known only when they are engaged in war.
We have not yet received the report of the Parliamentary Committee which sat to investigate the working of the Commissariat of the Egyptian campaign. But two things are notorious: first, that the appointment of a committee was most unwelcome to the parliamentary heads of departments; secondly, that a condition of things and a system were disclosed which required exposure and condemnation at all costs.[1]
Surely the moral of all this is, that it is in the nature of things impossible for the parliamentary heads of departments to sift out for themselves grave abuses and serious derelictions of duty among their immediate subordinates; and it follows that they are still less able to judge fairly whether some immediate subordinate of their own has or has not acted fairly towards an outsider; still less, again, are they able to judge fairly whenever the question lies between their department and some outsider with whom it has become involved, as departments must occasionally be, in a dispute.
We are sorry to open up an old sore, but the present case is one of such vast importance that we must do so. We wish to show how completely in the past the Ordnance Department itself has become involved in the defence of direct and unmistakable wrongdoing by individuals, and how little as yet they have learned from that shameful experience.
On 29th April 1870, Sir John Pakington, referring to a dispute in which he had committed himself to the defence of Colonel Boxer, R.A., an officer who had held the appointment of Superintendent of the Royal Laboratory, said in the House of Commons, as he withdrew from the case: –
"I could not have supposed it possible that a colonel in the Royal Artillery, a man classed as an officer and a gentleman, and holding a high official situation in a Government department, would attempt to practise upon me what I can only describe as a gross deception. It was not the suggestio falsi so much as the suppressio veri; and I am not ashamed to say I believed his statements."
Now it happened that in that instance the person injured by the Superintendent of the Royal Laboratory was a wealthy and influential gunmaker who could not easily be crushed. He succeeded, after years of snubbing and refusal of all investigation,[2] in forcing his case upon the personal attention of Sir John Pakington. He also adduced proofs in black and white which did not admit of contradiction.
The result was, of course, inevitable. Mr Cardwell, who had succeeded to Sir John Pakington, with the full approval of the latter, called on the Superintendent of the Laboratory to resign. It is with regret that we have felt compelled to allude to such a matter. The offence imputed to Colonel Boxer was expiated by his dismissal; but without reference to
- ↑ See the pamphlet published by Dr Cameron (who moved for the Committee), entitled 'A Romance of War; or, How the Cash goes in Campaigning,' founded on the evidence taken by the Committee.
- ↑ Mr Daw has now the complete set of papers on this subject. We ourselves have worked them out from the Parliamentary Reports and the numerous indignant articles in the 'Times' and other newspapers of the time in which the facts were at last exposed.
