OUR NEGLECTED DEFENCES.
Sin—Deeply impressed as every reader of your paper must be with the truth of your remarks on the "French Question," I cannot refrain from urging you, especially at this political crisis, to direct your attention and that of the country to the one great defect in our means of national defence; a defect to which our French allies are so fully alive that they have long re- lied upon their own contrasting efficiency in this respect, for a favourable issue to any hostile demonstration which might be in store for the future. I allude to our inability, through mere lack of system, to avail ourselves of the services of the numerous able seamen and gunners constantly trained in our Navy ; then suffered to disperse in quest of higher wages in the merchant service, without the possibility of recovering their services on any sudden emergency. Should such occur, we should certainly need a score of those valuable and most efficient moveable forts the steam block-ships, to keep a foreign army from our shores—and this at a week's notice : but if you will refer to any competent authority, you will find that we could not, under pre- sent circumstances, man such a number efficiently under two months ! For the last twenty years naval men have suggested schemes, many of them quite prac- ticable, for remedying this alarming defect. These, however, have been only very partially adopted by successive Boards of Admiralty ; and the ne- glect still remains, palpable to foes, though occult to ourselves. Providence has endowed this favoured nation with ample means of defence against any invader. On the one hand, we have most powerful ships, with guns which, properly manned, no enemy could face ; on the other, a splendid body of men to fight them : but, alas ! our ingenuity cannot organize a " system" whereby the two can be brought together. F. H.
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