Mr. Ward Hunt, the new First Lord of the Admiralty,
brought forward his Estimates on Monday. They are, with one slight exception, Mr. Goschen's estimates, and amount to a demand - for £10,000,000 sterling for the Navy. The precise figure is 19,966,485. Mr. Hunt, however, drew a gloomy picture of the state of the Navy, declaring that of our 41 ironelads only 18 can be considered effective for the service of this year, the rest being under repairs for boilers or injured hulls, or of little use in any way. He feared supplementary estimates would be necessary, as demands were made which he could not resist, and he would never be a party to a paper Navy. Mr. Reed, though more just to the late Government, thought it impossible to send the 60,000 men voted to sea for ten millions a year. Sir John Hay made one of his usual technical speeches, declaring that this ship and that ship were in a bad condition—a mushroom in the Minotaur' had grown 24 feet high—and asserting that the Navy was in a deplorable state. Mr. Goschen made a speech complete as a Parliamentary answer, but as usual with him, so candid that his audience believed Mr. Hunt's case must have something in it. He entirely admitted the rapid deterioration of the ironclacls, the short lives of their boilers, and the great increase in the cost of all materials, and told Mr. Hunt that to abuse the parsimony of the Liberal Government, and then not demand part of their surplus, was insufferable. He pointed out, however, the key to the situation,—that all the beat ships, the fighting monsters, were admitted to be efficient, and that we possessed a fleet which could at any moment clear the Channel.
