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CHIPS.

IN days even now not very remote the visitor to Chatham never escaped being told that all the best houses round the dockyard were "built of Chips." The mild jest explained itself to the moderately quick wit alert to grasp the analogy with pickings. The risk of error was slight. There was, in fact, a time when the pieces cut away in the process of shaping timbers in the Saw Pit, at the Dock Side, in the Mast, Top and Capstan, and Boat Houses, were the lawful perquisites of officials and workmen. They afforded no despicable addition to wages. In 1803 the chips gleaned in Plymouth dockyard were sold for £3204, 2s. 9d.; and this was when all temptation to the deliberate manufacture of cuttings had been taken away. After centuries of experience the Navy Office was at last taught that when

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out to their own gain from material paid for by "the Public," they will infallibly cut to to waste. So order was taken.

At the close of the eighteenth century the menacing spectre of reform was beginning to tower before the Board. Will the reader pardon the reminder that, before 1830, the superior direction of the Navy rested with my Lords of the Admiralty, and the actual administration belonged to the officials of the Navy Office or

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Board the Treasurer, Surveyor, Comptroller, Clerk of the Acts, and Commissioners. They had been subject to recurrent accusations of negligence and corruption ever since the reign of James I. The reports of the Commissioners of Public Accounts of the American War time had given them a warning. Then came the reports of the "Commissioners appointed by an Act of Parliament to inquire into Fees, Gratuities, Perquisites, and Emoluments which are or have been lately received in the several public offices therein mentioned." The reports were made between 1786 and 1788, and had been ordered to be printed in 1793. The Commissioners had had their eyes on curiosities great and small-on that person of attractive title, "The Necessary Woman" of the Home, Foreign, and Admiralty Offices, and on several most unnecessary causes of waste in other departments. The Necessary Woman was, to be sure, nothing more mysterious than a subordinate housekeeper and chief charwoman. The oddities of the dockyards were not so innocent, and the Board was driven to understand that something must be done. was not as yet severely scared, and therefore made no haste. Schemes of reorganisation, or at any rate plans for reducing the chaotic heaps of its in

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structions to some order, were languidly entertained. Inconsiderate action might have been inconvenient to some great men. But one thing could be done. Chips could be brought under control; and so in 1801 the Board issued an order. The actual chips were no longer to be divided as perquisites, but swept together and sold for "the public." In lieu of them the workmen received an increase of daily wages-sixpence a-day for the shipwrights, who were, in the metaphorical sense, the "top sawyers" of the yard, and so downwards to threepence for scavelmen and labourers. The scavelmen were the workmen who managed the pumps of the docks, and who in the intervals of pumping helped to discharge and strip ships which came in for a thorough overhaul, or to be laid up "in ordinary," as the official term had it, or "by the walls," according to the colloquial phrase.

So Chips as a legitimate perquisite went on their way, and we see them no more. But the name remained to render its old service as the dockyard equivalent for "the miller's thumb," the cook's "licking of the fingers," which the world calls fraud and embezzlement. It was notorious that they abounded in and under the Navy Office. About 1800 the officials at Portsmouth were were engaged in mutual accusations which were by themselves enough to reveal the truth. A workman in the yard, who was

caught in the act, was transported for embezzlement. He left behind him a vengeful paper of accusations against the chief officials of the yard. No sooner was it known of than they began a contest of recriminations, each endeavouring to whitewash himself by blackening the others. The Navy Office undertook to make an inquiry. A brief glance convinced it that the wisest course was to act on Don Quixote's advice to Sancho, "Peor es meneallo rancho," the worst is to stir the mess. So the great officers of the Board ordered the officials of the yard to cease recriminations, to be reconciled, and to apply themselves in future to their duties. The officials promised obedience-and of course the quarrel went on. "On nous reconcilia," said the Diable Boiteux to Don Cleofas; "nous nous embrassâmes, et depuis ce temps nous sommes ennemis mortels." So the way was prepared for St Vincent, when he became First Lord of the Admiralty in the Ministry of Mr Addington. He hated corruption and waste as he hated mutiny. He took, said Nelson, a hatchet to every error, and he enjoyed inflicting punishment. He it was who forced his reluctant colleagues to pass the 43rd of George III., intituled "An Act for appointing Commissioners to inquire and examine into any Irregularities, Frauds, or Abuses which are or have been practised by persons employed in the several Naval Departments therein

mentioned, and in the business of Prize Agency, and to report such observations as shall occur to them for preventing such Irregularities, Frauds, and Abuses, and for better conducting and managing the Business of the said Departments and of Prize Agency in future."

These were the Commissioners of Naval Inquiry who sat at 24 Great George Street, and published twelve reports, from 1803 to 1805. The Tenth Report on the Office of Treasurer of the Navy is famous, for it led to that impeachment of Lord Melville which, so Lord Cockburn tells us, shook the dynasty of Arniston to its foundations. But we will leave aside the case of Lord Melville, with one observation only. It is, that those friends of his in the Commons who met the motion for his impeachment by the demand that he should be proceeded against by way of indictment, and who on second thought concluded that impeachment was better, were wise men and helpful. The

appointed a Paymaster of the Navy, who did the work for 8 nominal salary and real percentages, and was the Treasurer's agent-if not his agent disavouable et désavoué. Money drawn from the Exchequer for naval purposes was banked in the Treasurer's name. When he left office balances remained in his hands. The Commissioners of Public Accounts found that the executors of Anthony, Viscount Falkland, who left office in 1689, were still indebted to the Navy for £27,611, 68. 51d. nearly a century later. The Treasurership was in fact a lucrative sinecure, which tempted a man to use public money for his personal speculations. A Spanish proverb asks what we are to expect from the lay brothers when the abbot dices. The Commissioners of Naval Inquiry will tell how the little men of the naval administration followed the example set by their august head the Treasurer. The ground to be covered is vast. We must leave aside much, and even deny ourselves the pleasure of dwelling on the proceedings of Mr Andrew Lindegren in the "Purchase of Hemp, Masts, and Fir Timber." The dockyards, building, repairing, coopering, caulking, and issuing of supplies at home and abroad, are quite enough for the present purpose, with an occasional glance to right or left.

story of Melville's Treasurership of the Navy was better fitted to be told to the House of Lords, than to be laid before the keen professional eyes of Lord Ellenborough and a wellinstructed jury. Whatever else the Tenth Report and the Impeachment did, they made one point perfectly clear: the office of Treasurer of the Navy was one great impudent Chip. The Treasurer did nothing, and was The Commissioners began known to do nothing, except far afield, with the office of pocket his emoluments. He Naval Storekeeper in Jamaica

-and they could not have taken a better case. The duty of the Keeper was to issue all kinds of supplies, draw and remit money, and make payments. His emoluments were made up in the fine old confused way of the ancient world, out of salary, house money, boat money, one half per cent on disbursements, four shillings a bale on slops (clothes) served out to the crews, and a few other things. They were not contemptible, and increased with the size of the fleet on the station. The lawful receipts of Mr Dick, storekeeper from 1797 to 1800, rose from £1436, 0s. 11d. to £2068, 10s. 11d. in three years. This was without including the four shillings per bale on slops, neither, as a matter of course, did it include Mr Dick's unlawful gains. What they amounted to only Mr Dick and the Recording Angel knew. The Commissioners could only get at indications. What Mr Dick had to do with a mysterious transaction in false money is not clear. But it is as clear as possible that he bought slaves, hired them for work in the dockyard from himself, and paid himself for their labour out of public money at a stiff figure. This, though impudent, was, comparatively speaking, not much. Mr Dick's real eldorado was the "pool of agio." Jamaica had a currency of her own which was at a discount of 10 per cent. He was bound to allow the Navy Office the benefit of the exchange; but he never did, nor had any of his predecessors done so.

The amount the Government lost by this fraud during Mr Dick's three and a half years' tenure of office was £53,000. His conduct was flagrantly irregular, and complaints had been made by the Admiral on the station against one of his predecessors for doing this very irregularity. Mr Dick made himself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness. When Rear-Admiral William Parker, Commander-in-Chief on the station, wished to send home his prize money, £45,000 in Jamaica currency, Mr Dick gave him Government bills for £45,000 sterling. An admiral who was better by £4500 by Mr Dick's complacence could not well complain of him. RearAdmiral Rodney Bligh (who was not Bounty Bligh) was not so manageable as Parker. Lord W. Seymour brought Mr Dick to grief, but not before he had cost the Navy £134,550 odd, by neglecting to order stores in time from England, thereby making it necessary to buy from merchants on the spot, and they took full advantage of the necessities of the yard. We may be sure they "complemented" Mr Dick, as Pepys would have put it.

The very extraordinary evidence of Mr Dick, as the Commissioners justly describe it, ought to be read by whoever wishes to understand the morality of the unscrupulous official. When asked whether he had looked at the instructions of the Navy Board, he answered, "Not further than answered my purpose, which was to ascer

Between 1793 and 1802 some £2,500,000 Jamaica currency passed through the hands of the great island agents, Messrs Wills & Waterhouse. Some details of their accounts are quoted, and they help us to realise all that it meant for a sailor to be on a rich station in war time. When a prize was taken, the agents opened a credit for the captors, and allowed them to draw against their claims. We have seen what Rear-Admiral Parker sent home. Here are the accounts of several small men as they stood when they were closed.

tain whether my predecessors great a business a prize agency had been paid from the time of might be is shown by one their appointment." As he example. was secured against further proceedings, he rejoiced in being impertinent. He told the Commissioners that when he found any difference between his instructions and the practice of the office, he followed the practice of the office. When it was pointed out to him that the difference was always to his advantage, he replied with the dignity of a gentleman and servant of his King and country, "My private concerns were always a secondary consideration to me." I cannot find it anywhere recorded that the Commissioners pelted Mr Dick with ink-bottles. The temptation must have been all but irresistible.

As we are at Jamaica, we may allow ourselves a glance at the business of the Prize Agency. It was not in reality an official business. Prizemoney was collected by agents of the captors, and distributed by them. The Commissioners set forth the whole system in detail. They show that crimps and keepers of low pothouses preyed on the carelessness and ignorance of the men for whom they acted, and that officers who employed a better class of agents suffered in another way. The agents yielded to the temptation to speculate with the money in their hands, and sometimes they became bank rupt. Rodney and his fleet lost great part of the St Eustatia prize - money by the failure of Mr Akers. How VOL. CLXXXVIII.—NO. MCXXXVII.

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Thomas Thorne, midshipman of H.M.S. Magicienne shares of such and such prizes, £53, 16s.; balance due to him (or his estate), £46, 14s.: John Stedman, coxswain of H.M.S. Magicienne-shares, £50, 16s. 1d.; balance, £45, 28. 1d.: Richard Waller, quarter-master of H.M.S. Magicienne shares, £103, 5s. 10d.; balance, £83, 108.: David Simpson, yeoman of the powder-room of H.M.S. Regulus-shares, £175, 5s.; balance, £149, 98.: Thomas Jones, boatswain's mate of H.M.S. Regulus-shares, £159, 15s. 3d.; balance, £129, 15s. 3d.: Henry Baskerville, midshipman of H.M.S. Regulus — shares, £139, 168. 3d.; balance, £90, 16s. 3d. We possess these

accounts because all the men named were killed in action, or died of disease. The prizemoney was not lightly earned, but we see it was earned, and

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