Gunnery in 1858: Being a Treatise on Rifles, Cannon, and Sporting Arms: Explaining the Principles of the Science of Gunnery, and Describing the Newest Improvements in Fire-ArmsGreener, William
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Gunnery in 1858: Being a Treatise on Rifles, Cannon, and Sporting Arms: Explaining the Principles of the Science of Gunnery, and Describing the Newest Improvements in Fire-Arms
Greener, William
Firearms; Gunnery
In addition to the serious evil of producing guns of such great
inferiority in material, and dubbing such barrels “laminated steel,” a
far more serious one is the practice of unscrupulously adding to such
guns the names of makers who have spent the majority of their lives in
obtaining a name for their manufacture; thus robbing them indirectly of
what is dear to all honest men--reputation. Few are judges sufficiently
qualified to detect a spurious gun of this description; and the name
thus forged reflects unmerited discredit on a maker who would scorn to
allow such an article to leave his manufactory: but as long as the
standard of moral honesty is so low, both among merchants and
manufacturers, such things will be. Men may excuse themselves for
affixing the names of men and firms to inferior or worthless guns by the
plea of having been ordered to do it by the exporters, but they are not
the less doing a moral wrong, in thus aiding in a deception which
profits them not. But such practices will continue, until the sense of
right and wrong becomes more conscientious, and trade morality rises to
a higher standard than at present.
I have every reason to believe, and have not the least hesitation in
stating the fact, that not only is the epithet “laminated steel” added
to guns the barrels of which do not contain a particle of steel, but
that a far more serious misrepresentation and injury is perpetrated by
affixing the words “William Greener’s Laminated Steel, indestructible by
Gunpowder,” to many guns not even of middling fair quality, but the
veriest rubbish ever manufactured. That this is a species of forgery
there can be no doubt; yet the law of this country affords no remedy to
effectually prevent and punish the rascality of offering for sale an
article fraudulently professing to be what it is not, to the injury of
the purchaser as well as the manufacturer whose good name is thus
maligned. Forged “Greener’s” are to be found principally in the American
markets; where batches of ten and twelve have been seen in various parts
of the States, principally in the hands of “itinerant merchants.” They
are, I believe, pretty plentifully produced in “Liege,” also; where, in
fact, forgeries on all our principal makers are produced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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