Mr. Trevelyan made an interesting speech at Bury on Monday,
in answer to a recent criticism of Lord Henry Lennox's, on the present state of the British Navy. Accord- ing to Lord Henry Lennox, the British Navy at present con- tains 236 guns, weighing 4,702 tons, whereas the French Navy contains 164 guns, weighing 4,630 tons ; while the average weight of English guns was 19 tons, the average weight of the French was 28 tons. Mr. Trevelyan declares that this is com- pletely erroneous. He had got the Admiralty officers to estimate carefully for him the comparative weight of the French and English armaments, giving every doubtful point against our own Navy, and the result was as follows :—The 164 heaviest guns at the present moment possessed by the French Navy weigh, not 4,630 tons, as Lord Henry Lennox had said, but 3,135 tons. The 164 heaviest English guns weigh 3,628 tons. The average weight of the French guns is 19 tons, and of the English 22 tons. Lord H. Lennox had also wholly mistaken the amount of advantage in penetrative force given by breech- loading over muzzle-loading. Lord H. Lennox had supposed that the muzzle-loader is only one-third as efficient in penetrative force as the breech-loader of the new type. The fact is, that the latter has only half as much again of penetrative force, while the breech-loader of the old type has very little advantage indeed over the muzzle-loader. Now, the French breech-loaders are almost all breech-loaders of the old type, and have so little advantage over the English muzzle-loaders, that Sir William Armstrong regards the English and French guns of the same weight as almost exactly on a par in penetrative force. Mr. Trevelyan himself thinks a British muzzle-loader of 38 tons and 12-in, bore the exact equal of a French (old) breech-loader of 34 tons and the same bore. Lord H. Lennox's attack on the British Navy was an ignorant attack, and would not have improved his position, if it had been made in the House of Commons.
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