SUPPLY—NAVY ESTIMATES.

HC Deb 27 May 1872 vol 211 cc719-75

SUPPLY—considered in Committee.

(In the Committee.)

(1.) £174,500, Coastguard, Royal Naval Coast Volunteers and Reserves.

MR. ALDERMAN LUSK

desired to be informed as to the truth of a report that the Naval Reserve was not in that state of efficiency that was supposed, and that there was not a sufficient number of modern guns and gun-carriages provided for their training. He also wished to know, why so large a Coastguard Force was maintained when there were so few seizures?

MR. GOSCHEN

said, he could assure his hon. Friend that there were few subjects which had attracted the attention of the Admiralty more seriously than that of the Royal Naval Reserves. Those who had given his hon. Friend information might not have seen the reports made from time to time on that force; but he could assure him that they were inspected rigorously by naval officers, and that the last Report especially gave a most satisfactory account both as to their quality and their general aptitude for duty. Their number was about 13,200. Some of them were in distant parts of the world; but they were all under most stringent obligations to serve. When he first went to the Admiralty, he doubted about the possibility of making this a thoroughly efficient force; but he was now convinced that in the Royal Naval Reserves we had a very valuable auxiliary force. There was an excellent spirit among them. They were sent to drill every year for 28 days. As to the few seizures made by the Coastguard, he thought the fewness of those seizures might be deemed a proof of the efficiency of the Coastguard. The revenue was greatly indebted to them for their vigilance. In time of war they would be a most valuable body.

In reply to Mr. DICKINSON,

MR. GOSCHEN

said, the allowance to the men of the Royal Naval Reserves amounted to £10 per man, and was given to them partly in respect of the 28 days' drill, and partly in the shape of a retainer, and to indemnify them against the inconveniences they suffered through not being able to take long voyages without getting leave. If they failed to present themselves at the 28 days' drill they forfeited the retainer.

SIR JAMES ELPHINSTONE

said, he thought the Naval Reserve was one of the most valuable forces which they could have. They were the flower of our seamen, and the great majority of them had shown at drill their extreme aptitude for gunnery. It was, therefore, a great mistake to suppose that we did not get the full value of the allowance which was made to those men. He regretted that his hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool (Mr. Graves) was not in his place; but there was one point to which his hon. Friend called attention last year, as to which he wished to ask a question. It was, whether the right hon. Gentleman had taken off the restriction as to height in the Coastguard Service. It did not at all follow because a man was not 5 feet 3 inches or 5 feet 4 inches that he was not a good sailor. Some of the best men on board ship that he had known were only 5 feet 2 inches.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, the height had been reduced from 5 feet 5 inches to 5 feet 3 inches, with this additional regulation—that anyone who had been in the Navy might be admitted, provided he was certified to be strong.

MR. ALDERMAN LUSK

having again expressed some doubts as to the efficiency of the men,

MR. GOSCHEN

hoped that the evidence of the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Sir James Elphinstone), who so seldom agreed with Her Majesty's Government on these matters, would be sufficient for his hon. Friend. Most of the men would be found to be thoroughly efficient. Naval officers, who were exceedingly jealous for the honour of the Service, said that the men were very efficient in drill, and that they were a very valuable body. If a man who was on a long voyage did not attend, it would be pretty certain that he had obtained leave of absence.

LORD HENRY SCOTT

asked, whether it was in the contemplation of the Admiralty that some steps should be taken for the proper officering of the Royal Naval Reserve? If any plan was now under consideration he did not wish that an immediate answer should be given; but he thought it well that the right hon. Gentleman's attention should be called to the matter.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, the question of officering the Royal Naval Reserve had been, and still was, under the consideration of the Admiralty. It had been pointed out that the present system of officering the Reserve was capable of great improvement, and a plan had been submitted to him to improve it. He had not yet had an opportunity of discussing the subject thoroughly with his official advisers, and he should not like, therefore, to give a sketch of a plan which had not yet been adopted.

Vote agreed to.

(2.) Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £978,983, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Expense of the Dockyards and Naval Yards at Home and Abroad, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1873.

MR. RYLANDS

, in rising to move a reduction of the Vote by £100,000, said, he would remind the Committee that this Vote was intimately connected with Vote 10 for Stores, upon which it was his intention to move a reduction of £150,000, so that the reduction upon both Votes would amount to £250,000. That was a reduction which could be very easily effected if Her Majesty's Government were prepared to carry out those principles of economy upon which the Government was formed. In 1870, the right hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers) came down to the House with Navy Estimates which showed a considerable reduction upon those of former years, being no less than £2,000,000 below the Estimates proposed when the Government of the right hon. Member for Buckinghamshire was in office. The present Estimates showed a considerable increase on those of 1870–1.

MR. GOSCHEN

But that does not include the Supplementary Estimates of 1870–1.

MR. RYLANDS

thought himself perfectly justified in leaving entirely out of view the additional expenditure included in the Supplementary Estimates growing out of the panic on account of the Franco-German War. The Estimates presented by the right hon. Member for Pontefract were not only in the aggregate considerably lower than the Estimates of the present year, but the two Votes to which he was now calling attention were less by £250,000—the Dock- yard Vote being less by £100,000, and Vote 10 by about £150,000. His right hon. Friend had been only one year in the office at the time he made a reduction of £2,000,000 on the Estimates of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Corry); but his right hon. Friend had had previous experience as a Member of the Board of Admiralty under a former Administration, and for several years; and while an independent Member of the House, had paid especial attention to naval questions, and had proved at all times his desire for economy, in those respects differing from the present First Lord. In the speech which the right hon. Member for Pontefract made in moving the Navy Estimates in 1870, whilst announcing his intention to make large reductions, he laid down three important principles in naval administration—first, the economical administration of the dockyards, by doing away with a large number of useless and expensive officials, and the limitation of the number of men employed in the dockyards to 11,000; secondly, to limit, as far as possible, the manufacture of stores by the Government, and to go into the open market for their purchase, and thereby to give shipbuilding yards an opportunity for competing for their contracts; and thirdly, to concentrate, as far as practicable, our ships and vessels of war at home, so as to have near our own shores the largest possible force for immediate use if necessary. He regretted that the Government were carried away by the panic of 1870, and induced to come down with Supplementary Estimates, which apparently they had not been able to throw off. The House and the country sympathized with the circumstances that caused the withdrawal of the late First Lord from public life, and it was a public misfortune that he was not carrying out the reforms he enunciated in 1870. The present First Lord had increased the number of men, and if his principle were carried out to the fullest extent, Government would become the manufacturers of everything they required. [Mr. GOSCHEN: No, no!] The right hon. Gentleman would seem to deny that that inference was to be legitimately drawn from what he had stated; but he distinctly argued as a reason for building a larger proportion of tonnage in the Government dockyards, that he could get the work done on more advantageous terms than in private yards, and he said that he thought it best to rely upon their own dockyards for the regular shipbuilding, and to go to the private yards in cases of pressure and emergency. Surely, if these words meant anything they must mean that, in the judgment of the First Lord, the Government should give out contracts only in cases of sudden emergency, and that, as far as possible, the Admiralty should be the manufacturers of all their materials and ships of war. The right hon. Gentleman in accordance with that policy was keeping up the number of men in the dockyards beyond the maximum proposed by his predecessor, and he also advocated the distribution of their vessels all over the world instead of concentrating them for the defence of their shores. In all these respects the First Lord had reversed the policy of his predecessor, and by so doing had reverted to the old ways of waste, extravagance, and inefficiency. In fact, his policy was just the same as that of the right hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. Corry), and the speech in which the First Lord moved the Estimates this year might have been appropriately delivered by the Member for Tyrone. So much was this the case that the noble Lord the Member for Chichester (Lord Henry Lennox) congratulated the First Lord of the Admiralty upon having taken a course contrary to that of the right hon. Member for Pontefract. The noble Lord saw that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Goschen) was playing the game of those who occupied the front benches opposite. The noble Lord (Lord Henry Lennox) said— The number of dockyard men taken in the present year, 12,858, was 1,586 in excess of the number taken by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Childers) in 1870. An economical fever had seized the House of Commons, the result of economical views throughout the country on the eve of a General Election, and the result was a reduction in the dockyards; but before the men who were then sent as emigrants to Canada touched the soil of their new homes they were much wanted in our own dockyards. He was glad that the First Lord had been statesmanlike enough to take warning by the mistake of his predecessor, and play none of those sudden economical pranks with our dockyards, but maintain the men there at the same strength as in the previous year."—[3 Hansard, ccx. 463.] He (Mr. Rylands) entirely disputed the assertion of the noble Lord that the men who were sent as emigrants to Canada were much wanted in our dockyards before they reached their new homes. It was only in consequence of the absurd panic of 1870 that any additional men were placed in the dockyards, and he believed that their labour, so far from being wanted, was actually unnecessary and was probably wasted; whilst if any emergency had really existed, the private shipbuilding yards would have supplied everything that the Government were unable to produce. The noble Lord spoke of the reductions in the dockyards as being "economical pranks," and he (Mr. Rylands) admitted that it was, in his opinion, exceedingly undesirable that there should be any great and sudden change in the number of men. It was undesirable that there should be one year a very large, and the next a much smaller number. There had been instances of that kind. He found that in 1867 the number of men employed in our dockyards was 18,330, while in 1868 that number was suddenly reduced to 15,200. That was a reduction that no doubt created a considerable amount of inconvenience, and must have involved the workmen in difficulty and distress. But who made that sudden change? The right hon. Gentleman opposite the Member for Tyrone. But the policy advocated by the right hon. Member for Pontefract was entirely different. It was not to make sudden changes, employing alternately a larger and a smaller number of men; but to keep down the number to the smallest maximum, and then if additional work were required, to go into the open market and to give orders for any additional vessels that might be wanted beyond those already contracted for. That appeared to him a prudent and sensible course, and he thought the maximum proposed by the right hon. Member for Pontefract ought not to have been exceeded. But the present First Lord was unwilling to remove the men set to work during the period of panic, because he was of opinion that it was undesirable to disturb the number of men they were themselves employing in order to increase the amount of work to be done by contract; and he went on to say that "if they discharged their own men, they would have to pay high prices for building in private yards, where, possibly, the men they had themselves discharged would be engaged in constructing the ships for which enor- mous prices were being paid." And he further contended that the Government could do the work cheaper because they paid lower wages to the dockyard men, in consequence of their expectation of receiving pensions after a certain length of service and of their regular employment all the year round. But he (Mr. Rylands) altogether questioned the accuracy of the right hon. Gentleman's conclusions, and he challenged him to show that the labour in the Government dockyards would be found cheaper than in private yards. In the public dockyards there had to be paid not only the wages of the men, but a large amount in the shape of establishment charges. He found from the Returns that the total amount of wages for the home dockyards for the present year amounted to £712,571, while the charges for management, superintendence, pensions, and police was £247,795; so that the cost under these heads amounted to a sum of not less than £18 per head per annum upon every man and boy employed in the dockyards. The present Secretary to the Admiralty (Mr. Shaw-Lefevre), when out of office, used to criticize the conduct of the late Board of Admiralty in permitting so large an amount to be expended on the official establishments connected with the different dockyards, and he should be glad to find that the hon. Gentleman was himself now giving his attention to the subject. A crowd of costly and useless officials was maintained in the dockyards. His hon. Friend the Member for Montrose (Mr. Baxter), when speaking as Secretary for the Admiralty in 1870, made some strong remarks on this subject. He said— He had been over all the yards, and, as his right hon. Friend had said, had routed out a great many things that had not seen the light of day for years before. One thing that had struck him particularly was, how amazingly the dockyards were over-manned, having a crowd of accountants, cashiers, storekeepers, master shipwrights, and admiral superintendents. As a man of business, it was impossible for him not to see that all that might be much simplified with benefit to the public. As to responsibility the consequence of having so many of those officers was, that nobody was responsible at all."—[3 Hansard, cxcix. 984.] The remarks of his hon. Friend the Member for Montrose had been supported in a remarkable manner by the conclusion arrived at by the Royal Commissioners appointed to inquire into the loss of the Megœra. The Royal Commis- sioners, as the result of their inquiries, report as follows:— We feel compelled to add that we have formed, however unwillingly, an unfavourable opinion as to the mode in which the administration of Her Majesty's dockyards is generally conducted. The important work of the survey vessels seems often to have been done in an incomplete and unsatisfactory manner. Officers too often appear to us to have done no more than each of them thought it was absolutely necessary to do; following a blind routine in the discharge of their duties, and acting almost as if it were their main object to avoid responsibility. Had any steps been taken by the Government to reduce that crowd of officials, and to prevent the want of attention to their duties which, according to the Commission, was displayed by the dockyard officials? Then, as to the wages of the dockyard artificers, the First Lord of the Admiralty said that men were obtained for reduced wages owing to the pensions awarded to them. What was the amount of this saving? Was it 5 per cent? He could, at all events, tell the First Lord what was the loss resulting from this pension list. The amount of pensions paid to discharged artificers this year was not less than £126,154, or nearly 6s. for every 20s. paid in wages to artificers on the establishment.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, the hon. Member was taking the present number of artificers in the yards; whereas the pension list represented the accumulated pensions upon very much larger numbers.

MR. RYLANDS

replied that all these pensions covered years when smaller as well as larger numbers were employed than were on the establishment now. In order to rebut his (Mr. Rylands') argument, it must be shown that the present number of artificers was much smaller than the average during the past 20 years; but, considering that our Navy Estimates had certainly increased by £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 a-year during that period, he much doubted whether that could be shown; and that being so, he challenged the right hon. Gentleman to show the saving effected in wages in the dockyard establishments as compared with wages in private shipbuilding yards. But, then, swarms of police were necessary to protect public property in the dockyards. The fact was almost incredible; but in their dockyards at home they paid for police not less than £22,908 a-year, and abroad £8,690. Thus, in order to overlook these 12,000 men in the dockyards, a crowd of officials was employed who seemed to stand in each other's way, and received a just rebuke from a Royal Commission, while the pension system added 5s. or 6s. to every 20s. paid in establishment wages, and over £30,000 a-year was paid for police either to keep the men employed from robbing the public, or to guard the public property from the dangerous population of the dockyard towns. From his business experience, he ventured to say that if any large private undertaking were carried on upon the same principles as our dockyards, the owners would very soon be in The Gazette, and ought to be taken in charge by their friends. He might remind hon. Members that in 1868 an important Select Committee was appointed to inquire into "Admiralty Moneys and Accounts." It was presided over by his hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr. Seely), and the evidence taken before that Committee demonstrated that the cost of vessels in the public dockyards was much greater than the cost of those built in private yards. That, at all events, was the opinion of the hon. Member for Lincoln, who, in his draft Report, as Chairman, made the assertion, that— If the cost of all the iron-clads built in Her Majesty's yards between 1858 and 1865 bears the same proportion to the cost as that of the Achilles to the Black Prince and Warrior, the excess cost of Admiralty built iron-clads during those years has been £1,663,000, on an expenditure of £3,500,000. And the Report further states, that in several cases the Committee had found the cost of repairs of old ships and old engines had exceeded the price for which new ships and new engines could have been bought. There might be some difference of opinion as to the conclusions at which the hon. Member for Lincoln had arrived; but there could be no doubt that, having regard to the enormous capital invested in the Royal Dockyards, and all the other expenses he had referred to, the working in those dockyards must be more costly than in private yards. The First Lord had told the House that in order to avoid paying enormous prices to private shipbuilders, he was determined to push forward the completion of every vessel but one on the stocks, and to build new ships. What could be the reason for such a course, at a time when not only wages had risen, but also the price of every material out of which ships were made? Unless the First Lord had bought the materials in advance, and had now got them on hand, it would be a most improvident thing to press forward the building of new tonnage at the present moment. If they kept up a large body of workmen in the dockyards they must find work for them, however high might be the price of materials in the market, and they must press forward the building of vessels which probably might not be required. Another reason for stopping this rash expenditure for new ships was, that there existed great uncertainty as to what was the best ship of war. The Report of the Committee on the Designs of Ships of War was of such an astonishing character that it ought to be well considered before more money was spent on the construction of vessels which might become obsolete in the course of three or four years; and they had the high authority of Armstrong and Whitworth for doubting whether it would be desirable for the future to build armour-plated vessels. It should also be borne in mind that a new power—that of the torpedo—was being brought into operation; and, under these circumstances, it was most unwise for the Government to come down, when labour and materials were dear, and ask the House for money to manufacture new vessels. There could be no justification for the course taken by the First Lord, unless he could show that there were some urgent reasons for preparing means of defence for this country against some threatened danger. But the right hon. Gentleman did not pretend that any further expenditure was necessary for home defence. On the contrary, he expressly said— He wished to say in distinct terms that looking to the condition of the navies of other countries, and at the amount of the offensive force of those countries they might be likely to be engaged with, he did not think it would be right to ask Parliament to devote any further large sums at present in strengthening their home defences. They believed that was one of the points on which they were strongest, and on which they need not fear, at present at least, that there was any country that could equal them."—[3 Hansard, ccx. 428–9.] The right hon. Gentleman further asserted that England was now relatively stronger than ever before, and in comparing our force with that of France, he pointed out that since 1866 there had been additions to our fleet, which had made an enormous difference in favour of this country as compared with France. Under those circumstances, it appeared almost incredible that the Government should be pushing forward the building of new vessels, and incurring an unnecessary and extravagant expenditure, from which no advantage could be derived. But the noble Lord the Member for Chichester (Lord Henry Lennox) deprecated any comparisons with the French Navy, and he urged that— We had in this country only to consider what was the proper strength of our Navy for the performance of the various duties so graphically described by the right hon. Gentleman at the close of his speech, and we ought not to enter into a race of building with other Powers."—[Ibid. 464.] That was, no doubt, a sound doctrine; but why was it not acted upon in former years? Again and again, successive First Lords had pointed to the extent of the French Navy as a reason for an increase of our own; but, so long as the position of the French Navy could be made use of as an excuse for expenditure in this country, we were never warned against "running a race of building with other Powers." On the contrary, ex-official Members when on the Opposition side of the House—and probably the noble Lord amongst the rest—made it a constant complaint against the Admiralty of the time being that they were not keeping up in "the race of building" with our dangerous neighbours. But now when France was no longer formidable, and could not possibly for many years to come possess a Navy that would be dangerous to them, and when therefore it might be expected that the opportunity would be taken of reducing their naval expenditure, the noble Lord and other hon. Members jumped up in their places and warned them against making comparisons with France. So long as such comparisons could be used as a justification of expenditure they were prominently urged, but now that they would tend in the direction of economy, they were told to disregard them as being "more than ordinarily fallacious." He had said that the policy of concentrating ships at home did not find favour with the First Lord, and at that statement the right hon. Gentleman had expressed his dissent by shaking his head. But what other conclusions could be drawn from the re- marks of the right hon. Gentleman? He had spoken of the "immense amount of work which was not immediately connected with a war establishment," and of the "ubiquitous duties to be performed by the Navy of England." What were those ubiquitous duties? Occasionally there was evidence of some of them in the Civil Service Estimates, when Votes were taken to cover charges of conveying a Bishop on his visitation to the Sandwich Islands, or of entertaining Royal and distinguished personages on board of men-of-war. But it was scarcely necessary to keep up foreign squadrons for purposes such as those. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say— If, therefore, we do not build ships for fighting, we shall still have to build them for other purposes; our policy will still be an expensive one, so long as the House resolves to keep up, not for ourselves alone, but for the benefit of the world at large, the police of the seas, and endeavours to stop such practices as the traffic in labourers in the Polynesian Islands, and to check the slave trade on the Coast of Africa; or is always disposed, if we hear of an Englishman or woman stranded or kept on any barbarous island, to send a man-of-war to their relief."—[Ibid. 460.] Well, if that were the true policy of the country as propounded by the right hon. Gentleman, he would no doubt find ample excuses for scattering their war vessels on foreign stations; but he (Mr. Rylands) entirely protested against the doctrine that the taxpayers of this country should be burdened to keep up a Navy "not for ourselves alone, but for the benefit of the world at large." As regarded the operations of their squadrons in aid of benevolent objects, he thought it could be shown that on the Coast of Africa and in China frightful atrocities had been committed by their men-of-war, and he could not suppose that it was in the interest of the Polynesian labourers or of Christian missions that the Rosario should sail round the island of Nukapu, pouring in shot and shell at a distance of 2,000 yards, setting fire to villages, and bringing destruction upon many of the native islanders who were probably innocent, and upon women and children. He should be anxious to know what course the Government intended to take with the captain of the Rosario, in order to prevent such disgraceful occurrences in future? As regarded the "police of the seas," he considered that that was an International duty; and that any measures for the suppression of piracy where it existed to any serious extent, should be taken by the combined action of the Great Powers, and certainly formed no justification for the great expenditure incurred by the maintenance of foreign squadrons by this country. The right hon. Gentleman had ended by asserting that their Navy was required to protect the commerce of England and carry civilization abroad; but that theory, though accepted before the time of Cobden, had since been universally condemned, even by Ministers at present in office when presiding at the Cobden dinner. Their ships of war were not instrumental in developing commerce. That was brought about by individual enterprize, and by the cheapness of goods.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, he had said nothing about developing commerce. He had confined himself exclusively to the protection of their commerce abroad.

MR. RYLANDS

contended that his argument was perfectly sound even if restricted to the narrower point. He trusted the Committee would support him in his Motion to reduce the Vote as a mark of its opinion that excessive expenditure should not continue, and that ships which were really not necessary should not be pressed forward at the present high price of labour, and of material. He would move that the Vote be reduced by £100,000.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £878,983, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Expense of the Dockyards and Naval Yards at Home and Abroad, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1873."—(Mr. Rylands.)

MR. WYKEHAM MARTIN

said, in reference to the expense of police at the dockyards, that so far as Chatham was concerned the Government only employed some 58 officers there, whose duty it was to protect miles of ground stored to repletion with valuable property against the depredations of convicts, who, if not closely watched, were notoriously given to secreting property in order to obtain those delicacies which the laws of their country would not allow them—while the cost of their services amounted to no more than £5,000 a year, an expenditure which, he held, was well laid out. As to pensions all persons superannuated before 1868 not only paid for their pensions, but they brought a profit to the Government out of the system; and he knew scores of men who were now living on pensions, every farthing of which they had formerly paid out of their own earnings. He believed that the Government offer of a small pension operated as an ignis fatuus in most cases. It acted as a retaining fee, although it was a delusion; and it kept the men at work at wages which were absolutely inadequate for the support of their families. In fact, he believed they paid such a price for their pensions that it had been stated that any insurance society would gladly take the annuities at a far lower price. A Return he had in his hand of the wages of a painter, who might be regarded as a skilled labourer, showed that the man received 2s. a-day except when he was employed in painting iron ships, when he got 2s. 6d. a-day. Why, the agricultural wages in Warwickshire were 12s and 14s. a-week, so that there was only 1s. a-week to the good of the painter. While the Secretary to the Admiralty was paying 14s. a-week to ordinary labourers at Chatham, where you could not get the commonest room under 1s. 6d. a-week, a respectable farmer, not 10 miles distant, between Michaelmas, 1870, and Michaelmas, 1871, paid the following sums to his men, whose weekly rent was 2s., which included a garden, while they could have an additional garden independently at 5s. a-year—the first, £78 5s.; the second, £62; the next, £67; the next, £72; and a boy, £53 11s. Personally, he (Mr. Wykeham Martin) employed a certain amount of labour, and there was only one who had less than 15s. a-week; and even in Warwickshire, which was purely an agricultural county, the result of the recent strike was, that farmers had been obliged to raise wages to 15s. a-week. Something had been said about the general increase of prices, and he could recollect the time when chops, cheese, bread, and beer could be obtained at the club for one-third less than the present tariff rate. He could read letters from dockyard employés which would make hon. Members shudder. A man with a wife and five children was living on 14s. a-week, and a man who had been hurt by an accident had to keep himself, wife, and children, and pay rent out of 7s. a-week. He therefore protested against the Admiralty being charged with paying high wages, when it paid only 14s. a-week in the quasi-manufacturing county of Kent. The hon. Member for Warrington (Mr. Rylands) had further overlooked the cost of superintendence in the Government yards, where a permanent staff must be employed, whether the labourers were many or few. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty would have a little mercy on his own flesh and blood, and would not reduce wages below the living point.

MR. RYLANDS

explained that he did not want to reduce wages. He merely pointed out that in calculating the wages paid account must be taken of pensions. He believed the hon. Member for Rochester (Mr. Wykeham Martin) had been alluding to men who were not on the establishment.

MR. SAMUDA

said, he was prepared to support the Vote, because while private yards might be, in many instances, advantageously resorted to, Government yards, properly administered, were absolutely necessary to the country. There was not, however, really the great difference the hon. Member for Warrington (Mr. Rylands) supposed between the pre sent Estimates and those of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontefract. There was great force in the proposal that a fixed amount of work should be done regularly in the Government yards, and his complaint was, that they were now doing too much in proportion to the private yards. It was understood that the proportion to be given to private yards should be 25 per cent; but that was not the proportion of the present Vote allotted to contract work. No doubt Government pensions, joined with other privileges, such as receiving their wages all the year round, and being paid whether it was wet or dry, were important considerations, and induced men to accept less wages, so that, with judicious management, the Government gained an advantage over private yards, and had no difficulty in getting men; and that rendered it the more incumbent on the Government to maintain an unvarying amount of work, and not disarrange private trade. Altogether the interests of the country required that the work should be divided very differently from that proposed in the Esti- mates, and that a much larger proportion of it should be given, to private manufacturers.

MR. OTWAY

said, he could not agree with any of the opinions expressed by his hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, and although it was desirable that the country ought to obtain the full value of the labour it paid for, yet that was impossible under the existing system. His hon. Friend's remarks had been extremely vague, for instead of there being swarms of policemen, as his hon. Friend had alleged, it had been shown by the hon. Gentleman below him (Mr. Wykeham Martin) that only 58 policemen were employed, and that the whole cost of the protection and police supervision of a property worth £20,000,000 sterling was only £4,799 a-year. Could the complete protection and supervision of private property of such value be secured by so small an annual expenditure? There were many other assertions of his hon. Friend to which exception might be justly taken. Great national establishments could not be conducted on the profit-and-loss principle which his hon. Friend advocated. If, for example, it were necessary to construct large vessels for national purposes, the work must be carried on, irrespectively of any rise or fall in the price of iron. There was another matter which had not occurred to his hon. Friend's mind when condemning the system of superannuation pursued by successive Governments, and that was the great danger which now threatened every industry in the country—he meant the strikes. The great danger which now threatened the industry of this country was the system of strikes. Everybody must regard those combinations with a certain amount of dread; and it was, therefore, a satisfaction to know that by the wise arrangements which had been acted on for some years past, the Government had induced men to remain in the public service at a moderate rate of wages by holding out to them the prospect of a moderate pension. Thus, the Government had entirely insured themselves against that great national danger. His hon. Friend, however, had not alluded to that subject, but had taken the whole of the superannuation as compared with the amount paid to the establishment artificers, and had asserted that out of every 26s. of wage 6s. were paid in pension. If his hon. Friend conducted his own establishment on the arithmetical principles he had propounded, he was astonished at the prosperity he was generally believed to have attained. His hon. Friend had also spoken only of the establishment artificers, forgetting that the great bulk of the labour in the dockyards was performed by men who never came on the establishment at all. His hon. Friend would doubtless concur with him that the Government ought to obtain all the labour for which they paid; but, considering the increase in rent and the high price of the barest necessaries of life, excluding meat altogether, it was impossible for a labourer to live on 14s. a-week. Consequently the labourers, after completing their 10 hours' work in the dockyards, were under the necessity of going to other employments, and, in some instances, toiling till midnight, the result being, that on the following day they could not devote their full strength and energy to the Government work. His right hon. Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty had evinced every desire to ameliorate the condition of the artizans in our dockyards; but, unfortunately, he had overlooked the labourers at 14s. a-week. All the conditions of their life had changed since their wages were fixed, for not only had rent risen, but the expenses the men were put to in consequence of the new kind of work to which they were put had increased, added to which, since iron shipbuilding had been introduced the wear and tear of clothes had increased some 40 or 50 per cent, and this was a very serious matter to a man earning only 14s. a-week. Again, the work was exceedingly unhealthy, and accidents to the eyes were much more frequent than formerly. It was true that provision was made by the Government for sending men thus injured to the Ophthalmic Hospital; but he knew of one case where a labourer paid £7 in travelling expenses to and from the hospital, and in the purchase of a false eye. Surely the Government ought to take into consideration the changes which had occurred in the conditions of life since the rate of wages was fixed? At Chatham the Government was a great proprietor and the sole proprietor; but it did not perform any of the duties of a proprietor. An agricultural labourer in receipt of 14s. a-week had the advantage of an occa- sional visit from the squire or his lady, of beer or cider and increased wages at harvest time; but the labourer in the Government employ enjoyed none of these advantages. It was not creditable to the Government, therefore, to maintain the existing state of things. It was the duty of the Government to give these men for their labour a sufficiency to live upon, and instead of being disposed to reduce the Vote by a single farthing, he hoped his right hon. Friend would take the first opportunity of increasing the wages of the labourers, who were at present so inadequately paid.

MR. G. BENTINCK

said, he could not imagine a graver charge than that which had been preferred by his hon. Friend the Member for Warrington (Mr. Rylands) against Her Majesty's Government. Put into plain English, the charge of the hon. Member for Warrington meant that Her Majesty's Government were prepared to sacrifice the honour and the security of the country to a description of economy which might, perhaps, enable them to save a few pounds and obtain a few clap-trap votes. It was also to be lamented that hon. Members should—unconsciously he was sure—mislead the Committee and the country upon questions such as the one now under discussion; for it was a pity that the country should be led into a belief that the dockyards were conducted upon a system of wasteful extravagance, while, as a matter of fact, the system was one of penurious and mischievous economy. It was all very well for hon. Gentlemen to compare the state of things in 1870 with that which existed at the present time, because the state of facts at the two periods was entirely different. In what he said he wished it to be understood that he did not blame the right hon. Gentleman now at the head of the Admiralty for this state of things, which he found in existence when he went into office, and who had not as yet had time to undertake the almost hopeless task of putting our naval affairs into a proper condition; but in order to justify what he said, he would ask the right hon. Gentleman one or two questions on points of detail. For instance, was the right hon. Gentleman of opinion that the number of workmen at present employed in Portsmouth Dockyard was sufficient for the work now in hand; and if he was so satis- fied, he should further like to inquire how it came to pass that there were such remarkable proofs existing of inefficiency in the operations of that dockyard? Was it true, for example, that there was only one tug in it in a serviceable condition, so that on the occasion of the recent collision in the Channel, the City of Baltimore had to be towed off by two vessels of war? If that was so, it reflected great discredit upon the department which had control of the yard. Again, it was said that as the boilers in certain ships, built at a cost of between £400,000 and £500,000, had become so much worn as to be dangerous at high pressure, it had been determined not to replace the boilers but to work them at a much lower pressure, thus rendering vessels practically valueless which had been built for speed at enormous cost. That again, if true, showed a most unsatisfactory state of things. Further, it was important that ships of great draught of water should be able to get in and out of a harbour like Portsmouth with ease; but it was rumoured that the harbour had only a single dredger in a condition fit for service. Yet another of the rumours he had heard in circles where the importance of questions of this kind was as well understood and as highly appreciated as in the House of Commons—it was stated that the repairs of the Prince Consort and the Warrior were proceeding so slowly that the vessels could neither of them be looked upon as being efficient ships in Her Majesty's service. If those rumours were well founded, the Government had clearly made themselves liable to the charge of persisting in that false economy which had hitherto resulted in so enormous an expenditure. It should not be forgotten that as respected the French Navy, that nation was as strong as ever it was; and the more so, as in later years we had been committing the fatal mistake of doing away with our old wooden screw line-of-battle ships, which were our only sure resource in case of disaster, and replacing them with iron-clads, which we could not, as yet at all events, regard as sea-going or efficient vessels. In conclusion, he felt bound to add that nothing was more ruinous to the country or to the naval service than the system of strikes which had been so prevalent in the country for the last few years.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, that the objections urged in the course of his speech by the hon. Member for Warrington (Mr. Rylands) had to some extent been answered by hon. Gentlemen who from that (the Ministerial) side of the House had taken part in the debate, therefore he (Mr. Goschen) should be able to keep his remarks within narrow limits. His hon. Friend had founded his criticisms not so much upon the Navy Estimates as upon his (Mr. Goschen's) speech in moving them; but he had failed to indicate a single item in them that was extravagant; and he had not attempted in the course of his remarks to show that they were building too many ships, or that they were replacing those they had by too many iron-clads. He was incorrect, moreover, in supposing that there was an increase in this year's Navy Estimates of £600,000 as compared with those of 1870. In 1870–1, they were £9,370,000; this year £9,508,000, or an increase of £138,000. It was equally an error to suppose that he was plunging into shipbuilding beyond the standard established by his predecessors, the fact being that the amount of new tonnage he proposed to build in the ensuing year was 20,000 tons, which the late First Lord of the Admiralty had declared to be the normal annual amount necessary to maintain the efficiency of the Navy; while in regard to that being a bad time to complete iron ships in, on account of the high price of iron, he would observe that they were taking the opportunity, for that very reason, of replacing a certain number of wooden corvettes and sloops, the construction of which had lately been somewhat neglected. Therefore, in that direction, the Government had not been so improvident as his hon. Friend would lead them to imagine. Then came the charge that they were keeping up an excessive number of men in their dockyards; and here he might remark that he had never stated that in times of peace they ought to do all the work which they required in the public dockyards and reserve the private yards for times of war. That was an exaggerated view of what he had said, and, as a matter of fact, out of 20,000 tons of shipbuilding to be done in the year, 3,400 would be executed in private yards. The statement that only £4,000 was to be expended during the year in private yards was also equally incorrect, for the amount now contracted for, although all would not be due during the financial year, was £80,700. In reference to the comparative advantages of public and private yards, what he had stated was this—that the frequent discharge of men from the Government dockyards would disturb the minds of the labourers, and would neutralize the advantages arising from having a certain number of men on whom the Government could under all circumstances rely; but he had never concealed the opinion that the events of the last few years had proved the importance of having a large number of men in their dockyards of whose services and abilities the Government could always be assured, for even the most ardent and disinterested advocates of doing work by private contract would admit that it was quite impossible to do the whole or nearly the whole in that manner and by that means, supposing it were confined simply to repairs and the maintenance of ships, which constituted a very large proportion of what was necessary to be done. In these circumstances certain establishments under certain supervision were indispensable; and the question was whether, having got these establishments and all that plant, it was cheaper for the Government to build their own vessels or to put them out to contract. A special reason, moreover, why the Admiralty should limit its operations to its own dockyards this year was on account of the extraordinary high price being asked for every species of contract work; and further, had he (Mr. Goschen) preferred to discharge more men from the dockyards in order to let the work be competed for by private enterprize, he should have followed a course which would not have been appreciated either by the Committee or the country. He would admit, however, that it was an enormous advantage to have private firms to fall back upon to supplement the regular Admiralty resources when such a step was required; while being equally certain the main numbers on whom the Admiralty should rely were their own employés. Then, again, his hon. Friend had forgotten that there was a certain number of ships for certain duties, not at the call of the Government, but at that of the interests which needed to be protected. That tended to increase the Estimates, but it was an item which was wholly unavoidable. Reference had been made to the conduct of the captain of the Rosario; but, although it was clearly inexpedient to enter into a discussion upon that matter now, he desired to state, with a view to prevent misapprehension on the subject, that he had been assured by the captain that the shells were fired over the natives, and that there was no loss of life. The subject of the employment of labourers and the rate of wages paid to them—a subject referred to by several hon. Members—was also a matter upon which it would be inexpedient to enter. He had, however, considered the question, and had consulted competent authorities upon it, but he was anxious not to make any statement likely to raise hopes that might not be realized. He would mention, however, in reference to the statement that the men engaged in extra work in order to add to their incomes, that they were employed in the yards for only 8½ hours. No doubt the men at Chatham were worse off than those at Pembroke, owing to the high price of provisions at Chatham as compared with Pembroke. The question had also been asked by the hon. Member for West Norfolk, as to whether a sufficient number of men were employed at Portsmouth for the work to be done, the answer to which was, there had been a great pressure of work at Portsmouth during the last few months, and he had encouraged as far as possible the system, that every available man should be put upon the fighting ships rather than upon the subsidiary vessels. It was true that the pressure upon the boilers of the Minotaur had been decreased; but it was a question whether the ship should be put into reserve at once, and the boilers be discarded altogether, or whether the boilers should be used for another year. That was a matter of discretion. He was not prepared to say—and he believed it had not been the custom of the Admiralty—that boilers should be at once discarded if at a reduction of pressure they would still be able to do good service for another year. He had now dealt with most of the points raised, and he trusted that his hon. Friend would not press his Motion to a division.

MR. CORRY

said, it was not his province to defend the policy of the First Lord of the Admiralty, as contrasted with that of his predecessor in office; but he wished to point out that the increase of 1,570 in the number of work- men in the yards under the Estimates of 1871–2 was not made by the present First Lord of the Admiralty, but by the Board of the late First Lord, after his unfortunate illness obliged him to absent himself from the office. And in saying that, he would add that it would have been quite impossible to go on with the reduced Vote of the year 1870–1, and it was, therefore, absolutely necessary to increase the number of the men in the dockyards, as was done by the Board of the late First Lord and continued by his successor. The hon. Member for West Norfolk (Mr. G. Bentinck) had been, like himself, at Portsmouth; and, speaking for Portsmouth, and he believed also for other yards, he could say the establishment of men was not adequate to complete the programme—that was to say, the work which the Admiralty deemed necessary for placing the Navy in a proper position in the present year. At Portsmouth, moreover, the programme of work included something which ought never to have been part of the programme of that or of any other dockyard—something which he had never seen before, and which he hoped would never be seen again. He saw in Portsmouth Yard a new ship, which had never performed any service except that of coming round from the port at which she was built to Portsmouth, where she was to be fitted. She proved so weak and leaky on the passage round that she was ordered to be surveyed, and found to be unsafe to be employed at sea. Her planking was of fir, and of fir of a very bad description, being only fit, as he had been informed, to be used for stageing; and they had to put on teak planking three inches thicker than the original fir planking to give her the requisite strength. In fact, he might almost say the re-building of that new ship, which was thoroughly unseaworthy, formed part of the work of the yard. She was so badly caulked, and the bolts were so badly driven, that it was the opinion at Portsmouth that she must have been put together by labourers, as no shipwrights could have turned such work out of hand. If anything could make the case more unaccountable, if not more reprehensible, it was the fact that that vessel was a Royal yacht, not intended merely for smooth-water service, but for conveying the Prince of Wales and other Members of the Royal Family to the Baltic, across the Bay of Biscay, or on other voyages for which a thorough sea-going vessel was required. He was not now blaming the Board of Admiralty; he was certain that no members of the Board would have sanctioned such a proceeding as that; but, at the same time, he did not think that such a thing would have been possible under the old system at the Admiralty. Again, he found that of the four tugs belonging to Portsmouth Yard, only two were available for service. One of them had her boilers so worn that they could not be used without risk of scalding the men. The most powerful tug, too, in the yard had been for 10 months with only one boiler fit for use, and had been all that time getting a new boiler fitted. Some time ago a French ship-of-war went ashore off Newhaven, and an order being given for the most powerful tug from Portsmouth to go to her assistance, they were obliged to send that unfortunate vessel with her one boiler, and it was considered quite a joke at Portsmouth when a powerful tug was ordered by the Admiralty on any service. What had been said as to the boilers of the Minotaur was quite true. They were meant for a pressure of 25lbs, and they were reduced to a pressure of 12lbs for the sake of safety; and that was the state in which the flagship of the Channel Squadron was to commence the evolutions of the year. When a vessel came in either with her boilers injured by accident, or worn by use, there were no boilers to put into her. A gentleman who wrote in the leading journal had been good enough to notice his visit to Portsmouth, and having heard, he supposed, that he had been inquiring into the condition of the boilers, had observed that it was bad policy to keep a large store of them, as they deteriorated rapidly when exposed to the weather; but it would surely be better to have boilers deteriorate than to have none at all. When the works at Portsmouth, in connection with the old steam basin, were commenced, it was the intention to employ one of the buildings as a boiler-shed, and he hoped that in the next year's Estimates provision would be made for a proper shed for boilers at Portsmouth. In the case of another vessel, the Royal Sovereign—a turret-ship—the boilers had been reduced to a pressure of 10lbs, and he was informed that, in consequence of the state of the trade, there was a difficulty in getting boilers made within a reasonable time either by contract or in the yards. A notice having been posted some time ago at the gate of Portsmouth Ddockyard that boiler-makers were wanted, he was told that a wag wrote under the placard in chalk—"You must send to Canada for them." After the treatment that dockyard artificers had received, persons earning good wages from the private trade were not willing to trust their fate again to the mercies of the Board of Admiralty. In the course of his observations, the hon. Member for Warrington (Mr. Rylands) had dwelt largely upon his (Mr. Corry's) sins, one of which, as he alleged, was that he had provided for 18,500 workmen in 1867. The hon. Member said the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Goschen) was going back to the number employed by the right hon. Member for Tyrone. Now, those men were not his, but his right hon. Friend's (Sir John Pakington's), as the Estimates for 1867–8 were prepared before his appointment to the Admiralty. He did not say this by way of disapproval, for, considering the absolute necessity which existed at the time of building a large number of unarmoured ships, the work could not have been done with a smaller number. When the hon. Member for Warrington talked of these large establishments at the dockyards as though they were owing to a Tory policy, he forgot, or more probably did not know, that they were smaller than those which existed in 1864, when the number of men was 19,500. That was at the time when the present Prime Minister was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and therefore had a right to control the expenditure of the Admiralty. Then it was said that he (Mr. Corry) had reduced 3,200 men. That arose from the necessity, in order to maintain our naval supremacy, of building iron-clads by contract, which the dockyards had not the requisite means of building, and he was obliged to discharge artificers in order to get the money for that purpose. When the hon. Gentleman taunted him with having effected reductions in the number of dockyard men, he appeared to have forgotten the fact that the right hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers) had reduced many more. The hon. Gentleman had also talked of the badness of the work in the dockyards, and had instanced the case of the Megœra as a proof of the bad manner in which dockyard work was performed. Now, the Megœra was a single exception to the ordinary rule, because he had never before heard of any ship being turned out of Her Majesty's dockyards in a state not perfectly seaworthy. No doubt, dockyard work was expensive, but its excellence had never been questioned before. The hon. Member had further said that in the present uncertain state of our knowledge of what was required in naval architecture, no more ships ought to be built. It was quite true that what with torpedoes and vessels to carry 50-ton guns, which we were told we were soon to have, those who had to design iron-clads might well be bewildered; but although the hon. Member might be right with regard to that class of vessels, he was quite wrong with regard to the unarmoured ships, of which there was a dangerous deficiency in the British Navy, and he was glad to see that the First Lord of the Admiralty had increased the tonnage of those ships to be built this year to more than 12,000 tons. He should wish to have from the First Lord of the Admiralty some information as to what description of iron-clads he intended to build this year. Of the two new iron-clads which were to be built, besides the Fury, one, they had been told, was to be on the principle of the Hercules or the Sultan; but he should like to know what the second was to be like. The right hon. Gentleman had stated that if the Devastation did not prove a success, the Fury would not be proceeded with, but that five gunboats would be built instead; and therefore, seeing that the Devastation was not yet completed, he would ask the right hon. Gentleman not to proceed with the Fury during the present year under any circumstances, more especially as the Thunderer, a vessel of the same class, was also incomplete. In his opinion the right hon. Member for Pontefract had made a mistake in commencing these three vessels of an entirely new description without waiting to see how one turned out before the other two were ordered to be commenced. He wished now to refer to certain statements that had been made with re- gard to the discharge of dockyard workmen, and to the relative numbers that had been discharged by the late and by the present Government—a subject that appeared to have excited a considerable amount of interest in the minds of the political agitators throughout the country. He had hoped that he had heard the last of this subject in the past Session, but it had been brought prominently forward by the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government during the Recess. In addressing his constituents at Blackheath last autumn, the right hon. Gentleman said— The facts I mean to communicate to you may cause some astonishment. Now, with regard to dockyard labourers, listen to the figures, for they are worth hearing. The number of dockyard labourers employed on the 1st of January, 1868, was 20,313. On the 1st of December, 1868, which was the day before I received my summons to the presence of Her Majesty at Windsor, the number of 20,313 was reduced to 15,974; the difference showing the reduction since the beginning of the year was 4,339. The number of dockyard labourers we found was 15,974; and the number on the 1st of October last was 14,511. The result of that statement is that the reduction since we came into office was 1,463; the reduction before we came into office was 4,339; so that three-fourths of the whole reduction of which you have heard so much was not our work, but the work of our predecessors. He was not at all surprised that the right hon. Gentleman should have thought that that statement was likely to occasion some astonishment, because there was not a dockyard man who heard him who did not know that there was not a single syllable of truth in the whole of that statement. Of course, he did not impute intentional misrepresentation to the right hon. Gentleman in the matter, because he merely uttered the words that were put into his mouth. Without making any assertion on the subject which might be disputed, he would content himself by referring to the dry figures which appeared in the Estimates. Those figures showed that in 1867–8 there were 18,321 dockyard workmen voted, and in 1868–9 there were 15,272, showing a reduction of their number by himself of 3,049; while in 1870–1 there were only 11,276 voted, showing a reduction by the right hon. Member for Pontefract of 3,996 in the two years. He must explain that in the autumn of 1868–9, 2,000 additional men were entered for the remainder of the financial year, under circumstances which he had frequently explained. On his appoint- ment to the Admiralty in 1867 there was not a single armour-clad complete in the steam reserve. In other words, there was no reserve of ships to fall back on in the event of an emergency. It was unnecessary to point out the extreme danger of such a state of things, and as the Controller reported an anticipated surplus on the Shipbuilding Votes in the month of September, he (Mr. Corry) obtained the sanction of the Treasury to appropriate it to the entry of artificers for six months, chiefly for the purpose of hastening the preparation of an armour-clad reserve. Yet these men so entered for mere temporary service were included among his (Mr. Curry's) reductions by the Prime Minister in his speech to his constituents. They had never formed part of the establishment of the dockyards, and in the words of the right hon. Member for Pontefract, in answer to a question put to him, in 1869—"They were temporarily engaged in the previous October in excess of the number provided for in the Estimates of 1867–8, and they were well aware they would only be employed for a few months." It had been asserted by an itinerant agitator in Yorkshire that these men had been badly used, as they had been induced to go from Scotland and other parts of the country to work in the dockyards at low wages, with the hope that they would ultimately get a pension; whereas the truth was what he had stated, and that it had been a great boon to them to get wages to enable them to tide over the winter at a time when the shipbuilding trade was nearly stagnant, in consequence of the financial crisis of 1866. The most valuable class of men in the dockyards were the established men, who considered they had a right to serve their full time, and retire on a pension, and on whom, therefore, the Admiralty could depend. Now, though he discharged some of these men—less than 300—the present Government had reduced them by 2,700. The reduction in the number of men, established and hired, was 3,996 in the two first years of the present Government; but afterwards discovering their mistake, they were obliged to take on 1,570 men, who had been on the Estimates ever since, thus making the net reduction effected by them 2,426, instead of 1,468 as asserted at Blackheath. The reductions by the present Government in 1869 and 1870 had been consider- ably greater than those made by the late Government, and if the late Government had sinned in reducing the number of dockyard men, the present Government had sinned still more; more especially in regard of established men, as contradistinguished from hired men who had no right to expect to be employed longer than the necessities of the service required. The point, indeed, would not have been worth noticing but for the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government at Black-heath—remarks made for electioneering purposes, which obliged him to show how the matter actually stood. He would only add that he hoped so absurd a proposal as that of the hon. Member for Warrington would not be adopted, for the present number of men, far from being excessive, was inadequate to the work which the Admiralty itself deemed necessary.

MR. CHILDERS

said, he also trusted that the hon. Member for Warrington (Mr. Rylands) would not press his Motion; but as the hon. Member had alleged that his right hon. Friend (Mr. Goschen) was pursuing a course of policy opposed to his (Mr. Childers's) own, and that statement had also been made by a great master of fiction the other day in Lancashire, he wished to give an absolute contradiction to that general proposition. It was natural in a large Department like the Admiralty that a First Lord should not in every detail concur with his predecessor; indeed, circumstances altered so quickly, that it was possible that on some points of detail, and even more than detail, he might have to differ from his right hon. Friend. The general principles adopted, however, with regard to the present Estimates were the general principles he had laid down in 1869 and 1870, and the difference between the present Estimates and the original Estimates of 1870–71 was only about £200,000. The difference on the aggregate charge, direct and indirect, for shipbuilding was very much smaller; and inasmuch as in 1870 he had proposed to Parliament to work up to a prospective system that with regard to the whole matériel charge, which had consisted of parts of other Votes, and his right hon. Friend had pretty closely adopted what he then proposed, he could not blame him. The average annual amount of shipping to be built was then laid down by him at between 19,500 and 20,000 tons. His right hon. Friend now proposed something over 20,000 tons—a slight excess over his (Mr. Childers's) own figure, which was quite justified by She Vote of Credit taken in 1870, and the effect of which had hardly yet ceased. It had been said that a much larger number of men was now proposed than in 1870; but it should be remembered that in August, 1870, he proposed a considerable increase for a specific purpose, which was not yet exhausted. When, indeed, the normal state of things had come back, it would be right and necessary to make a reduction on the per cent numbers. The calculation which he adopted—one made by professional officers after long and careful inquiries, but for which he was fully responsible—was that the number of men required to build 16,000 tons of shipping, and provide for repairs and miscellaneous services, was from 11,000 to 11,500. He was disposed to think bat this calculation would, for a few years, be insufficient to the extent of 500 or 400 men; but it was better to lave been inaccurate to that extent than to have continued the system of numbers fluctuating from year to year without regard to any general rule. On the subject of the numbers in the dockyards, lad he expected his right hon. Friend opposite (Mr. Corry) to go into figures to-night, he should have come down with statistics, so as to answer him in detail, which he could only now do from memory. His right hon. Friend had ingeniously put the case as if the complaint of discharges from the dockyards lad been originated by him or his right ion. Friend (Mr. Gladstone); but nothing could be more inaccurate. On the contrary, at the General Election of 1868 nobody on his side of the House—certainly, nobody who had held office—complained of the discharge of between 4,000 and 5,000 men by his right hon. Friend, or attempted to make capital out of it. As soon, however, as the present Government acceded to office—before a single man had been discharged—a cry was got up by the right hon. Friend's political friends about the cruelty of discharging dockyard men. That made it necessary to see what the extent of the discharges and the reasons for them had been. What were the facts? What he (Mr. Childers) objected to in that House in 1868, and ever since, was not the discharge of men who were in excess of the requirements of the public service, but the absolute want of a policy in the matter which, in a time of absolute peace, led to the employment of 2,000 more men than the Estimates allowed in February, and 5,000 less in the following June. What had been called cruelty to the persons employed arose from a want of foresight with regard to the requirements of the service. It had arisen solely from the peculiar policy in connection with the dockyards which had been pursued by his right hon. Friend and by the right hon. Baronet who had preceded him (Sir John Pakington). What was that policy? His right hon. Friend had described very accurately what was done at the end of the year 1867, when he applied to the Treasury for leave to employ, out of certain savings, an additional number of men in the dockyards, running the number up to somewhere about 2,000 beyond the Estimates. But that application to the Treasury was made without any foresight whatever, and without any regard to the principle on which the establishment should be managed, and it was that very want of foresight and absence of definite principle that led to all the difficulties that followed. His right hon. Friend talked of this increase being met by savings on the year's Estimates; but it turned out that his calculations were wrong by something between £300,000 and £400,000; and that very increase in the number of men during the last three or four months of the financial year was one of the causes of that excess.

MR. CORRY

said, the cause was that the Government to which the right hon. Gentleman himself belonged had left the ships of the China station in such a rotten and unsound state that the admiral on the station, on his own responsibility, spent some £50,000 to fit them for service, without the knowledge or the sanction of the Admiralty, and, in consequence of this, their calculations were completely deranged.

MR. CHILDERS

said, this could hardly justify a miscalculation 18 months afterwards; but however that might be, up to the very day when Parliament was meeting in 1868, his right hon. Friend was increasing the number of men in the dockyards, and though the Estimates were laid on the Table when Parliament met, copies of them could not be procured for something like three weeks afterwards. He did not know what change took place in that time, but it was certain that whereas up to the very beginning of February the establishments were being increased, yet, when the Estimates were produced, they showed not only that the additional men employed were to be employed no longer, but that there was to be a further reduction of 3,000 men, making a total reduction of no less than 4,600 men. His right hon. Friend had said that he (Mr. Childers) for two years reduced the number of men; but during those two years the reduction was a steady reduction, until the Franco-German War broke out in 1870. It had always been a principle of the present Government that, while the dockyards should be reduced, still, when such an event as that occurred, the Admiralty should be at liberty to increase their establishment and carry out special works. When that war broke out, Parliament was asked for a Vote of Credit for £2,000,000, and £500,000 of that sum was employed by the Admiralty, who took on a certain number of men, and in the Estimates for the following year the same number of men were continued in employment. He (Mr. Childers) had never charged the late Government with discharging men, for he maintained that the dockyards were made for the country, and that if it were necessary for the public service that they should be reduced, they ought to be reduced; but he had always laid it down—and he hoped the House would always act upon that policy—that those reductions should be made in conformity with the interests of the public service—that they should not be made in a haphazard manner, but that they should be explained to, and approved of by Parliament. His right hon. Friend had next referred to the Osborne, built at Pembroke, as having been at Portsmouth in a state not creditable to the Department, in consequence of wood of an inferior kind having been put in her, and in consequence of her scantling having been too light, and the right hon. Gentleman had said that such a thing could not have happened under the system in force in his time. But he (Mr. Childers) had been allowed to see the papers on the subject up to the time of his leaving office, and it turned out that the orders relating to the Osborne were given by his right hon. Friend himself. The right hon. Gentleman had approved of the material to be employed in the fullest detail, and had recommended that she should he built as light as possible. No change whatever was ordered by the present Government, except that the Osborne should be proceeded with slowly, there being several iron-clads of more importance to be proceeded with first. Coming to the general question He admitted that there was considerable force in some of the observations of the hon. Member for Warrington as to the relative value of dockyard business to contract work; but he hoped the Motion now before the House would not be pressed to a division, and if it were so pressed he should vote against it. With regard to the value of our dockyard establishments, the view he took was very similar to that of the First Lord of the Admiralty. He should greatly deplore undue reduction of our dockyards, or the abandonment of the system of establishment; and great care should be taken to keep up a proper proportion between the men who were on the establishment and the men who were not on the establishment, but who were hired in the ordinary way. There was an extraordinary misunderstanding in the House on the subject of the conditions on which men were engaged. It was stated that all the skilled artificers in the factories and dockyards were on the establishment; but there could not be a greater delusion, for the great body of the factory men and workers in iron were not on the establishment at all, but were engaged in the usual way. He would repeat that the proper proportion between the established and unestablished men should be watched very narrowly, keeping the dockyards as nearly as possible at the same level, but always retaining power to increase them when an emergency arose. In conclusion, he would say that his right hon. Friend, when he opened the Estimates, did not, in his opinion, state with sufficient fulness the great advantages to be derived from going to private yards; but to-night he had done so with perfect accuracy, and he hoped, under all circumstances, that that policy would be approved by Parliament.

LORD HENRY LENNOX

said, he did not wish to interfere with the proceedings of the evening, or to delay in any respect the taking of the necessary Vote; there were, however, a few remarks which he felt called upon to make. With regard to the Motion of the hon. Member for Warrington (Mr. Rylands), if pressed to a division he would vote against it. He did not think there were more than half-a-dozen Members out of all in the House who, if they had merely read the Motion as it stood on the Paper, would have voted for it. But after the speech of the hon. Member, that half-dozen would probably have dwindled down to half that number. The hon. Gentleman was supposed to be a great authority on foreign affairs, and certainly, if his speech to-night was to be taken as a specimen of his naval criticism, the hon. Member would do well to confine himslf to our foreign relations for the future. The hon. Member had criticized most unjustly what had fallen from the First Lord of the Admiralty as to our keeping the police of the seas, and asked why it was that it should devolve on us alone to discharge that office. But if the hon. Member paid that attention to our foreign relations which we were told he did, he ought to have known that during the prevalence of Chinese piracy we had constantly received active co-operation from the Navy of France in putting it down. The hon. Gentleman had represented him in a chameleon-like view, for he said—"When the noble Lord is in office he alarms the House by comparing our Navy with that of the French; but when he is in Opposition he is the first to condemn the First Lord of the Admiralty for doing so." But if the hon. Member had read his speech in 1867, when it fell to his lot to move the Estimates, he would have seen that he acted in a very different way, for he stated then that it was with pain and grief that he listened to such comparisons; that they could do no possible good, and could only tend to create misunderstanding and embitter our relations with our neighbours. The hon. Member had fallen foul of his right hon. Friend the Member for Tyrone (Mr. Corry), of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers), and of the present First Lord of the Admiralty, for holding the extreme advisability of keeping in our dockyards a good reserve of workmen. He (Lord Henry Lennox) must himself advert to the speech of the right hon. Member for Pontefract, in order to show that that right hon. Gentleman had said that when he made reductions in the dockyards he did so upon a distinct principle, and that according to that principle 11,300 was the proper number of dockyard men for the year, and he added that that result was arrived at after due calculation. He (Lord Henry Lennox), however, fancied he had seen in certain documents which had been laid on the Table that one of the officers in a high post in the Admiralty at the time did consistently protest against the reduction made by the right hon. Gentleman. It was, in fact, only one of what he might call "those spasmodical reductions" which the right hon. Member had that night himself condemned. The Estimates of the right hon. Gentleman had been laid on the Table at the usual time; but, owing to a very important and much-contested Bill, the Estimates that Session were not finally passed until a very late period. Before, therefore, those very economical Estimates that reduced the number of men were passed the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontefract had to come down himself and ask for an increase of men to carry out the work that was necessary in consequence of the breaking out of the war between France and Germany. But did the right hon. Gentleman find it easy to replace in the dockyards the men that had been discharged? Not at all. The right hon. Gentleman would bear him out when he said—and if the right hon. Gentleman did not remember he had only to appeal to the archives of the Admiralty, which now, as when he was in office, he found ready access to—that though the men were voted in July, the full number could not be had until the November following, so that we were during the interval working with fewer men than were required. [Mr. CHILDERS dissented.] The right hon. Gentleman shook his head; but he thought he could convince the right hon. Gentleman by reference to documents which he would find it impossible to dispute. His right hon. Friend the Member for Tyrone had asked what description of iron-clads we were going to have. The other night, when he himself asked the same question, the First Lord of the Admiralty said that when the Vote came on, he would be prepared to give an accurate description of them. He (Lord Henry Lennox) hoped we should have that description to-night, and that we should be told what their size would be, what was their projected armour, what their displacement, the kind of ordnance to be carried on board, and other particulars. There was another point to which he called attention when the First Lord of the Admiralty made his opening statement, and that was as to the difficulty of estimating beforehand the amount of work that could be done in the dockyards, owing to its varying nature and peculiarity. On referring to the Estimates for 1871–2, he found that the iron-clad rams, the Cyclops, Hecate, Hydra, and Gorgon, were put down in the Appendix as requiring only 20 tons each to be worked into them; but in the Estimates of 1872–3 he found three of these old friends requiring, not 20, but 100 tons each, to be worked in our dockyards. Why, when 20 tons were thought enough in 1871–2, were 100 tons needed in 1872–3? Could the right hon. Gentleman, looking at the number of men he had to do the work to the amount of work done last year and the year before, confidently say that 16,700 tons was likely to be completed this year? Of that programme of 16,700, as he made out, 10,000 tons went in ships already ordered, and 500 tons were for the torpedo vessel, about which he should have something more to say. There remained, therefore, according to that statement, some 6,000 tons to be worked up in new ships in the coming year. Would anyone, looking to the class of ships all these were to be, tell him that they could be advanced in a more than infinitesimal degree, if the programme of the right hon. Gentleman were carried out? These ships were two iron-clad frigates, the tonnage of which was given by the right hon. Gentleman as 2,679; two corvettes, one of the Blanche class, and four sloops, about which he should like to have some information. The 6,000 tons were to be spread over that amount of shipping. He would like that the right hon. Gentleman should state how he meant to apportion the 6,000 tons, which, according to his own showing, was to be done? He also wished to know whether the right hon. Gentleman seriously intended to include in his programme of works the repairs and refitting of the Cruiser? Some years ago that vessel had been mentioned before a Committee of that House as a proof of wanton extravagance in the Admiralty Departments, and it had also been stated that her repairs and refittings had already caused an expenditure three times the amount of her original cost. She was a vessel of 60-horse power, and in her best days could only run 6½ knots an hour, and in 1867 he (Lord Henry Lennox) spoke of her as one of those vessels which could "neither fight nor cut and run away." At a time when there was so much work to be done in the dockyards, he must ask whether it would be judicious to employ men upon a vessel of that class and type? He should have something further to say upon a later Vote, with regard to the proposal founded upon the recommendation of the right hon. Member for Pontefract to add 20,000 tons of shipping every year to the Navy. The programme in that respect was illusory, and the additional fleet was merely upon paper, as would be seen when Vote 10, section 2, was considered. It had been said by the right hon. Gentleman that the Opposition ought to bear the responsibility of any deficiency in the Royal yacht Osborne; but that was absolutely a mistake, for not a plank had been laid, nor a bolt driven in her when his right hon. Friend (Mr. Corry) went out. That was evident from a statement made in 1869 by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontefract, who said that the building of the Osborne had been postponed in consequence of the expenditure for repairing the other Royal yachts. There ought not to be any party opposition in matters affecting the welfare of the naval service; but those who sat on that side of the House had a difficult task to perform, because they had to give quotations from memory, while the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontefract was allowed by the First Lord of the Admiralty to see private confidential documents. Notwithstanding these facilities, however, the right hon. Gentleman had not been able to discover anything which redounded to the discredit of the administration of his right hon. Friend the present First Lord. In conclusion, he would say that nothing was more painful to his right hon. Friend the Member for Tyrone than to draw comparisons between himself and his successors; and last year his right hon. Friend distinctly deprecated any such discussions, saying that so long as the Admiralty provided good ships, he would support it.

SIR JAMES ELPHINSTONE

said, he must congratulate the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty on something like an approach to what formed the old naval policy of the country. He also agreed with the right hon. Gentleman that though we must look to private shipbuilding yards in cases of necessity, the work there and in the dockyards was as different as possible. They could not carry on the business of a Government like the business of a private concern—a Government being subject to political contingencies, from which private firms were wholly exempt, and therefore they were bound to employ a large permanent staff in the dockyards, a course of policy he had always advocated. The right hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers) had gone into a long discussion with respect to the controversy between himself and the right hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. Corry), as to who had discharged the dockyard labourers. All he (Sir James Elphinstone) could say was that when he was returned for Portsmouth in 1869, he found wandering about the streets hundreds of the very best of our artificers, and he then said he considered it a gross cruelty to turn such men adrift at such short warning, and thereby reduce the strength of our establishment, which had been carefully adapted to the exigencies of our times, and had been controlled and moulded by our best politicians. Now, after the discharge of these men there was a great want of dockyard artificers, and he could not see the economy of the measures which had been taken, for the right hon. Gentleman had discharged men whose pay was £33,000 a-year, involving £12,000 of pensions and £2,000 of gratuities, and men had to be taken on at an expense of £35,000. Our staff of artificers had been broken up, their homes had been destroyed, and since then we had been endeavouring to supply their places, but had succeeded in doing so most imperfectly. Then, again, with regard to boilers, a disgraceful state of affairs existed, and he believed it could not be contradicted that boiler-makers could not be found to supply the boilers wanted for the service. In consequence of that deficiency, the boilers of the Minotaur had been reduced from a pressure of 24 lb to 12 lb to the square inch, and he doubted whether with that power the vessel could draw off a lee shore in a strong wind and heavy sea. He should like to hear what progress the boilers had made, and whether it used not to be the practice to have a pair of spare boilers for each ship. Suppose we now had "a scare," the fact was, that we were now two years behind in the whole of our work, and at our present rate of production it should take that period to make up leeway and get our Navy into proper condition. The Government were fond of the tu quoque argument, and the First Lord recently twitted Lord Clarence Paget with having signed the Order restricting officers in the use of coal. Lord Clarence, however, was then Secretary to the Admiralty, and he imagined, had no more to do with framing the Order than the Gentlemen at the Table had to do with the debates of that House. It was thus that dust was thrown in the eyes of the public. Because a vessel on being pulled to pieces was found to have its bolts driven foul—a fault which indicated that unskilled labourers were employed—his right hon. Friend (Mr. Corry) was told that he ordered it to be built rapidly, as if it followed that there should be bad timber or that the bolts should be driven foul. But whenever a charge was made against the Government, it seemed to be answered by two hon. Members; and as regarded the explanation which the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Childers) had given as to the Osborne, he (Sir James Elphinstone) hoped the Papers would be laid upon the Table; because it was very desirable to know where the responsibility of one Government ended and that of another began. It was all very well for the First Lord of the Admiralty to raise a discussion as to the relative responsibility of persons at the Admiralty; but he (Sir James Elphinstone) did not wish to see dust thrown in the eyes of the public in that way. He concurred with his hon. Friend (Mr. G. Bentinck) as to the reckless destruction of wooden line-of-battle ships, most of them comparatively new. Now, an iron-clad, if pierced by a heavy gun, would have to go into harbour, for such a hole could not be repaired at sea, so that whatever Power could send out the most gunboats and pierce the iron-clads would have the advantage. The second line of defence—wooden ships—would then have to be fallen back on, and Admiral Farragut had expressed an opinion that our re- serve of fine wooden vessels should not be parted with; yet that had been done for the sake of petty economy. In the dockyards, too, there were now no corvettes or reliefs, and the foolish system was pursued of keeping ships out in hot climates and sending out crews to relieve them. Thus two sets of men had to be kept, and sometimes after all a ship had to be sent home. Last year the Bullfinch was sent up the Persian Gulf, and he inspected that vessel at Bombay in January, 1871, and found the thermometer on the main deck at 82 degrees. It amounted to manslaughter to send such vessels on duty in hot climates; there ought to be a particular class of ships for that purpose, as was the case under the rule of the East India Company. Again, to send out flying squadrons with directions to be at particular places at particular times, regardless of climate, winds, and currents, led to ships being knocked to pieces, and to a great loss of life by pulmonary complaints. He preferred the old plan of independent commands at foreign stations, for the manner in which young officers had dealt with difficult international questions which arose—as had been the case in China and the Polynesian Islands—was highly creditable, although he feared they were sometimes snubbed, instead of encouraged. He wished to take the opportunity upon that Vote of making reparation to Mr. Austin, whom, in the discussions last year on the sale of the dockyards in the river, he mentioned in a manner which he now regretted. He spoke on the faith of information on which he relied, but having since found that he was entirely mistaken, he begged Mr. Austin's pardon. At the same time, his opinion on the improvidence of the transaction remained unaltered. In conclusion, he must say he regretted that of the 16,000 tons of shipping to be built this year, only 5,000 were to be applied to small ships, in which we were lamentably deficient.

MR. SHAW-LEFEVRE

said, he thought it unnecessary, particularly after the figures quoted by the right hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers), to notice at any length the observations of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tyrone (Mr. Corry) in reference to the discharge of dockyard men. It was true that the number of men voted for the establishment in the time of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tyrone was only 18,000, but the right hon. Gentleman engaged a number of men in excess, and the number discharged within a few months was 4,508. It was that proceeding which was described by the right hon. Member for Pontefract as a real grievance for the dockyard men. The right hon. Member for Tyrone also addressed himself to the matter of the Osborne, with respect to which vessel a grave mistake was made in building it with light fir instead of with teak, but that was due to the orders of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. There had been, in connection with that vessel, some bad workmanship, which the right hon. Member for Tyrone attributed to the right hon. Member for Pontefract; but the latter right hon. Gentleman was able to show that all the orders for preparing the vessel emanated from the right hon. Member for Tyrone himself. The latter right hon. Gentleman had addressed himself to the subject of boilers. In the Navy Estimates of last year £90,000 were taken for boilers to be made by contract, and a sum of £30,000 was taken for the same purpose in the Estimates of the present year. Boilers had already been prepared for the Royal Oak, and for a considerable number of other larger vessels. They had been ordered for the Minotaur, but it was not a prudent course to provide a reserve of boilers for all existing vessels. The proper mode of proceeding was to order boilers just about the time when a vessel was likely to want them, because the boilers, if kept long, were liable to become deteriorated. With regard to iron-clads, he was in a position to state that it was intended to commence one at Chatham, and to complete 1,500 tons of her this year; and another at Portsmouth, of which 400 tons only would be completed. The vessel of that class intended to be built at Chatham would be an improved Sultan, she would be somewhat larger than the Sultan; and the hull would be protected by 11 inches of armour, whereas the Sultan had no more than nine inches. The guns would also be heavier, being 18-ton guns, and the engines would be so constructed as to lead to economy in the consumption of fuel, while giving a speed at the measured mile of 14 knots. As to the character of the iron-clad at Portsmouth, no decision had yet been arrived at, nor would be until it was absolutely necessary; for the science of shipbuilding was still so incomplete that it was always desirable to avoid committing themselves to any particular type of vessel until the last moment. With regard to the Fury, it was intended to proceed to complete that vessel as soon as possible; it being necessary to make allowance for the consideration he had referred to, she would not be completely finished until the Devastation was tried. It was hoped the Devastation would be tried this autumn, and it was still thought she would be; but there had been some delay in furnishing the armour-plates, and therefore she could not be completed so soon as intended. It was therefore only intended to build 500 tons of the Fury this year. The result was that it was intended to build 16,741 tons of vessels this year; of this, 9,028 tons were represented by vessels already commenced, the whole of which, except the Fury, it was intended to complete within the year; and that left 7,713 tons of new vessels to be laid down and advanced. Of this amount of tonnage, as he had before observed, 1,500 tons were of the iron-clad laid down at Chatham, 400 tons were at Portsmouth, and 500 tons were represented by the Fury. There were corvettes, of which it was proposed to build 1,277 tons within the year; there was a new corvette at Devonport which it was proposed to advance 730 tons; there were two new sloops at Pembroke, of which it was proposed to complete 850 tons; and there were two new ones at Chatham which it was proposed to advance 1,027 tons. The amount of tonnage in new vessels would be 7,713 tons, to be completed within the year; and at the commencement of next year, with the exception of the iron-clads already mentioned, the course would be tolerably free for the laying down of new vessels. As to the Cruiser, it was the opinion of the Admiralty that she was not suitable for an ordinary war vessel. The Admiralty had recognized a great want of sailing vessels for training purposes, and they proposed that the Cruiser should be fitted out simply as a sailing vessel, to be attached to the Mediterranean Squadron, and used for the training of seamen and young officers. For this purpose the engines would be taken out of her, and the necessary alterations would not involve any great expense.

SIR JOHN PAKINGTON

said, that the statement made with regard to the Osborne was one of the most extraordinary he had ever heard; it was of a most discreditable character, and it was necessary some further explanation should be given. They who sat upon that side of the House were under a disadvantage in dealing with naval subjects, because no sooner did they turn to the First Lord for an explanation and obtain it than they had to go over the same thing again with the former First Lord of the Admiralty, who was in office when the matter occurred. He understood that to-night there had been a good deal of the tu quoque—"It was not we who did it; it was you." He thought that there could be no more unimportant question for the public than which First Lord it was that did it; the important question was, whether it had been done; whether there had been gross abuse and negligence in the dockyards, for they should all aim at having good management in the dockyards. If he were rightly informed in regard to the Osborne, it was a shameful case, discreditable to the administration of the dockyards, and the House had a right to to look to those now in office for an assurance that such a case should not occur again. As there had been such an undue tendency to say "it was done by the other side," he would refer to a speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontefract, in 1869, in which he said— There will be no unarmoured ships in hand at the end of the financial year, except a small gun-vessel at Chatham, and the Osborne, which was to have been built in the course of 1869–70; but the building of which has been postponed in consequence of the expenditure incurred in the repair of the Victoria and Albert."—[3 Hansard, cxciv. 895.] The inference he drew from those words was that the superintendence of the building of this vessel was in the hands of the present Government; but whether that were so or not, speaking as a bystander and as one of the public, he would ask—Was it true that this vessel was built of bad material, and that when surveyed at Portsmouth as a new vessel she was so utterly worthless that she had to be almost built again? Were those facts? If so, whoever was responsible, they constituted a right to urge on the First Lord that there had been gross neglect and mismanagement. Bad materials had been put into a new vessel, and the public had been involved in very great and wholly unnecessary expense. He did not blame the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Goschen), who of all First Lords had had least to do with it; but in the position he now held he had a great responsibility; and they ought to have from him an assurance that care would be taken that such clumsy workmanship should not be again passed. With regard to the Fury, an assurance had been given that the expenditure upon her should be limited. On Friday last it was his fortune to go over the Devastation, and such an extraordinary mass of machinery was never looked at by the eyes of humanity. She might be a ship, but she did not look like one; she might go to sea, but she did not look as if she ever could, or as if she was ever intended to go to sea. So extraordinary a structure he never looked at. He spoke under correction, but he believed the result of this first experiment in the Devastation produced on the Committee which sat upon the subject a feeling on their part that we had better be cautious about the Fury. As he had before observed, the right hon. Gentleman said there was to be a very limited expenditure on the Fury; but he would ask why there need be any expenditure at all. It appeared to him that the Government ought to be very cautious in regard to proceeding with any vessel like the Devastation, and that it would be better to suspend all the intended expenditure on the Fury until they knew a little more about the success which might attend the experiment of the Devastation. Although he did not think the right hon. Gentleman opposite was so much carried away as his Predecessor by a desire to economize, yet there were several recent cases, something akin to that of the Osborne, which tended to bring anything like fair and legitimate economy as regarded naval affairs into ridicule. He would now make a few remarks on what had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman respecting an ironclad ship which the Admiralty were going to build, and which was to be an improved Sultan. A few days ago he saw the Sultan, and a noble ship she undoubtedly was; but the proposed improvement of the Sultan raised the very important question—Who is responsible for the construction of the Navy? Lately, Mr. Reed, a gentleman of great ability, held the responsible office of Chief Constructor of the Navy; but he was no longer at the Admiralty, in consequence of some unfortunate misunderstanding during the administration of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontefract. [Mr. CHILDERS: There was no misunderstanding.] There might have been no misunderstanding; but, at all events, Mr. Reed had left the Admiralty, and at the present moment their Navy was in a most unsatisfactory position as regarded the construction of iron-clad men-of-war. As a gallant Admiral had pointed out in a recently-published pamphlet, a struggle was going on between the gun on the one hand, and the ship on the other, and it was difficult to foresee what would be the ultimate result; but, at all events, the result at that moment of the various experiments which had been tried during the last few years with regard to their iron-clad men-of-war showed that, while we had incurred a gigantic expenditure—of which, however, he did not complain—the great question of the principles on which our iron-clads ought to be constructed remained a matter of great difficulty and doubt. He was not speaking in any party spirit or spirit of complaint, but from a feeling of anxiety respecting one of the most important questions affecting the power and interest of this country, which was still standing in a most unsatisfactory and unsettled position. They had, at least, a right to know who was responsible for the administration of this important branch of our naval department—who was responsible for the construction of our ships, and who was to determine whether the ship about to be built would really be an improved Sultan. In conclusion, he earnestly appealed to the right hon. Gentleman to inform the Committee who was to succeed Mr. Reed as the head of the constructive branch of the service.

MR. LAIRD

said, he also concurred with the right hon. Baronet who had just spoken as to the desirableness of knowing who was to be the responsible party for the constructive department of the Navy. He also wished to ascertain from the First Lord of the Admiralty whether the Osborne, was defective in design or in workmanship. If she were defective in design, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would state who designed her; and if her construction was faulty, who was to blame for that?

MR. GOSCHEN

said, the right hon. Baronet the Member for Droitwich had complained that his right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract had answered a question with regard to the Osborne, and had stated that some inconvenience arose from the fact that there were two right hon. Gentlemen on the Government side of the House who had filled the post of First Lord of the Admiralty. But precisely the same inconvenience arose with regard to the opposite side of the House, because when he (Mr. Goschen) had disposed of the right hon. Member for Tyrone he had to deal with the right hon. Baronet the Member for Droitwich. The question respecting the Osborne had been pointedly put by the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Laird), who asked whether the vessel was defective in design or in workmanship. Now, there could be no doubt the original mistake made in the Osborne was that the outer skin was of too soft a material—namely, fir. That mistake was committed by those who were responsible for the design and the specification of the ship, and it was stated that this was done during the tenure of office of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Corry). The inner skin was of hard wood, while the outer skin was of soft wood, and in driving in the bolts which passed through the soft to the hard material, a larger hole was made in the former than ought to have been the case, and leaks then occurred through that process. If, however, there had been more careful workmanship this might have been avoided; and although it was a mistake to have soft material, yet blame was attributable to the Pembroke Dockyard in reference to the work on this ship. Of all the cases which had come into notice during his tenure of office, that was the one he most regretted as regarded the management of a dockyard. He quite concurred with the re-mark of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tyrone, that however costly the work of the Admiralty might be, it was well done as a general rule. He trusted, therefore, neither the Committee nor the country would regard that as a fair specimen of dockyard work. This matter, however, he might remark, had nothing whatever to do with economy. As regarded the Fury, the right hon. Baronet the Member for Droitwich asked the Admiralty not to proceed with her, because he had no confidence in the Devastation. If the right hon. Gentleman would read the Report of the Committee of Designs, he would find that they recommended the Devastation as the type of the fighting ship of the future, and also that they warned the Government against proceeding at once with the Fury. The main question raised with regard to the Devastation was, whether the forecastle was high enough, and it was pointed out that in case this question was answered in the negative, a similar defect could easily be avoided in completing the Fury. Therefore, nothing would be done with the Fury which could cause any difficulty in changing the design in case it was found desirable to do so. The Admiralty was not proceeding in the dark with regard to this question. The designs had been examined by naval officers of the highest experience, as well as by eminent scientific men, who reported, perhaps, more strongly than the Admiralty altogether approved on ships of the Devastation class; in fact, it was already determined not to build any more ships of the Sultan and Hercules class. He did not know whether the right hon. Gentleman wished him to name the particular individual who was responsible for the design of the improved Sultan, but he would describe to the Committee the precise way in which the design was arrived at. The scientific gentlemen in the Constructor's department prepared the plans, and the Committee of Designs paid a very high compliment in their Report to Mr. Barnaby, and the gentlemen who assisted him. The designs had also been submitted to naval officers who were perfectly conversant with the construction of the Sultan, and were able to make suggestions for the improvement of the model on which she was built. The main difference between the Sultan and the improved vessel was, that in the latter the armour-plating would be thicker, and her bow-fire would consist of four 18-ton guns instead of two guns of 12 tons each.

SIR JOHN PAKINGTON

said, he did not intend for a moment to depreciate the ability of Mr. Barnaby, or of the gentlemen associated with him; but what the right hon. Gentleman had stated did not alter his opinion that at the present time the state of the Construction department at the Admiralty was far from being satisfactory.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, he ought to have added to what he had just said that the re-construction of the Construction and the Control departments of the Admiralty, had for the last six or nine months been a subject of anxiety at the Admiralty. It had been found impossible to deal with the subject pending certain inquiries which were still proceeding, and which affected the Admiralty to a certain extent. With regard to the appointment of a new Constructor, he did not think it would be well to proceed with that until he had had a brief opportunity of consulting whoever might be hereafter appointed Controller, as to the best arrangements to be made for the future.

MR. SCOURFIELD

wished to know clearly who was responsible for the fact that in building the Osborne fir was used instead of teak?

MR. GOSCHEN

said, the suggestion was made to the Admiralty by the dockyard officials, and adopted.

MR. LIDDELL

, in reference to the right hon. Gentleman's statement as to the Sultan, said, he wished to ask in the name of common sense, whether it was wise to build such vessels, according to the idea of a sailing ship, or, whether they ought not rather to build such vessels without any reference to their sailing power, but merely with regard to their being guided by steam, and upon which they would be able to put as much armour as would be necessary? Authorities on the matter, who saw her, considered she was unsafe to send to sea under sail. He wished to know how long the present competition between gun and iron was to continue? Iron ships were constructed to resist artillery, and then a gun was invented to sink the ship, and he asked in the cause of economy whether the time had not come for stopping the competition?—that they should not build ships for carrying these enormous masses of iron solely, but for the purpose of fighting our battles—ships easily armed and capable of resisting, if possible, the artillery of the day, but at all events they should not build sailing ships that were not seaworthy.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, the question had been carefully considered both by the Admiralty, and the Committee of Designs, and the conclusion arrived at was that it was impossible to tell where the services of fighting ships would be required, it would not be wise to rely upon steam vessels which could only carry a limited quantity of fuel, and were thus confined to the range of their coaling depôts.

SIR JOHN HAY

said, he agreed with the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Goschen) as to the undesirability of discarding sailing ships of war, and wished to urge further the importance of not building fighting ships with too low freeboards. His hon. Friend the Member for South Northumberland not only advocated the necessity of doing away with masts altogether, but of adopting a low freeboard and heavy armour. But experience had shown that such ships were in danger in heavy seas, and the occasional advantage which they would possess when opposed to an enemy would scarcely compensate for the continual disadvantages to which they would be exposed. He had taken occasion at an earlier period of the Session to allude to our wooden iron-clads. At that time it was intended to repair the Prince Consort, but since then that intention, as he understood, had been abandoned, and as others might be in the same faulty condition, it might perhaps be as well that the right hon. Gentleman should give some information about the state of the remaining vessels which went to swell the apparent number of our iron-clad fleet. With regard to the Devastation, the Thunderer, and the Fury, he thought the right hon. Gentleman had scarcely carried the Committee with him as to the advisability of building the three vessels at once. The design had not as yet been tried either in the case of the Devastation or the Thunderer, and, therefore, it might perhaps be as well to delay the expenditure on the Fury till it was seen what kind of vessels the two former turned out to be. It also appeared that the plan to be adopted with regard to the Cyclops was to be pursued in the case of two other ships of the same class.

MR. SHAW-LEFEVRE

explained that though the Estimates were framed to include the two other vessels, it was only intended at present to proceed with the Cyclops, and that the question with regard to the other two vessels remained undetermined.

SIR JOHN HAY

said, he could not regard the hon. Gentleman's explanation as thoroughly satisfactory. It had been stated that shortly before the Conservative Government left office his right hon. Friend near him (Mr. Corry) had some correspondence with Pembroke Yard with respect to the construction of a light vessel for a Royal yacht. But the vessel was not begun, and when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontefract came into office, he postponed the building of the vessel. When, therefore, it was determined to construct the vessel, the designs, which had never received the approval of the Chief Controller of the Navy or the Chief Constructor, ought to have been revised. He trusted that the matter would receive careful consideration.

MR. CHILDERS

said, that when he took office he found that the Osborne had been commenced on details absolutely approved of by his predecessors. Her progress was delayed for some time, and when it was re-commenced, it was carried out on the instructions given by his right hon. Friend opposite.

SIR JOHN HAY

said, he was not aware that any instructions were given, or that the Osborne had been commenced. The matter was earnestly and carefully considered.

MR. CHILDERS

said, he could only repeat that the most precise instructions were given by his predecessors, and he had not altered them. The question of good workmanship was quite distinct.

MR. CORRY

said, there could be no objection to the use of fir, provided the proper quality was used.

MR. GOSCHEN

, in reply to the remarks of the hon. and gallant Baronet (Sir John Hay), said, that with regard to the Osborne, it was distinctly asserted by those competent to determine upon the matter, not that the fir used in the construction of the ship was bad, but that it was a mistake to employ such a soft wood as fir at all. With regard to the Thunderer and the Fury, only 386 tons of the former vessel remained to be completed at Pembroke, and the work which it was proposed to execute on the Fury would embrace no controverted point of naval architecture. He was informed that the work to be done upon her during the next month or two would enable her to be turned into any kind of iron-clad; and he might also take that opportunity of informing them that it was not proposed to repair the Prince Consort this year. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tyrone laid down six of the Audacious class, which had gone a long way to replace the wooden ships, and now it was proposed to bund two iron-clads besides the Fury; and concurring in what had been stated—that it would be unwise to proceed further with iron-clads until they had obtained further information, the subject had been under the consideration of the Board.

LORD HENRY SCOTT

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty, whether, in the face of the fact that a 50-ton iron gun could be manufactured which could pierce any iron-clad ship afloat, he was prepared to go on with the construction of iron-clad vessels?

MR. GOSCHEN

said, that 50-ton guns had not yet been constructed, nor a ship that could carry them; in fact, it was a problem of difficult solution. Our ships were mainly designed to fight others, and we should not be justified in altogether refusing to build iron-clads which were strong enough to meet all the existing iron-clads of other Powers, simply because there was a possibility of a 50-ton gun being hereafter invented, and ships built to carry them. Experiments, however, would be instituted by the Admiralty to elucidate the question raised by Admirals Elliot and Ryder.

MR. RYLANDS

said, he did not think it right to put the Committee to the trouble of dividing, especially as the First Lord had modified some of the statements which he had made in introducing the Navy Estimates. He was glad to have it understood that the additional number of men put on at the time of the panic in 1870, were only to be considered as being maintained for a temporary purpose, and that the number would be reduced to the maximum proposed by the right hon. Member for Pontefract. Before sitting down, he wished to explain that his object was not to strike at the maintenance of Government dockyards, as he was quite aware of the necessity of keeping up the dockyards for the repairs and re-fitting of the Fleet; but he was anxious to urge upon the Committee the desirableness of limiting, as far as possible, the manufacture of vessels and stores by the Government, and of purchasing from pri- vate manufacturers and shipbuilders, wherever it could be done advantageously. He thought it had been clearly shown that the cost of manufacturing in the dockyards was considerably higher than in private yards. In withdrawing his Amendment, he hoped that good might arise out of the long discussion which had taken place.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Original Question put, and agreed to.

(3.) £68,344, Victualling Yards.

MR. CORRY

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty, whether his attention had been directed to the mooted question of the propriety of having the victualling yards placed under naval superintendence; the change introduced in 1869–70 having been objected to by all the naval authorities who were consulted on the subject, including Sir Sydney Dacres, the first naval adviser of the Crown? Those authorities were in favour of his opinion, which was, that those establishments should be placed under naval management not only in reference to the service in time of peace, but more especially with reference to the possible contingency of war.

MR. CHILDERS

, referring to the change made in 1869 and 1870 in that matter, said, that formerly at Portsmouth and Devonport a naval officer superintended both the hospital and the victualling yard, the hospital at Chatham being under medical superintendence. The conclusion at which he had arrived was that it would be better to have the hospitals placed under the superintendence of medical officers, both at Devon-port and Portsmouth, and the question then arose whether the Captain superintendent should be retained for the extremely limited duties of the victualling. He arrived at the conclusion that this was not expedient. His right hon. Friend, however, was not quite accurate in saying that the change was objected to by all the naval officers consulted. Of those who were strongly in favour of the change was Lord John Hay, the junior Naval Lord directly superintending this department.

LORD HENRY LENNOX

said, he must support the view taken by his right hon. Friend (Mr. Corry). He entirely differed from the right hon. Member for Pontefract as to the naval element in the management of those hospitals. There was a great body of naval evidence in favour of the old system, and he hoped that the present First Lord of the Admiralty would consent to revert to it.

SIR JOHN HAY

remarked that at the time the Duke of Somerset's Committee was sitting the then Secretary to the Admiralty had given evidence that nine persons out of ten who had been consulted, including Sir James Hope and Sir William Martin, had stated that it was a mistake to take away the naval officers from these yards; and not only that, but the Duke of Somerset himself and Sir Sydney Dacres were of the same opinion. On the only occasion when any pressure had been put upon the department—namely, when a quantity of provisions had to be sent to Paris, the undertaking was but imperfectly carried out in consequence of this injudicious change. In his own opinion the appointment of civilians in the place of naval officers over these yards had been most unsatisfactory.

SIR JAMES ELPHINSTONE

said, he entirely agreed with the right hon. Baronet who had spoken last, that the efficiency of this branch of the Department had suffered from the appointment of civilians in place of naval men over it. That was a specimen of the way in which the paltry reduction in the aggregate Estimates had been made to enable the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government to fulfil his pledge to reduce the amount of the Estimates, and that end had been brought about by crippling the efficiency of every branch of the service he had touched. He trusted the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty would revert to the old practice with respect to the victualling yards, and would again place them under the control of experienced naval officers in place of second-class clerks.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, that in view of the fact that nothing of an unsatisfactory character had occurred at the victualling yards during his term of office, he must decline to put an end to the existing system, which he thought had been proved to work well, until it had had, at all events, a fair trial.

SIR JAMES ELPHINSTONE

remarked that the only time that any strain had been put upon that system it had broken down.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, on the contrary, his opinion was that it did not break down.

MR. CORRY

said, whatever the right hon. Gentleman might think, it was in the evidence before the Duke of Somerset's Committee, that the civil authorities had forgotten that it was necessary to provide a ship when provisions were be carried across the water.

Vote agreed to.

(4.) £59,926, Medical Establishments.

SIR JOHN HAY

wished to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty how it was that when 11 of the crew of the Rinaldo were wounded in an attack upon a piratical community on the coast of Sumatra there was no medical man on board to attend to them? It was of the first importance that when ships were ordered on such expeditions they should carry surgeons.

MR. GOSCHEN

explained that on the occasion in question the chief surgeon belonging to the Rinaldo had been directed by the Commander in Chief in China to attend to the hospital at Hong Kong, and that at the same time the assistant surgeon was laid up by illness at Singapore.

DR. BREWER

said, he should like to know what had been the cause of the want of dental efficiency in both services, and whether it was contemplated to have any dental service in the establishment?

MR. SHAW-LEFEVRE

said, the subject of dental surgery as practised in the Navy had not been specially brought under the notice of the Admiralty. He would suggest, however, that the hon. Gentleman should do so himself.

Vote agreed to.

(5.) £18,728, Marine Divisions.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £928,510, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Expense of Naval Stores for Building, Repairing, and Outfitting the Fleet and Coast Guard, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1873.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £818,626, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Expense of Half Pay, Reserved, and Retired Pay to Officers of the Navy and Royal Marines, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1873,

MR. CORRY

said, he must object to proceeding with it, because he wished to raise an important question as to the retirement of naval officers.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—(Sir James Elphinstone.)

MR. GOSCHEN

urged that the discussion should proceed at once.

LORD HENRY LENNOX

said, he also objected to the Vote being discussed, and would recommend that the next Vote, No. 16, should be taken.

MR. CORRY

again urged his objection that it was too late—midnight—to discuss the question of naval retirement.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, that, under the circumstances, he would consent to postpone the Vote.

Question put, and negatived.

Original Question again proposed.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

(6.) £638,311, Military Pensions and Allowances.

SIR JAMES ELPHINSTONE

took occasion to call attention to the case of Mr. Burgess, late engineer of Her Majesty's ship of war Lucifer, to whom, at the outset of the Crimean War, the Russian Government, he being at the time in their service, offered a large salary to remain, which he declined to accept, on the ground that he could not work against his own country. He then found his way home to England, and served for 17 years, and found himself discharged from the Navy at the age of 75, with only a bonus of £100. He had a wife who was 70 years of age, and he saw nothing between them and the workhouse, although he had acted so nobly, and was one of the most honourable and finest fellows he had ever seen. If the Government did not come to his aid, all he could say was that he should ask his friends to join him in the endeavour to relieve him, so that he might be enabled to pass the rest of his days respectably. He must do the Admiralty the justice to say that they had done their best with the Treasury to put the matter right, but they were met with difficulties arising out of the Superannuation Act.

MR. SHAW-LEFEVRE

said, that the hon. and gallant Baronet was correct in saying that the difficulty in the case was that it did not come under the provisions of the Superannuation Act, and that the Government could not do as the hon. and gallant Baronet wished without violating the law. There was no way of obtaining a pension for Mr. Burgess except by asking the House of Commons for a Vote for the purpose.

MR. G. BENTINCK

said, he thought the case was one of entirely an exceptional character. Mr. Burgess had given up a lucrative employment in a foreign country because he would not work against his own, and our honour required that his claim should not be neglected.

MR. LIDDELL

said, he supported the claim, and must contend that it would be most impolitic to do anything which would tend to discourage men like Mr. Burgess from coming back to give their services to the country in time of emergency.

MR. A. GUEST

said, he would suggest that for a sum of £200 or £300 an annuity might be purchased which would enable Mr. Burgess to end his days in comfort. He further thought it was impossible to decide in any other way than in favour of the policy of so acting as to hold out an inducement to others to follow his example.

MR. GOSCHEN

said, that the Admiralty and the Treasury had done the best they could under the circumstances, but that the Government had not felt justified in going beyond the limits of the law in dealing with the case. After the views which had been expressed with respect to it, however, he would bring it again under the consideration of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, while he must add that it would be, in his opinion, a most dangerous precedent. But individual eases which were not met by the Act of Parliament should, as they arose, be brought before that House.

MR. R. N. FOWLER

said, he thought the case one deserving of consideration. The gentleman referred to had given up a lucrative position in the Russian service, and having served his country for 17 years was in his old age left without the means of maintaining himself. The circumstances showed that he was a man who deserved well of his country.

SIR JOHN HAY

wished to know, whether the right hon. Gentleman had considered the question of the number of Admiralty clerks with reference to which he had been in communication with the right hon. Gentleman? In the Estimates for 1868–9, the number of clerks and writers at the Admiralty was 445; it was now 607.

MR. SHAW-LEFEVRE

said, the figures quoted by the hon. Baronet were quite erroneous, and not to be relied upon. He would, however, grant the hon. and gallant Baronet the Return he wished for.

In answer to Mr. DICKINSON,

MR. GOSCHEN

said, the question of pensions was taken into consideration on the question of the pay of seamen and marines. The pay of seamen of the Royal Navy was less than that of other seamen, but they had the prospect of pensions held out to them. If the pensions were struck off, their wages must be increased in proportion. The Admiralty attended to the question of pensions with the greatest care. No more pensions were given than absolutely necessary.

MR. DICKINSON

said, he would suggest that for the sake of diminishing drunkenness on the part of the pensioners, arrangements should be made to pay their pensions weekly instead of monthly.

Vote agreed to.

(7.) £309,185, Civil Pensions.

(8.) £156,700, Freight of Ships (Army Department).

House resumed.

Resolutions to be reported To-morrow; Committee to sit again upon Wednesday.