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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[Nov. 



civil engineers — no one class claimed by military engineers, and no one 

 great work wliich hears their name. Assuredly, therefore, the standard of 

 qualification beIon;>in^ to tlie Royal Engineers cannot he a material one; 

 we have shown that it cannot be on their scientific or literary attainments ; 

 and we do not know, in fact, upon what it rests. 



The employment of military men in civil afl'airs is usually held to be 

 ill advised, because from their training they are not suited for such pur- 

 suits. From the peculiar nature of their employment and associations, 

 they do not acquire business habits or ideas, and we have always esteemed 

 it unfortunate when they were placed in civil positions, because they have 

 been utterly unable to respond to the call made upon them. The removal 

 of Major-General Pasley from the office of Inspector-General of Rail- 

 ways, is one ohjected to by himself, and on which he has pursued the 

 extraordinary course of appealing to the public. It shows that there is no 

 sympathy between him and the government. The employment of military 

 engineers brings them in comparison with their civil brethren, who are 

 particularly well trained in matters of business, and who hold their ground 

 among the acutest men of business in the country. The most important 

 and complicated alfsirs are left to the negotiation or arbitration of Mr. 

 Robert Stephenson, M.P., i\Ir. Brunei, or Mr. Locke, M.l'., by capitalists 

 fully capable of appreciating their practical abilities. It will be found 

 that the engineers have taken as great a part as any class in the organiza- 

 tion and development of the railway system and its administration. 



So far from exhibiting any such public proof of their capacity, military 

 men are well known to be unfitted for the understanding of business mat- 

 ters. A lad is taken from schDol, sent to Woolwich, gets a commission, is 

 employed at home or in the colonies, and at length is made a railway 

 inspector, without knowing as much of business as any young man in the 

 city of London. He can give orders to sergeants and corporals, build 

 barracks in places where he has it all his own way ; but as to any useful 

 intercourse with society, it is perfectly out of the question. He has not, 

 in most cases, that association with professional and practical men, which 

 might put him in the way of acquiring a proper degree of professional 

 experience. A pupil in Mr. Stephenson's ofBce knows very much more. 



It would be very hard for the Board of Trade to furnish the public with 

 any sufficient justification for appointing aged or middle-aged gentlemen, 

 tricked out in blue, gold, and scarlet, as inspectors of railways, of which 

 the inspectors know nothing. It may very well happen that an officer, 

 who has spent his time in New Zealand, or the Isle of Ascension, or in 

 the backwoods of Canada, building barracks and convict jails, may be 

 perfectly guiltless of knowing what a railway is ; and it is no reflection 

 upon the unfortunate individual who is made a railway inspector, that he 

 should know nothing about them. Major-General Pasley has the rare 

 merit among military engineers of having written on several professional 

 subjects; but no one ever thought of his knowing anything of railways, 

 until he was brought forward to be the arbiter between Stephenson, Brunei, 

 Locke, and C'ubitt, as Inspector-General of Railways. General Pasley 

 could scarcely refuse accepting the appointment, though it put him in the 

 very painful position of interfering with the master-minds of the world in 

 matters of whicli he knew nothing at all. This position must have been 

 one very paiuful to Sir Charles Pasley's feelings, and every one will sym- 

 pathise with him, for his own merits and his gentlemanly conduct have 

 secured for him much good will. The government cannot, however, be 

 pardoned for putting him in a false position. The same is to said of the 

 other gentlemen, who were similarly ill-used. 



The appointment of raw soldiers to inspect railways made engineers 

 and directors familiar with their ignorance and incompetency. As they 

 did not understand anything about railways, they had to be taught. Some 

 of them were conscious of their ignorance, very willing to learn, and taking 

 much trouble to learn ; others, in the supercilious arrogance and self-conceit 

 engendered in the atmosphereof a barrack-room, have rendered themselves 

 ridiculous by the exhibition of their ignorance on points of which they 

 supposed themselves well informed. How many of our readers have been 

 witnesses of their follies, and have laughed at the presumptuous incapacity 

 of the Mentors set over them by government ! Not even an en" inedriver 

 can be brought to hold a favourable opinion of men, of whose emptiness he 

 is well aware. The visit of a government inspector is a joke, which no- 

 thing but the prudence or good sense of the railway authorities prevents 

 from being made sensible in a manner very undignified. The public, 

 too, and the public press want faith in government inspectors, and the 

 Times and Punch, the two magnates of the pen, have held them up to well- 

 deserved ridicule. 



The officers of the Royal Engineers, and other parties employed by go- 



vernment for railway purposes, use the employment for their own con- 

 venience ; and if they happen to learn anything, turn their knowledge to 

 account by going into the service of the railway companies. So long as 

 they are worth nothing, the government is at the cost of keeping them, and 

 has to pay for their blundering out of the public purse, and to encounter 

 the ridicule of their incompetency ; but when the officers are worth any- 

 thing, they sell their knowledge in the best market. 



Anything so unsatisfactory as the position of the railway officers of the 

 Board of Trade, and their relations with railway companies, can scarcely be 

 imagined. Some needy son of patronage, who has scraped through his 

 examination at Woolwich, and who is always more of a dandy than a gen- 

 tleman, and more of a schoolboy than an engineer, gets into the railway 

 department. He is dependent upon the chairmen, secretaries, superin- 

 tendents, and engineers not to expose his ignorance, and to give him the 

 information he wants. He gets very sociable in his intercourse, and very 

 familiar — for many of his associates are much better gentlemen than him- 

 self, and none is ready to give way to assumptions of barrack superiority. 

 On being brought in contact with the world, free from the hallucinations 

 of mess pomp and self-conceit, he finds out his own true position, apart 

 from his butterQy livery, that he is a nobody, and rather a poor one. He 

 wants the means to keep up his own dandyism and his wife's millinery, 

 and he wants places for his sons and portions for his daughters. The 

 ambition to live a useful life comes upon him, and he cannot resist the 

 temptation of asking for the first railway appointment which comes in his 

 way. 



Some very honourable men may do their best to withstand corrupt ac- 

 tion ; but at any rate the government officer is placed in a false position, 

 and cannot give satisfaction to his employers. Some, it may be, give 

 way to positive corruption — nay, suggest and carry it out; and at any rate, 

 those who do not give way lie open to the imputation of it. The events of 

 184.'>, and the parliamentary discussions ou the conduct of the Board of 

 Trade, will occur to every reader, and the result of them cannot by any 

 means be considered as satisfactory. 



For a public officer to be suspected is always bad, because when honest 

 it trammels his own mode of action, and the jealous public will never be 

 satisfied of the independence of the officer, when they know how readily 

 he may turn his trust to his own private purposes. The communication of 

 valuable information may so easily be made a matter of profitable barter 

 and speculation, that the public can never be satisfied it is not done, and 

 unfortunately before now circumstances strongly corroborative of suspicion 

 have occurred. The public have every regard for the honourable character 

 of military men ; but it does not esteem the character of one profession, or 

 of one body of gentlemen, as higher than another ; and at any rate it does 

 not judge very favourably of human nature wheu exposed to temptation. 



The Board of Trade officer, when once determined to place himself out, 

 has the means of preparing the way by rendering such services to his 

 future employers as may well be considered the price of his employment. 

 How easy it is for one so determined to make such arrangements for the 

 favoured line, and to make such reports npon it, as may be very valuable to 

 the company, and in the end very valuable to himself, but which cannot in 

 anyway be held as the best means of forwarding the public interests. 

 This is certainly a possibility — nay more, it has a probability, and there are 

 those who believe that it really has occurred, while there is no guarantee 

 that it may not occur over and over again. 



The temptation to companies of using parties connected with the Board 

 of Trade is very strong, as they not only get an immediate service done, 

 but they also have the means of communication whenever they may 

 want it. 



Often as the Board of Trade have been subjected to public censure, we 

 are not aware of any defence which has been made for them — we might say 

 of any defence which can be made. The railway department is utterly 

 useless for the purposes intended; its inspection is a joke, which is now so 

 well known, that it ceases to tranquillise tlie public mind ; and it is only 

 operative for mischief. The department is an incubus on the railway in- 

 terest, which does not give patronage enough to a government tojustify its 

 continuance, and which is well calculaled to bring a ministry into jeopardy. 

 In the first session of a parliament iu which a railway interest will be 

 combined, Mr. Strutt is pledged to bring forward a bill, which has been 

 denounced as an aggression on a vast amount of private properly ; and this 

 railway directors have determined to resist to the utmost. With the number 

 of new and hostile members iu the house, the defeat of Mr. Strutt by the 

 railway interest, assisted by the opponents of the ministry, is one among the 

 disasters of the next year which appears most likely to be accomplished. 



