Childers on Admiralty Reform

The following is a speech given by The Right Honourable H. C. E. Childers on Admiralty Reform in the House of Commons on 18 March, 1872.

Speech

Sir, it is somewhat disheartening, after the attention so long devoted by the public to this question, to have to address so thin a House, and it is no consolation that those who have for some time preceded me have been addressing still more empty benches. I regret this the more, inasmuch as two years, within some weeks, have passed since I last spoke here; and, during that time, from a misfortune beyond my control, I have not only been absent, but have, till recently, been entirely unacquainted with the discussions which have been raised as to matters in which I was concerned. I feel, therefore, no little discouragement in dealing with this important question; but I am sure I shall receive the fullest indulgence from both sides of the House in the observations which it is my duty to make. My right hon. Friend (Mr. Corry) has spoken with great moderation, and has said much with which I concur. He is not only "the Father of the House," but in regard to naval and Admiralty affairs speaks with an authority which I should be the last to dispute, and with a degree of personal knowledge second to none. I do not complain, but am rather glad that he repeated so much that he had stated in discussions last year; but, while thanking him for enabling me to hear and reply to some parts of those speeches, which, whatever they may have seemed to others, were not crambe repetita to me, he will forgive me for reminding him that the House is under some disadvantage with respect to a considerable portion of his speech. He alluded in much detail to the evidence taken before the Megæra Commission; but, though he and I, by the courtesy of my right hon. Friend the First Lord, have had an opportunity of seeing that evidence, it is not in the hands of the House generally; and it is uphill work to discuss Papers and make references to evidence to which other hon. Members have not access. Another disadvantage is, that we are thus needlessly anticipating the debate which is to come off after Easter, on the Motion of the noble Lord the Member for Chichester, running over much of the same ground. I appreciate the force of my right hon. Friend's reasons for raising this discussion; but it would have been more convenient had he accepted the offer of my right hon. Friend the First Lord, when we should have had all the advantages of a night like the present, while the House would have been able to understand what must now be utterly unintelligible. My right hon. Friend probably, however, deemed that his speech would lose all its interest if it came later; and, therefore, I will now do my best to discuss the question involved in the Motion. But before I do so, I wish to get rid of some of what I may call the fringe of the question, to which my right hon. Friend attached considerable importance, but which I think I may very briefly dispose of. In dwelling on the administration of the Admiralty, with which I was connected for some years, he repeated the charge brought against me last year by more than one hon. Member as to a state of confusion and a want of harmony resulting from the altered administration, and he referred especially as one of the vices of the change, to the want of acquaintance with what was going on from time to time on the part of individual members of the Board at Whitehall; and more especially to the standstill to which, from this ignorance of the current business, the machine had been, or would be brought, by the absence for more than a short time of the First Lord. Well, with regard to the last point, my right hon. Friend is certainly under a mistake; because in the year 1869 I was absent for a very considerable time—indeed, I think I was even out of the country for no less than six weeks—and I can answer for it that the machine worked perfectly well. Therefore, as far as the ordinary absence of the First Lord is concerned, I do not think there is any foundation for the statement which has been made. But, then, it is said there is a want of harmony caused by the present arrangements of the Admiralty—that different members of the Department do not know what is going on, and that hence arise conflicting decisions and action. Now, I do not pretend that in every case in the many thousand transactions of the Admiralty no such inconvenience has occurred; but it is not the result of my changes. Indeed, on the contrary, I think I can show that those inconveniences existed formerly to a much greater degree than they do at present. I will only give a single illustration, although I can, if I choose, bring forward a good many. In giving this illustration, I cannot help mentioning well-known names; but I desire it to be clearly understood that I shall avoid raising any personal question whatever, especially as to the individuals with whom it was my misfortune to have certain differences during my tenure of office; and I desire to thank my right hon. Friend for having avoided all references of that kind. But while I shall on the present occasion avoid alluding to those differences, yet if any hon. Member has any charges to make against me on the subject of those differences, and thinks fit to bring them before the House, I am prepared to meet him and to justify my conduct. The particular illustration of utter want of harmony to which I was about to allude is that of the resignation sent by Mr. Reed, not to me, but to my right hon. Friend; and as there is some novelty about it, perhaps the House will allow me to describe the affair at some length. In 1863 Mr. Reed was appointed Chief Constructor of the Navy by the Duke of Somerset. Well, towards the close of the year 1866 he applied for an increase of salary, undoubtedly well-earned, and also for a grant of money. In passing, I may say I entirely sympathize with those hon. Gentlemen who advocate good salaries for the number of officers we really require, rather than inadequate salaries for numbers whom we do not require. Well, after a preliminary discussion, in which my right hon. Friend the Member for Droitwich (Sir John Pakington) and others took part, Mr. Heed was informed on the 7th of February, 1867, that his statements and the reports upon them would receive the careful consideration of their Lordships. This careful consideration was so careful that it seems the matter was altogether forgotten for more than a year, for my right hon. Friend on the 9th of April, 1868, wrote this Minute—"Why are these papers which ought to have been settled 14 months ago brought up now?" I do not know why they were not; and yet this was the system under which everybody knew what was going on. Towards the end of the same month, Mr. Reed wrote to request the Secretary to the Admiralty to inform their Lordships that more than a year had elapsed since they intimated that they would give their attention to the case, and he expressed a hope that it might be further considered. Well, three more months passed by, and, as nothing was done, Mr. Reed, in despair, resigned his office, and became a candidate for the borough of Pembroke. Two or three days afterwards he withdrew his resignation, and the Press was much surprised, and, indeed, puzzled, by the occurrence. For instance, on the 5th of August The Times, discussing Mr. Reed's resignation, and the reason of his returning to his office and giving up his candidature for Pembroke, made a very ingenious suggestion—namely, that it had something to do with turret-ships; that he had differed with the Admiralty, but that the Board preferred a quiet life to their own opinions. The real cause, however, was this—when Mr. Reed resigned towards the end of July the Board was very frightened, and passed a Minute at once to the effect that a letter should be written to the Treasury requesting that a considerable sum of money should be given to him. Upon this, Mr. Reed, to use his own words, said—

I foresaw and said that the Treasury might object, and that for this and other reasons I would prefer to leave and go forward with my candidature. The Controller then told me that the First Lord of the Admiralty had seen the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that no objection would be made. Upon that assurance I acted, and but for that I should most certainly not have remained at the Admiralty and relinquished my Parliamentary prospects.

There is also on record a Minute by the Controller, saying that he told Mr. Reed nothing but what he was authorized by the Board to tell, and that Mr. Reed was fully justified in believing that the matter was settled and the arrangement finally made. Accordingly, on the 5th of August, 1868, a letter was written to the Treasury to say that the Board of Admiralty thought Mr. Reed had established his claim, and to request that the sum of £5,000 should be paid to him. I do not know what part my right hon. Friend had in all this, but Mr. Reed, at any rate, was satisfied with the assurances given to him. Well, the thing went on; all August passed, all September passed, all October passed; but at the end of October, however, just before the General Election, he received a letter from the Treasury saying that their Lordships had considered the question, and must decline to allow the money. The House will imagine, therefore, in what frame of mind Mr. Reed naturally was when I succeeded my right hon. Friend. About three months after the money had been clearly promised to Mr. Reed, that gentleman was told that the payment could not be allowed, and it is not to be wondered at that he considered himself "jockeyed." It is true that a Minute was left for me by my predecessor, to the effect that Mr. Reed ought to have the money; and as I was of the same opinion, I ultimately succeeded in obtaining it for him. But I think this is a very fair illustration of the manner in which, even under, forsooth, the perfect system of administration by Boards, utter confusion and misunderstanding arises, to my mind frequently in consequence of that system. Now I will pass to the main question. My right hon. Friend has done me the justice to say that from the first I was explicit as to the course of policy we proposed to adopt, and I must admit he has not charged me with having in the least degree departed from the principles which I laid down a few days after taking office. I can say with perfect sincerity that when I took office at the end of the year 1868, and determined to do my best to apply those principles which I have never hesitated to advocate in this House, I knew I was undertaking a most difficult task, in which the chances were that I should not entirely succeed. I think my hon. Friend the Secretary to the Admiralty (Mr. Shaw-Lefevre), in a speech delivered in the country a short time ago, referred to the blasts, or gusts, which at the time were blowing through the Department at Whitehall. Judging from my own experience at Whitehall, that was a very moderate description of the state of affairs there. My impression is, that for the last 10 or 12 years a perpetual cyclone has been blowing at Whitehall, and, unlike other cyclones, you are not even sure of a calm when you get into the middle of it. I say nothing as to the causes of these severe gales, but it has been said over and over again that there are two or three, if not five or six, parties in the building. That there were differences of opinion was patent to everyone, nor was it to be denied that we lived there in a sort of glass case, open to any amount of observation from without, and this fact was brought home to our minds, not in a very agreeable manner, pretty well from morning to night. I was perfectly aware of that state of things; but nevertheless I was determined to follow out in the Department the principles which had been advocated by naval reformers both in this House and out of it. The better organization of the Department has been the subject of discussion frequently during the present generation, and two or three hon. Gentlemen who have preceded me referred to these discussions. I will, myself, refer to one or two a little more in detail than has yet obtained. In doing so, however, I must say that I am sorry to detain the House by entering upon a history of the subject; but its importance must be my excuse. I will take as my starting point the reform effected in Admiralty administration in 1832 by Sir James Graham, the wisdom of which, as far as it went, I entirely concur in, as will, I also think, my right hon. Friend; the state of things which existed before that date being such as would be intolerable at the present day. Before that time there were three Admiralty Boards in existence—the Admiralty Board proper, a Navy Board, and a Victualling Board—the resulting confusion and want of responsibility between these almost rival Boards being so great, that Parliament was at length obliged to step in and put an end to the system under which they existed. Sir James Graham, although he effected a great deal, failed to do all that was wanted, because in abolishing the Navy and the Victualling Boards he threw all their work upon the Admiralty Board, without perceiving that in all probability the latter would be over weighted, and that his plan would lead to exactly the evils which it was my duty to explain to the House on a former occasion as being in existence down to a recent period. He was duly warned of this by several of the then Members of this House, who, being thoroughly conversant with naval affairs, were fully entitled to speak upon the subject. Sir George Clerk, an undoubted authority on such matters, in criticizing the proposals in Sir James Graham's Bill, pointed out that the Board of Admiralty would inevitably be overburdened by the additions they would make to its labours, while responsibility, by being diffused over the whole Board, would not attach sufficiently to any one of its members. Sir Byam Martin, again, said that the one marked vice of the proposed change was, that the Controller of the Navy was not placed upon the Board of Admiralty, and Sir George Cockburn and Mr. Goulbourn used words which might almost be repeated in reference to the present debate. The former said that the plan would not secure the public service against mismanagement or against the waste of public money, because no Lord of the Admiralty per se could be made responsible under it. That is precisely what has been said of the whole system up to the present day. Mr. Goulbourn used language similar in its purport. Did not these warnings point exactly to the shortcomings of the old Admiralty system, which is now admitted by universal consent to have failed? My right hon. Friend the Member for Tyrone (Mr. Corry) has said that I did not exactly represent with accuracy Sir James Graham's own opinions before the Megæra Commission. What I stated in my evidence was, that Sir James Graham had used words to the effect that the Board would only work satisfactorily when it acted as little like a Board as possible. In this I was strictly accurate, and I have always been struck by Sir James Graham's appreciation of the real difficulty of his own plan, and the extent to which it had been practically altered. However, for some years after 1832 the controversy slept to a certain extent—or, at all events, it was not keen enough to come prominently forward until about 12 years ago; but from then down to the present time, both in and outside of the House, there has been a constant expression of opinion on the part of all naval reformers, that the system recently abolished was a bad one, and that a reform in a particular direction ought to be made. It will be within the recollection of all hon. Members of this House who take an interest in naval affairs, that in 1861 a small book was published, entitled, Admiralty Administration; its Faults and Defaults; which, I believe, was written by Admiral Denman, and which expressed, I have reason to know, the feeling of a very large body of naval officers, who met more than once in consultation with hon. Members of this House, and whose views obtained a certain form and substance. The hon. Baronet the Member for Portsmouth (Sir James Elphinstone) will recollect all about the work, because his name has been connected very intimately with it—in fact, he has endorsed a late edition of it with his authority. That book professed to express the feeling of the Navy as to the best way in which it could be administered, and it is singular how remarkably the recommendations contained in it tally with the reforms that have since been made. It advocated the appointment of a Minister possessing complete responsibility for the administration of the affairs of the Admiralty, and it pointed out that to surround a Minister with a Board, none of the members of which were to incur individual responsibility, and to set them to manage a mass of heterogeneous matter comprehending very many details, was the worst form of administration which could be adopted; and it further stated that collective responsibility was a cloak to cover blunders, and was destructive to efficiency. It proposed as a remedy for the then existing state of things the division of the Admiralty into three great departments; the first of which was to be under the control of a Captain General, comprising the management of the Fleet, discipline, manning, Reserves, Marine, and medical arrangements generally; the second, under a Surveyor General, comprising contractors' and engineers' works, and the general management of the dockyards; while the third was to be under civil control, in the shape of a Controller, with an Accountant General under him, comprehending all matters of business connected with the purchase of naval stores. These three officers we now possess, but under different names. It was further suggested that there should be a sort of Naval Council, but not an executive one, which was to form a sort of standing Commission of Naval Inquiry. That is the nature of the proposal contained in the book to which I have alluded, and I shall show by-and-by, with regard to the exact business of the Board, how far we were right in the arrangement we made about that tripartite system—a system which, in my opinion, is thoroughly calculated to solve the question of the administration of the Admiralty. Upon this subject there were many interesting debates in Parliament, and I have gone carefully through them, and done my best to gather from them what was the general opinion at the time with regard to naval reform. In 1860, no less than six Gentlemen spoke advocating such reform, but it is a remarkable fact that they all agreed in recommending one particular reform, which appears to have got into disgrace to-night—namely, that the Controller should be a member of the Board. Among the Gentlemen who gave that recommendation was, first of all, the right hon. Member for Droitwich, who said it would be a most excellent plan to have the Controller at the Board. Next came my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, who thought the Controller the most important man at the Admiralty, and one who undoubtedly ought to be a member of the Board. Then Sir Charles Napier, Mr. Lindsay, my hon. Friend the Member for Water-ford (Mr. Osborne), once the Secretary to the Admiralty; and others, all, one after the other, pointed out, as the express remedy for existing evils, the importance of having the Controller as a member of the Board. In the following year there was another naval debate, in which the right hon. Member for Droitwich again took an active part, expressing a still stronger opinion of the unsatisfactory position of the First Lord under the then existing system, and declaring it to be desirable that the constitution of the Board should be re-considered, because it was inconsistent with the theory of Ministerial responsibility on which the House always acted. In 1863 also there was another debate on the subject, in which Sir Henry Willoughby—always a great authority—said the first thing to be done was to make the Controller a member of the Board, and that instead of filtering his authority through another Lord, he should be made responsible. A very remarkable speech, and one that attracted considerable attention, was delivered in that debate by a naval officer of great promise, who had then recently entered the House, and who stated the cardinal defect of the Board of Admiralty, as then constituted, to be the want of responsibility which pervaded not only the Board but every one of the branches of administration which it conducted; that it was practically impossible to fix the responsibility on any one officer; that the officers who really did the practical work of the Admiralty were not responsible to the House or the public; that, to take as an instance the manning of the Navy, the natural course would be for somebody to be directly responsible to the First Lord; that the First Sea Lord had the manning of the Navy in his department, but the whole Board took the responsibility; and that the First Lord ought to have the power of putting his finger on the officer who was responsible, and of making his responsibility a reality. The distinguished officer who made those remarks was the hon. and gallant Baronet the Member for Stamford (Sir John Hay). Those were his views then, and I am afraid he did not do much to carry them out during the two years and a-half that he was a member of the Board of Admiralty. The right hon. Member for Droitwich also repeated what he had said before as to the constitution of the Board, and spoke of the absence of that concentrated responsibility which he held to be essential to the fulfilment of the duties of a department. I am not charging my right hon. Friend with any inconsistency in this, as he has never concealed his objections to administration by a Board, though he had not, I presume, time to abolish it when he was in office. Again, my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth said that under the existing constitution of the Admiralty it was perfectly impossible to carry on naval affairs with any degree of satisfaction. I think I have quoted enough to show what was undoubtedly at that time the almost unanimous opinion of naval reformers both out of this House and in this House in regard to the Board of Admiralty. Well, during those 10 years, from 1859 to 1869, is there anybody here who, not looking just at the purposes of the present occasion, but really exercising some little effort of memory, will doubt that the administration of the Admiralty was thoroughly objected to, criticized, and I would say condemned by public opinion in every direction? My right hon. Friend has said that the Board of Admiralty was unpopular on account of its exercise of patronage. Well, I may be wrong, but I had the honour to administer the affairs of the Admiralty for two years, and I never heard any word or any suspicion as to any difficulty in exercising patronage. I do not for a moment claim to have exercised that patronage better than other people, although I did my best; but I never knew of any doubt, to speak of, being expressed that the patronage was exercised for the good of the service, and with fairness to the officers. I do not remember any considerable criticism outside of the office even among those officers of the service who, as my right hon. Friend said, are able to grumble, and who do occasionally exercise the privilege of grumbling. I certainly did my utmost to reduce their power of grumbling, because, by the arrangements we made, we so prospectively reduced the list of officers on shore that they would be at sea during the better part of their time, and would have no leisure for grumbling. The greatest provocative of grumbling is the leaving officers idle on shore during the most active years of life. I doubt, then, whether the cause of the criticisms passed upon the Admiralty was connected either with the exercise of patronage, or with the subject of shipbuilding. Certainly there has been a good deal of sparring on the question of shipbuilding; but the keenness of that controversy exists more among naval architects, and among scientific men and shipbuilders, than among the naval profession generally, and I cannot think that anyone with an average good memory would represent that under the old system at the Admiralty everything was couleur de rose, and free from all grumbling except as to patronage and shipbuilding. This forgetfulness of former discussions about the Board is very like what happened about the turret system. Until the unfortunate loss of the Captain, some 18 months ago, there was no other opinion proclaimed from one end of the kingdom to the other, but that the Admiralty had shown themselves very wanting in their duty in not sufficiently recognizing the merits of that system. Nay, up to within a very few days of that sad disaster, I myself, my colleagues, and those who preceded me, were the subject of attack in every quarter; we were held up as old women, because we had not appreciated the glorious results of the experience gained as to the turret system; but a fortnight later we were as violently assailed for exactly the opposite reason, because we had hastily taken up a wrong principle. That is an illustration of the rapidity with which, in these matters, people forget what passed a short time before. So, after having all used one language as to the administration of the Admiralty, a few months elapse, something is done to carry out the principles which everybody has advocated, and then all at once the public turns round, and we find people both in and out of this House forgetting all their former declarations of opinion. My right hon. Friend on this point gave us the old stereotyped argument in favour of everything that is and that was. He told us that under the Board of Admiralty the greatness of England had reached its present height. Well, I thought we had got rid of that style of argument some time ago. That was the old defence for rotten boroughs, and for all the abuses swept away during the last 40 years. It was always urged that England had flourished so exceedingly under those abuses—in spite of them I should rather say—that it would be a pity to touch them. I was sorry to find my right hon. Friend condescending to a kind of reasoning hardly worthy of the atmosphere of the present House of Commons. However, the views of naval reformers having been those which I have described, what did we do at the commencement of 1869, when the present Government succeeded to office? On this point, perhaps, I ought to repeat here what I stated to the Megæra Commission, because so much unaccountable misapprehension, as it appears to me, has arisen in the public mind on the subject of the Minute with reference to the change made at the Admiralty. It seems to be generally assumed that this change was effected solely by myself; that my colleagues were in no way parties to it; and that they reserved, as it were, a sort of right of objecting to it afterwards if necessary. The facts are perfectly plain, and they appear in the documents themselves. The present Government came into office about the 6th or the 8th of December. Before the Board of Admiralty was formally constituted about a fortnight passed away. During that fortnight I was in constant communication with those who were to be my colleagues, and we carefully considered the principles and the details of the new mode of conducting business. On the very first day that we assumed office my Minute was formally laid before the Board, received their approval, and, then, having been converted into an Order in Council, became, as has been said, the charter of the new arrangements at the Admiralty. It is important to observe this, for during the whole of the year 1869 we worked exclusively under the arrangements as to individual responsibility, and the departmental system, as it is popularly called; and none of my colleagues, either directly or indirectly, testified in the slightest degree any doubt either as to the operation of that system, or as to their having been parties to it when first introduced. Under that system, indeed, the principal officers of the Admiralty had a considerable increase of their salaries, corresponding to the increase in their duties. Unfortunately, however, at the beginning of the following year, the system of naval retirement decided upon under the new order of things was not approved by a colleague, who thereupon discovered that the old Board system would be more convenient, inasmuch as he might possibly then have had an opportunity of discussing it at the Board, although it did not come within his department. This was the origin of the doubt thrown upon the working of the system, and in support of it the gentleman in question gave evidence before the Duke of Somerset's Committee to the effect that he was so little burdened with work that he could well give an hour and a-half a day to the discussion of naval matters. The next thing was, that a difficulty arose on the other side of the Department in consequence of my having decided, with the very best intentions, and perfect success, upon taking the victualling yards and hospitals from under the control of post-captains and placing them under civilian and medical control respectively. In this I had the first difference with my most important naval adviser—almost the only one I ever had—and upon this the doubt as to the expediency of resorting to departmental, instead of Board, management became fixed in his mind; as he was doubtful whether I could have carried out the reform if I had had to face four naval officers at a Board, instead of two heads of the Naval Department. Besides, I must admit that the system of departmental, as opposed to Board control, is not popular with the upper branches of the service. It is, I believe, popular with the middle of the service, and that the junior captains and the ranks below are in favour of it. Sir Sydney Dacres gave an excellent reason for the preference for the old system among the upper branches of the service. He said they liked four Sir Sydney Dacres instead of one. [Mr. CORRY: Hear, hear!] Of course, they would. It was quite natural they should prefer to have four such appointments open to the profession. Moreover, though it was all very well to have responsibility when things went smoothly, it was not quite so pleasant when unpopularity had to be faced. And it was very convenient for those who administered to be able to shelter themselves behind the Board, so as to be able to say to a critical friend—"Yes, my dear fellow, I agree with all you say, but you see it was the Board, and not I, who decided on this course." But that was the very reason why I objected to administration by a Board, for although it was satisfactory to the single member of the Board thus to shield himself, the principle was bad. It was an unsound system which allowed those who administered a great public Department to shirk responsibility. With personal and direct responsibility, things were done with greater promptness and more efficiency than with divided and general responsibility. In one respect, however, I think the plan has been tried under some disadvantages—namely, that though no gentlemen could have done their duty more thoroughly than my colleagues, Lord John Hay and Captain Willes, yet the system might have been launched more successfully if one, at least, of them had been of higher rank; but my First Sea Lord was a full admiral, and Lord John Hay and Captain Willes were post captains. Again, some have charged me with having reduced or eliminated the naval element in the Board. I have taken some trouble to look back to see what ground there was for that charge, and I find that whereas 12 years ago there were only six or seven sailors at Whitehall, in my time there were eight, including four admirals and four senior captains. It is true that the number of naval Lords was less; but several additional naval appointments have been made within the last 12 or 20 years, such as the Director of Naval Ordnance, and the Director of Transports. Then, again, we have been told that the present system does not afford opportunity for sufficient discussion among the officers at the Admiralty. I have never deprecated the existence of a consultative Board. On the contrary, I regard it as very valuable, and if the evidence given before the Duke of Somerset's Committee proves anything, it proves that I consulted its members too much. Accordingly, when I was at the Admiralty, what I did was to consult frequently with all those persons who were concerned in the question I had under consideration, whether they were members of the Board or heads of Departments; and I greatly prefer this to passing everything under the review of a Board, both on the score of responsibility and of the saving of time. I had the misfortune in 1864 to sit for two and even three hours a-day as a junior member of the Board, discussing questions which concerned, on the average, two or three members only. The time of the rest was fairly wasted. My whole experience, therefore, has convinced me that, although it is well to have a Board whose opinion on great questions—such, as for instance, novel plans of construction—may be sought, yet to occupy a Board, partly comprised of sailors and partly of civilians, with all the details which engage the attention of the Department, is sheer waste of time. It was predicted in 1832 that this system of Board administration would fail; all naval reformers since showed that it was failing, and by 1869 it was clear that it had failed. Having now stated what I think is good in the new system, I will now criticize it, and say where it can be reformed. I know there are official and constitutional reasons that make it convenient that, when a change of Government takes place, the new Minister should have the power of re-appointing the Board. But, as a matter of administration, I should like to see either the First Sea Lord, or two of the three Sea Lords, and certainly the Controller, permanent officers, with a permanent head of the financial department, though not one that would in any way interfere with the supremacy of the Parliamentary Secretary. As to the Controller, it would, in my opinion, be a serious mistake—and I trust my right hon. Friend the present First Lord does not entertain the project—it would be a grave error to interpose between the First Lord and the Controller of the Navy a naval officer, by whatever title he may be called. That is my opinion, and I will venture to say that nine-tenths of the Members of this House who interest themselves in the question have always been of that opinion. The supreme management of the shipbuilding department should be in the hands of the officer who is immediately responsible to the Minister, and should not be filtered through a second officer. There is another suggestion that has been made with respect to the constitution of the Admiralty. I do not think that I can see any disadvantage in the substitution of another Lord of the Admiralty for the gentleman who holds the post of chief of the Staff. I think it might be for the interest of the service, as tending to the avoidance of some difficulties of procedure, if the experiment were tried; and if the right hon. Gentleman finds that such an arrangement works well he will have my support in carrying it out, when the Estimates come before us. Now, I come to another part of the constitution of the Admiralty at the time I had the honour to belong to it. I refer to the arrangements of the Secretariat. Let me say that this portion of the reform we intended to carry out was necessarily the last to be undertaken, and when I had the misfortune to be incapacitated for the performance of the duties of my office, the Secretariat was left in a more unsatisfactory state than any other department. You cannot bring together in a single day these eight or nine outlying departments from Somerset House and other parts of London. And when the departments were got together under one roof, you could not get the Secretariat in perfect working order all at once. The consequence was, that at the time when I had to leave my office the contemplated reforms were very far from being completed. But my right hon. Friend (Mr. Corry) makes a mistake in giving his version of what I have said with respect to Mr. Romaine, and the former arrangements of the Admiralty. What I said was, that between the month of December, 1868, and Midsummer, 1869, Mr. Romaine, was the Secretary to the Admiralty, and carried out the arrangements intrusted to him with remarkable vigour and success. That is to say, Mr. Romaine did very perfectly the work he had to do, and there was no misunderstanding, as has been described in Mr. Lushington's sensational evidence. My right hon. Friend has given some statistics with respect to the economy of the change instituted under my direction. He says that the Admiralty of the present time are employing more clerks than—[Mr. CORRY: More clerks and writers.]—more clerk and writers—I beg your pardon—than were employed at the end of 1868. That is a question which the Secretary to the Admiralty will probably answer presently. It is one which I cannot deal with off-hand; but, so far as I have seen the figures, they do not in the least tally with the calculations. On the contrary, there is a considerable reduction in the number of the officers employed. Now, Sir, as to the questions of registry and record. The state of things is this—the old system at the Admiralty proper was a very perfect one in some respects, and contributed to the rapid transaction of business; but it had the great vice that there was no inward registry whatever until I took office in 1869. The consequence was that if a letter came in and was lost within a certain number of days you never could be certain whom to charge with it. Six months after I took office, therefore, I appointed a committee, consisting of the then Controller of the Navy, the hon. Member for the Border Burghs, and the present Permanent Secretary to the Admiralty, to revise thoroughly the system of the Secretariat; and they recomended an entirely altered system—one of which I will undertake to say my right hon. Friend would, in some respects, have totally disapproved. I was, however, very unwilling to override the decision of a committee of officers in whom I had such entire confidence, and I adopted a compromise, by which the new system was to be tried in certain of the offices, and a modification of the old system was to be tried in others. I wrote a Minute, which is still in existence, and in which I directed that the question should be brought up again after the experiment had been tried for 12 months. That was at the end of 1869, and in 1870 I should have been in a position, had I been able to retain my office, to decide between the two, and to have introduced a uniform and approved system of registry in the whole service. Let me here get rid of an impression that seems to exist in some quarters that the Megæra inquiry has resulted in a condemnation of some change I made in this respect. That inquiry has clearly brought out two most unmistakeable errors in connection with the former system of registering papers. At the time when the ship was undergoing repair at Woolwich, long before my time, there was in New Street a separate steam department, which dealt with engine questions; and, as the ironwork involved in the repair of the Megæra was done in the engine factory at Woolwich, from the lack of iron shipwrights at that port, the records came to the steam department. The consequence was that this particular Paper in connection with the Megæra, when she was repaired at Woolwich, instead of going as it ought to have gone to the Controller's department, went to the steam department, and was buried there. The second error was a telegram upon which a great deal depended, as to the duration of employment of the Megæra, and which telegram was sent from Woolwich to the Secretary's department at Whitehall, and thence to the First Sea Lord, who dealt with it, and it did not go to the Controller. Such a misfortune could not have happened had the reforms I contemplated been carried out, for one of the first steps in the scheme was to centre the control of the Dockyards in a single office. Since the reforms we effected, any confusion between the jurisdiction of the First Sea Lord and the Controller is impossible, although it might easily have occurred under the old system, and, therefore, the blots hit in this respect in the Megæra Commission refer to a former state of things, and not to the reformed system. I may mention, in reference to this subject, to show the necessity for exercising that degree of strict supervision over the records and papers of the office which the changes recommended to me do not enforce, that, having to appear before the Megæra Commission, I was very anxious to see a certain document, and the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Goschen) was good enough to allow me to have access to the Papers in his Department; but the particular document which I desired to see could not be found; and it is only within the last few days that it has been discovered that it was taken away, with others, by a gentleman who had ceased 18 months ago to be a member of the Department, and who, after having kept it for some time, had handed it over to another gentleman, also not, during the last 12 months, a member of the Department, who, after keeping it for six months, had returned it to the Admiralty Office. That is an instance of the care that ought to be taken in the mechanical arrangements as to the record of papers. On this subject my right hon. Friend (Mr. Corry) stated that Mr. Lushington, in his evidence before the Commission, said that a revolution ought to be made in certain parts of the Admiralty, but he forgot to inform us that Mr. Lushington had used that word in reference to the abolition of the Board, and not in the sense which my right hon. Friend would have wished us to have understood it. With regard to Mr. Lushington himself, I must at once say that I appointed him; that I am solely responsible for that appointment; and that if for any reason whatever anybody casts any blame upon me in respect of it I must bear it. If the appointment was an unsuccessful one, I know that it will reflect upon my reputation as a man of business, but that I cannot help. I appointed him, after a careful inquiry, upon the recommendation of his predecessor; he is a man of the highest character, of eminence in his profession, and of great intelligence. I must remind the House that there are but few persons who are suited for the office, and that within the last 15 years a gentleman of the highest eminence was appointed to fill it, and that such appointment did not turn out a success. If Mr. Lushington has not appreciated the great importance of his position, and the necessity there was that he should carry out to the full the instructions which I gave him, and which I detailed before the Megæra Commission, I can only express my sincere regret that he should have done so. I ought to offer my greatest apology in this matter to himself, because I took him away from an office which was nearly a sinecure, and which was almost of the same value as the one he now holds, and from a profitable private practice, in order to give him a hard-worked and badly-paid office. I regret exceedingly the remarks affecting him which I have read in the public Press, and I repeat that upon myself all the blame of his appointment must fall. Turning to the subject of the dockyards and their superintendence by the Controller, I may say that I listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Hastings (Mr. T. Brassey) with great interest, and that with many of his recommendations I cordially agree. In the first place, I fully admit, and I think that my right hon. Friend will agree with me upon the fact that the Controller's office is under-manned. The arrangements respecting the Controller's office were very carefully considered by me, in conjunction with the late Controller and the late Chief Constructor, and I was ready to appoint an assistant if they had required it; and I still think that such an appointment should be made. With regard to the engineer's department, I do not think that we made a mistake in bringing it under the control of the Constructor of the Navy. I also agree with the hon. Member as to the insufficiency of the salary paid to the engineer under the Constructor; and I should like to see it raised. The fact is that, in my opinion, we give all our professional officers too small salaries. There are, doubtless, many Government departments where there is a redundancy of officials, whose numbers might be reduced with advantage; but, at the same time, the majority of our great engineer officers are underpaid, and I trust that my right hon. Friend (Mr. Goschen) will be able to persuade the House that it is for the advantage of the public service that some of these salaries should be raised. As regards the dockyards, I am entirely at issue with my right hon. Friend opposite. We did what we could in the right direction in spite of the most determined opposition both in and out of this House, although the officers at Whitehall supported us in effecting the changes. I believe that the expression I have used is a sound one—namely, that in all dockyards there should be, either under or not under a naval officer, a civilian manager, who should be an engineer, and who should manage the engineering and the civilian business of the dockyard. In using the word "engineer," I mean such a professional manager as would be found at the head of first-class engineering works. As I have said before, we did our best in that direction—we combined in one person the master shipwright, the master engineer, and the storekeeper, putting an assistant for each department under him. I have no doubt that you will be able to obtain competent professional persons to place at the head of these establishments if you will give them adequate salaries; and I hope my right hon. Friend at the head of the Admiralty will, whatever names he may think fit to use, persist in carrying out the plan. I do not think that I need detain the House longer upon these points of detail, further than to remark that we have done our best to place at the heads of the other establishments, such as the hospitals, persons who are responsible for their management. I will say one word as to the general result. We have all heard pretty well of the criticisms which have been addressed to the details of our office arrangements. But is that all the work that the Admiralty has done in the last three years; is that all the work—for it is not my business to speak of what has been done in the last year—that has been done in the two years when I was responsible for that great Department? My right hon. Friend the Member for Droitwich, in his evidence before the Committee in 1861, spoke very pointedly indeed of the difficulty which he found when he was at the head of the Board of Admiralty in carrying out great improvements, and of the embarrassment in which he found himself, through the necessity of conciliating the opinions of the four naval officers who advised him. I quite agree with him, and I will say this—that I believe we could not have carried out any reasonable proportion of the very large reforms which we effected during those two years had we been hampered by that system, the evils of which he pointed out so very much better than I am able to do. Is it nothing that, by the admission of all persons, except, I believe, individual critics here and there, we added very much to the efficiency of the Fleet during those two years, in respect of reforms which had been long discussed, but had not been adopted? For instance, can anyone doubt that by keeping our Fleet at sea—and that was the cardinal point of our policy—we have greatly added to the efficiency of our Fleet; or that the Flying Squadron, in spite of criticism, is an immense improvement and addition to the efficiency of our Navy; or that the bringing out of our Coastguard every year has given us an additional squadron, and very great efficiency? Why, in respect of drill and other matters connected with those changes, enormous reforms have been effected which have made the efficiency of the English Fleet the admiration of foreign countries. And let me remind the House of one point on which, our changes have been such as neither my right hon. Friend nor any of his Colleagues would have ventured to carry out. We compelled every seaman to take his turn at sea, instead of loitering for years, perhaps for three-fourths of his service, in harbour. With respect to the Coastguard, that most difficult subject, we have been most successful. We have improved the inspection of the Coastguard; we weeded out the inefficients; we required them all to take their turn in service, and we have raised their qualification. Is it likely that all these reforms, or anything like these reforms, could have been carried out under the previous system? I have unfortunately been subjected to a great deal of criticism for the plan of naval retirement. It has, to my cost, irritated half-a-dozen individual officers who are affected by it, and in trifling points here and there it may be doubtless improved. But I regard, and shall regard to the last day of my life, that general plan of naval promotion and retirement as a great and successful reform of the system from beginning to end. It dealt uniformly and equally with all classes of officers in Her Majesty's service; it got rid of infinite abuses which existed in former days; and when it is brought into final operation, and the wise amendments, in detail, of my right hon. Friend have borne fruit, you will have a service contented, well employed, in which all this grumbling of which we have heard so much will practically be at an end—a service in which every one, from flag officer down to lieutenant, will be at sea as long as he wishes That reform, too, I humbly think, would have been found quite impracticable with the presence of four co-equal naval officers at the Admiralty Board. Again, I hope my right hon. Friend at the head of the Admiralty will be able to carry out, in accordance with the recommendations of the Committees which I appointed two years ago, improvements with regard to training of officers, to the strengthening of Reserves, to the victualling and accounts of the Fleet. All these we initiated, and I do not grudge him the pleasure of giving effect to them. But we did not confine ourselves to material reforms affecting our sailors. I know something of the difficulties experienced at the Board of Admiralty in such matters as improvements in the religious interests of the men; and I look back with intense satisfaction to what we did, putting an end, I hope, to the complaints which from year to year were made both here and elsewhere. As to the dockyards, whatever evil there may be in their organization, we have reduced their number and concentrated them, and got a better system to work. We have also greatly improved the pay of a considerable number of men in the dockyards. And if I may touch on the present occasion such a question as economy—which I am sorry to say is not quite so popular as it used to be in former years—I think it is something to have established, even in the opinion of my right hon. Friend, a better system of financial control, and to have satisfied even the Lords Committee that we had introduced reforms in the superintendence and the purchase of naval stores. And, perhaps, the House will not think it nothing that, whereas the net average expenditure for the Navy in the two years before we took office was just upon £11,000,000, it has been since, on the average, just upon £9,000,000. I do not think it is nothing that in the three years in which the present Government have been in office a saving of more than £5,000,000 has thus been effected. I apologize to the House for having detained them so long. My statement would have been much shorter if I had spoken only on my own account; for, whatever may have been once the case, I have no longer any official ambition to serve or to promote. But I believe, and I have always believed, that the reforms which I did my utmost to carry out in the beginning of 1869, and till the time when I was disabled from active work, were in accordance with the wish of this House; were in harmony with the views of naval reformers outside, and will be appreciated by the country. I have not entirely succeeded—no man can expect to succeed who undertakes so great a task; but the success is as great as I ever anticipated, and I confidently believe that in the end it will be recognized.