The first ironclad built was the _Gloire_, designed by M. Dupuy-de-Lôme for the French Government. It was regarded by the English Naval Authorities as of doubtful practical value; but it soon became necessary for them to adopt the principle of defensive armour for our own ships. The _Warrior_, built by private contract at a cost of £376,000, was completed in October, 1861. She has a length of 380 feet, breadth 58 feet, displacement 9,210 tons, horse-power 1,250; and, whilst she has the general form of a wooden ship, with overhanging bows and stern, she embodied many of the ideas--such as that of watertight compartments--which have been adopted in all the more recent warships.] [Sidenote: Disraeli's First Budget.] Parliament had been prorogued on July 1 by the Queen in person and dissolved immediately after by Royal Proclamation. The elections which followed left the relative strength of parties nearly the same as in the old Parliament, that is, with no working majority on either side. The new Parliament met on November 4, and on December 3 Mr. Disraeli introduced his Budget in a speech which lasted five hours. The debate which followed is memorable as the occasion of the first encounter between two men who, for a quarter of a century afterwards, were to be as conspicuously the protagonists of their respective parties as Pitt and Fox had been at the beginning of the century. Disraeli--by this time fully conscious, and embittered by the consciousness, that he was fighting for a losing cause--concluded a speech full of stinging invective at two o'clock on the morning of December 11. To answer him rose one whom Macaulay had described in 1838 as "the rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories who follow reluctantly and mutinously a leader (Peel) whose experience is indispensable to them, but whose cautious temper and moderate opinions they abhor." Mr. Gladstone had been a Member of Parliament for more than twenty years, and was already distinguished for power and poignancy in debate; but the moment had come when, for the first time, the House of Commons was to come under the full influence of his superb command of language, his impressive use of gesture and his singularly resonant voice. [Illustration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Gregory & Co., Strand._ THE GREAT STEAM-HAMMER AT WOOLWICH ARSENAL. Maximum striking power, 1,000 tons.] Gladstone's speech closed the debate on Disraeli's First Budget, and it was decisive. The Government suffered defeat by nineteen votes, and next day Lord Derby went to Osborne to tender his resignation. Her Majesty laid her commands on the Earl of Aberdeen who, as a Peelite Conservative, assisted by the Whig Marquis of Lansdowne, proceeded to form a Coalition Cabinet. [Sidenote: Expansion of British Colonies.]