nance Department for their treatment of an adaptation of that system, known as the Hydro-pneumatic Carriage.[1] The story is too long to tell in full. We will only say, therefore, that the extent to which the country has suffered by the persistent treatment of a man who had been acknowledged officially to have rendered the greatest service by his earlier invention, has been so serious, that during a discussion in the United Service Institution., the calm of that most orderly, and, if we may say so without offence of a most valuable public body, prim and undemonstrative assembly, was broken by such exclamations as these from venerable and experienced admirals and generals: –
"If there is some shadowy power or department behind, which prevents the recommendations of the most scientific committees being listened to, I know that whatever that power may be, it constitutes the greatest real danger that a nation can suffer from. It must be recollected that in a matter of this kind John Bull submits for a long time to deception; but he is very apt to get angry after a long course of it – particularly if it is accompanied by incapacity, either in his servants or in his governors – and that anger is unmistakably shown."
How little any object of national economy was the cause of this treatment of Colonel Moncrieff may be judged by a statement of Mr Anderson, C.E., which represents a fact frequently repeated in many of these cases: "The Ordnance Department undoubtedly had the opportunity of trying the experiment free of all cost if they had pleased to do so." While Mr Hawksley says: "It is impossible for a layman to understand why, with committee after committee reporting, as I understand these committees have done, in favour of the Moncrieff system, and recommending that experiments should be tried, no practical step has been taken."
We cannot go at length into this story, but we may say that it is one in which the most deceptive answers have been prepared by the department for Ministers to give in the House of Commons.
After one favourable report upon another had been given by committees, recommending the full trial and presumptive adoption, yet another committee was appointed, with Colonel Campbell as president, and a majority of members composed as follows: Two were men who had been energetically engaged in the advocacy of "shields," which would have been superseded had Colonel Moncrieff's system been adopted. A third was one of the very few men who had committed themselves to opposition to Colonel Moncrieff. Nevertheless, the report of even this committee was too favourable to be used for the suppression of Colonel Moncrieff, had the whole case on which they reported been fairly stated. But a garbled force was given to it by the suppression of an important covering letter; and by a technical evasion, the papers which went before the House of Commons, when the correspondence was called for, left an impression that the committee had reported on a different subject from that actually referred to them.
The whole case urgently calls for thorough sifting.
We can only afford time for one
- ↑ "The Moncrieff System applied by Hydro-pneumatic Gun-carriages to Harbour Defences," by Colonel A. Moncrieff, C.B., F.R.S. A Lecture delivered in the United Service Institution, April 25, 1884.
