WEEDONISM.
WREN any article is more often adulterated than genuine, the commerce in that article is almost sure to decline ; and when once the traffic has decayed, it can seldom be revived if the adultera- tion have gone to a considerable extent. One of the most noted instances in history is that of the Chinese cotton stuff which passed by the name of " nankin," and was extensively used in this country on account of its good quality and durable wear : the trader endeavoured to make a larger profit by giving at the same price an inferior stuff, the trick was discovered, and the nankin trade died out beyond any power of revival. In England, we are a more civilized people than the Chinese, and we carry the tricks of trade still-further ; we carry them into official life, into politics, into the highest branches of administration ; they are
pushed even to the most dangerous extremes, and adopted by men in perfect good faith. So general, indeed, is the want of value for the genuine, that men are content with a form, a simul- acrum of the thing, without the substance, even where substance is essential to life and national safety. It is a great advantage to the soldier, and to the nation which employs him, that he should be thoroughly disciplined and trained, beyond any possibility of controversy with his commanding officer. But there are men who regard this subject so mechanically, that they consider the soldier nothing more than a machine, and they believe the value of dis- cipline not to lie in the trained action, but in the mere restraint and stiffness of the routine itself. We have been promised many Army reforms, when, in the midst of the heat and battle of India, we learn that there are Conservatives in the Army whose politi- cal notions are so hopelessly adulterated, that they retain the stock round the neck of the soldier in that apoplectic climate. Verily we think there are men who literalize the maxim " obsta principle" to such an extent, that if they were to remove the stock, they fear, the system of purchase might go some day, demo- crats might get into the Army, and the Throne itself already topples down in the melodramatic vista of their prophecies. To such men the very abuses in the meanest details of administration are taken for outposts ; they accept the form of rule as something better than the spirit of rule itself ; and they constitute those witless stewards who unintentionally connive at the tricks of the adulterator.
.This system, of course, is not confined to India, nor does it originate there. Whether the disease has gone too far for our national recovery or not, the canker is in the very heart of our htical system ; it is continually exposed in one portion of the
y politic or another. The vastness of a blue-book which has been recently issued has not, as it so often does, prevented the public from learning the monstrous incidents which are taking place in our most respectable and most recently-reformed public departments. Melodrama and farce combined could not equal the incidents of practical life in that distinguished department, and the events are so astonishing that they have forced their way through the ponderous obstruction of the blue-book aforesaid. The public was lately startled by the statement that one hundred and seventy thousand pairs of boots had been sold out of the pub- lic stores as "old" when they were really new ; and the House of Commons cheers when a Minister states that the quantity has been "only seventy-four thousand." The sale of " only seventy- four thousand" therefore, is a trifle ! But looking a little fur- ther we discover that, if it is a trifle, it is one amongst a great multitude of such little incidents. Whatever may be the theo-
retical system, the practice is of a kind to produce those incidents, and to block out the supply of proper goods for the public ser- vice. Let us see the round which a parcel of goods may go. The contractor has a stock of goods on hand of the proper pattern to be accepted by the public department. We have an instance of such a case in Mr. George Pays, whose accoutrements are "equal to the pattern" ; but are rejected. Are they bad ; are they proper for rejection ? We are unable to answer the ques- tion ; but Mr. Pays does not think them so, and he cannot divine the reason why he has on hand an unaccepted store of goods. At last he learns the reason from an official called a " viewer," whose duty it is to examine the goods. A person employed in such duties has already become illustrious ; and we have an ex- planation of the sort of thing that the man may be. Mr. James Charles Gray applied in 1856 for a clerkship to the Directors of Army Clothing, but his education did not enable bin to pass his examination for a clerkship ; he was nevertheless some- how appointed inspector at Weedon at a salary of a hundred a year. His duty was to inspect the soldier's kit, the knapsack and the articles which it contains, for the soldier's toilet, his feed- ing, his cleansing himself, &e. Mr. Gray may not have been a peculiarly well-educated man, but he appears to have been con- scientious ; for, at least, once he remonstrated with his superior, a Mr. Elliot, now celebrated, upon the bad quality of some brushes. Gray was told to pass the brushes : the official instructions con- veyed to him by his superior were, " Damn your eyes, mind yOur own business ; you do as you are told." Now what could be the reason that, while the accoutrements "equal to pattern" sent in by Mr. Pays are rejected, goods of which even a Gray can detect the badness are passed in spite of Gray's eyes ? If Pays could only discover the reason how much would it ease his mind ? At last a viewer, a Mr. E. Ddivning-, confesses that the "poor viewers cannot be expected to give a fair view unless they have some compensation." Pays gave two- sovereigns, and his accoutrements " equal to pattern," were placed_ upon an equality of admissibility with the bad brushes. We have now got the goods into the public department, and they are placed " in store." Official gentlemen dislike anything which is indefinite ; they are the people for " drawing the line somewhere " : they draw the line between goods " in store " and "old stores" in a very summary manner. Mr. Shaw says, that "when goods are once packed for a certain destination, and are not sent, they are not again taken into store," but are sold as old stores. This is as much as considering a regiment embarked for India, but recalled by orders, and disembarked, as nothing better than so many dead men. Being thus converted into " old stores," the new goods are sold by public auction, and Mr. Levi, a mer- chant who has made a fortune and is retiring from business, has, during the last two years, bought ten thousand pairs of Govern- ment boots at sums ranging from 4s. 10d., to 6s. 3d. a pair, the Government having given lls. 3d. for them. The boots are only officially " old," actually they are new ; they are of course " equal to pattern," and there does not appear to be the slightest practical reason, why, if boots were wanted again, the same should not be again tendered, and no doubt again accepted as being " equal to- pattern," if only qualified for acceptance in the eye of the viewer. On this plan a man might turn many an honest penny upon the same consignment of boots, which would become " old" and "new" entirely according to the point of view. The authorities at the War Department have been much scan- dalized at the evidence given by witnesses before the Committee. Mr. Gray was called to account by his quondam official employer, Mr. Ramsay, until he showed that he had been summoned by General Peel himself ; he was told, however, he says, that if he- did not mind what he was about, he should never get any em- ployment in the Government service ; and this caution was given m, although the cautioner, the same person who had previously given him the employment, wrote, in dismissing him, " I am, at the same time to inform you, that should an opportunity occur upon any future occasion, Lord Panmure will not fail to take into consideration Mr. Gray's recent services at Weedon." At Wee- don, therefore, Mr. Gray was disposed of as " old stores " ; but, although he was not quite "equal to pattern," there was nothing to prevent his being received by the public department as new stores, provided, we suppose, the viewer were propitiated ? This is the administration which provides for the most material part of the materiel of the Army. By it we perceive the public loses at the rate of four or five shillings on each pair of boots, with an indefinite amount of loss on the employment of "old stores," like Mr. Gray, or energetic men, like Mr. Elliot, the gentleman who• facilitated the admission of stores by the damnatory couching _lir. Gray's eyes. Not only has this state of things existed at Wee- don, but the officials are indignant at the disclosure, and have tried to soften, if not prevent, the inquiry. An upright appear- ance gives a semblance of strength, and Colonel Hely Hutchinson will make the soldier look upright, by the help of stock, until the man shall fall down in a tit : inspection gives an appearance of honest service, and the officials employ viewers to look at the stores introduced into the War Department after the fashion that we have seen. A Commission has just been appointed, of very honest gentlemen, to inquire into the abuses at Weedon ; but the inquiry, it appears to us, ought to be enlarged, beyond the ques- tion of old stores to old stocks, old colonels, and old notions of prerogative existing, we fear, throughout that department and in some others.
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