hours. It must, however, be observed that when this was written, no tidings had been received of more than one half the above number of balloons. Some, however, were known to have fallen into the hands of the Prussians. A great number of the courier-pigeons also had never re-appeared, a circumstance attributed by the fliers to the season of the year.*

"Those who wish for particulars of the perils to which our aeronauts are exposed," says M. Simonin, "may learn them from a pigeon which left the Gare d'Orleans with the balloon 'Washington,' on the 12th October, at 8.30 a.m. This bird did not return to Paris until the 5th December, having taken two months to find its way back. The balloon left Paris in a northerly direc tion with a speed of about fifteen leagues per hour. It passed over the Prussian outposts during a well-sustained fire. The shells burst at altitudes of eight hundred and nine hundred metres, and security was only attained by mounting to an elevation of eleven hundred metres. The same greeting welcomed it at Chantilly, Senlis, Compiègne and Noyon. At Ham the enemy's fire slackened, and about 10.30 a.m. the balloon was thrown down by a violent squall at Carnières near Cambrai. The aeronauts were severely con tused; but the country people came to their rescue-the mayor of Cambrai received them-and the same evening they were lodged at Douai."

To guard against similar dangers, and especially the new peril arising from the threatened punishment of the aeronauts by the Prussians as spies, led the Administration des postes in conjunction with the Governor of Paris, to determine that all balloon ascents should thereafter be made at night, and with the utmost secrecy, although the difficulties of the operation were thereby greatly increased, above all by the impossibility of reading the barometer, the aeronaut's compass. So much for the balloon-post, which with the aid of photo-micrography, served the Parisians so well.

M. Simonin gives an account respecting the employment of captive ballons for the purposes of reconnoisance in the revolutionary armies on the Sambre and Meuse in 1794. As this subject was treated in some detail in an article in the United Service Magazine for March, 169, we need not pursue it farther than to note that observatory balloons of this kind were established successively at Montmartre, at the Fort of Vanves, and in the market-square at Auteuil to watch the movements of the Prussians in the wood at Meudon; but the damage inflicted on them by the wind, and the impossibility of using telescopes for reconnoitring purposes in the cars, appear to have caused the Government of the Defence to discontinue their use, and to discourage the numerous suggestions made in respect of their employment for such purposes.

Other topics are touched upon by M. Simonin, such as the use

* The word courier-pigeon is used, as the birds were not of the species known to naturalists as "carriers," but a "cross" between smaller varieties.

of balloons for purposes of attack, the employment of Montgolfiers, and the possible improvements to permit of steering these machines. As some of these matters were subjected to trial at a later period of the siege, we reserve any observations upon them until further details shall have come to hand.

THE NAVY ESTIMATES FOR 1871-72.

The Admiralty is, at present, in a most unpleasant state of excitement, and it wears an air of novelty which is more interesting than pleasant. But the Estimates, which somebody has drawn up for the service of the navy, are as deficient in novelty and as dull as in the old days of so-called wanton profligacy and blundering stupidity. One point of novelty they present almost on their title page. For the first time for many years the sig nature of the First Lord is wanting. This omission, though remarkable was, we fear, inevitable. Such an omission, a few years ago, would not have been striking, but it cannot but attract attention now under the altered circumstances of naval administration. Mr. Childers undertook the responsibility of governing the navy and of assuming all those functions which were formerly vested in the Board of Admiralty, and he was, as a matter of course, responsible for the Estimates. At all events, so far as we have any clear ideas of what the Board of Admiralty is, or means, we understand that it is impossible for any other member of the Board than the First Lord to frame the Estimates for the navy, in any sense of being responsible for them. So the omission of any First Lord's signature to the statement which has been published for this year is enough to excite suspicion and suggest distrust. This difficulty was suggested in a motion. brought forward in the House of Commons by Mr. Corry in the middle of last month, when he asked Mr. Goschen, who had not even then been gazetted as First Lord of the Admiralty, and could hardly have known of his appointment many hours, whether he was responsible for the Navy Estimates, and if so, to what extent. Mr. Goschen's answer was ready, but hardly satisfactory; for he drew a distinction between naval policy and the Estimates, suggesting that the First Lord was not responsible for the Estimates, and that, therefore, the absence of his name was not a serious omission, but that he was responsible for the policy upon which those Estimates were based. Now, subtle as this explanation sounds, it is not satisfactory. If the First Lord is not responsible for the Navy Estimates, who, in the name of fortune, is? Perhaps we shall next hear, if John Stuart Mill and his agitators succeed in obtaining a larger hearing, and it

is found necessary not to press the increase in the Army Estimates, that Mr. Cardwell is not responsible for them. In one sense neither the Secretary of State for War nor the First Lord of the Admiralty are responsible; for, as the House of Commons votes the money required for the maintenance of our Army and Navy, the House of Commons is really responsible. But for the preparation of the votes which the House is asked to pass, the First Lord of the Admiralty is undoubtedly responsible.

In criticising, therefore, the present statement of the Navy Estimates for next year, we may be a little premature, as Mr. Goschen may, if he does not feel inclined to swallow them whole. sale, suggest alterations of importance, and end in thoroughly revising them before he attaches his signature. But our criticism of them in their present, so to speak, draft state, may be useful not only in showing what is proposed at the time, but inproving that alteration is almost impossible except under special and hardly probable contingencies.

Looking back, during the past two years, one fact is impressed in a most prominent manner, on all acts of naval policy; this is the untiring and unceasing efforts of Mr. Childers and the Board of Admiralty to reduce to a minimum the expenditure on the Navy. In a general way the public has an idea that great efforts at economy have been attempted, and that to effect this Mr. Childers had, probably, by the simple exercise of moral courage and self-will and in spite of much opposition, struck off a million or two by a stroke of bis pen; but few know with what jealousy every branch of expenditure has been watched; how every item has been exposed to the severe scrutiny of "my Lord's" eyes; and how remorselessly the retrenchment of the last two years has been obtained. When this is realized, it will have to be admitted by every candid critic, that the present Estimates, drawn up as they are by men whose whole official existence has been devoted to the most rigorous retrenchment, represent the minimum cost of the Navy. It may be found shortly that, in some cases retrenchment has been a little too hastily attempted, but it is hardly possible to expect further reduction. In fact, so as we can ascertain, every redundant item, every man, store, or boat which was in excess of the positive requirements of the Service has been abolished; and this result is, even now, beginning to make itself felt by the slight increase of nearly half a million which the present Estimates show over those for last year.

Here then is a fact to start with; surprising possibly, at first sight, but in some respects consoling. To maintain our Navy in an efficient state at an economical cost, and at a minimum rate, requires an expenditure of about nine millions. The new First Lord will, naturally, be bound to devote considerable attention to the principles and details of these Estimates before submit

ting them to Parliament; but we venture to assert that, the more severely they are inspected and the more independently they are tested, it will be found impossible to alter them with safety.

Any new critic, say one of the many new Lords who have been recently appointed to the Admiralty, who will have to carry out these Estimates, may naturally, if he cares anything for statistics, or knows anything about them, reflect that nine millions is a large minimum cost for the Navy which twenty years ago did not amount to more than five millions sterling. But here again, the more he inquires the more he will be convinced that a minimum is now proposed. It is true that the Navy now costs four millions a year more, as its lowest estimate, than was the case twenty years ago, but that difference can be accounted for without any great difficulty, and without recourse to the mysterious agency of statistics.

During the last twenty years the Royal Naval Reserve and the Royal Naval Coast Volunteers have been added to the Navy, the continuous service system has been adopted and has resulted in a permanent increase of about twenty thousand men; and the pay of every class of officer and sailor has been increased. These additions can be accounted for by them, and can be shown to account for an increase of nearly two millions sterling to the cost of the Navy. Then in its material strength great changes have occurred; food is dearer, stores are of a more costly description; and the dockyards are being extended; added to which the cost of administration has increased in answer to the demands made upon it. These changes have cost the country, as can be shown by calculations of a very minute and precise description, rather more than a million sterling. Lastly, the substitution of ironclads for wooden ships alone has been a great drag on the Estimates, and it is only by the use of the most severe economy, amounting almost to parsimony, by selling off old useless wooden ships, and by reducing the ordinary annual vote for wooden shipbuilding, that this change can be shown not to have cost the country at the present time so much as a million more than was the cost twenty years ago.

These additions and changes, however, have all occured in the

last twenty years. Then the Navy was conducted in a cheap manner, and cost, it is true, four millions less than at the present time. But no investigation and no argument will be convincing enough to prove that any administration is specially responsible in an improper manner for this enormous increase. The old answer of Tory extravagance is certainly out of place! and equally out of place is the suggestion of Liberal carelessness. No administration during the last twenty years can be considered responsible for the introduction of ironclads, or for having unduly increased the manning of the Navy, or for having raised the

cost of food or stores. These are all the chief causes of the enormous increase in naval expenditure, and where they are not accidents, independent of Tory or Liberal administration, they are additions representing advantages which have been acquired for the Navy at the express wish of the country. When, there fore, two years ago, the present Government undertook to prune with a severe hand, the cost of the Navy it found, upon investigation, that its only opportunity was to be found in attacking certain branches which seemed to be too luxuriant and overgrown; but it found, upon a strict inquiry, what we have just shown to be the case, that the bulk of this large and apparently unaccountable increase was due to positive or to inevitable additions to the strength and cost of the Navy which could not without danger be touched. As the result, the utmost energy and the most severe economy have been unable to effect a greater reduction than a million and a half in the last two years.

Here, then, we come to a certain point, which is to a great extent satisfactory; if the naval expenditure cannot, under present circumstances be reduced, is it possible to alter those circumstances? Is in fact the naval policy which these Estimates represent capable of alteration? This is a new question; but it simplifies the position both of the First Lord, or rather the Board of Admiralty, and of outside critics like ourselves. Instead of worrying about petty reductions which may or may not be possible, the time seems to have arrived when, assuming that a proper amount of vigilance has strained out of the Estimates all useless items of expenditure, undivided attention may be given to naval policy.

A new question, altogether, is thus opened; and the few words which fell from Mr. Goschen in his first speech on naval matters seem to pave the way for such action. He maintained that the First Lord was responsible for policy rather than esti mates, and we believe that he might now, without prejudice to his position, accept the Estimates as necessary and devote his attention to considering what sort of a Navy we want.

Unfortunately, the Navy, its cost and its policy, have been too often used merely as excuses for party skirmishing. Naval subjects have but seldom a fair chance of being discussed properly by the House of Commons, and as a consequence the Navy suffers. What is wanted, therefore, is that there should be something like a common agreement and understanding between the country and its constituents, whatever their politics may be, as to what sort of Navy is required, and for what purposes it is necessary; and further than this it is desirable that the country should have the benefit of professional criticism to as large an extent as possible. To some extent, indeed, there is this common agreement; but it can hardly be said to be regarded as a policy. It is admitted on all hands, that the safety of this country depends