1843.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



363 



upward passage of a vastly additional quantity of tidal flow. We cannot con- 

 clude these remarks without bearing our warm testimony to the liberality 

 and enterprise of the members of the River Trust, who have directed ,and 

 the ability of Mr. Bald, their engineer, who has planned and executed, these 

 stupendous works, and when we consider that within a comparatively recent 

 number of years, more than half a million of money has been sunk in these 

 operations, and that the revenue varies from £42,000 to £47,000 per annum, 

 we may well say tbat there is scarcely a similar instance on record of such 

 vast enterprise and such rapid advancement." 



ORDNANCE SURVEY. 



We are not of those who entertain prejudices against or for the Royal 

 Engineers or any other class, we are staunch supporters of that eminent 

 body, when engaged in the discharge of their legitimate duties, but we could 

 not have been so many years employed in watching the interests of both 

 military and civil engineers, without seeing that a very general attempt has 

 been made to introduce the government officers as competitors with their 

 civil brethren. Government no more wants an exclusive corps of civil en- 

 gineers than it wants an exclusive corps of architects or lawyers; but as a 

 matter of economy, it is of course right that it should avail itself of the 

 Services of the military officers at its disposal for its own works. It is, how- 

 ever, quite clear as a settled principle of political economy that it is most 

 dangerous for a government to meddle at all with the general market of 

 labour. When a corps of officers is kept up at the national expense greater 

 than is required for the discharge of military duties, and nork has not only 

 to be made for them, and to be made at the expense of private professional 

 parties, it becomes a great grievance. The want of adequate responsibility 

 of the royal engineers, and the evils attendant upon their employment where 

 they are not required, is well shown in the following letter; and it must be 

 obvious to every man of common sense that their employment in the Ord- 

 nance Survey, of England, Ireland or London, must have the same ulti- 

 mate effect, upon the members of the engineering profession, as the employ- 

 ment of paupers from workhouses to ruin the existence of the poor semp- 

 stresses and shirtmakers, about which so much outcry has been made. At the 

 present moment there is a greater dearth of employment in the engineering 

 profession and its subsidiaries than at any former period ; and when a legi- 

 timate occasion for occupation occurs it is to be given to men who have no 

 impulse to adequate exertion, and no pecuniary penalty to check their errors 

 or their ignorance. We say with the writer, that this state of affairs claims 

 redress. 



TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR R. PEEL, BAP.T. 



Sir— It appears by the Parliamentary reports in the newspapers, that you 

 have moved for leave to bring in a bill relative to a survey and the construc- 

 tion of maps, on a large scale, of the city of London : I trust it will not 

 be deemed an impertinent intrusion on my part to make a few observations 

 in connexion with this undertaking. 



It has not yet been formally declared who the parties are that will be en- 

 trusted with the execution of this important work ; conjecture, however, has 

 awarded it to the Royal Engineers, acting nominally under the Board of 

 Ordnance. I have watched the proceedings of these men for years with a 

 lively interest ; early associations have, in some measure, excited that inte- 

 rest and kept it alive. Being intimately acquainted with their modes of 

 operation, and enabled thereby to form correct conclusions relative to their 

 value as practical men, I now come forward to deprecate the measure which 

 would entrust to them the survey of the city of London, and to contend for 

 the propriety of its being left open to competition. 



You, doubtless, will be furnished with an estimate of the time and expenses 

 necessary for the execution of this work. I can readily believe that if esti- 

 mates were the data which would determine your choice of parties, the Royal 

 Engineers would at once crush the pretensions of all competitors ; but per- 

 mit me to ask, have the estimates heretofore made by the Royal Engineers, 

 relative to works of this nature, proved correct? It is most notorious that 

 they have not. You are aware that the survey of Ireland has been executed 

 by these persons ; this undertaking was commenced in 1824, the estimated 

 time for its completion being seven years, and the estimated expense 

 £300,000 ; did subsequent experience prove the truth of this ? No, it proved 

 its utter fallacy ; you, perhaps, will be surprised to hear, that far from bear- 

 ing out the previous estimate, the scientific operations of these seven years 

 were almost, if not entirely, useless; the maps and other documents proved 

 so grossly incorrect — so utterly unfit for the purpose for which they were 

 designed, that the greater part of them were ordered to be destroyed. Thus, 

 Sir, and for these reasons were the materials which bore the impress of the 

 concentrated talent of five captains and twenty -five lieutenants of the Royal 

 Engineers, for a period of seven years, reduced to their primitive elements : 



the survey of the island was not completed till 1842, and it incurred an ex- 

 pense little short of three quarters of a million sterling. 



But a specious objection may here be started — It may bo said that the 

 above would be unfair premises whence to draw conclusions relative to the 

 present claims of the Royal Engineers, inasmuch as they were at the time 

 alluded to comparatively inexperienced. I shall not wait to discuss the merits 

 of this plea, but I shall meet the objection on its own ground. In 1841, an 

 act was passed for the survey of the six northern counties of England, the 

 estimated time for its execution being six years j two years of this lime have 

 already elapsed, and there is not one county finished yet. The expense, up 

 to the present time, is about £120,000, or £60,000 a year; the quantity sur- 

 veyed at present amounts to about 2,000,000 acres, and before the mapping 

 and calculation of this will be finished, three years will have expired. We 

 are here furnished with data to find the expense of this survey, and the time 

 of its completion. The contents of the six northern counties are, — 

 Northumberland .. ,. .. 1,197,440 acres 



Cumberland .. .. .. 974,720 ,, 



Westmoreland .. .. .. 487,680 „ 



Lancashire .. .. .. 1,130,240 ,. 



Durham .. .. .. 702,080 ., 



York .. .. .. 3,835,040 „ 



Total .. 8,327,200 acres. 



Then, by a plain statement in the rule of three, if 2,000,000 acres require 

 three years for its completion, 8,237,200 acres will require about twelve years. 

 So that though the Act contemplates that this survey will be finished in 

 1846-7, it will not be completed till 1853, and will incur an expense of 

 £700,000. 



You may now judge, Sir, what effect the experience of the Royal Engineers 

 has upon their estimates. And will you, Sir, permit the continuance of such 

 an expensive system at a period of such financial embarrassment as the pre- 

 sent? Let an examination be made before the House of Commons into the 

 pasi history of the Ordnance survey of Ireland, and the history of the Ord- 

 nance survey of England, which is at present in a state of progress — let per- 

 sons be examined who will give plain facts as to the progress of the work 

 and the outlay of public money— let some of the most intelligent of the 

 Royal Sappers and Miners, and assistants, be examined before the House, 

 and afterwards you can judge of the propriety of entrusting to the Royal 

 Engineers the survey of London. Captain Boldero's reply to a question 

 lately asked by Lord H. Vane, proves that there exists on the part of the 

 Government gross misconception relative to the present state of the survey 

 of the six northern counties. The proceedings of the Royal Engineers have 

 ever been mysterious ; in 1835, an Honourable Member moved for an exami- 

 nation into the state of the Ordnance survey of Ireland, but Sir H. Vivian 

 assured the Honourable Member that the work was getting on rapidly, and 

 that an examination would only cause dispirit. When this assurance was 

 given the Ordnance surveyors were plodding their weary way over a district, 

 the survey of which had been previously executed so incorrectly as to need 

 a complete revision. 



Since their arrival in England the Royal Engineers have adopted a line of 

 conduct which strikes at the very vitals of a respectable profession — they 

 have entered into a most unfair competition with the civil surveyors of Eng- 

 land ; I refer to their contracting for the surveying of townships for tithe 

 commutation, their estimates of which work are so low as to wither in the 

 breast of the civil surveyor every hope of successful competition. But, Sir, 

 in point of accuracy, they may be ranked with the other estimates spoken of 

 — they are utterly false. I challenge contradiction when I assert that the 

 actual expense of the tithe plans executed by the Royal Engineers is far 

 beyond the estimated expense, so that the public service must suffer from such 

 undertakings. 



Now, Sir, contrast the case of these men with that of a body of civil sur- 

 veyors similarly circumstanced : the latter have a professional character at 

 stake— the former need not rely on theirs. The Royal Engineers may cal- 

 culate on their salaries, maugre all their blunderings— the civil surveyors 

 have no such prop. The Royal Engineers have a ready salvo for each mis- 

 take — the public purse is their panacea— the civil surveyors have nothing but 

 their talents to bear them out, and a single error such as those wh'u h are 

 so common with the Royal Engineers would injure their professional charac- 

 ter for ever. 



These, then, Sir, are the grounds on which I contend for the survey of 

 London being left open to competition. I am satisfied that the civil pro- 

 fession are able to do it as correctly, as quickly, and more cheaply than the 

 Royal Engineers. Let engineers and surveyors put in tenders for certain 

 sections of the metropolis, all to be executed on a uniform system;— let all 

 parlies be bound to a certain time ;— let the Ordnance surveyors put in their 

 tenders also, bnt let them stand on their own merits— let them have no funds 

 to fall back on as heretofore, in case of failure ; let their own pecuniary loss 

 be the result of any error in their estimates, and the issue will prove that 

 the civil profession are able successfully to compete with them. 



49* 



