29 MARCH 1873, Page 2

The general effect of Mr. Gosahen's statement is to satisfy

us that: he is wisely, firmly, and successfully carrying out the great lines of Naval policy and administration settled5by Mr. Childers when he was at the Admiralty. As we have shown, he maintains the Promotion, Pay, and Retirement orders. He thoroughly adheres to the view that in the Devastation we have got the type of the great fighting slip of the future, and he proposes to build on this model until we- have got six such puissant mastless iron- clads. The passage-of his speech in which he dealt with this subject was admirably reasoned and illustrated. He maintains the scale of tonnage to be annually built, 20,000 tons, and the proportion of armoured to unarmoured, 6,000 of ironclad to 14,000 tons of wooden ships. He is keeping the number of men at the figure fixed by Mr. Childers, 60,000, and although he in- creased-the number of boys by 500 last year, he has seen reason on revising the calculation to return to the original estimate of 3,000. In the reduction of squadrons-to their present scale, and in not listening to further reductions, he pursues the same clear and coherent policy. The report which he was able to make of the progress of Greenwich Naval College must have been very gratifying to all who take an interest in that really great idea. There is nothing in Lord H. Lennox's speech that even seemed to have a show of reason in it, except his complaint that the tonnage for the year had not been strictly built up to, — a proceeding which, however, Mr. Goselten had shown was deliberately adopted in the public interest. Mr. Disraeli is evidently likely to miss Mr. Corry-very much in the conduct of opposition on Naval affairs. When,Lord II. Lennox ventured into what is notoriously uncongenial to him, the domain of figures, and tried to show that Mr. Childers?s great economies of

11869-70 had not been maintained, he must have forgotten the facts that the normal expenditure in the-Met two years of Tory office averaged eleven millions anda quarter, -that Mr. Childers brought it down to an average of nine millions.and three-quarters, and that in spite of coal and iron, this is just the.average of the present and coming year-s. And yet we never had a more efficient Navy.