174 PEACE ESTABLISHMENTS 



latest development was a paid member, though before the 

 period of General Gator's committee, only the president was 

 paid, every other member being called upon to give his ser- 

 vices gratuitously. During General Gator's presidency it was 

 that the proposition of adopting the Armstrong breech-load- 

 ing ordnance into the British service came, as a matter of busi- 

 ness, before the Ordnance Select Committee. The latter (all 

 save the president unpaid) declined to recommend the Arm- 

 strong breech-loader ; whereupon the committee was dissolved, 

 and the War-office, with a liberality the motives of which have 

 never been explained, appointed another Ordnance Select 

 Gommittee, of which every member was paid. That com- 

 mittee it was that passed the Armstrong gun ; and the pass- 

 ing of the Armstrong gun has cost the country upwards of 

 three millions sterling ! This much, obiter dictum, about the 

 origin of the Ordnance Select Committee. 



Seeing that one function perhaps the chief function of 

 the Ordnance Select Committee was that of scrutinising pro- 

 positions relative to appliances of war, involving a knowledge 

 of chemistry and of mechanism, it would seem only rational 

 that a mechanical and a chemical element should be recog- 

 nised in its aggregate. Nothing of the sort, until just before 

 the Ordnance Select Committee was abolished. For your 

 constitution of that body was military wholly, with the ex- 

 ception of the vice-president, who was always a naval officer. 

 Sure an outsider civilian may be that, when protesting against 

 the undue preponderance of the military over the naval ele- 

 ment, he will find himself backed by the naval service. 

 Englishmen are accustomed to regard their navy as foremost 

 in rank, comparing it with the army; and questions of mere 

 heraldic precedence apart there are specialities in naval ar- 

 maments which naval men should best sit in judgment upon, 

 save and except it admits of proof that the naval service, man 

 for man, is inferior to the sister service in talent and intelli- 

 gence. If the latter, then the preponderance of military over 



