The Radicals on Monday raised the question of our "bloated
armaments," Sir W. Lawson and Mr. Labouchere moving reductions in the Naval Estimates. They have a case; for there can be no question that the sixty millions we spend in the whole Empire on sailors and soldiers, or the forty millions in the Empire, excluding India, is an enormous sum, considering what we get. They argued their case but feebly, however, as we have shown elsewhere, the few real points made by Mr. Labouchere being directed rather against the organisation of the Army than the increase of the Navy. The speakers were all obviously in favour of Sir Robert Peel's policy of "running some risk in peace time," but they did not attempt to show that the risk was not now too great to run, or disprove Sir Charles Dilke's really unanswerable statement that the strongest "bond of anion in the Empire" was the British Fleet. Perhaps, however, the heart was out of them, for on the division they obtained only thirty-two votes. We can remember when they would have obtained three hundred ; and the total collapse of their side is almost a historical event. Democracy is never very peaceful, and it seems clear that the mass of the electors now prefer that England should be strong at sea, and should even extend her liabilities. They are absolutely right as to the Navy, but if they were wiser they would insist on a reorganisation of the Army, so as to give us at least two shillings-worth for our half-crown. We do not now obtain a clear eighteenpence, or, in other words, we ought to have fifty thousand more efficients for the same money.
