THE NAVIES OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE.

Wellington Independent, Volume XVI, Issue 1506, 19 March 1861, Page 4

THE NAVIES OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE.

Mr. Baxter, M.P. for Moutrose, stated in the course of a recent speech, that Great Britain has a larger number of persons employed in her royal navy, than France has iu her entire mercantile marine, both coasting and/oreign. One of his constituents, Mr. J. M. Paton, asked Mr. Baxter to publish the statist tics on which this assertion was based, and the hon: gentleman at once complied with the request, giving the following figures : —

" Oa the Ist July, 1860, the total number of men and boys registered according to the French maratime inscription was 156,384, classified as follows: — 1. Officers, mariners, et matelots,Bs,#39 ; 2. Novices et moussess, 42,883 ; 3. Ouvriers, &c, 19,159; 4. Mecaniciens, &c, 1702. Under the first head are ranked all sea-goiog men of all ages, including not only those employed in the foreign and coasting trade, but fishermau and also the sailors in the imperial navy, with the exception of that portion of them about one-third (or 10,000), which are landsmen taken from the military conscription. Under No. 2 are enumerated the boys and the landsmen omitted from No. 1. No. 3 includes ship carpenters,, sailmakers, and all sorts of labourers, whether employed in national dockyards, or at private establishments, likewise boatmen who descend rivers so far as the tide water. No. 4 is for mechanics and firemen." Proceeding to analyse these figures, Mr. Baxtor says: — If we deduct from the gross number of 150,000, 30,000 employed in the imperial navy, the same number of fishermen, 19,000 workmen, and 2000 mechanics, there remains 75,000 actual sailors. Or we may adopt another plan. In 1859, the French had 14,708 sailing vessels, with a tonnage ot 960,936, and 324 steamers with a tonnage of 56,000— in round numbers a million tons of mercantile shipping. They reckon 8 meu and boys to every 100 tons, although in Great Britain the proportion is very much less. The difference may be to some extent accounted for by their having very large vessels, and by the fact that small ships have in proportion more hands; but T suspect those French writers who calcu late upon a man or boy to every 12 tons, take into acoount the fisherman on the Newfoundland coast. But even granting that they do not, aud giving the alarmists the full benefit of the doubt, 8 per cent, on a tonnage of a million only gives 80,000 persons, or deducting boys, about the same number of able bodied men as M. de Mondy calculates upon (between 55,000 and' 66,000). Well, then, we have this year 84,000 persons, or 77,000 men and 7000 boys in our ships of war — a greater number than that in the entire mercantile servioe of France, computed according to any of the above methods. Nor must we forget that we have a reserve of 20,000, or perhaps more, in our coastguard service and our volunteer naval reserve, and that the merchant shipping of France is steadily decreasing, tt had in 1859, 42,000 tons less than it had in 1857 ; and, without a flourishing mercantile marine, there never can be a powerful naval reserve, or even a reliable navy. The state of the case then, is simply this. We have 77,000 able bodied men in our royal navy, and 7000 boys--84,000 in all; the French have 30,000. They have 60,000 able-bodied men, or 80,000 hands in all, in their mercantile marine ; we have 240,000, or thereabouts. Our sailors are increasing every day, theirs are on the decline. So it is to be hoped we may still sleep soundly as far as the droad of the naval resources of France is cono^rned. The most extraordinary mistatement9 are afloat, too, with regard to the number of vessels in the French imperial navy. By the lists corrected up to April, 1859, (and every one knows that we, since then, have made much greater progress than our neighbours), the French had 180 sailing vessels, with 2920 guns; the British had 221 sailing vessels, -with 8275 guns — the difference in the proportion between the ships and guns being accounted for by the fact that the French have only four sailing three-deckers and ten two-deckers left, whilst we have 43 sailing liue-of-battle ships still in the service. At the same period the French had 265 steam vessels of war, with 5,500 guns ; the British had 530 steam vessels of war (including 161 gunboats), with 8697 guns."