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the express stipulation that I should be liable to be retired at the age of sixty-five if still a Rear-admiral, and at sixty-eight or seventy if I had attained the various higher grades.
6. I was in that year requested to form one of the Board of Admiralty, and so continued until the change of Government in 1868.
7. I may therefore, say without fear of contradiction, that during the ten years which have elapsed since my last sea-service afloat, I have been employed for seven years in the Civil Service of the Admiralty by the choice of those who were under various administrations entrusted with the selection of officers for service.
8. I may also state that I applied in writing to the First Lord of the Admiralty, of which I was a member, to give me active service afloat; but that he declined from the consideration that in peace he considered that my services at the Board were such that he did not feel justified in dispensing with them.
9. Service at the Admiralty has hitherto been considered the most honourable to which a naval officer could aspire in peace. The pecuniary recompense was nothing, but it gave him opportunity for acquiring information on naval affairs which could not be obtained in other appointments, and it gave him an enlarged capacity for dealing with great questions when the country might require him to command its fleets.
10. It is desirable doubtless that in the junior ranks of the Navy constant sea-service should complete the officer in all the details of his profession; but the naval Commander-in-Chief, who has thoroughly learned his profession in youth, is of increased value to the State, if instead of passing his life in a narrow round of professional routine, he can add to that a knowledge of men and public affairs, which can only be gained in other positions.
11. In confirmation of this I may instance the fact, that the services of almost all the men whose naval reputation is the greatest would have been lost to the State by this
