The Express.
London, England, 1862-11-11 00:00:00

HIGH WATZRAT LONDON DRIDOL,

MI DAT Morning. 4b. 30m......1.144r000n. 4h. 4Sta.
To-moshow—licehing, 6h. bm.....Atterhooh. btu Zia.

LONDON, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11.

SIR Was. ARMSTRONG and Mr. WHITWORTH,
while eagerly pressing their rival claims as artil-
lerists, have at length agreed on one point. They
both impeach the fairness of the trials to which
their respective systems are subjected by the
authorities, and appeal to public opinion to com-
pel an open and equal comparison. It is but a
week since a report appeared in our columns of
some experiments at Shorncliffe in which the Arm-
strong gun was made to appear inferior to the
Whitworth, both in accuracy and rapidity of fire.
Sir W. ARMSTRONG immediately wrote to com-
plain that his guns should have been tried in a
competitive examination in his absence. Mr. WHIT-
WORTH retorts that his guns have for four years
suffered in estimation from trials conducted in the
sine
way. Each is confident that if he has only
fair play he will be found the victor. But each
has to complain that his efforts are misjudged
and thrown away, because they are arbitrated on
by an incompetent, an indifferent, or a partial tri-
bunaL In the interest of the public, whose inte-
rest after all happens to be supreme, we are bound
to say they are right. The mere outline of the
facts is sufficient to establish the charge against
officialism. It is four years since these guns were
first pitted against each other, and there is as yet
no decisive experiment to tell us which is best.
There were indeed some comparative trials insti-
tuted in 1858, the result of which, as stated offi-
cially, appeared to show a superiority on the pat t
of the Armstrong gun. On the faith of these trials
this gun has been adopted, millions have been, and
are still being, spent in its manufacture, and it
has been issued to our troops and garrisons in every
part of the world. But the data on which
this momentous decision rests are all at once
vitiated when Mr. Wiirrwoivra assures us that
his gun was then tried in his absence, that it was
not served by his own men, that till this moment
he was denied inspection of the official result of
its trial, and that that result is utterly different
from what his gun has been proved to be ca-
pable of doing in hands acquainted with its ma-
nagement. He tells us, moreover, that no subse-
quent comparison has been made, because the
Ordnance Committee would not agree to the con-
ditions which he laid down as preliminary. These
were—firstly, that the trials should be in presence
of disinterested spectators, including members of
scientific societies ; secondly, that the Whitworth
guns should be worked by his own men ; and
thirdly, that the trials should be continuous, so as
to cause the least possible interruption to his busi-
ness. The Committee conceded the first point,
but they refused the two others, and it is from
their rejection of such obviously fair and reason-
able stipulations that there results the adoption of
the Armstrong as the gun of the service, and the
utter ignorance of the public whether it is or is
not inferior in the most important respects to the
Whitworth. This fact is of itself damnatory of
the Ordnance Committee.

It is quite clear, indeed, that the whole system
of " secret experiment " is rotten. It is impos-
sible it can give satisfaction to the inventor, who
cannot tell what private influences, or even what
accidental blundering, may have been at work to
render all his labour nugatory ; and it is equally
impossible that it can give confidence to the public.
The public, in this matter, is thoroughly impartial.
It has, and it can have, no desire but that the
most efficient gun should be that adopted in the
service. It did at first full justice to Sir WILLIAM
ARMSTRONG'S merits. It backed the Government
in taking measures for procuring a supply of the
weapons invented and manufactured by that
gentleman, in the belief not only that
they were an improvement on the old smooth
bores, but that they were the ultimate improve
went which science had as yet suggested. If,
then, the public now begins to doubt that conclu-
sion, Sir WILLIAM has no one to blame but et)
Committee which too ardently espoused his cause.
We have, indeed, no satisfactory comparison be-
tween his gun and his rival's; but it is the very
absence of such a comparison which throws doubts
on the merit of Sir WILLIAM. For when it comes
to light, as it now has done in official docu-
ments, that the Committee which professed to ad-
judicate with impartiality gave to one competitor
the advantages of superintendence which it den'ed
to the other, adopted the one principle while r -
fusing to allow the other to be exhibited by
any one cognisant of its method of work-
ing, and ffirdly, allowed their own Secre-
tary, by whom the experiments were recorded,
to become a partner in the firm which undertook
to supply the favoured gun, Englishmen are driven
to the conclusion that fair play has not been done,
and that the result might have proved very dif-
ferent had the ordinary rules of impartial competi-
tion been adhered to.

The remedy for a blunder, the cost of which
cannot be counted in money alone, lies in the
adoption of the only system yet discovered which
can secure impartiality, the system which we adopt
whenever we refer a question of fact to the arbitra-
ment of • jury, or a question of legal science to
the decision of a judge—the system of publicity.
None other can relieve the tribunal, however
honest and able it may be, from suspicion ; none
other can yield reliable results. An Ordnance,
Committee does not comprise the whole science
of the nation, and on • question which
concerns the nation, it is entitled to have con-
sulted the whole 00i01100 it contains. The Coin-