Such a gross case of inability to furnish, within any reasonable time, Artillery for service in the field, followed by such uselessness and confusion, could not be overlooked, nor allowed to pass without an effort at improvement for the future. Public admission of defects in a Department cannot be expected; and when consciousness of their existence is present in the minds of the officials, their manner is to suggest a remedy, but to evolve the evil, which the remedy is to cure, either from other sources, or from their own imaginations. The student, who turns from the ghastly tale of incompetence and blundering in 1715, to see what steps the Ordnance Board took to prevent its recurrence, need not, therefore, be surprised to find a very slight allusion to their own blunders, and a gushing catalogue of the benefits which will result from the adoption of their new suggestions. In fact, in their letter of 10th January, 1716, to the Master-General, the members of the Board use language of virtuous and indignant protest; and instead of alluding to the recent failures, they talk of the hardships which the existing system had wrought upon their office. It is, perhaps, ungracious to criticise too closely the language used when suggesting a really important and valuable innovation; but when we find the foreign establishments of Annapolis and Placentia, of Gibraltar and Port Mahon, quoted as the arguments in chief for a change, which would probably never have been suggested but for the conspicuous failure of the preceding year, the temptation is irresistible to draw the mask from the face of complacent officialism. Summing the case up in a few words, it may be said that the annual cost of that part of the military branch of the office of the Ordnance which the Board proposed gradually to abolish at this time, including the foreign establishments at the places above mentioned, amounted to 16,829_l._ The Regimental establishment, which it was now proposed to substitute by degrees, consisting of four companies with an adequate staff, would, on the Board's calculation, cost only 15,539_l._ The main reduction was to be obtained by allowing the North Britain establishment, which cost annually 1200_l._, gradually to become extinct, the duties to be performed by the new companies. The foreign establishments were also to be supplied in the same way. Of course, it was not pretended that all this could be done at once. But as vacancies occurred in the existing establishment, the money would go to furnish men for the cadres of the new companies, which it was proposed at once to create. And by removing the Artillery officers and the 120 gunners now on the old establishment to the rolls of the new companies, the skeletons would have a little flesh and blood from the commencement.