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 Consulative 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.

And what has occurred?  It is only a few weeks since that in the House of Commons I heard the naval statement made by a new First Lord [Mr. Goschen], and it consisted only of the rescinding of all the revolutionary changes of his predecessor, the mischief of every one of which during the last two years has been pressed upon the attention of Parliament and the country by that constitutional and necessary body, the Opposition.  Gentlemen, it will not do for me—­considering the time I have already occupied, and there are still some subjects of importance that must be touched—­to dwell upon any of the other similar topics, of which there is a rich abundance.  I doubt not there is in this hall more than one farmer who has been alarmed by the suggestion that his agricultural machinery should be taxed.

I doubt not there is in this hall more than one publican who remembers that last year an act of Parliament was introduced to denounce him as a “sinner.”  I doubt not there are in this hall a widow and an orphan who remember the profligate proposition to plunder their lonely heritage.  But, gentlemen, as time advanced it was not difficult to perceive that extravagance was being substituted for energy by the government.  The unnatural stimulus was subsiding.  Their paroxysms ended in prostration.  Some took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated between a menace and a sigh.  As I sat opposite the treasury bench the ministers reminded me of one of those marine landscapes not very unusual on the coast of South America.  You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes.  Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest.  But the situation is still dangerous.  There are occasional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumbling of the sea.