Mr. Shaw-Lefevre has been making a somewhat similar, though less
grave mistake, in his reply to the Pall Mall's attack on the Admiralty for buying of the Union Company the Briton,' a very slow steamer, for the service of transporting stores and officers to the Gold Coast. The Pall Mall had expressed a suspicion that the purchase was a "compensation job," meant to make up to the Union Company for the disappointment of losing the Zanzibar contract; and had also hintedthat the change of the ship's name from the ' Briton ' to the 'Dromedary' might have been made to throw out public inquisitiveness. Mr. Shaw- Lefevre had a fair defence, and gave it in a speech at Reading last week. He said the name of the Briton 'was changed to the Dromedary' only be- cause there was another 'Briton' in the same service; that the 'Briton' was not chosen for fast work, and not wanted for fast work ; that other vessels were chartered for the fast work ; and that as to the stores sent by the Briton 'there was no hurry, while the .officers sent out in her were sure to arrive as soon as the West Coast packets, and therefore, as there was room, they and a hundred Marines were despatched in her, though her principal duty was to carry stores. Moreover, the ' Briton' was a fast sailer, though slow under steam, and this would make her useful for the future in time of peace. The Pall Mall, however, returned to the charge this day week in a somewhat irritating article, to -which Mr., Lefevre replied on Wednesday by a letter to the Pall Mall, which had better not have been sent. It expressed an annoyance which could not but have been felt, but need not have been confessed, and which cannot be -confessed without giving a .querulous air to an Administration. As far as we can see, the criti- cism of the Pall Mall, though 'nasty 'in tone, and not followed, as it ought to have been, by a frank admission that the mistake, if it were a mistake, had evidently been due to no animus of jobbery, was of the kind which is very useful, and had strong points in it. Mr. Lefevre would have done better to confine his reply to his Reading platform and his place in Parliament, where what he had to offer would be sure to have its fall weight,—a weight, we think, fairly balancing the weight of the hostile criticism. Public men can hardly be too thick-skinned.
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