AND WAR SALARIES. 165 



individuals and firms is demonstrated, therefore special govern- 

 ment factories are proved to be useless at the very least, a 

 surplusage. 



I am very far from acceding to this proposition ; and al- 

 though the very essence and tenor of these remarks goes to 

 inculpate the practice of applying military faculties, the 

 result of military education, to the management of civil tech- 

 nical organisations, yet I can by no means follow certain mem- 

 bers of the quasi-purist school of reformers in that train of 

 argument whereby the germs of honour and the springs of 

 principle are affected to be sought in the commercial grades 

 of civil life alone. I by no means think that the naval and 

 military careers are, from their very nature, calculated to foster 

 principles of dishonour ; nay rather believe that these special 

 avocations comprehend within themselves leavening elements 

 of truth and honour not usually found in commerce, and ought 

 not to be expected. 



This very complete, and as to some it may seem extreme, 

 confession made, it can be taken in no very bad part by the 

 naval and military service when a critic says, that gentlemen 

 so environed with the pomp and glamour of this wicked world 

 as they are, naturally tend, through the very gravitation of 

 circumstances, to assume a position of dogmatism begotten by 

 habits of command; a position not well calculated to subserve 

 the interests of a technical operation founded upon the results 

 of experience. 



On the other side is a list of the government manufac- 

 turing establishments presided over by lieutenant-colonels of 

 the Engineers and Artillery together, with a statement of sal- 

 aries respectively. Let the fact be borne in mind, that the 

 military pay goes on simultaneously with the pay for civilian, 

 supervision. Every colonel, then, placed at the head of a 

 government manufacturing establishment is paid double: first, 

 in his military capacity ; second, in consideration of his effi- 

 ciency in the civilian department at the head of which he is 



