How does his action stand? He is First Lord of a Board of Admiralty which has for some years been doing all that is necessary for providing a national navy (if not, it had been culpably negligent); but in 1884, "the public failing to understand what was going on," got scared, and Lord Northbrook and his colleagues in the Cabinet thought it "right to take advantage of the opportunity thus afforded" (of a scare founded on false premisses) to ask for and obtain £3,000,000 in addition to what they considered necessary, and added this in a lump sum to the shipbuilding estimates of the navy. "And the result had been most satisfactory!" What a curious way of providing a State navy, and how droll that a British statesman should describe it as most satisfactory! What part of it are we to consider as satisfactory? Is it satisfactory that just four years afterwards (that being about the time that a wise shipbuilding policy might be expected to show its results) we are told, not only by the whole of our admirals and captains, but by the political chief of the navy himself, that the navy is inadequate to meet the requirements of the country, and that even two years hence it will not be strong enough. Is this satisfactory? So much for the broad principles of the Northbrook administration. And now to descend for one moment into details. One of the items – in fact the principal item – of the so-called Northbrook programme, was the construction of seven armour-belted cruisers; but these ships were designed with such a totally inadequate coal-supply, that on consideration it was seen to be necessary to double it, in order to render them of any use as unmasted cruisers; and the result
has been to send these ships to sea with every atom of their expensive armour under water, where of course it is not only useless but worse than useless, as it is so much dead weight. We only quote this one example as a specimen; but we ask, Is this also to be considered as "most satisfactory"?
It will be seen that we write in no party spirit; but merely in condemnation of a system, and to show our readers how the politicians play battledore and shuttlecock with the most vital interests of the empire, by making the navy subservient to their party politics. We believe that this system would not be allowed to go on for a single year, if the public were once thoroughly enlightened as to the consequences which must inevitably ensue if we found ourselves at war with a maritime Power. Such a war would break it down utterly, and we should have to swop horses crossing the stream; an operation which would put a terrible strain upon our whole social structure, and offer potent weapons to those traitors, and general enemies to society, whom we know to be lurking in our midst. The system works, after a fashion, in peace time. It could not work in war.
Peace may be a blessed and precious gift; but if, whilst we enjoy its blessings, we make all our arrangements as if we expected it to last indefinitely, and as if we had made up our minds that Great Britain will never again find herself engaged in a maritime war, fighting for her national existence, – then, our long era of maritime peace, which has enabled us to grow rich and luxurious, will prove to be a very doubtful and ephemeral blessing – nay, perhaps a delusion and a curse.
We remarked above that the
