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 purposes. These sums represent an annual tax, for expenditure sanctioned during the last ten years, of £1,500,000. That great repairing establishments are absolutely necessary to the navy is a self-evident proposition, but to disperse the facilities of these establishments by a multiplication of dockyards in different parts of the world may easily result in loss rather than gain, and when done at the expense of fighting strength it is as if a general, having asked for reinforcements, is sent ambulances. With navies it is very much as it is in business—the large establishments win the orders. We may, by good luck, have a Gibraltar with a small dockyard as close to a battle as it is to Trafalgar, but the repair work might well be far more efficiently done if the vessel spent three or four days in steaming back to England. Thus, when the Howe lost her rudder in the Levant, it was found to be the speediest and most efficient course to send her to England and back, rather than to the dockyards at Malta and Gibraltar, which we have so assiduously nursed at the cost of many millions. As for the mere provision of docks, it will generally be found that at any port on a great trade route, private capital is only too anxious to provide those accessories to commerce and navies without any cost to the taxpayer, or, as at Colombo, with the assistance of a small subsidy. Much the same consideration should induce us to regard with suspicion the policy of shipbuilding in the dockyards, since it is notorious that the work is more cheaply performed by private firms.

Many conclusions follow on a policy of sea supremacy, which lead to vast economies. The distribution of the fleets for war purposes instead of police work is a case in point. Sea supremacy means safe communications for the predominant Power. We can, therefore, rely on merchant vessels to carry the bulk of our naval stores and coal. The very reverse has always been argued and carried out in practice. Our ships have been enlarged, and engines required to do much more work in driving