DOCKYARD PLUNDERING.
-1T is Mr. Baxter's speech on the Navy Estimates whichi 1 demands the attention of politicians rather than Mr._ Childers'. The First Lord is doing his work extremely well, even by the confession of his opponents, who are reduced to- complain, quite truthfully, of the personal hardships which are the inevitable consequence of reductions, however neces- sary they may be,—a method of argument which the publia- outside dockyards never appreciates. It is too like the com- plaint of a patient who, under an operation intended to save- his life, cries out that the knife hurts. Mr. Childers has given us a fleet strong enough to fight any Navy, or, as we- believe, any two Navies now afloat, for about £9,000,000 a year,. and promises to increase its strength fifty per cent. for the same money. He has, moreover, made this fleet mobile to an unprecedented degree, so that it can go racing about the- world wherever a display of concentrated force is wanted, without unusual expense ; has provided such a cadre for- manning it, that a great fleet could be sent to sea at a few days' notice full of trained men, and has broached a project- which, whether it contents the Navy or not,--and we trust that it will, being wholly opposed to the system of starving- naval officers,—will at least give us Admirals and Captains- in the prime of their efficiency. Those are most satisfactory- results, and it is by results, and not by professional talk about minute details, that the nation will judge both the- Admiralty and its chief. Suppose the First Lords cruise- in the Channel Fleet was a freak. It was not one, if' only because it brought him into personal contact with a. large body of officers while actually engaged in their duty but suppose it had been, what does it signify, so long as the- national work is all the more willingly done at as low a price?' Mr. Childers' statement, wretchedly overloaded as it was with details, shows that in him the Navy has a strong chief who- dares secure economy, but secures it without compromising' his higher duty,—the maintenance of a Fleet no-Power can suddenly attack, and that is what the public wanted to discern..
Mr. Baxter is strong, too, in a different way, strong with that kind of business capacity which is so rare among English politicians ; but his speech leaves us, we confess, not a little alarmed. It is quite clear from every line of it that the popular suspicion as to fraud in the Dockyards was only too- correct, that the necessity all Governments have till lately felt of maintaining their political influence in those establish- ments so as to secure a few nominee seats, has fostered a system in the purchase of stores which its defenders will admit to be "lax," and which the nation will pronounce grossly fraudulent. Not only are thd official buyers "tipped' by the sellers, that is, encouraged to rob the State of a. per-centage on all articles bought, but inferior goods are "passed" for a consideration, and sound supplies rejected or reported upon unfavourably. This last practice is of all conceivable forms of robbery the most dangerous to the efficiency of the service. It is excessively difficult to punish, for the rejection is based upon an opinion, which at the worst may be the result of ignorance or prejudice, and not of dishonesty of purpose. At the same time, it completely cuts off the Government from the open market. The honest sellers are so daunted by the constant rejection of their goods, —rejections involving reputation as well as money,—that they retire from competition, and the Admiralty is given over bound hand and foot to the few dealers who know how to conciliate the officials, either by direct payments, or by sales to them at low prices, or by opening opportunities of making profit outside the yard, and who, of course, intend to make a shilling for every penny they throw away. A " Ring " of this kind is a strong organization, and it always grows up around a great purchasing establishment. The chances of detection are very few, for silence is the interest of all parties ; and those of punishment are fewer still, for no First Lord likes to discredit his department by frequent prosecutions. It is quite clear that such a ring, which frequently extends its influence very far down, the system being to rely ultimately cn artizans as examiners, exists in the British Dockyards. The "master butcher at Gosport," says Mr. Baxter, "confessed to having received gratuities for a series of years." The paper—for sheath- ing, we suppose—bought in the time of the late Storekeeper- General "would not bear the weight of pitch." Everybody in the dockyards praised the leather, volunteered praise, till Mr. Baxter thought something must be wrong, and sent an expert to see, to whom the yards tried to refuse admittance, and he found the leather exceedingly bad. Smithery coal was rejected as 'being "too small," but as smithery coal cannot be too small, Mr. Baxter inquired, and found that it was too small for the house fires of the officers of the dockyards. As to contracts presumably honest, but intended to gratify friends, or voters, or the like, there is no end to them. Mr. Baxter foundfifty years' supply of "foot-pieces for stockings," intended for the men in cold weather, laid up in stock :— "The right honourable gentleman [Mr. Corry] talked of their starving the Navy, and said they had no cloth, no cloth- ing for the Marines. Of blue cloth, No. 2, they had seven years' supply ; of jackets, 12 years' supply ; they had supplies of comforters for 3- years, of striped shirting for five years, and of towelling for seven years." The stocks of timber accumulated till part of it began to rot, while of salaried people, storekeepers, cash-keepers, master shipwrights, and such personages, there was apparently no end ; that kind of people having votes, as we shall have reason to know, unless we disfranchise them before the next election. Mr. Baxter is doubtful whether even yet he has got to the bottom of the corruption, and remembering Crimean experiences, we should say it is extremely probable that he had not yet pene- trated an inch deep, and that a careful examination would show waste on wages without work such as would ruin Mr. Napier or Mr. Laird in a twelvemonth, and a further expense on work done for work's sake, honest work, but needless, such as no private shipowner would endure for a week. There is waste, too, from pure carelessness, as in the old matter of " Seely's pigs," such as is often felt in Estimates, waste due almost entirely to the overwork and imperfect responsibility of the Superintendent of each yard. The State, in fact, is plundered at every turn, plundered so systematically that when Mr. Baxter visits the Dockyards he, though Secretary to the Admiralty, "is received with bare civility," that is, in fact, with gross impertinence. That does not hurt the Member for Mon- trose, with his enthusiasm for the State, his tenacious memory, and his tough skin ; but it shows that in dockyard eyes economy is meannessi inquiry interference, and rigidness about honesty a hunt for popularity. Moreover, it shows that peculation has passed the first, or French stage, that in which the State pays too dear for everything, and has reached the second, or Austrian stage, in which everything is not only dear, but bad, and is approximating towards the third, or Russian stage, in which everything is dear, most things are non-existent, and the officials are supremely contented with the net result. The infusion of a little new blood among the chiefs would, under each circumstances, be advisable, and Mr. Baxter need not fear a general mutiny. Should one occur, a suspension of the dock- yards en masse for a year or so might be advisable, so that the Admiralty might begin afresh upon new principles with- out the the old hands, and certainly any reduction in their number would, as a temporary expedient, be accepted. The dockyard seats, of course, are lost ; but they will be fully recouped by the gain consequent on the public belief that Government means work.
Mr. Baxter faces his difficulties, unpopularity included, in a spirit which demands, and will receive, the support of every honest man in the country,—faces them, too, without losing h,is temper ; but we are by no means sure that he has as yet devised a good method of cure, or one which will work for an indefinite period. His favourite remedy for moral evil is, it is clear, to administer Baxter in heroic doses as a sort of moral quinine. That would do capitally, if there were an unlimited supply of Baxter in the official world ; but then, unhappily, there isn't. We cannot imagine a more unpleasant situation for an official conscious of douceurs than to be cross-examined by an unbelieving, hard-headed Scotchman,—a Dissenter among Scotcbxoen, too,--who intends to put down his practices, who knows business better than he does, and who has anonymous letters in his pocket describing every little " economy " the official ever practised for his own advantage. Such a man, if effectively supported, is sure to get the better of rogues for the moment, but then he depends upon a particular combina- tion of qualities which a Premier is very seldom able to discover existing in one man. Hard-headed men of business, with stiff upper lips, official aptitude, and capacity to deliver a speech like Mr. Baxter's on Monday, are very rare politicians indeed, and when they exist are usually up to their necks in the business of making money. There have been dozens of Secretaries to the Admiralty before Mr. Baxter, and they have not found out these things, and there is no security that the Secretary coming after him will have all that keenness of scent or disposition to hunt either. Mr. Baxter corrects contract abuses by buying himself in the open market, with advice from the chief superintendent of contracts and the chief clerks of the department,—and with him, with his experience of firms at a distance, that may do ; but suppose the next Secretary is an Admiral, or a mere politician, or other unbusiness-like person, will not the old deposit crust round the system again, and this time taint the central office, and not the Dockyards? We should like to hear a little more, we confess, of a plan for individualizing respon- sibility, of a scheme for thorough inspection by skilled men beyond bribery, of means adopted for comparison with private yards, of better pay for officers with pecuniary power, and above all, of a swifter and sterner law for the punishment of an offence which combines in the highest degree treason to the State with ordinary vulgar fraud. We should inflict death on a captain who sold his ship in battle, why not penal servitude on the man who sells or buys fraudu- lently materials which cause the loss of the ship ? Mr. Baxter is probably afraid, like other officials, of the old jealousy of the State, and the old predominance of the trading interest in Parliament, and does not see that with the Reform Bill of 1867 both passed away, that the Householders would welcome any repression, however severe, in the interest of the national strength. Sternness, almost amounting to cruelty, has now become possible, and is required to retone the public senti- ment on the duty of every individual towards the State. The root of corruption in dockyards and offices is a latent idea that though it is wrong to rob an individual because, poor fellow! it might hurt him, it is not wrong to rob the State, because the State does not feel ; and the cure is to replace that idea by the true one, that robbery of the State is treason, the highest of social crimes. Of course there are other things besides this to be done. Our whole system of allowing men on four pounds a week or less—for the actual inspection is always shifted downwards from officer to officer—to " pass " purchases out of which a fortune can be made, is inherently bad and absurd ; but besides a reform in that point, and scientific inspection, and a Secretary who dare " meddle " and " poke " and "screw," we need a sterner law, a law strong enough to make a race which seeks its direction in the law believe that to bribe a purchas- ing clerk in State employ is as dangerous and therefore as wrong as to bribe a judge. When the sellers of brown paper went to the guillotine the soldiery got good boots.
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