That this is no wild dreaming will be evident to everybody, when the action of the English Parliament regarding a proposal made there by a Lord of the Admiralty was considered and acted upon favorably in rapid order. A certain Lord Paget, who commanded an English ship at the bombardment of Sebastopol, proving that he was not without experience in justifying the assertion, told them that if all the five hundred and eighty English warships then in existence were sent into the Cork harbor; and if the little American _Monitor_ were to get in there, too, at the same time; and also if a suitable chain boom were fixed so as to enclose the whole lot, that the same little _Monitor_ could send them all to the bottom within a few hours without being compelled to fire a single shot. Lord Paget made these assertions in support of a motion he made before the House of Commons, proposing that the unspent part of an appropriation of about $75,000,000 designed to build forts to defend harbors in the South of England for the protection of their fleets against the French and Yankees should be immediately applied to the construction of armorclad ships. Without any delay a bill was passed making the required change in the appropriation bill. Very shortly after the Admiralty proposed the construction of four ironclads, which proposal was immediately adopted. Four large battleships were taken and razed and covered with armor-plate. They were followed later by many much more powerful vessels designed especially to carry armor, _until at the present day the English Navy is competent to engage all the European navies together_. Mr. Holland, reflecting upon the result of the duel at Hampton Roads, foresaw this result clearly, because he knew that England possessed the necessary materials, money, and mechanical skill required to provide ships enough to maintain her claim to her assumed title, "Mistress of the Seas," and to enable her to terrorize the greatest nations of Europe that had persistently shown lack of wisdom by their neglect to properly provide themselves with the only weapon that could resist her; that is, a sufficiently powerful navy. They trusted, to their undoing, to great armies, forgetting that England had already proved her ability to cause combinations of her former enemies against any one of them.