Sir Howard Douglas's book, of which at present
they only talk? If we have a policeman, he
may as well be on his beat, and occasionally,
also, learning to handle his truncheon.

In the matter of the education of officers, we
have lately (within two years) borrowed one
good thing from "over the water." The French
have a naval school on board a line-of-battle-
ship in Brest roads; we have established the
Illustrious, 74, Captain Harris, for the same
purpose at Portsmouth. We are more exacting,
too, than we used to be in our examinations.
In fact, the modern importance of science forces
a higher standard upon us, and we must come
up to it to avoid being disgraced. There can
be no reason now, why naval officers should not
be as generally accomplished as other gentlemen.
Many of them are so. What with peace,
leisure, constant communication with the shore,
all the advantages of travel with the additional
zest (a great one) of a reason for travelling; with
copious access to books also, and time to read
them, there is no excuse for their remaining at
the artistic level of Benbow or Shovel, however
excellent these worthies may be as merely
professional examples. Fifteen years ago there
were naval men who sneered at all this, and
yet were not Benbows either. They entered
the service just in time to imitate the roughness
of the real old school; but, being caught
by the peace in a year or two, missed that
grand Spartan experience of war which to
their predecessors was an education in itself.
These are the real fogies, whose influence is a
nuisance and a bore. They governed the service
during the long slumber which came after
1815, and from which we have wakened to find
that a new era has begun in Europe, and that
the Trench know it. Let us shelve these old
men and their ideas, before they shelve the
country's naval power and renown.

The naval power and renown of England are
secure, if we do our best to make them so: not if
we go to sleep again: not if we pooh-pooh all
suggestions of reform, and repose on traditions
which were only established by that genius and
energy which it has been our modern habit to
ignore. Fortify and improve the dockyards;
build your ships with an eye (not a hasty but a
prudent eye) to the latest inventions; keep up
a standing force of trained seamen, making the
navy an object of good-will among all seamen
under the British flag; institute a formal
inquiry into the Admiralty administration of the
last twenty years before reforming that department;
exercise your officers, from those of the
flag downwards, in all that it becomes them to
know; do these things, and the country is safe,
under Providence, for ever and a day.

The announcement of general reductions by
land and sea commenced by our imperial friend
opposite, is welcome enough. But we have
seen too many of these fluctuations to attach
much importance to them; the natural mutual
watchfulness of powers like France and
England is too deep and permanent a fact in
European politics ever to lose its consequence.
Let us, of course, meet all friendly demonstrations
with hearty friendliness. But, as regards
our navy, it would be easy to make a redaction
which might nominally be tantamount
to that of the French, yet virtually be
something far more serious than theirs. They can
whistle their men back when they please; we
cannot. They have completed Cherbourg; we
have not completed Portsmouth and Plymouth.
Besides, there is the old fundamental distinction
between us;—a Channel squadron to an island
power with commerce and colonies, is a necessity
which no squadron can ever be truly and reasonably
made out to be to an empire like France.

A PIECE OF BLOOD-MONEY.

BOTANY BAY, that mouthful taken out of the
land by the hungry sea, on the east shore of
Australia, some five miles south of Sydney, was
so denominated by Captain Cook, some few
years before he was eaten, on account of the
nest of wild flowers, bulbs, and creepers that
grew on the beach. How little did the observant
captain think, when he looked on that primeval
nursery-garden of nature, of the moral weeds
that were hereafter to fester on this purgatorial
coast. How little he foresaw the prickly
Whitechapel thistles, the Westminster teazles, the
Hockley-in-the-Hole brambles, that would one day
grow in rank hideousness on this shore, so dark
and high that some men, looking this way for a
glimpse of heaven for a moment, would scarcely
see it, so darkened would be God's blessed
sun by the hideous undergrowth and the dark
branches of this swampy jungle of crime, and
misery, and sin.

A little unpretending book, entitled Lost and
Found, published by Mr. Bensley, that lately fell
into our hands, gives us a curious picture of convict
life in 1802. We abridge some of the statements,
as furnishing a curious picture of manners, not
in Botany Bay but in the neighbouring settlement.
The story of Lagged, let us call him so, is
affecting but simple. In 1801, Lagged was a
well-to-do die-sinker and engraver in Birmingham,
with an amiable wife and an only child. During
the war with France, forged assignats and forged
bank-notes were both common, and were used by
politicians, more patriotic than good-principled,
to injure the finances of this or that side. The
punishment for forgery was death, but men who
find it hard to live are sometimes not unwilling
to lay down life as the dreadful stake in the
gambling game of life. Lagged was the starved
apothecary over again; not so starving, but quite
as greedy for the gain. One day, to this man thus
ready for crime, comes the devil, in the shape of
a stranger, muffled to the eyes, false wigged, and
otherwise disguised. He whispers a wish that
Lagged would prepare an imitation of the Bank
of England copper-plates, for the purpose of
printing and circulating bank-notes in France.
Lagged, in an evil hour, consents. Lagged little
knows that the masked man is a government
informer, paid with "blood money" for ripening