Akin to this subject, could no simpler arrangement be made for the payment of officers messing on board ship? You move from Scutari to the Crimea, or from Malta to Scutari, and two years elapse before the transaction-the small amount incurred for messing-is settled. Even up to this time, official letters are still going and coming, and many of the officers thus sought to be brought to account, or to explain, have long since passed beyond reach of all earthly reference. Again, where the necessity for that huge printed form, which you are required to fill up before the agents will issue you your pay, but which even the agents themselves are at a difficulty to unravel or explain? Could these things not be settled with more promptitude, and less paper?

Sooner or later the present low rate of pay of our officers must force itself on the notice of the Government. There can scarcely be a difference of opinion on this matter, and we find the subject ably pressed on the authorities from time to time in letters in most of the daily and weekly papers. We are at a loss to conceive what can be urged in defence of the present inadequate rate of pay of all ranks, but especially of those of ensign, lieutenant, and lieutenant-colonel. We hope, ere long, that the rate of pay will be revised and increased, as was, a few months back, that of lodging allowance to regimental officers; and we would suggest, that a full and free ration to officers, as well as men, would, with a more simple, appropriate, and economic style of mess living, go far to better the officers' position. There is no agitation cry more needed than that of "Reform your mess establishment."

Malta, May 9, 1857.

[The remarks of our gallant contributor will be read with interest, and are, for the most part, such as every practical officer will readily assent to; but there are few, we imagine, who share his opinions on the subject of the distribution of honours and promotions. Many meritorious officers have necessarily been rewarded, but how many others, equally deserving, have been altogether passed over, while rewards have been lavished on unworthy objects.-EDITOR.]

BRIGADIER-GENERAL JACOB AND MR. LAWRENCE. To the Editor of the United Service Magazine.

Bushire, April 13, 1857. SIR, A letter in your magazine for February, 1857, signed "James Lawrence," has just been shown to me.

The assertions of Mr. Lawrence with regard to myself and my rifle praotice, contained in the letter above mentioned, are wholly incorrect. I beg to assure Mr. Lawrence that I never heard of him or of his inventions until this letter was shown to me. I never made use of the expressions which he quotes as mine, "that the matter was in the committee stage" when I was in England. I have not been in Eng

land since the beginning of the year 1828. My proposed method of rifling cannon, percussion shell for artillery, &c., was communicated to the officers of the Royal Artillery, many years ago, by Major Greer; and, as mentioned in my "Rifle Practice," the things were, I understood, consequently being tried at Woolwich.

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I claimed no merit in the matter, and expressly mention (p. 31 of the "Rifle Practice") that "nothing but actual trial can decide the merits of these things." I have been, I confess, quite free from the trammels of the "committee stage" to which Mr. Lawrence alludes, inasmuch as I have never sought for, and have never received, any encouragement" or remuneration" whatever. I have never cared for patronage myself, and have never submitted to any; my only connection with government in the matter in question has been, that I have, from time to time, as my experiments led to practical results, during the last twelve years, placed freely, without condition or reserve, at the disposal of the Indian government, for the public good, the results of my experiments and researches in rifle practice.

What may be the nature of the "redress" which Mr. Lawrence seeks at my hands, and which he says he could obtain, by reason of his having a patent for something, I know not. But I beg to assure Mr. Lawrence that he is most welcome to all the "encouragement" and "remuneration" which I have ever received for my labours. This "remuneration" and this "encouragement," which, according to Mr. Lawrence, "government are not ashamed to offer," consist in my having been permitted to incur an expenditure of some £5,000 from my own private means, in perfecting an invention which appeared to me to be of great national importance to my country, but which, it was evident to me, was not understood in the least and would never be investigated by authority.

I never expected either encouragement or remuneration. I am not, therefore, in the least disappointed; but, on the contrary, am well pleased at having, in carrying on these expensive experiments, learnt much, and greatly extended my knowledge of physical science generally; while I have succeeded beyond my utmost expectations in the pursuit immediately in hand, and the delight felt at seeing shell after shell, fired from the shoulder in rapid succession, without any sort of rest, strike within a few feet of each other, and burst with full effect at TWO THOUSAND YARDS' DISTANCE-feeling at the same time the consequences which must follow from the general use of such arms by a free people was ample reward for me, and would have been felt to be so even if I had been reduced to work on the roads for the rest of my life.

I beg further to assure Mr. Lawrence that I used percussion rifle shells of various descriptions, of my own contrivance, so long ago as the year 1829, and that the original contriver of rifle shells, Captain Norton, used them long before.

All these missiles, however, were adapted only for what now appear VERY SHORT ranges; and it is only since the year 1845 that I have thought of attempting DISTANT practice with rifle shells, or discovered the means of succeeding in such practice. The ranges now attained,

even from small 32 gauge rifles of my pattern with my shells, are about DOUBLE the ranges of our ordinary field artillery, and treble those of the best Minié rifles.

But it is unnecessary here to enter into further particulars; the experiments and their results are fully laid before the public in my "Rifle Practice," which I shall be obliged if Mr. Lawrence will do me the favour at least to peruse, before he again make my proceedings the subject of his invective.-I am, Sir, your most obedient servant,

JOHN JACOB, Brigadier General,
Commanding troops at Bushire.

To the Editor of the United Service Magazine.

SIR, Brigadier-General Jacob has had the courtesy to forward me a copy of a letter intended for insertion in your pages, in reply to one of mine which appeared in your magazine of February last. I am therein accused of incorrectness in stating that General Jacob had either infringed my patent in any way, had received any encouragement from the government, that he had been in England recently, or that, being in England, his invention was in the committee stage. General Jacob denies further that he ever heard of me or my invention at all.

The main point, I think, is the infringement of the patent, the fact of General Jacob not having heard of me not affecting the validity of my patent, if I am prior to him in point of time, or being of any consequence if no such infringement has taken place. This point is of course the ground of complaint which I have, or think I have, against General Jacob, and it is one which cannot be brought to any issue while he remains in India, and which will never be worth deciding unless his invention is taken up by the British Government in England. However bitterly I may feel my loss of reputation, I should not think it practically worth while to moot the point at all, unless it could be decided by evidence, and in a court of justice. My idea that the Government had determined to encourage the general was derived from the following words in your article of January last, on the general's invention :-"The official countenance and support withheld in the first instance, would appear to be no longer denied." I thought this so probable, and, in every point of view, it appears so just, that I consider I owe no apology to the general for my inadvertence, but rather to the Government for assuming that they would treat a man of European as well as Asiatic reputation with more consideration than myself, and I certainly was not prepared for such equality of stupidity and injustice.

As to the quotation respecting the committee stage and Colonel Jacob's supposed visit to England, I certainly derived that from some newspaper account of General Jacob's invention; but as I cannot at this moment lay my hands on the paragraph, I must retract and apologize for part of it, the main fact of the invention being in the "committee stage" being true at this moment.

After giving General Jacob every possible eredit for the expense

and labour incurred, and the public spirit evinced by him, I think it is perfectly clear, from the statement in the Illustrated London News, of Nov. 22, 1856—the first time, by the bye, I ever heard of General Jacob as an inventor,-from his own letter, and from the terms used by Colonel Sykes at Addiscombe, when speaking of this invention, that his, General Jacob's, success WAS RECENT.

Now, although my name has not been brought prominently forward in connection with it, my invention has been known in military circles for years. Lord Hardinge, to whom I was introduced by Mr. Muntz, M.P. for Birmingham, in the summer of 1852, lent me the Minié musket with which my first experiments with bullets composed of lead and zinc were made, inspected the bullets after they had been fired, and finally permitted me to try my hand at a cannon-shot. Lord Hardinge had not very long returned from India, where he had been engaged in hiding the Sikhs, and was so far from conjecturing that anything of the kind had been done before, that his feeling was one of strong doubt whether so rash and doubtful an experiment as it then appeared should be tried at all.

When Lord Hardinge left office I was turned over to Lord Raglan, passed on to Sir Hew Ross, and have finally fallen upon the evil days of Lord Panmure. Eight callow secretaries have successively filled the mossy nest at Pall Mall since the luckless day I first directed my steps there, with all of whom I have had some communication, so that, if unnoticed, my inventions cannot be said to be unknown, the more especially as their success has continually increased up to May, 1856. Now the account given of General Jacob's experiment at Kurrachee (Sept. 5, 1856) in the Illustrated News, concludes as follows:"These results have been arrived at after many years of great expense, continual observation, and experiment with every known rifle made in England and other countries." It was not then a very far-fetched notion to imagine that General Jacob, amongst his experiments with every known rifle, might have fallen upon mine.

General Jacob kindly offers to transfer to me all the encouragement and remuneration he has received from the Government. I beg leave respectfully to thank him for nothing; and, as I scorn to be outdone in generosity, even by a general officer, I beg to reciprocate his offer, and, in addition, to make him a present of the following official letter, which is all I have ever received in the way of acknowledgment. It will require to be explained that the letter was written at the conclusion of experiments extending over years, and three weeks only after a successful trial with a 68-pounder, all mention of which is carefully avoided. I feel somewhat proud of it, as I believe it to be the most shabby document which ever emanated from the War Department.

"War Department, Pall Mall, 13th June, 1856.

“SIR,—With reference to my letter dated 28th February last, on the subject of your compound projectiles, I am directed by Lord Panmure to acquaint you that the final opinion of the select committee relative to projectiles of this nature, must await the consideration of the whole subject of rifled guns.

"I am to add that the committee do not recommend any further experiments with projectiles of your construction at present.

“Mr. Lawrence,

(Signed)

"H. R. DRewry.

"20 Great Charlotte Street, Blackfriars Road."

In conclusion I beg to say, that although I have not hitherto read General Jacob's "Rifle Practice," I shall make a point of doing so; and take this opportunity of expressing my regret, if in self-assertion I have given General Jacob any fair ground of offence.-I have the honour to be, Sir, your most obedient servant,

J. LAWRENCE.

THE SHIPPING LAWS.

FOR JUNIOR NAVAL OFFICERS.

[SECOND AND CONCLUDING NOTICE.]

SINCE last treating this matter, the efficacy of the Merchant Shipping Act has been called in question in Parliament. We, however, agree with Lord Stanley in thinking the act a most valuable one; superseding as it does a multitude of scattered enactments, and combining the whole of this department of our legislation into one intelligible mass, clearly headed and subdivided, and of easy reference. But we imagine that the framers of this act never claimed for it absolute immunity from imperfection. The very extent of the project, remodelling and compassing the whole of the maritime legislation of the largest maritime and colonial power on the face of the globe, rendered it impossible that all its numerous parts, many of an experimental nature, should work equally well. When a special remedy is applied by enactment to one particular grievance, the task of the legislator is easy, but when, for the sake of simplicity and regularity, a whole department is embraced, partial reconsideration is inevitable. A man repairs his house as it suits his fancy, but when a whole quarter is knocked down to make way for edifices more modern and symmetrical, partial inconvenience is for a time to be looked for.

In our last we said something of the general principles of our mercantile legislation; we will now proceed to a fuller detail of the newest regulations on various points.

The Board of Trade is the department for regulating all forms of procedure relative to merchant shipping, and these are issued through their special organ, the Customs department. The Board of Trade is also the receptacle of all the information requisite relative to our mercantile marine, and in aid of these functions all consular officers must make returns and reports on matters relating to shipping, and are fully empowered to examine the log-books of merchant vessels; and both consuls and commissioned naval commanders or captains may examine log-books and muster the crew of any vessel belonging to our merchant navy, and demand from the master any information relative