will never be effected by
the slow routine in which each second stands heir to the first. P.
possibly may not be better than A. or K., but the nation will profit
more, and in a matter vital to it, than if P., whose equality may be
conceded, has to wait for the whole alphabet to die out of his way.
The injustice, if so it be, to the individual must not be allowed to
impede the essential prosperity of the community.

In 1854-55, the results of a contrary system had reached proportions
at once disheartening and comical. It then required fourteen years
after entrance to reach a lieutenant's commission, the lowest of all.
That is, coming in as a midshipman at fifteen, not till twenty-nine,
after ten to twelve years probably on a sea-going vessel, was a man
found fit, by official position, to take charge of a ship at sea, or
to command a division of guns. True, the famous Billy Culmer, of the
British navy, under a system of selection found himself a midshipman
still at fifty-six, and then declined a commission on the ground that
he preferred to continue senior midshipman rather than be the junior
lieutenant;[3] but the injustice, if so it were, to Billy, and to many
others, had put the ships into the hands of captains in the prime of
life. Of the historic admirals of that navy, few had failed to reach a
captaincy in their twenties. _Per contra_, I was told the following
anecdote by an officer of our service whose name was--and is, for he
still lives--a synonyme for personal activity and professional
seamanship, but who waited his fourteen years for a lieutenancy. On
one occasion the ship in which he returned to Norfolk from a
three-years' cruise was ordered from there to Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, to go out of commission. For some cause almost all the
lieutenants had been detached, the cruise being thought ended. It
became necessary, therefore, to intrust the charge of the deck to him
and other "passed" midshipmen, and great was the shaking of heads
among old stagers over the danger that ship was to run. If this were
exceptional, it would not be worth quoting, but it was not. A similar
routine in the British navy, in a dry-rot period of a hundred years
before, had induced a like head-wagging and exchange of views when one
of its greatest admirals, Hawke, was first given charge of a squadron;
being then already a man of mark, and four years older than Nelson at
the Nile. But he was younger than the rule, and so distrusted.