Board is collectively responsible, but for the execution of the separate duties described in the Distribution of Duty,' they are only responsible to each other. The result of this is, that the habit of the Board is a system of compromise, not only on minor matters of detail, but on subjects of great importance. Science is frequently obliged to yield to prejudice. In the case now under discussion, the design of the Chief Constructor, a good shipbuilder, approved by the Comptroller, a competent judge of what is needed specially for the Navy, is submitted for discussion to six gentlemen, none of whom need know anything about design, who are overworked with official routine, and each of whom probably has some preconceived and crude imagination to gratify. One, perhaps, has a belief in wooden walls, thinks that iron is liable to sink, and states that a large quantity of timber has been bought, and is in store, and that, if they take to iron shipbuilding, he will get into a scrape for having ordered so much timber in his special department. The Board feels for its erring member, and decides that the Comptroller's design shall be carried out in wood rather than in iron. Another Lord has charge of the Ordnance of the Navy. He confidently affirms that no gun above a certain weight can be used on a broadside, whilst another asserts that the broadside is the only place where guns can be used. Another compromise is resorted to, and numerous ports and small guns are ordered to be inserted in the design. In addition to this, each Lord is daily besieged by a multitude of rival inventors, some of them friends of his own; and as the Lords have no individual responsibility-through a judicious use of compromise among the various members of the Board, the Comptroller finds his design further embarrassed by a number of untried experi

ments.

ments. This slight example may serve to show how impossible it is for the Admiralty system to work well. The same argument will hold good through all the varied duties, which are performed, as well as may be, by the permanent heads, and marred in the performance by the action of the Board of Admiralty. The Admiralty also, in an evil spirit of centralization, gradually encroaches more and more on the independent action of the naval officers in command. The electric telegraph has led them to believe, not only that they can put fleets in motion, but that they can control them in every detail on distant stations. This incessant meddling is particularly unfortunate for the public service, and restrains that freedom of action which is essential to success.

It must also be remembered that the abolition of the Navy Board has altered the whole character of the business conducted by the Admiralty. Until the Navy Board was abolished, the Admiralty employed the Navy Board to build ships for them, and otherwise to supply the fleet with what was required for its efficiency. The Admiralty in this acted as the agent for the public, and dealt with the Navy Board, which was watched as the producer of the articles required by the public for the navy. No doubt the Navy Board manufactured at the public expense, but a check existed in the very jealousies and rivalries of the two departments; and though it was not a perfect system, the public had some control. Now the Board of Admiralty are not only the agents for the public, but the producers; and they act, moreover, in such a manner, that the responsibility is diluted, and it is never known to whom it attaches.

We should look with more complacency upon the government of the Navy by a board, if in days gone by the Admiralty had ever shown cause to lead us to believe that they had in any way contributed to our naval successes. It is easy to show, however, that no such credit is to be attributed to them. The true mark of ability in war is, with forces inferior on the whole, to be superior to the enemy on the point of attack. Let us look at a few instances of the capacity of the Admiralty measured by this standard. After two years of war, Lord Howe encountered the French fleet with an inferior force. At Cape St. Vincent fifteen sail-of-the-line were opposed to twenty-seven. At the Nile a victory was gained by an inferior fleet. At Trafalgar, and off Ferrol, the disparity was in favour of our enemies. It may, perhaps, be said that the Admiralty had a right to count on the navy being victorious against any odds. Have they any right to hold such an opinion? There was no doubt a slight superiority to be reckoned as due to an English frigate over a French frigate of equal force; but it may safely

be

be asserted that no English 12-pounder frigate ever took a French 18-pounder frigate; and the Admiralty, at least, commanding as they did the largest force, rarely contrived to be superior in numbers on the day of battle. Their conduct of the American war, in 1812, was still more deplorably inefficient; and it may be said with confidence that our defeats in that war were distinctly to be attributed to the Admiralty, our successes to the individual commanders. The same character holds good in every administration.

We have in our recollection the Admiralty neglect of Sir Charles Napier in the Baltic, and the gunboats that were not built till the war was well nigh over; and we have already alluded in the course of this article to the general state of our distant squadrons. The true remedy is to be found in a change in the mode of governing the Navy. Let the head of the Navy be an individual, and not a board. Let us have personal supervision, and not a diluted responsibility; one strong spirit to command, and not six-water grog. Let this Minister of Marine, or Secretary of the Navy, be a Cabinet Minister, a Statesman of enlarged views and capacity, and a Member of Parliament; if possible in the House of Commons. If, in addition to these qualifications, he is also a naval officer, it will be so much the better for the profession and the country. Under him let there be two political Under Secretaries, one in each House, and then let the heads of the departments under them be selected for their competency in the special knowledge required in each of the divisions of business conducted under the Admiralty. Let the chief constructor be a shipbuilder, responsible to the Minister of Marine for the ships he produces. Let there be a naval officer of rank and experience, responsible for the manning of the Navy, its discipline, the Coast-guard, and the Naval Reserve; an accomplished Surveyor at the head of the hydrographical department; a naval officer in charge of the ordnance; the Director of Transports; the Medical DirectorGeneral; the Comptroller of Victualling; the Storekeeper-General; the Accountant-General; the General of Marines,-each at the head of his department, and personally responsible to the Minister of Marine for its complete efficiency. Let the officers in command of the Dockyards be responsible for the economy and efficiency of their respective establishments; and while rigidly enforcing well-considered laws and regulations, leave full scope to the zeal of well-selected officers on distant commands. Thus will your Navy recover its vigour, and the nation its prestige.

It is instructive to compare our crude and unsatisfactory

system

system with that which has developed, in spite of all disadvantages, the formidable navy of the Federal Americans. There the Secretary of the Navy is all-powerful, and exacts from the various chiefs of bureaux the most accurate attention to the necessities of the sea-service. The whole armament of their ships has been changed, and cannon of enormous calibre now form their ship-batteries. The governing rule in arming our ships-of-war,' says the Report, has been to place on board of them the very heaviest and most effective guns they can bear with safety.' The result of this arrangement is, that their new first-rate, with only 48 guns, throws a broadside of 2606 lbs. ; whilst the English 91-gun line-of-battle ship throws only 2120 lbs. But the American guns are thus arranged: one 150-pounder, rifled, pivot ; one 11-inch smooth bore, do.; forty-two 9-inch smooth bore, broadside; four 100-pounders, rifled, do. ; and four howitzers.

Their second-rate carries two 100-pounders, rifled, pivot; twenty 9-inch smooth bore, broadside; two 60 rifled, do.; and two howitzers, and throws a broadside of 1220 lbs.

Their third-rate carries two 100-pounders, rifled, pivot; four 9-inch smooth, broadside; two 24-pounders, smooth, do.; two 20-pounders, rifled, do., and throws a broadside of 424 lbs.

Their smaller rates are equally armed, in proportion to their size; whilst some of their Monitors, on the turn-table and turret principle, are armed to fire as much as 1764 lbs. in one direction. It is worthy of remark, though the boastful tone in which it is related rather injures so valuable a State Paper, that the victory of the Kearsage' over the Alabama' is justly attributed to the deadly injuries inflicted upon the Alabama' by the 11-inch shells fired from the two pivot guns of the Kearsage;' and in spite of the lesson conveyed by this example, brought to our very shores near a year ago, we have no such guns yet afloat; whilst guns of even 15 inches in diameter are in use in the Federal navy.

We have endeavoured shortly to review the state of our Navy. We have suggested that it cannot be wise that the country, which is the consumer, should allow its agent, the Admiralty, to be the producer, the purchaser, and judge. We have pointed out that we are being gradually distanced by rival nations. No doubt our private manufacturing power is so great that with time we may again overtake them; but even such gigantic establishments as those of the Thames, or Millwall Iron Companies, or those of the Messrs. Laird, or Napier, would be in the Gazette' in a week if they adopted the plan of the British Admiralty.

But no change can be anticipated under a government such as the present. Pledged to political Reform, they have broken every en

gagement.

gagement. They have stayed the course of administrative Reform, so wisely, so temperately, so judiciously planned and commenced by Lord Derby; and it is fervently to be hoped that one of the first acts of his next advent to power will be to carry out the views so clearly expressed by Sir John Pakington before the Admiralty Committee in 1862, and entirely remodel the government of the Navy.

ART. VI.-1. First Annual Report of the Bishop of London's Fund, January, 1865.

2. Statistics as to the Religious Condition of London, &c. 1864. 3. A Letter to the Bishop of London. By Rev. C. Girdlestone, M.A., and Rector of Kingswinford, Staffordshire. 1863.

4. Churchman's Family Magazine. November and December, 1863.

L

ONDON contains within it about as many people as the whole of Scotland, and adds to itself yearly a population equal to that of York or Derby. It is scarcely to be wondered at, then, that the great metropolis should have become somewhat unmanageable, and that its condition in many respects should be far from creditable to the first city of the world. But it is fair to remember that this is true in other departments besides those connected with religion. The State and the Municipality, as well as the Church, have their difficulties and their shortcomings arising from the same cause. With all our elaborate apparatus, backed by our national wealth, there is much which might well make us blush in matters affecting the intellectual, moral, and physical wellbeing of the inhabitants of the metropolis. Notwithstanding our Revised Code, our new Poor Laws, and our Metropolis Management Acts, there is really no adequate provision made either for the education of the people, the relief of the poor, or the maintenance of our thoroughfares. One hundred thousand children are still left unprovided with proper places of education; the daily papers contain occasional reports of men and women dying of starvation at our very doors; and those who chance to stray into some of our newly-erected suburbs can tell us, out of a painful experience, the disgraceful state of the streets in such localities. The houses are inhabited almost before they are finished, and the speculative builder and fortunate landlord have achieved a great success. But outside the houses themselves all is dirt and desolation. The narrow roads are left to the influences of sun and rain, unmade and uncared for by human hands, and a few flickering lamps serve only

to