The Clerk of the Deliveries had to draw all proportions for delivering any stores, and to keep copies of all orders or warrants for the proportions, and journals vouched by the persons who indented for them. He had to compare monthly the indents taken for all deliveries of stores with the Storekeeper's proportions; and had to attend, either in person or represented by one of his sworn clerks, at all deliveries of stores, and when taking remains of ships.
The Treasurer of the Ordnance, who had to find heavy personal securities, was one of the most important of the remaining officers attached to the Board.
So much for the individual duties of the principal officers of the Ordnance, duties which, it must be admitted, were generally well and conscientiously performed. Their acts, in their collective capacity, are more open to criticism. Although the Master-General could act independently of the Board, when he chose, and had full power of dismissing or suspending any of the officers, reporting the same to the Sovereign, he generally worked by means of the Board and, with his consent, their acts were perfectly legal and binding without his presence. His personal influence appeared chiefly in matters of patronage and promotion, and, after the foundation of the Royal Military Academy, it appeared in a very marked way in all matters connected with its government. But, with these exceptions, the actions of the Board which were most public, and call for most comment, are those which are to be traced to it in its collective capacity; and, as we shall see in the course of this History, their joint acts were often characterized by a pettiness, a weakness, and a blindness worthy of the most wooden-headed vestry of the nineteenth century. It is marvellous how frequently men who, when acting by themselves, display the utmost zeal and the strongest sense of responsibility, lose both when associated with others for joint action, where their individuality is concealed. The zeal seems instantly to evaporate: their sense of justice gets blunted by the traditions of the Board of which they have become members; and even the most radical—after a few useless kicks and plunges—soon settles into the collar, and assists the team to drag on the lumbering vehicle of obstruction and unreason. The power over a Board which is exercised by its permanent clerks is not the less tyranny because it is adroitly exercised, or because the tyrants are necessary evils. If an individual is put at the head of a department, self-esteem assists a sense of duty in making him master the details, and ensure the proper working of the machine. But when he finds himself merely one of several shifting and shadowy units whose individualities are lost, and whose faults are visited upon an empty abstraction instead of on themselves, he speedily in mere sympathy becomes like them; and, like them, he bows to the customs and precedents quoted by the permanent officials with an ill-disguised contempt for those to whom these precedents are unfamiliar. Then follows the unresisting signature of documents placed before the Board by clerks who have no idea of anything beyond their office walls—who imagine the world was created for them, not they for the world, and who believe and almost say, that the very members of the Board are there merely to be the channels of their offensive and dictatorial opinions. There has been in all ages in this country an officialism which cannot look beyond the letter of the law, whose representatives decline to enter into argument, to consider the circumstances of a case, or to make allowance for emergencies:—whose minds prefer sinning in a groove to doing right out of it: and whose conduct would often appear malicious, were not malice too active a feeling to enter into their cold and contracted bosoms.
This officialism was often rampant in the Ordnance; nor with the extinction of that Honourable Board can it be said to have vanished from England's administration.
As in the history of every corporation, there were at the Ordnance fits of economy and extravagance. The extravagance always began at the Tower, the centre of the Board's official centre and kingdom; the economy away at the circumference, among poor gunners at distant stations, among decaying barracks and fortifications crying out loudly for repair. It seems destined to be the motto of departments in every age, "Charity begins at home: economy abroad." After the peace of Utrecht, there was a determined resolution on the part of the Government to retrench,—a wise and praiseworthy resolution, if the method to be adopted were judicious. The Treasury communicated with the Ordnance: and the Tower having made plausible promises to Whitehall, the Honourable Board met to see what could be done. Starting with the official postulate, so characteristic of English departments, that their own salaries were to be untouched, the field of their labour was in proportion contracted. Ultimately they decided to economize in Scotland: they reduced all the stores there; voted no money for the repair of the fortifications or barracks; and, regardless of past services, they reduced the gunners in various garrisons.
From the far north a plaintive appeal meets the student's eye. It is from one John Murray, who had been Master-Gunner of Fort William for nineteen years, and who in this fit of economy had been ruthlessly struck off the establishment. Verily, ere many months be over, honest John shall have his revenge!
From Scotland, the Board turned to the Colonies, and reminded them that they must pay for their own engineers and gunners, if they wished to keep them. A committee sat to inquire how the American dependencies could be made to pay for themselves,—the beginning of that official irritation which culminated in the blaze in which we lost them altogether; and in the mean time demands for stores were neglected. One unhappy Governor wrote that he had under his command a company of troops which for fifteen years had received no fresh bedding: and "many of the soldiers were very ill, and in ye winter ready to starve." A special messenger was sent to lay the matter before the Board; but, he having been recalled by domestic reasons before succeeding in his prayer, the Board adroitly pigeon-holed his petition for four years; and, in the language of a subsequent letter, "For want of bedding, many of ye soldiers have since perished."
But ere long came the inevitable swing in the other direction. Queen Anne died; King George had not yet landed at Greenwich; there was agitation and conspiracy among the adherents of the Stuarts, and Scotland was simmering with rebellion. Then did the fearful Privy Council send letter after letter to the Ordnance urging them to find arms for 10,000 men for Scotland, or for 5000, or even for 4000; but from their diminished stores even this small body could with difficulty be armed. A train of artillery was ordered to march, and could not: everything was starved, and in chaos; and its commander, Albert Borgard, wrote, "Things are in such confusion as cannot be described." Orders were sent to man and defend Fort William, the now desolate scene of John Murray's nineteen years; and General Maitland, on reaching it, reported that "the parapets want repairing: there are no palisadoes; without an engineer to help me, I can but make the best of a bad bargain." He had to advance the money himself: "Who pays me," he wrote, "I know not." By next messenger he asked for a little gunpowder, a few spades, pickaxes, and wheelbarrows, all rather useful articles in a fortification, but which had vanished under the breath of economy. There were no gunners, he wrote, to work the guns; and he requested that the hand-grenades which were coming from Edinburgh might be filled and fitted with fuzes before they should be sent to him, "for we have none here that understand this matter well." Of a truth, John Murray had his revenge!
The principal gate of the fortress was so rotten and shattered that it could not be made use of, and was of no defence at all. There never had been any gate, the General wrote, to the port of the ravelin; and unless the platform could be renewed, it would be impossible to work the guns. "And," he adds in a well-rounded period, "the old timber houses in which the officers of the Garrison are lodged, and also the old timber chapell, are all in such a shattered pitifull condition, that neither the first can be lodged in one, nor the Garrison attend divine service in the other without being exposed to the inconvenience of all weathers."
Nor was General Maitland singular. From Dumbarton Castle Lord Glencairn wrote to the Board, "We not only want in a manner everything, but we have not so much as a boat. And, besides, the Garrison wants near four months' pay." From Carlisle the Governor wrote that there were only four barrels of powder in the garrison, a deficiency of every species of stores, and only four gunners, "three of which are superannuated." Most of the gun-carriages were unserviceable, and the platforms wanted repairing. There was haste and panic at Portsmouth, as empty stores and unarmed ships warned the Board what work there was before them. And from Chester, Mr. Asheton, the zealous governor just appointed, reported, "The guns are all here, but not the carriages, so that the stores, &c., would be of service—not prejudice—to an enemy." The only men there who were capable of doing any work were forty invalids; and he therefore begged for assistance in men and stores, "in order" he wrote, "that I may be capable of doing my country service by maintaining the rights of our gracious Sovereign King George against all Popish Pretenders whatsoever."