Of Mr. Goschen's masterly speech at the Colston anniversary at
Bristol, on Wednesday, we have spoken at some length else- where. Here we may state the nature of his special reply to the Admiralty panic-mongers. During the four years of the present Administration, he said, the Admiralty had added 40,000 tons of armour-clad ships, represented by ten large ironclads, but of these 24,000 were to be put to the account of vessels begun by the Conservatives, and left in an early stage of construction when they resigned. The ships we inherited from the previous Ad- ministration Mr. Goschen believes to be among the most powerful additions to the British Navy. As to the formidable new foreign ship, the Peter the Great,—which will not be finished till 1874,— though "most of the Bristol people expected to see it steaming into their port to-morrow,"—may turn out a trifle more power- ful than any ship of ours of the same class, but "if rams are to run down, if torpedoes are to explode, if guns are to pierce, numbers will still count for something in the battle." ludeed they will sometimes count for a good deal. In the late war, Germany had a ship vaunted more powerful than any in the French Navy.- Yet it never came out of port. "Something was wrong in the cylinder, the bottom was rather foul, and there was some difficulty as to the dock." Single ships will always be liable to such accidents. You can count only on numbers, by which you insure against accidents. Few, if any, foreign Powers can approach us in rapidity of building in the remotest degree. Often they have to request us to build for them. The country will be asked to furnish means for main- taining "our maritime supremacy, as to which the present Government is as deeply pledged as any that preceded it."
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