[Illustration]
LONDON:
EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE.
1871.
_Entered at Stationers’ Hall._] [_All rights reserved._
Ipswich, _March 1st, 1871_.
DEAR MR. ANSELL,
I have no objection to your appending to the third edition of your book
your letter to me in regard to your case, and my correspondence with
Mr. Gladstone and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but if you add in
addition to this correspondence the report of the debate on my motion
for a committee to inquire into the management of the Mint, I should
wish to make some few remarks on the subject in question; but before
doing so I must take the opportunity of thanking you for letting me see
Mr. Fremantle’s letter in answer to your offer, made at my suggestion,
to meet Mr. Fremantle with a view to rendering him some assistance
(which from your great experience you are well able to do) in the
management of the Mint, which I have reason to know both he and Mr.
Lowe find _somewhat difficult_.
The answer is evidently dictated by Mr. Lowe. After his letter[1] to
me of the 29th April, 1869, I might have known that he was not likely
to do anything which might appear as if he owned himself in the wrong.
This letter, indeed, showed how annoyed Mr. Lowe was at my having seen
that most malicious report to the Treasury by Dr. Graham, which has
been the cause of your having been so unjustly dealt with, to the ruin,
in a great measure, of your prospects in life. Dr. Lyon Playfair at the
time threatened that if I moved to inquire into the management of the
Mint, he would move that that report be laid on the table of the House.
This would not have deterred me, as the report _itself_ would have been
the best refutation of the _insinuation_ it contained that you were
dismissed because you were guilty of the Mint practice of purloining
gold (whereas the note[2] relieving you from further attendance stated
that the short work at the Mint was the cause). Dr. Graham did not,
he said, believe the insinuation, and to show that he did not believe
it, although he had sent in the report to the Treasury, he authorised
me to offer you the situation (at an increased salary) filled by Mr.
Goodwin, who was to be retired, which of course you refused as being
far inferior to the one you held; and in further proof he wrote you
that handsome testimonial[3] which I read to the House of Lords.
[Footnote 1: See page 196.]
[Footnote 2: See page 186.]
[Footnote 3: See page 198.]
The report, however, _had served its purpose_ in preventing you from
being appointed to an office in the Mint.
I am sure Dr. Graham regretted that he had been induced by his brother,
whose animus against you was known throughout the Mint, to send in such
a report to the Treasury. Dr. Lyon Playfair’s threat, as I have said,
would not have deterred me from moving for a committee to inquire into
the malpractices of the Mint, but I confess that I had great scruples
in regard to Dr. Graham himself. I shall never forget the expression of
his face, and the fearful agitation the mention of my intention always
caused.
I confess I did hesitate to place a man of Dr. Graham’s great
scientific attainments in such a position as an inquiry would have
done, seeing also that his brother was just dead, and that I knew
individually Dr. Graham was in no way implicated in the malpractices
which formerly prevailed in the Mint; for, as you know, Dr. Graham
had soon after his appointment set to work to clear out that “Augean
stable,” which, with your assistance, he had almost accomplished till
in an evil moment he appointed his brother, to whose intemperate habits
I referred in the House of Lords,[4] to a responsible office in the
Mint.
Dr. Graham’s death following so soon after that of his brother, I was
greatly rejoiced at having delayed bringing the subject of the Mint
before Parliament, because I should have felt that I had been to some
extent instrumental in hastening that event by drawing attention to the
state of that Department.
On the occasion of the reading to me, by Dr. Lyon Playfair, of that
wicked report to the Treasury (to which I have previously alluded),
in the presence of Dr. Graham and of Mr. C. W. Fremantle, I urged, as
Dr. Graham exculpated you from all blame _insinuated_ by the report,
that in common justice you should be reinstated in some office in the
Mint, you having, with my advice, refused the position offered by Dr.
Graham through me, when Mr. Fremantle remarked as a reason against
your being appointed that “you were so unpopular with the officials;”
such unpopularity being in my opinion the natural result of the work
you had done at the request of Dr. Graham, and in the service of the
Mint. I say the work you had done, and use the expression on the
authority of Dr. Graham, copies of whose letters to the Treasury are
now in my possession, and in which he distinctly states that to you
mostly were due the reforms. There is no doubt, therefore, but that
you were exceedingly unpopular just in the sense that a detective
would be amongst the “light-fingered gentry,” and had I obtained the
committee for which I moved I could have shown the true grounds of
your unpopularity. I have collected some further valuable information
showing the necessity for a rigid and full inquiry into the affairs of
the Mint, which will show that the officials of a public department
are not justified in putting into the hands of a young and rising
member of the House of Lords statements which are not only erroneous,
but absolutely false, so that Lord Lansdowne was obliged to declare
that “he had on a previous occasion overstated the amount in regard to
the profit on silver;”[5] but again was he grossly misled by the Mint
officials when he stated “that there was a gain of £5,000 per annum
on the silver coinage”[6] (a considerable reduction on the former
statement) while the _return_ showed a positive and very great loss. It
would appear that the Mint officials mystify him, and that _he_, not
_I_, confuse two things.
[Footnote 4: See page 197.]
[Footnote 5: See page 146-148.]
[Footnote 6: See page 148-149.]
I alluded in the House to a job by Mr. Lowe in appointing Mr. Roberts,
and Lord Lansdowne in reply stated that Mr. Roberts was a _very eminent
chemist_ who had proved his capability by “_devising_ a system for
depriving brittle gold of the obnoxious properties on which I recently
commented.” Have you heard that the plan has been tried and found to
be a complete failure!!! I am also informed that Mr. Roberts _did
not devise_ the process in question, but that it was invented by a
really eminent chemist, who did not make the inquiry with a view to
its application under the circumstances which arise in the Mint, where
operations are conducted on so large a scale. The process is described
in the British Association Reports for 1848, and more fully in the
_Philosophical Magazine_ for 1850.
I have just received the Report of the Deputy-Master of the Mint, on
European Mints, which I have only had time to glance over. The report
is evidently framed with a view of meeting the allegations I made on
the appointment of the commission. It would appear, moreover, that Mr.
Fremantle and his colleagues have made a _very careful study of your
book_!!! which might have been done without the pleasant trip. For
the general public the reports are interesting as showing how foreign
mints are worked, but as far as the management of the English Mint
is concerned, and how a department which is a serious expense to the
country, and from which no one but the Bank of England and the employés
derive any profit, can be made, as it ought to be, a source of revenue,
the report does not show. I see it is proposed to build new offices,
“so constructed as to diminish facilities for peculation!!” I think
the real question is, would it not be better TO COIN BY CONTRACT—this
might be tried, at all events for a time, before the new offices are
commenced.
I almost fear this Mint question will not be taken up in the House
of Commons, as members are afraid to “tackle” Mr. Lowe, and in these
fearfully excited times the subject is _too dry_ for members to
interest themselves in; but I cannot understand how a Government bent
on economy and reforming abuses in the several Departments can allow
such wasteful extravagance and useless losses to go on, unless indeed
Mr. Lowe is dreaded as much at the Council Board as in the House of
Commons.
Believe me,
Dear Mr. Ansell,
Yours faithfully,
(Signed) KINNAIRD.
To G. F. Ansell, Esq.,
27, Bernard Street, Russell Square, London, W.C.