3. The third charge against me is that I said of Sir William Armstrong that, in 1858, 'he was constituted the confidential adviser of the Government upon the discoveries of other inventors as well as his own.' 'But the Bluebook,' says the Saturday Review, tells a different tale: the officers appointed to report upon the guns assert, that when the guns of other inventors were submitted to the Committee, Sir William never came between the parties in any shape.'

The question here is not what Sir William Armstrong did, or what he did not do; the point at issue is, was he or was he not constituted the confidential adviser of the Government upon the discoveries of other inventors as well as of his own?'

The writer in Fraser's Magazine says, he was not; that his post did not give him the position of judge or arbitrator over his rivals;' and that 'an honourable man could not have held it.'

Again I turn to the Story of the Guns, in which (p. 149) I quoted from the official documents by which Sir William Armstrong was appointed, and the official instructions which defined what his duties were to be. By the latter, in addition to 'maturing and perfecting his system of rifled ordnance,' he was to duct all experiments for the purpose of developing his system, or for the improvement of rifled ordnance generally.' But besides this, Articles 5 and 6 direct that

con

he shall report and advise upon all questions submitted to him by the War Department in relation to rifled ordnance, and, in cases where questions relating to rifled ordnance shall be referred to the decision of a Committee, Sir William Armstrong shall, if required, act under the direction of such Committee.

I observed that he

was thus constituted the confidential adviser of the Government upon the discoveries of other inventors, as well as of his own-a position of the utmost delicacy and difficulty, and one in which it was hardly possible for its occupant to be regarded as an indifferent witness, or to escape the suspicion of becoming an interested umpire. I added that

it would be derogatory to the high character

of Sir William Armstrong to suppose it necessary, even for form's sake, to disclaim the remotest idea of imputing to him a feeling so unworthy, much less any act emanating from it; but to demonstrate how unwise in its conception was the creation of an office which placed its occupant, however great his reputation, in a position where his conduct was so open to misconstruction; and I pointed to the fact that

Captain Blakely and other inventors had abstained from submitting their plans to the Ordnance Select Committee, of which Sir William Armstrong was the constituted adviser (p. 149, 150).

The fact is thus proved to have been precisely as I stated it, and that by the terms of his appointment, and the duties assigned to him by his instructions, Sir William Armstrong was constituted the adviser of the War-office on the inventions of others; and so far from being a contradiction, it is an obvious concurrence in the justice of my strictures as to the impropriety of this arrangement in the abstract, that in practice Sir William Armstrong himself abstained from acting upon his instructions. The following passage from the evidence of General St. George fully sustains the opinion I expressed on that subject, whilst I disclaimed the remotest intention of casting any imputation upon the honour of Sir William Armstrong:

2783. Mr. Laird.-Did you state that Sir William Armstrong was the adviser to the War-office, with respect to rifled ordnance, irrespective of your Committee?

General St. George.-He is the engineer for rifled ordnance, and the definition of his duty says that he shall report and advise upon all questions submitted to him by the War Department, with respect to rifled ordnance.

2784. If Mr. Whitworth, or any other inventor, sends in any proposal to the Waroffice, Sir William Armstrong has to report upon it, according to that definition?

He never does; such a proposal is not submitted to him; it is invariably sent by the Director of Ordnance to the Ordnance Select Committee.

2785. But that is part of Sir William Armstrong's duty, according to that definition, is it not?

It appears that his duty is to advise upon all questions of rifled ordnance submitted to him.

2786. Do not you think that would deter other inventors from sending in proposals

to the department, because Sir William Armstrong, however much he may wish to act impartially, has his own invention, and most people are inclined to promote their own schemes; and inventors, perhaps, particularly so?

I do not see why inventors should be deterred; Sir William Armstrong is not referred to.

2787. Captain Jervis.-Supposing an inventor goes to the War-office and offers to submit an invention, he is sent to the Director of Ordnance? Invariably.

2788. Who makes inquiries and refers the matters to the Ordnance Select Committee?

Yes.

2789. Sir William Armstrong never comes in between the parties in any shape? Never.

2790. Mr. Laird.-Is it not the general impression that Sir William Armstrong, being the adviser of the Secretary of State upon questions of rifled ordnance, does, in fact, deter parties from laying their inventions before the Government?

I do not know; from the number of proposals received, it does not appear that parties are much deterred.

4. The fourth charge adduced against me is, that on another occasion Sir Emerson Tennent complains that Mr. Whitworth's men were not allowed to fire his guns at the trials; and a passage is quoted by him from the report of a military officer, who says, The practice recorded was carried on entirely under our direction.' "There,' says the Saturday Review, 'Sir Emerson Tennent stops; but the Bluebook does not stop there; it continues the same sentence in these words: "A man of Mr. Whitworth's, accustomed to fire his guns, looking over the sights on each occasion before firing, and pointing out anything he thought required alteration."'

I am sure that this charge of unfairness proceeds from a want of practical acquaintance with the wide subject of this contest, which is by no means to be wondered at. But what are the facts? The earliest trials with Mr. Whitworth's guns were made by the military gunners alone, in the absence of Mr. Whitworth or his assistants. But on the second occasion, when a new gun of his was about to be tried, Mr. Whitworth required that his guns should

be fired by his own men.

The War

office, however, as stated by General St. George, strongly objected to Mr. Whitworth working his own guns, and explained that no proper comparison could be made as to the facility of laying and working the guns, unless both were worked by artillerymen; and, as Mr. Whitworth felt compelled to stipulate that his guns should be worked by his own men, and remain under his control, the arrangement was suspended. It was resumed, however, at a later period, when Mr. Sidney Herbert, then Secretary for War, so far accommodated matters as to intimate to Mr. Whitworth, by letter of 12th July, 1860, that the guns to be tried might be worked by Mr. Whitworth's men, but with the stipulation that one half the rounds were to be fired by artillerymen and sailors.

To any one familiar with the subject, the nature and importance of this concession are at once apparent. It did not imply that before the real trials commenced, Mr. Whitworth and his men were to be at liberty to amuse themselves by firing a number of shots from his own gun, which were to count for nothing in the subsequent experiments. They did not require the permission of Mr. Sidney Herbert to do that. What was meant was this: that of the total number of rounds to be recorded as the result of the trials, one half were to be fired by Mr. Whitworth's own men, and under his direction and control, and the other half were to be fired' by artillerymen and sailors;' but what says the official report of the actual performance, signed by General St. George and Colonel Bingham?

In obedience to our instructions, we went to Southport on the 25th July, and carried on practice with Mr. Whitworth's 80pounder and 12-pounder guns. Detailed reports of the practice on that and the following day are herewith. The guns were fired a few rounds by Mr. Whitworth's men previously; but of these we took no note. They were then handed over to the Royal Artillery, and to seamen of the Royal Navy; and the practice recorded was carried on entirely under our direction, and that of Commander Herbert of the Excellent, who was sent down for the purpose by the Admiralty; a man of Mr. Whit

worth's, accustomed to fire his guns, looking over the sights on each occasion before firing, and pointing out anything he thought required alteration. The ranges and deflections were taken by a party of artillerymen under an officer, and are, we believe, correct, (Bluebook, 1863, p. 475).

The Saturday Review complains that in narrating the above facts I stopped short at the point where General St. George states that the only shots recorded were those fired by artillerymen and sailors, under his own direction. But that was the only fact I had to complain of; and as to Mr. Whitworth's man looking over the sights and pointing out anything he thought required alteration, it no more constituted a redemption of Mr. Sidney Herbert's promise that one half the shots should be fired by Mr. Whitworth's people, than it would have been held that the other half had been fired by General St. George, if the guns had been laid by Mr. Whitworth, whilst an artilleryman was permitted to look over his shoulder.

and

In selecting the foregoing out of the numerous allegations contained in the article in Fraser's Magazine, the writer in the Saturday Review no doubt chose them as the most clear and conclusive proofs of my supposed abuse of the privileges of literary advocacy. But I have seen all the others; and I need scarcely assure you that, one and all, they are equally unsubstantial, equally susceptible of refutation by the simple expedient of collating my statements with the official documents on which they are founded. In fact, in preparing for the third impression of the Story of the Guns, the publication of which is delayed to await the termination of the pending trials, I have not, up to the present time, found occasion to alter or to modify a single statement which appeared in the first edition of the work.

I am, &c.,

J. EMERSON TENNENT. London, May 9th, 1864.

The above letter, which the rules of the Saturday Review did not enable the editor to publish, disposes of so much of the article in Fraser's

Magazine as appeared in the former; and I now proceed to apply the same test to the remaining statements impugning the accuracy of my book.

5. It was one of Mr. Whitworth's complaints, that the Committee, which in 1858 decided in favour of Sir William Armstrong's gun, did so after visiting Sir William Armstrong's factory at Elswick; but 'without performing their promise to visit Mr. Whitworth's works at Manchester, and see what was doing there,' (Story of the Guns, p. 130). I quoted the explanation of Sir William Wiseman, that the omission was' because they had no proposal from Mr. Whitworth for constructing guns at all.' It will be observed that I gave the very words of Sir William Wiseman, and upon them, I went on to remark that there was some obscurity in saying that 'there was no proposal of a gun by Mr. Whitworth before the Committee, when the Committee were in the very act of comparing a Whitworth gun with an Armstrong.' On this, the writer in Fraser observes that I alter Sir William Wiseman's language in the act of commenting on it; that Sir William 'no where says that Mr. Whitworth proposed no gun; what he said was, that Mr. Whitworth did not propose to manufacture or construct any,' and 'had the Committee gone to Manchester they would have gone on a wild-goose chase.' But if this be so, why did the Committee themselves propose to go on that wild-goose chase? Why did they promise to visit Mr. Whitworth's factory at all, and fail to redeem that promise? As to the explanation offered, that, although Mr. Whitworth proposed a gun, he made no proposal for constructing guns,' it is simply untenable; for this reason, that at that time the Government had no notion of employing any one to construct guns for them; their intention was to manufacture for themselves; all they wanted was a model; and in offering one, Mr. Whitworth's proposal differed in no degree from Sir William Armstrong's. Thus the 'obscurity' of which I spoke in Sir William Wiseman's evidence remains as profound as before.

6. The next charge brought against me is, that in the Story of the Guns, Sir Emerson Tennent gives us distinctly to understand that the Armstrong 40-pounder was introduced into the service by a committee, of which Sir William Armstrong was a member;' but he 'does not inform his readers that the Admiralty had already decided on the gun; and then, and not till then, was it referred to Sir William Armstrong and three other officers to determine on the weight, calibre, and minor details.'

This charge is clear, distinct, and explicit, that I suppressed the fact of the Admiralty having previously decided on that gun; and that I withheld a passage in the Report of the Committee which would have shown it.

But what is the truth? In the Story of the Guns the whole of the occurrences are set out at length in the very words of the Report which I am accused of suppressing. At P. 142 occurs the following passage:

In the autumn, guns of large calibre were accepted for the naval service; their adoption having taken place under the circumstances thus succinctly stated in the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons, reappointed in 1863 to inquire into the expenditure on rifled ord

nance.

In the winter of 1858-9, the Board of Admiralty, acting upon the advice of Captain Hewlett, R.N., of Her Majesty's ship Excellent, gunnery ship at Portsmouth, decided upon the introduction of the Armstrong guns into the navy for boat service; and in the summer of 1859, the same officer having urged the importance of introducing into the navy larger calibres of Armstrong guns, the Board of Admiralty requested the Secretary of State for War, in the strongest manner, to supply them with as little delay as possible with a large number of 40-pounder and 70-pounder Armstrong guns.

On the 24th of September, 1859, a Committee, of which Sir William Armstrong was a member, approved of the pattern of the Armstrong 40-pounder for naval service. The Armstrong system was first extended to the 110 calibre on the 14th October, 1859. The political necessities of the day appear to have been so urgent as not to allow time for maturing the design previous

to its manufacture. In consequence of the excessive pressure which existed at that time for the supply of guns of that calibre, the first 100 of these were constructed before any experiments upon them had been concluded.

The italics in the above passage are my own, and they are complained of by the writer in Fraser as invidious; but the object of introducing them is obvious, in connexion with the chapter which immediately follows, the entire gist of which is to point out the anomaly of Sir William Armstrong's original appointment, in a position where his official acts, however pure, were exposed to misrepresentation, and in which, as was pointed out by Sir James Graham's Committee in 1861, 'he was placed in a false position by being made the inspector of the work of his own partners.'

The very terms in which the committee of which Sir William Armstrong was a member, record the result of their deliberations as to the adoption of his gun, are calculated to convey incorrectly the impression that the decision rested with them. The minutes of their proceedings is as follows:

The Committee assembled at the Waroffice at I o'clock P.M., on the 24th Sept., 1859.

Present-Colonel St. George, C.B., R.A., President; Captain Sir William Wiseman, R.N.; Sir William Armstrong, C.B.; Captain Noble, R.A., Secretary.

The Committee approved of the adoption for the naval service of Sir W. Armstrong's 40-pounder of 32 cut., 10 feet in length; but propose that it be reduced when necessary to a gun of 30 cwt., with a length of 7 feet 6 inches.'

It was not long, however, before the incongruity became apparent, of Sir William Armstrong being member of a committee, where decisions on his own guns had to be recorded, and the arrangement was put an end to by his retirement in 1863.

7. It is said that I have misquoted the evidence of the Duke of Somerset, in attributing to him the statement that, in the hurry incident to the early introduction of the Armstrong gun about the year 1859, guns of every calibre were taken into the service without a trial in

any instances except that of the 40-pounders;' whereas that applied to the 110-pounders only, and what the Duke did was merely to endorse the evidence of Sir William Armstrong as to the 110-pounders. In reply to this, my simplest course is to quote what the Duke really said

5178. Mr. Vivian.-Let me refer your Grace to the answer of Sir William Armstrong on the 10th of June to Question No. 3549. Can you state upon what series of experiments the 110-pounder gun was approved?-None at all; there was such an excessive pressure for rifled guns at that time that there was no time for experiments, and it was one of the great difficulties which I had to contend with that I was obliged to produce the guns under these conditions.' Is that answer substantially correct?

Duke of Somerset.-That is quite correct, I dare say, with respect to the 110-pounder gun. Our experiments were with the 40-pounders.

8. Another charge against me is in connexion with the subject of welded coil, which is not a new discovery. Captain Blakely claims to have tried it in 1854 or 1855, and Sir William Armstrong introduced it in the manufacture of his own gun in 1858. In 1861 the Ordnance Select Committee of the War-office gave an opportunity to Captain Blakely to explain his views about the making of cannon from this material, and made a report; in alluding to which I am charged with having put into their mouths words implying an opinion on their part that Captain Blakely had used the coil 'previously to its use by Sir William Armstrong, whereas what the Committee really did, was to pronounce on the identity of the two processes, but to decline, entering into the question of priority.

This is precisely what I have represented in the Story of the Guns; the words 'previously used' are my own: they do not appear as a quotation from the Report; and the only extract I have made from it is contained in the following lines (p. 91): -The Ordnance Select Committee of 1861 reported to Lord Herbert, that Captain Blakely's method and no other is the principle employed in the manufacture of the Armstrong guns; and it appears to them that

whatever disputes there may be as to the originality or priority of invention, there is little or none in the matter of fact. Both make, or propose to make, strong guns, in the same way; nor is the principle in any way new,' (Rep. p. 551).

9. As to the value of welded coil compared with steel as a material for guns, some rather indistinct strictures follow on those passages in my book, in which I have alluded to expressions of Sir William Armstrong indicative of his preference for the latter, and his use of welded coil intermediately pending the improvement of steel. Any doubt attempted to be thrown upon this point will perhaps be best met by the fact, that in the guns of Sir William Armstrong, at this moment under trial at Shoeburyness, welded coil is abandoned by him for the inner tubes, which are one and all made of steel.

10. One painful episode in the proceedings of the late Committee of the House of Commons was the production of a Report of the Ordnance Select Committee of the Waroffice, made on incomplete inquiry,. and never meant to have been made public. In it an incorrect assertion was unfortunately admitted in relation to the manufacture of a large gun at Woolwich, in order to have it rifled on Mr. Whitworth's principle. The anomaly of a gun for Mr. Whitworth being made at the Government works, of which Sir William Armstrong was the official head, is explained by the circumstances thus detailed in the Story of the Guns.

Lord Palmerston, in 1861, gave an order to Mr. Whitworth to prepare a gun calculated for firing shot or shell weighing 150 pounds. Not having at that time machinery at his own works, at Manchester, calculated for the production of ordnance of so large a calibre, Sir George Cornewall Lewis gave instructions that the gun should be made at Woolwich, according to Mr. Whitworth's principles and under his directions.' Difficulties, however, presented themselves in the execution of the work, arising out of the difference between the processes at Woolwich and Manchester respec