A curious incident in the debate was Mr. Bentinck's citation -
of the Pall Mall's statement that long before the late Government retired, SirAlexanderMilne and his professional colleagues laid their view as to the need of considerable further outlay on the Navy be- fore Mr. Goschen, and that Mr. Goachen laid the statement before the Cabinet, not being willing to ignore the representations made to him on his own authority. That, said Mr. Bentick, is a state- ment which is tolerably clear, whereon Mr. Goschen interposed,— " and intolerably false,"much to the grief of the Pall Mall, which desires to make out that it comes to much the same thing whether a permanent officer of the department gives his Chief advice before the Estimates are finally settled, which that Chief partly accepts and partly rejects, or whether the same officer lodges a formal protest with him on the insufficiency of the Naval Estimates, which the First Lord, shrinking from- deciding the matter by his own authority (in fear, of course,. of the Prime Minister's economy- mania), lays before the Cabinet. Now it strikes us that the difference between the false rumour and the truth, is precisely the difference between the normal action of a department and a most grave and em- phatic departure from it, taken on purpose to compel attention to a menacing peril ; and further, that it is the difference between a First Lord who feels that he may judge of the requirements of the Navy for himself, and one who stands in such fear of his col- leagues that he shirks the responsibility. If that makes no kind of difference between truth and grossly misleading error, what does?
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