sent such a contradiction, yet a contradiction essentially similar is betrayed by our conduct in the political sphere. Perpetual disappointment does not here cure us of perpetual expectation. Conceiving the state-agency as though it were something more than a cluster of men (a few clever, many ordinary, and some decidedly stupid), we ascribe to it marvellous powers of doing multitudinous things which men otherwise clustered are unable to do. We petition it to procure for us, in some way which we do not doubt it can find, benefits of all orders; and pray it with unfaltering faith to secure us from every fresh evil. Time after time our hopes are balked. The good is not obtained, or something bad comes along with it; the evil is not cured, or some other evil as great or greater is produced. Our journals, daily and weekly, general and local, perpetually find failures to dilate upon; now blaming, and now ridiculing, first this department and then that. And yet, though the rectification of blunders, administrative and legislative, is a main part of public business—though the time of the Legislature is chiefly occupied in amending and again amending, until, after the many mischiefs implied by these needs for amendments, there often comes at last repeal; yet from day to day increasing numbers of wishes are expressed for legal repressions and state-management. This emotion which is excited by the forms of governmental power, and makes governmental power possible, is the root of a faith that springs up afresh however often cut down. To see how little the perennial confidence it generates is diminished by perennial disappointment, it needs but to remind ourselves of a few state-performances in the chief state departments.
On the second page of the first chapter, by way of illustrating Admiralty mismanagement, brief reference was made to three avoidable catastrophes which had happened to vessels-of-war within the twelve-month. Their frequency is further shown by the fact that, before the next chapter was published, two others had occurred: the Lord Clyde ran aground in the Mediterranean, and the Royal Alfred was seven hours on the Bahama reef. And then, more recently, we have had the sinking of a vessel at Woolwich by letting a 35-ton gun fall through her bottom. That the authorities of the navy commit errors which the merchant service avoids, has been repeatedly shown of late, as in times past. It was shown by the disclosure respecting the corrosion of the Glatton's plates, which proved that the Admiralty had not adopted the efficient protective methods long used by private ship-owners. It was shown when the loss of the Ariadne's sailors brought out the facts that a 26-gun frigate had not as many boats for saving life as are prescribed for a passenger-ship of less than 400 tons; and that for lowering her boats there was on board neither Kynaston's apparatus nor the much better apparatus of Clifford, which experience in the merchant service has thoroughly tested. It was shown by the non-adoption of Silver's governor for marine steam-engines; long used
