^6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



6ent such a contradiction, yet a contradiction essentially similar is 

 betrayed by our conduct in the political sphere. Perpetual disappoint- 

 ment 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 



