AND WAR SALARIES. 169 



manufacture of government war-material wholly thrown open 

 to competition. On the first establishment of the Enfield fac- 

 tory for small-arms, a great outcry arose from Birmingham ; 

 the complaint being, that the government prejudiced private 

 small-arms manufacturers by entering upon the field of com- 

 petition, under chosen and favoured circumstances ; such, for 

 example, as being in a manner independent of the vicissitudes 

 of the money-market ; as being absolved from the pressure of 

 taxation, of rent, &c. A certain section of British political 

 economists took up the cry, and made the most of it ; but 

 with only the result of justifying the establishment of the 

 Enfield factory, and the permanent maintenance of it. 



This testimony of opinion fails to imply belief that a mili- 

 tary chief should be expected to display more technical effi- 

 ciency than a civilian accustomed to the manufacture of small- 

 arms from his earliest days. Confessedly all the technical 

 supervision and control exercised by the military chief of 

 department at Enfield is vicariously exercised through his 

 subordinates ; and not this alone but what is more abnormal 

 and prejudicial the military chief uses his technical sub- 

 ordinate in the double capacity of receiving technical instruc- 

 tion from him and conveying technical orders through him. 



The objections advanced in respect of the two govern- 

 ment manufacturing departments already brought under con- 

 sideration, will be found to apply to all the rest, though not 

 perhaps with equal force. The radical and unmitigated bad- 

 ness of the system does not rest on the presumptive evidence 

 of tendencies alone. It is demonstrated, and is made to ap- 

 pear self-condemned, by actual experience. If the system 

 possess elements of good, they should be recognisable through 

 the light and testimony of experience. To challenge acqui- 

 escence in the existing arrangement, through scrutiny of the 

 muster-roll of names of military technical chiefs who have 

 made themselves distinguished, would be only to court and 

 bring about discomfiture. It would puzzle the most strenu- 



