It will in due time be officered by a class of men eminently scientific, but with no relations necessarily with society; while the militia is withdrawn from all local influences, and placed under the immediate command of the Secretary of War. Thus, in the nineteenth century, we have a large standing army established in England, contrary to all the traditions of the land, and that by a Liberal government, and with the warm acclamations of the Liberal party.
Let us look what they have done with the Admiralty. You remember, in this country especially, the denunciations of the profligate expenditure of the Conservative government, and you have since had an opportunity of comparing it with the gentler burden of Liberal estimates. The navy was not merely an instance of profligate expenditure, but of incompetent and inadequate management. A great revolution was promised in its administration. A gentleman [Mr. Childers], almost unknown to English politics, was strangely preferred to one of the highest places in the councils of her Majesty. He set to at his task with ruthless activity. The Consultative Council, under which Nelson had gained all his victories, was dissolved. The Secretaryship of the Admiralty, an office which exercised a complete supervision over every division of that great department,—an office which was to the Admiralty what the Secretary of State is to the kingdom,—which, in the qualities which it required and the duties which it fulfilled, was rightly a stepping-stone to the cabinet, as in the instances of Lord Halifax, Lord Herbert, and many others—was reduced to absolute insignificance. Even the office of Control, which of all others required a position of independence, and on which the safety of the navy mainly depended, was deprived of all its important attributes. For two years the Opposition called the attention of Parliament to these destructive changes, but Parliament and the nation were alike insensible. Full of other business, they could not give a thought to what they looked upon merely as captious criticism. It requires a great disaster to command the attention of England; and when the “Captain” was lost, and when they had the detail of the perilous voyage of the “Megara,” then public indignation demanded a complete change in this renovating administration of the navy.[57]
