282 
MEPPEN EXPERIMENTS. 
These guns were characterised also by being made of wrought-iron, 
which complicates the comparison I wish to make. Still the fact 
remained that England and Italy had muzzle-loading guns of 100 and 
80 tons weight, and of a power with which no breech-loading ordnance 
could compare. 
The Meppen trials have exhibited a gun which entirely surpasses the 
latter, and, for its weight, compares well with the former. Instead of 
dealing, then, with a theoretical gun existing only on paper, we have 
one in thoroughly good working order loading, and firing by hand with 
a rapidity, and shooting with a power and accuracy, beyond the achieve¬ 
ments of our 80-ton gun up to the present time. This result is not due 
to a want of knowledge on our part, but to the impossibility of applying 
our knowledge to the case of the 80-ton gun. 
With muzzle-loading guns on our present system, we have greater 
labour in loading, and, in the case of turrets, we have to commit ourselves 
to the length of our gun 3 or 4 years before we bring it into the 
service. To argue that breech-loaders should be at once adopted would 
be to commit the fault complained of above, but surely we have 
sufficient reason to give them a trial on a large scale. If breech-loaders 
have the advantages of ease and rapidity in working, of the possibility 
of changing their length without revolutionising the surrounding 
structure of the ship, and of affording greater cover, especially when 
on non-recoil carriages of any kind, they surely deserve a full trial 
even should it be at the cost of having both breech and muzzle-loading 
guns in our service. 
