After the Napoleonic wars the British navy, like the British army, was greatly reduced. In the Navy List of 1837, 132 vessels are named. Sixty years later they had increased to 461. Now the naval policy of successive Administrations seems to have acquired the same continuity as belongs traditionally to foreign policy. It is a first principle to-day with all parties in the State that the iron walls which, as our first line of defence, have replaced the walls of wood, should not be reduced to a point at which they need fear the combined opposition, if not of Europe, still of the two or three most powerful of European fleets. At the moment when the great reductions in our fleet were contemplated, Napoleon at St Helena, in the course of the conversations recorded by O'Meara,[71] said: 'It was bad policy to encourage the military mania instead of sticking to your marine, which is the real force of your country.' In 1832 the naval vote had been 4-1/4 millions. Two years later, it was reduced to 3 millions. The fleet reductions did not, however, reach their limit until the year before the Queen's accession. Then the naval vote was reduced to 2-3/4 millions, with the dwindling of our squadrons already noted. Contrast with this the 1896-97 estimate of £22,774,318, providing for the services of a total, every branch included, of 93,750 officers and men, inclusive of the 461 ships already named. The history of the naval transformations through which during the Victorian age we have passed, may be described as a succession of periodical scares, a steadily progressive instruction by science in its latest application to maritime affairs, and by the lessons contained in the experience of other countries. The English operations by sea during the Crimean War; in a still greater degree perhaps the improvements in naval construction, attack and defence, shown in the hostilities between the Federal and Confederate navies in the civil war on the other side of the Atlantic; later again the lessons taught by the engagements between Italian and Austrian squadrons, notably at Lissa;--these are the incidents that have gradually taught us, as well as our European neighbours, to bring our naval arrangements and appliances up to the latest mark of mechanical perfection. Even during the time when the security brought by relief after long war was causing England to neglect her navy, some of those movements which in Victorian days have given us our present race of seamen were in progress.