If this cutting down in the size of the principal ships of Great Britain had been attended by a corresponding reduction in the sizes of the ships of other powers, or even by some advantages of design which largely tended to make up for the defect of size, there might be something to say for it. But the French ships have shown no such falling off in size, and have benefited as fully as the English ships by the use of steel and by the improved power and economy of the marine steam-engine. Simultaneously with the reduction in the size of the English ships there has been brought about—voluntarily, and not as a consequence of reduced size, for it was first applied in the largest of all British men-of-war, the _Inflexible_—a system of stripping the so-called armored ships of the English navy of a large part of their armor, and reducing its extent to so deplorable a degree that, as has already been said, they are quite unfit to take part, with any reasonable hope of success, in any general engagement. Here, again, there might have been something to say for a large reduction in the armored surface of ships if it had been attended by some great compensation, such as that which an immense increase in the thickness of the armor applied might have provided, although no such increase could ever have compensated for such a reduction of the armored part of the ship as would have exposed the whole ship to destruction by the mere bursting in of the unarmored ends, which is what has been done. But although in the case of the large _Inflexible_ the citadel armor was of excessive thickness, that is not true of the more recent ships of England, the armor of which sometimes falls short of that of the French ships, in two or three instances by as much as four inches, the French ships having 22-inch armor, and the English 18-inch. But by the combined effect of injudicious economy and of erroneous design, therefore—both furthered by a sort of frenzied desire on the part of the British Admiralty to strip the ships of armor, keep down their speed, delay their completion, and otherwise paralyze the naval service, apparently without understanding what they were about—the British navy has been brought into a condition which none but the possible enemies of the country can regard without more or less dismay. [Illustration: SECTION OF THE “AMIRAL DUPERRÉ.” SECTION OF THE “INFLEXIBLE.” SECTION OF THE “COLLINGWOOD.” NEW ADMIRALTY SHIP.]