156 THE ARMS TRADE OF BELGIUM. 
average Belgian gun, but will last for a lifetime. The Belgian lock 
will appear quite equal, but in a year or two the mainspring will 
become relaxed. English iron, coal, and workmen have been brought 
to Belgium in order to make English steel, but in vain. This is conse- 
quently attributed to the nature of the Sheffield water. 
The British Board of Ordnance has bought about 150,000 stand of 
arms at Liege. The contracts were passed about 1854 with an associa- 
tion of four great houses, and were finally completed in 1863, to the 
entire satisfaction of the War Department, as officially notified. Of 
this order, some 1,500 were rolled barrels from Val-Benoit. The locks 
were all of Liege manufacture, excepting some for the navy rifles. The 
prices were — for the Enfield rifle musket, with bayonet, complete, 
21. 13s. ; the artillery carbine, with sword-bayonet, 3Z. 3s. ; the naval 
rifle, with sword-bayonet, 31. 8s. 5d. All these arms were made under the 
inspection of British artillery officers, and were subject to an inspection 
unusually severe for Liege. All the parts were made interchangeable, 
an object very difficult of attainment by manual labour. These arms 
were found from 8 per cent, to 20 per cent, cheaper than those supplied 
by the English gun trade, and at least equal in quality, but were 
inferior in regularity to the machine-made arms produced by the 
Enfield factory. During the same period some 20,000 stand were also 
supplied to Her Majesty's government by the Imperial Factory of St. 
Etienne. This would seem to show a decline of the English gun trade 
since 1830, when Birmingham was the great arsenal of the world. She 
then was able at a short notice to supply the French government with 
140,000 muskets at 23s. each ; but seems, from strikes and other causes, 
to have lost ground so much as to have been hardly able to supply 
28,000 Minie rifles to our own Government in two years, 1852 and 1853. 
Liege was well represented at the Exhibitions of Paris and London in 
1855 and 1862. At the former she certainly occupied the first place for 
military arms. The house of Lemille there exposed a collection of 392 
different specimens of fire-arms. One great medal of honour was 
awarded to the Liege arms trade collectively ; three personal medals of 
honour, besides eight medals of the first class, seven of the second class, 
and three honorary mentions. The charge of imperfect straightening 
has been brought against Liege barrels. A great number of first and 
second class barrels were on this occasion examined by the Jury, and 
were most of them found defective in this respect. The London 
Exhibition received fewer contributions from Liege ; there being only 
nineteen exhibitors in Class XL, Section C, Arms and Ordnance. Seven 
medals were awarded to Belgian exhibitors, — viz. ; To MM. Simonis, of 
Val-Benoit, for their laminated gun- barrels ; to MM. Lezaack, Dumoulin, 
Jansen, and Malherbe, for guns ; to M. Ladry, for his rifle-rest ; to MM. 
Coopal, for the purity of the raw materials used by them in the manu- 
facture of gunpowder. Eight honorary mentions were awarded "to 
Belgians in the same section. In another class a medal was awarded to 
