LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
MR. CARD WELL.
• [TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—The most recent episode in the discussion on our military preparations at home—a discussion which may be said to have been now voted by the nation to be en permanence—is almost of a kind to make one hopeless of our present newspaper and Parliamentary government.
For the last six months or more, every newspaper in the country has been filled with denunciations of Mr. Cardwell for a blunder universally attributed to him, with reference to the store of breech- loaders in reserve ; ]1ir. Cardwell has at last published a statement which does not affect the actual charge against him in the smallest degree, yet everyone of the Liberal daily papers have accepted the reply as completely refuting a charge which that reply does not attempt to meet. Let us recapitulate the facts.
On the 1st of August of last year Sir John Hay, commenting on the vote for the 20,000 additional men, said that he did not believe that there was any use in voting the men unless greater care was taken that an adequate supply of the best obtainable arms should be kept in readiness for all, whether those newly enlisted or those actually in the ranks. No one who reads his speech and the debate of the following day on supply can doubt that that was the point he was making, and that the whole House so understood it. Unfortunately, in drawing out the facts in support of this, he, by an obvious verbal slip, said (I quote always from the Times' report of the following day), " We had not 20,000 breech-loaders ready for service for the Army, the Militia, and the Volunteers." On that verbal slip Mr. Card- well fastened, and stated triumphantly that we had 300,000 breech- loaders " in store." The House was not satisfied, and on the following day Mr. Sinclair- Aytoun and Sir John Pakington pressed Mr. Cardwell for a more exact statement as to whether these 300,000 were really surplus rifles not required for arming the Regular Army, the Militia, or the Marines.
No one who will take the trouble of reading the debate can doubt for an instant that the House rose with the full conviction that, altogether irrespective of the ordinary regimental supplies of arms kept up to provide for immediate contingencies, there were 300,000 rifles which on any sudden emergency would be available to increase the armed force of the country, and that the only cause which delayed their immediate issue to the Volunteers was the necessity for taking proper precautions for the care of such delicate weapons. On the 8th August, in answer to Mr. Sinclair-Aytoun, Captain Vivian, speaking for Mr. Cardwell, said, still more em- phatically, that the breech-loaders in reserve were 269,964, and breech-loading carbines, 39,456.
Ten days afterwards, when Parliament had been prorogued, a letter from Lord Elcho appeared in the Times, announcing that he had had a personal interview with Mr. Cardwell, who had met him for that express purpose, and that from him he had heard that " of the 300,000 breech-loaders in store, about 100,000 are required to meet present pressing demands at home and abroad for the Army, Navy, Marines, Pensioners, and Militia." He adds, " of the
remaining 200,000, a considerable portion is, I believe, in Canada."
On these facts this definite charge was made against Mr. Cardwell,—not that it was not possible for him to show that there was a store of 300,000 breech-loaders, but that the House of Commons had most anxiously endeavoured to ascertain in what sense that store was available, that he had succeeded in leaving it absolutely under the impression that the rifles were available in one sense, while ten days afterwards he was obliged to admit that in that sense they were not available at all.
Mr. Cardwell took no notice of Lord Elcho's statement, signed by him in full in the Times, and with reference to a subject on which Mr. Cardwell had himself summoned him as a representative volunteer, obviously not for his private information, but as a means of letting the Volunteer force in the country become acquainted with the facts.
Then a foolish address is got up in Greenwich, which, again, makes the verbal slip of saying very vulgarly that Mr. Cardwell has mistated as to there being 300,000 breech-loaders "in store." On that verbal slip Mr. Cardwell, according to his custom, fastens, and produces by way of retort a return moved for by Mr. Sinclair- Aytoun, showing that there was "a store" of 300,000 breech- loaders before Parliament was prorogued.
Briefly, then, what occurred was this. The House was most anxious to ascertain whether the nation was adequately prepared for sudden emergencies, and pressed and repressed the question.
Mr. Cardwell, ingeniously taking advantage of the verbal slips of his assailants, evaded the question, and as soon as Parliament was prorogued, was obliged to admit that in the sense in which the House had wished it should be ready the nation was utterly un- prepared. These facts, founded on no particle of anonymous evidence, but on the speeches in Parliament and on the signed statements of a member of the House selected by Mr. Cardwell himself, were commented on by every newspaper in the kingdom, If it was possible for a clear conception of the exact nature of the true complaint against Mr. Cardwell to- reach the minds of every newspaper writer in the kingdom, it must have done so in this instance. Yet such is the wear and tear of our newspaper work on men's lives, and so impossible is it for men to keep more than the immediate question of the hour fresh before their minds, that no sooner does Mr. Cardwell repeat his old tactics, and catching at verbal flaws, write on a point entirely irrelevant to the real issue, than each of the daily Liberal papers unsay all that they have said, and assume that they must have wronged Mr. Cardwell, because he restates again one of the facts on which the original charge was founded, but which a silly slip of the Conservatives in their eager- ness to find fault had induced them to dispute.
How are we, then, ever to get rid of this ingenious special pleader from the position in which his first duty is to make it luminously clear to the nation and the House how facts actually are, and who has resolutely determined to use all his faculty in concealing the true character of facts.—I am, Sir, &c., F.
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