SIR FREDERIC SMITHsaid, he rose, pursuant to notice, to call the attention of the House to the Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the control and management of Her Majesty's Naval Yards; and to move. That a revised Estimate for Vote 10 for the Naval Service he substituted for the Estimate already submitted, adopting in such revised Estimate the principle of showing the amount proposed to be expended in the current year on each Ship to be built and converted in the Government Yards. The Report of the Committee recently made on the subject of the management of the dockyards, was one of the most important ever laid on the table of the House. It declared the system pursued in the dockyards to be inefficient, especially in organization, in the arrangement of the subordinate departments, and as to the means of effectively checking expenditure and examining the accounts. It also attributed the defective state of the dockyard establishment in some degree to the present constitution of the Board of Admiralty; but as a Committee was now sitting on that subject he would not further refer to that point. He confessed that he had risen from the perusal of the Report to which he had referred with feelings of great dissatisfaction; but there was one source of gratification, and that was that it was universally admitted that the work performed in the dockyards was of the very best description, and that there was nothing discreditable to the dockyard officers in the manner in which the accounts had been kept, or the 667 application of the money by those who had the control of the monetary transactions. The fault lay with those who established and sanctioned a defective course of action. The great defect was that there was a want of organization in the departments which had the control of the dockyards; that fact was in evidence, and it was a serious defect. There was also a want of system in the subordinate departments; there was no harmony of action between two of the most important departments—the comptroller's department and the storekeeper's department—and it appeared that the storekeeper general was ignorant of the wants of the dockyards, while the controller was equally ignorant of the amount of stores suitable for shipbuilding in charge of the storekeeper general. He had read the evidence given by the noble Lord, the Secretary to the Admiralty, with much satisfaction, and the House owed him their thanks for bringing the subject before it and the country. His noble Friend had, however, made a mistake in his figures; but he (Sir Frederic Smith) did not wonder at that, considering the confused state of the accounts. He believed the accounts to be substantially correct, although it would appear that five millions of money had not been accounted for as business men were in the habit of accounting; he did not charge any disreputable conduct on any one, but regarded the fact as owing to a blundering confusion. It appeared to him that it was advisable and easy to introduce a system by which the cost of each ship could be estimated and known. He believed that there existed in the dockyards a difference of opinion as to the construction of ships, and their cost?
§ Notice taken, that Forty Members were not present; House counted; and Forty Members not being present,
§ House adjourned at a quarter before Eight o'clock.