ngular difficulty just now. It requires
us to keep a large stock of ships and arms. But on the other hand,
there are most important reasons why we should not keep much. The naval
art and the military art are both in a state of transition; the last
discovery of to-day is out of date, and superseded by an antagonistic
discovery to-morrow. Any large accumulation of vessels or guns is sure
to contain much that will be useless, unfitting, antediluvian, when it
comes to be tried. There are two cries against the Admiralty which go
on side by side: one says, "We have not ships enough, no 'relief'
ships, no NAVY, to tell the truth"; the other cry says, "We have all
the wrong ships, all the wrong guns, and nothing but the wrong; in
their foolish constructive mania the Admiralty have been building when
they ought to have been waiting; they have heaped a curious museum of
exploded inventions, but they have given us nothing serviceable". The
two cries for opposite policies go on together, and blacken our
executive together, though each is a defence of the executive against
the other.

Again, the Home Department in England struggles with difficulties of
which abroad they have long got rid. We love independent "local
authorities," little centres of outlying authority. When the
metropolitan executive most wishes to act, it cannot act effectually
because these lesser bodies hesitate, deliberate, or even disobey. But
local independence has no necessary connection with Parliamentary
government. The degree of local freedom desirable in a country varies
according to many circumstances, and a Parliamentary government may
consist with any degree of it. We certainly ought not to debit
Parliamentary government as a general and applicable polity with the
particular vices of the guardians of the poor in England, though it is
so debited every day.

Again, as our administration has in England this peculiar difficulty,
so on the other hand foreign competing administrations have a peculiar
advantage. Abroad a man under Government is a superior being: he is
higher than the rest of the world; he is envied by almost all of it.
This gives the Government the easy pick of the elite of the nation. All
clever people are eager to be under Government, and are hardly to be
satisfied elsewhere. But in England there is no such superiority, and
the English have no such feeling. We do not respect a stamp-office
clerk, or an exciseman's assistant. A pursy grocer c