We refer to the matter of iron-clad vessels of war.  England already had her ‘Warrior,’ and France her ‘Gloire,’ with all their resistant powers fully tested by experiment, and yet this war had progressed one year without finding our Government in possession of a single iron-mail steamer.  Our foes, with many disadvantages, had more wit, and gained a victory the more galling, because in naval matters we of the North claim in ability to rank with England herself.  Perhaps history contains no parallel instance of such negligence, such weakness.  It is a matter calling for investigation and exemplary punishment.  The guilt lies somewhere, and must be atoned for.

It is, however, interesting to remark, that in this, as in so many other matters, science is very rapidly changing the character of warfare.  In a few years the war-navies of the world will consist almost exclusively of iron-mail steamers, since no other vessel can resist their attacks.  Yet these steamers, though far more expensive than the old wooden hulks—­so expensive that the ‘Warrior’ alone caused an outcry in England as a national burden—­can readily sink one another in a few minutes by the use of the prow, or by returning to the primitive cock-fighting fashion in vogue among the iron-beaked galleys of earliest antiquity.

Will it pay, under such extraordinary conditions of naval warfare, to fight at all? will probably be the next question, asked.  When a few minutes may witness the literal sinking of a few millions of dollars, tax-paying people will begin to stand aghast.  The very idea of England and America playing a game of war with such checks, is as terrible as it is startling; it is like the suggestion to fight out a duel with columbiads, or as the two Kentucky engineers are said to have done, with full-steamed locomotives in collision.  No patriotism, no wealth, no sacrifice, can endure such drafts as the loss of iron-clad navies would involve.  War would eat itself up.

Possibly genius may contrive vulcanized gutta-percha or other resistant steamers which can neither be billed nor gaffed, shot nor slashed into sinking—­vessels beyond all capacity for bathos, and no more to be persuaded into going under than was the black Baptist convert of David Crockett’s story.  What would naval battles amount to between such invulnerables?  The Roman mythology had a fable of a hare which had received from the gods the gift that it was never to be caught, while at the same time there was a hound which was destined to catch every thing he pursued.  One day the hound began to chase the hare; Jupiter settled the question by changing them both to stone.  Paradoxes can only be solved by annihilation.  When war becomes, by the aid of science, all-destructive, yet all-resistant, it must perish.  History shows a gradual decrease of deaths in proportion to improvements in destruction of life.  It is gratifying to reflect, that this war, by developing the full capacities of iron-plated vessels, has made a most important advance toward the impossibility of warfare.