It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  that  part  of  the  defence  of
government  manufactories,  which  insists  on  the  difficulty  of  testing
work  done,  is  the  weakest  part  of  their  case.  It  implies  corruption
or  incompetence,  or  both.  I  will  admit  that  it  is  difficult  to  provide
against  these  risks,  and  I  must  allow  that  our  system  of  giving
government  officials  of  aU  grades  freeholds  in  their  offices  is  a
practice  of  very  questionable  wisdom.  I  am  certain  that  no  private
trader  could  afford  the  experiment.  In  the  government  offices>-
forty  or  fifty  years  ago,  there  were  all  the  evils  present  of  a  close
corporation  of  seK-elected  officials.  When  I  was  a  youth  my  father
asked  a  friend  of  his,  then  naval  lord  in  the  Admiralty  Board,  to  put
me  in  the  Navy  office.  He  told  my  fother  that  he  could  willingly
do  so,  but  that  my  life  would  be  a  burden  to  me  if  he  did,  for  that
the  Admiralty  clerks  were  a  family  party,  who  would  endure  na
outsider  among  them,  in  an  estate  which  was  divided  among  a  few
famihes.  So  I  never  went,  and  a  member  of  one  of  the  families
was  put  in.  A  quarter  of  a  century  afterwards,  I  had  the
melancholy  satisfaction  of  getting  my  rival  a  sentence  of  penal
servitude.  My  friend,  Mr.  Baxter,  then  Secretary  to  the  Navy,  was
entirely  convinced  that  frauds  were  common  in  the  Navy  contracts.
