A discussion, carious because illustrating the inconsistency o the House
of Commons on Admiralty matters, took place with reference to the Ariadne and the use of lifeboats at sea, yesterday week. Mr. Childers has been generally and bitterly accused of weakening "the Naval element" in the Admiralty, and has been told that on all professional matters the Naval element ought to be supreme. It is impossible to conceive a more strictly profes- sional detail than the kind of boats to be used in a man-of-war. Yet the outcry as to this accident to the Ariadne is raised solely on the ground that the civilians did not force lifeboats with a particular apparatus on the sailors against their will. The last discussion about it was under Mr. Corry's Administration in 1868, when Mr. Corry yielded to his own Sea Lords. If Mr. Childers had adopted the Board of Trade rules in the teeth of his Naval advisers, and the accident had then happened with a Clifford apparatus, what a chorus of naval indignation there would have been ! Yet Mr. Bentinck and others contended that it was all due to placing a civilian at the head of the Admiralty. Political scolds appear to be quite as willing to preach from a text which directly attacks, as from one which sustains, their conclusion.
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