tions those who were in the first class from | power of the Horse Guards commenced corporal punishment. At first he under- and where it ended. It was a great stood that privilege was to be retained; responsibility to quote the opinion of the but to his astonishment, and he believed to Horse Guards to the House, inasmuch the astonishment of many other Gentlemen as there was scarcely a single hon. Memalso, that privilege had been taken away. ber in the House who was not interested It had been his fate to see soldiers receive in some persons immediately under the more than fifty lashes each at a time, and control of that Department. he, for one, should be glad to see the punishment entirely abolished. He was convinced that in time they might abolish flogging from the army; because since 1834 the statistics showed that a less number of lashes had been given, and a fewer number of men flogged than formerly, and yet the discipline of the army had not in the slightest degree diminished. They had lost the boon of the men in the first class, which was a great pity; but they must for the present be content with those advantages they had gained, hoping, however, that another year's experience would induce whatever Ministry should happen to be in power to come down to the House and say that, except in time of war, they were prepared to abolish flogging altogether. Clause added to the Bill. Clauses 10 and 11, with Amendments, agreed to. Preamble. MR. OTWAY said, he thought that it was absurd, considering the small numerical strength of the British army and the events which had recently occurred on the Continent, to declare in the preamble that the army was maintained "for the preservation of the balance of power in Europe.' He would therefore move that those words be omitted. MR. DARBY GRIFFITH complained that the Government had been afraid of bringing the important question involved in this Bill before the Horse Guards, and had neglected to do so from the 15th of March to the 22nd, when they were forced to adopt that course; and whilst on one occasion they had invoked the authority of the Horse Guards in favour of their views, they had subsequently evaded the responsibility of communicating with that Department. The answer which the right hon. Gentleman (Sir John Pakington) had given him at an earlier period of the evening upon the subject of the Commander-inChief was eminently unsatisfactory; and he must go further and characterize it as evasive. He did not think the right hon. Gentleman himself, and he was sure the House did not understand where the VOL. CLXXXVI. [THIRD SERIES.] SIR JOHN PAKINGTON assured the hon. Member for Devizes that the inferences he drew were perfectly inaccurate. With regard to the words in the preamble to which objection had been taken, he observed that they had been inserted in every Mutiny Bill for a long time, and he advised the hon. Member for Chatham, who had given notice of his intention to propose in a future year great changes in the Mutiny Bill, to reserve this point for consideration among others. MR. OTWAY said, that was no reason why those words should remain in the Act. They were a perfect absurdity, and their omission would not affect the Mutiny Bill at all. He moved that they be omitted. COLONEL SYKES thought the words had been so long in the Act that it was quite time they were invalided. Amendment negatived. Preamble agreed to. House resumed. Bill reported; as amended, to be considered To-morrow. SUPPLY. Order for Committee read. Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair." GENERAL DUNNE asked the Secretary of State for War if the classification of the civil departments had been decided on, so as to place all the civil departments on a similar footing as to allowances, and whether civil officers of the Royal Engineers department were included? He believed this matter had been referred to a Committee which had finished their labours, and he wished to know whether the Report would be carried out? SIR JOHN PAKINGTON said, it was quite true that the subject to which his hon. and gallant Friend referred had been under the consideration of a Committee; but, so far as he was aware, his hon. and gallant Friend was mistaken in supposing that the Committee had concluded their labours. The subject was still under the consideration of the Committee; at all + 2 H2 events, they had not yet reported, and till | Then the noble Lord the Secretary of the they had done so, he could not tell what decision would be arrived at. SUPPLY-NAVY ESTIMATES. SUPPLY-considered in Committee. (In the Committee.) 1. Question again proposed, "That 67,300 Men and Boys be employed for the Sea and Coast Guard Services, for the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1868, including 16,200 Royal Marines." Whereupon Question again proposed, "That 65,300 Men and Boys be employed for the Sea and Coast Guard Services, for the year ending on the 31st day of March 1868, including 16,200 Royal Marines."—(Mr. Childers.) Admiralty said that the maintenance of a squadron on the slave coast was a Cabinet question, and that as long as the Cabinet decided on keeping up squadrons of this kind, the Admiralty were bound to find the men and ships. LORD HENRY LENNOX said, the hon. Member was mistaken. He did not say anything of the kind. What he did say was that on a question of national policy the Cabinet must decide. MR. STANSFELD: The noble Lord certainly talked of vessels on foreign stations which on the outbreak of war would have to "cut and run." He also talked of the African squadron, and expressed a MR. STANSFELD said, he wished to duced. Then the present first Lord gave strong hope that it might at least be recall the attention of the Committee to the some recollections of an older date, when he point at which they had arrived when the was Secretary to the Admiralty some years Chairman was ordered to report Progress. ago, and told them that the Admiralty were His hon. Friend the Member for Ponte- the victims of the Foreign and Colonial fract had reviewed the Estimates at con- Departments. But the true doctrine as to siderable length and in considerable detail, responsibility for Estimates was laid down pointing out evidence, as he thought, of by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. On the absence of an economic hand in their the subject of cost the First Lord was reconstruction. His hon. Friend complained sponsible as a Cabinet Minister; and the of the excess of £500,000 as compared whole Cabinet were fully responsible to the with the Navy Estimates of the preceding House for the policy of the Estimates and year, and he went on to propound in great the charge which the House of Commons detail a policy and a scheme for the reduc- were asked to defray. Therefore, he retion of our foreign squadrons, which, with-peated, when a new Government asked out at all impairing the efficiency, but rather adding to the immediate efficiency, in time of peace, of our navy, would effect a considerable saving, which it would be open to the Admiralty to apply as far as necessary in the construction of fighting vessels of war. No one could deny that when a new Government came down to ask for an addition of £500,000 on the Navy Estimates, and, on the whole of the Estimates, of £2,000,000, they were at least bound to offer some clear and complete explanation, some sufficient defence and justification of that extra charge. The first point to which he addressed himself was this-had they been furnished with that complete explanation? What was the line of argument adopted by the noble Lord who introduced the Navy Estimates, and by the present and late First Lord, who followed his hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract. The first thing he noticed was he would not say the deliberate intention, but the tendency and desire to shift the responsibility of this heavy and increased charge on other Departments of the Government, and also on the proceedings and policy of the late Government. £500,000 in excess of previous Estimates they were bound collectively and individually to give some good reason for the demand. The right hon. Baronet the late First Lord appeared to be disposed to throw the responsibility of the existing scale of foreign squadrons on the late Board of Admiralty and the late Government. The right hon. Baronet read a list of the number of men and tonnage of vessels employed in foreign squadrons from 1860, downwards, showing that during the time of the late Board of Admiralty there had been a progressive diminution in the number of men and tonnage of ships employed in foreign squadrons. He also showed that in 1867 there was a still further small reduction. The reductions stated to have been made in particular branches of the service at the beginning of 1867 had not affected the amount of the charges nor the number of men asked for the year 1867-8. He admitted that the Naval Estimates of recent years were also open to criticism, and that the measures which had been taken to improve the efficiency of our naval force had been hesitating and illo gical, and had involved a great waste of public money. But with reference to the policy proposed to be pursued by the present Board of Admiralty, he could not forget the old maxim which asserted the desirability of "being off with the old love before taking on with the new," and he thought the Board of Admiralty ought to be sufficiently satisfied of the value of the new power, offensive and defensive, before they gave up the old. The nation, however, had a right to ask that our naval force should progress in strength and efficiency, and the objection he had to make to the present administration of the navy was that it allowed the naval power of the country to remain stationary. It was impossible to calculate the strength of the navy upon the principle that would have been correct some years since. In the days of wooden sailing vessels and of 32-pounders, when we had plenty of reserves, the man was rightly and naturally taken as the true unit of power; but since that time our naval force had undergone a rapid and violent transition, and we had now to look more to the power of the gun and to the strength of the vessel than to the number of men on board. If the men were not provided with the best guns and the most improved vessels, they would only be a source of needless expense. The ships which composed our foreign squadrons would have to "cut and run in the event of war, and in time of peace they cost us large sums for repairing and maintaining them. What the Admiralty had to do was to produce naval power, and he did not think that the method they were now adopting, of building a vast number of small vessels which would be of no use in time of war, was likely to produce that power. There were two lines of policy, two alternatives as it seemed to him--policies by which the result desired could be arrived at. In the first place, by spending an enormous sum to provide the navy with a vast number of the best modern iron-clad vessels on which to place the men who were asked for, we might obtain a navy of overwhelming power for a time, but in the course of a few years the whole work would have to be done over again. The other policy was that indicated by his hon. Friend (Mr. Childers) in his speech the other evening, which would necessitate every possible saving of men and ships on foreign stations in order to add to the number of fighting ships in our possession and under our im mediate control. He must, however, point out that the details of that scheme were suggestive, not dogmatic. The noble Lord the Secretary told the House the other night that a Committee was to be appointed to inquire into the working of the dockyards; and he thought it would be of advantage to the service if the two gallant Admirals who had been named were empowered to inquire into the subject of the cost and use of our stationary and harbour ships, since he was certain that those vessels were a source of unnecessary expenditure, and not of real power. The noble Lord (Lord Henry Lennox) had told the House the other night that the Admiralty had given up repairing the large oldfashioned ships in consequence of their being so expensive to repair and man, and that they were building new vessels of a more manageable size, which would be infinitely more useful and more economical. To a certain extent such a policy would be a good one; but the question was whether it was wise to build 16,000 tons of such vessels besides the composite gunboats for China in the course of the next financial year. But, after all, the great question was whether the Admiralty were justified in asking the Committee for £500,000 for the purpose of building vessels. The noble Lord the Secretary for the Admiralty told them that the late Board had rather neglected the construction of ironclad vessels. LORD HENRY LENNOX: What I stated was that £128,000 had been put down in one year for iron-clads, but had not been spent on iron-clads in dockyards; and that in the following year no estimate at all had been proposed for iron-clads. MR. STANSFELD: That could be only with regard to dockyards. LORD HENRY LENNOX: I said so. MR. STANSFELD said, that remark only applied to vessels that were to be built by contract, and not to those building in the Royal Dockyards. However, the view of the noble Lord was that it was necessary to do more in the coming year than had been done during the two previous years in the way of building iron-clads. He would take Vote 10, and of the additional £500,000, roughly speaking, £160,000 was for engines. He presumed that these engines were not all for iron-clad vessels. The balance of the £500,000, or £340,000, was intended for two iron-clads-one the sister ship to the Inconstant-and for ten composite gunboats designed for service in China. But as iron-clads could be built and then the Estimates underwent a yet but slowly, his belief was that of that further docking to meet the views of the £500,000 in the Controllers' section of Chancellor of the Exchequer, and not to Vote 10 not more than one-half, or carry out any clear and definite naval po£250,000, would really be devoted to the licy. That was a most illogical system, construction of iron-clad ships, or of the and led to extravagance. The Government engines that were to be put into them. ought to set out with a notion of general The £500,000 to be devoted to the strength policy and of total cost, and then it should of the navy was thus reduced to £250,000. | sub-divide and appropriate that total under Confining the question to the addition to the different Votes, so as to purchase as the real fighting strength of the country, much real power as possible, and keep he could not admit that there would be down waste. He was not surprised at much gain. He found that in the Esti- schemes of re-construction being brought mates for 1866-7 the late Board of Admi- before the Board of Admiralty. Men feelralty proposed to advance the constructioning themselves responsible for the efficiency, of the Hercules and the Monarch by what and not at all for the cost of the navy, nawould be equivalent to 5,715 tons, and in turally and logically brought such schemes the present Estimates he found that the before the Board. They saw that we had Hercules and Monarch had only been ad- got so many men, and that we had not got vanced 2,752 tons, and the present Board fighting ships, and they asked if a serious had thus done less by one-half (2,963 tons) war arose, what was to be done with our during the financial year just expired than men and our ships. And how had they the late Board had proposed to do in ad- met the proposals made to them? They vancing the construction of these vessels. retained the men for whom they did not It was urged in explanation of this that propose to build ships, they also retained there had been a failure in respect to the the ships which could not fight, and then armour-plates, and that a caisson had been they professed to add to the strength damaged; but that was not a sufficient of the navy by £500,000, though in reason to account for so very great a dif- reality this proposal amounted to next ference in the amount of progress made. to nothing. His hon. Friend (Mr. ChilIt was a question of labour; and as much ders) and himself put forward their views labour had not been given to those two as their contribution towards the soluvessels in the course of the financial year tion of the question of naval policy, and as had been intended, or as might have they thought that their views at least been done if that labour had not been di- deserved a fair consideration. What was verted to the building probably, or to the the justification of a naval expenditure of repair, of other vessels, to which he at- £10,000,000 or £11,000,000? Could it tached smaller importance. From the Es- be justified merely for the purposes of timates of this year he found that they pro- peace, and to maintain the police of the posed to advance their iron-clads 4,195 seas? No naval man, he believed, would tons; but they were already in arrear 2,963, pretend to vindicate it on such narrow and and therefore, deducting that arrear, it limited grounds. Their reason for incurring only left the present Board credit for 1,232 so vast an outlay was to provide for the tons of dockyard building of iron-clads. possible contingency of a serious naval Taking, then, these facts and figures into war. The object of their preparation, then, account, he said that their £250,000 should surely be to give them immediate for the construction of iron ships dwindled efficiency; for in modern warfare hard, down to nothing. Now, what was the rapid, and decisive blows were required to practice in regard to the framing of be struck. If they could imagine a naval the Navy Estimates? All the sub-de-war lasting beyond a few months there partments were summoned to rack their brains in finding out work, and then, as a matter of policy, they sent in greater demands than were reasonable, or than were expected to be conceded, because they knew the docking process to which their demands would be subjected, and they wished to provide against it. Those various demands having been cut down still produced a total which could not be submitted to that House, would be in that case practically no bounds to the resources of this country. No two countries in the world could put as many men on board ship as this country could, and the whole world combined could not surpass England in the power of manufacturing the most modern inventions of maritime warfare. The only justification for a large naval expenditure in time of peace, was that it should be so appropriated and expended as to give a maximum of immediate efficiency in time of war. The expenditure proposed by the Government could not in that view be justified. Were men an element of naval strength if we had not fighting ships into which to put them, or were these vessels of the noble Lord, which were to "cut and run" as soon as they were attacked -if, indeed, they could run-to be regarded as an element of strength? Ought it to be necessary to pay £500,000 more than last year, or ought they not to take the expenditure of last year as a maximum, and more or less gradually to reduce it? Let the House compare the naval power of England with that of America and France. The American Monitors were all iron-clads. Two had certainly crossed the ocean, but they were vessels for defence and not for offence. The number of seamen, officers, and marines after a gigantic war had been reduced to 17,000 men. France had seventeen seagoing iron-clads and ten others proposed and partly building. He purposely left out of the account the third class French iron-clads available for home defence. This country had twenty-six sea-going ironclads, four turret-ships, four building, and three proposed this year to be built, making a total of thirty-seven. With such a force no one could doubt that, taking ship for ship, our vessels were immensely superior to those of the French navy. Naval science was still in a condition of violent and rapid transition, and the true policy of the Admiralty was not to lay down any great scheme of naval re-construction at the present moment, but to concentrate their strength upon one or two vessels and get them afloat as rapidly as possible, and by that means get work out of them before, by the march of invention and improvement, they fell behind the time. The lesson that modern warfare had taught ought to be borne in mind. It was this, that war was now so costly that nations would not go to war without the most powerful motive to do so. Italy had such a motive; so had Prussia. That country, after years of deliberate preparation, had gone to war to secure a united Germany. The United States went to war under the pressure of motives so overwhelming that it was almost impossible to conceive their recurrence. Considering our present policy of non-intervention, which was safe in the hands of the present Secretary for Foreign Affairs, it was unlikely that any nation would wantonly incur the danger and risk of a war with England. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the end of last Session, addressed the House in explicit and almost solemn terms in favour of economy. He said it was the "Intention of the present Government in spirit and in truth to carry into effect that policy in respect to the expenditure of the country which we recommended to the late Government, when clxxxiv. 1289.] sitting on the Benches opposite."-[3 Hansard, And the right hon. Gentleman assured the House that in the administration of the finances they would be guided by the principle of economy and imperfection, but that prudence in the appli"Not meaning by that negligence, inefficiency, cation of our resources which engages in nothing but what is necessary for the public welfare, but takes care to accomplish its purpose in the most complete manner."-[3 Hansard, clxxxiv. 1290.] He knew no better or more complete definition of naval or other administrative economy than was contained in these words. The Resolution in favour of economy proposed by him in 1862, was called at the time an abstract Resolution, yet it was in its result a practical Resolution, for it led in the following year to a reduction of £2,000,000 in the present Estimates. The Resolution of the right hon. Gentleman, on the contrary, had led to a precisely opposite result, for there had been an increase of £2,000,000 in the present Estimates. No doubt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer still held the same opinion which he expressed at the end of last Session, and the Cabinet had probably resisted still greater demands than they had conceded. It was still open to the right hon. Gentleman and his Colleagues to make their influence felt, if not on the Estimates, at all events on the expenditure of the year. There were two Members of the Cabinet who, more than any others, could affect the expenditure-the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary. The former could no doubt persuade his Colleague to say to the Admiralty and to the War Office that the problems of the year must be worked out within the Estimates of the year; and the latter could form himself into a sub-committee with the First Lord of the Admiralty, and cause to be ordered home every ship which was not a fighting ship from foreign squadrons. A great saving could thus be effected-in the building of ships, in repairs, and in outfits. That might seem to be an arbitrary position; but it was not so in reality. The consequence would be to compel, as it |