With such a poor force it must be evident that it was impossible to discharge in an efficient manner all the duties of a navy. Our work in foreign surveys is limited to that of one small vessel on the west coast of North America; our deep-sea soundings are few and far between, dotted along the tracks pursued by our ships while going to and returning from distant stations; our commerce is protected; but we are unable to support any positive policy that the government might decide to declare in reference to, for example, the Monroe doctrine. To say nothing of European naval armaments, it is only necessary to point to some of the smaller powers in our own hemisphere that possess ships-of-war with which we have nothing fit to cope. Our people cannot desire to assume a position in the society of naval powers without supporting the position with dignity; they cannot wish their navy to be cited as a standard of inefficiency; they cannot wish to force their representatives (the officers of the navy) into a position of humiliation and mortification such as is imposed by being called on to deprecate criticism by labored explanations. Better abolish the navy and lower our pretensions. But the fact seems to be that the rapidity of naval development has not been properly appreciated, and it is after a long interval of indifference that, attention being at last centred on the subject, it is seen how rapid its strides have been, and how utterly we are distanced in the race. There is evidently now in the country a growing desire to repair the effects of the past oversight, and we see Congress has moved in the matter. As all political parties now unite in the necessity of effort in this direction, the hope is inspired that the subject is to be separated from those of a partisan character, and that the rehabilitation of the navy will be put on its proper level, and accepted as a national question in which all are alike interested. Possessed as we are now of a navy such as has been indicated, the change that was instituted involved a most violent transition. In reviewing our work of construction for over thirty years we saw no new type of cruiser. The only types of ships that we produced were those that date before the war; since which we but reproduced the same in classes of differing dimensions. From the sailing-ship with auxiliary steam-power we passed to the steamer with auxiliary sail-power; but we had no full-powered steamers, with or without sails. As long as it was considered necessary to spread as much canvas as was used, the space assigned to boilers and engines was limited, and we failed to achieve full power; and a reduction to the minimum of sail-power had to be accepted before we could present a type of a full-powered steamer.