To Robet, via the Liverpool Mercury Peel   August 15th., 1843.

From the LIVERPOOL MERCURY – Sept. 1st. 1843.

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ORDNANCE SURVEY: ROYAL ENGINEERS.

Knowing nothing of the question treated of in the following letter, but being of the opinion that it calls for consideration, and is written in a fair spirit, we give it insertion on public grounds, and shall be glad to receive a fair answer to it, especially if the discussion shall sub-serve the interest of the public. Of the importance of the subject we need not say a word.¹

Letter No.1,

To the Right Honourable Sir Robert Peel, Bart.,² &c.

Sir – It appears by the Parliamentary reports in the newspapers, that you have moved for leave to bring in a bill relative to a survey and the construction of maps, on a large scale, of the city of London.³ I trust it will not be deemed an impertinent intrusion on my part to make a few observations in connexion with this undertaking.

It has not yet been formally declared who the parties are that will be entrusted with the execution of this important work; conjecture, however, has awarded it to the Royal Engineers, acting nominally under the Board of Ordnance. I have watched the proceedings of these men for years with a lively interest; early associations have, in some measure, excited that interest, and kept it alive. Being intimately acquainted with their modes of operation, and enabled thereby to form correct conclusions relative to their value as practical men, I now come forward to deprecate the measure which would entrust to them the survey of the city of London, and to contend for the propriety of its being left open to competition.

You, doubtless, will be furnished with an estimate of the time and expenses necessary for the execution of this work. I can readily believe that if estimates were the data which would determine your choice of parties, the Royal Engineers would at once crush the pretensions of all competitors. But permit me to ask: Have the estimates heretofore made by the Royal Engineers relative to works of this nature proved correct? It is most notorious that they have not. You are aware that the survey of Ireland has been executed by these persons. That undertaking was commenced in 1825, the estimated time for its completion being seven years, and the estimated expense £300,000. Did subsequent experience prove the truth of these calculations? No, it proved their utter fallacy. You, perhaps, will be surprised to hear that, far from bearing out the previous estimates, the scientific operations of those seven years were almost, if not entirely, useless: the maps, and other documents, proved so grossly incorrect, – so utterly unfit for the purpose for which they were designed – that the greater part of them were ordered to be destroyed. Thus, Sir, and for these reasons, were the materials which bore the impress of the concentrated talent of five captains and twenty-five lieutenants of the Royal Engineers, for the period of seven years, reduced to their primitive elements. The survey of the island was not completed till 1842,⁴ and it incurred an expense little short of three quarters of a million sterling.⁵

But a specious objection may here be started. It may be said that the above would be unfair premises whence to draw conclusions relative to the present claims of the Royal Engineers, inasmuch as they were, at the time alluded to, comparatively inexperienced. I shall not wait to discuss the merits of this plea, but I shall meet the objection on its own ground. In 1841, an Act was passed for the survey of the six northern counties of England,⁶ the estimated time for its execution being six years; two years of this time have already elapsed, and there is not one county finished yet. The expense, up to the present time, is about £120,000, or £60,000 a year; the quantity surveyed at present amounts to about 2,000,000 acres; and before the mapping and calculation of this will be finished, three years will have expired. We are here furnished with data to find the expense of this survey, and the time of its completion. The contents of the six northern counties are:—

Northumberland 1,197,440 acres

Cumberland 974,720 acres

Westmoreland 487,680 acres

Lancashire 1,130,240 acres

Durham 702,080 acres

York 3,835,040 acres

Total - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 8,327,200 acres.

Then, by a plain statement in the rule of three,⁷ if 2,000,000 acres require three years for its completion, 8,327,200 acres will require above twelve years. So that though the Act contemplates that this survey will be finished in 1846–7, it will not be completed till 1853, and will incur an expense of £700,000!

You may now judge, Sir, what effect the experience of the Royal Engineers has upon their estimates. And will you, Sir, permit the continuance of such an expensive system at a period of such financial embarrassment as the present?⁸ Let an examination be made before the House of Commons into the past history of the Ordnance survey of Ireland, and the history of the Ordnance survey of England which is at present in a state of progress; let persons be examined who will give plain facts as to the progress of the work and the outlay of the public money; let some of the most intelligent of the Royal Sappers and Miners and assistants, be examined before the House, and afterwards you can judge of the propriety of entrusting to the Royal Engineers the survey of London. Captain Boldero’s⁹ reply to a question lately asked by Lord H. Vane,¹⁰ proves that there exists on the part of the Government gross misconception relative to the present state of the survey of the six northern counties. The proceedings of the Royal Engineers have ever been mysterious. In 1835, an Honourable Member¹¹ moved for an examination into the state of the Ordnance survey of Ireland, but Sir H. Vivian¹² assured the Honourable Member that the work was getting on rapidly, and that an examination would only cause dispirit. When this assurance was given, the Ordnance surveyors were plodding their weary way over a district, the survey of which had been previously executed so incorrectly as to need a complete revision.¹³

Since their arrival in England the Royal Engineers have adopted a line of conduct which strikes at the very vitals of a respectable profession: they have entered into a most unfair competition with the civil surveyors of England. I refer to their contracting for the surveying of townships for tithe commutation,¹⁴ their estimates of which work are so low as to wither in the breast of the civil surveyor every hope of successful competition.¹⁵ But, Sir, in point of accuracy, they may be ranked with the other estimates spoken of – they are utterly false. I challenge contradiction when I assert that the actual expense of the tithe plans executed by the Royal Engineers is far beyond the estimated expense, so that the public service must suffer from such undertakings.

Now, Sir, contrast the case of these men with that of a body of civil surveyors similarly circumstanced. The latter have a professional character at stake; the former need not rely on theirs. The Royal Engineers may calculate on their salaries, maugre¹⁶ all their blundering; the civil surveyors have no such prop. The Royal Engineers have a ready salve for each mistake – the public purse is their panacea; the civil surveyors have nothing but their talents to bear them out, and a single error such as those which are so common with the Royal Engineers would injure their professional character for ever.

These, then, Sir, are the grounds on which I contend for the survey of London being left open to competition. I am satisfied that the civil profession are able to do it no less correctly, no less quickly, and more cheaply than the Royal Engineers.¹⁷ Let Engineers and surveyors put in tenders for certain sections of the metropolis (all to be executed on a uniform system); let all parties be bound to a certain time; let the Ordnance surveyors put in their tenders also, but let them stand on their own merits – let them have no funds to fall back on, as heretofore, in case of failure, let their own pecuniary loss be the result of any error in their estimates – and the issue will prove that the civil profession are able successfully to compete with them.

I would not have you infer from what I have stated that the Ordnance survey is altogether wanting in point of talent; I am free to admit that there are many intelligent, respectable men connected with it; but I do contend that the treatment which these men receive is sufficient to wither all their energies. It has been the boast of individuals in high places, that they can procure the best draftsmen in Europe at the rate of two and sixpence and three shillings a day. I willingly admit that, at the present moment, there are first-rate draftsmen on the Ordnance survey, who are condemned to toil for this miserable pittance; but does not the individual ‘glory in his shame’¹⁸ who would thus make a boast of his ability to crush merit; and I appeal to you, Sir Robert, what interest will a man of talent take in that situation, the pecuniary emoluments of which amount to no more than half a crown¹⁹ or three shillings a day, and even that much lessened by travelling and other expenses incidental to the migratory life of the operative Ordnance surveyor? I could abundantly prove the fallacy of a system of economy which would treat deserving men thus; and I could show that the best, and ultimately the cheapest, mode of proceeding would be to make a situation on the Ordnance survey worth holding, to pay the man of merit properly, and thus excite in him an interest in the work entrusted to him for execution.

Another clog on the proceedings of the survey is the employment of persons at a still lower rate of pay than the above, several of whom are utterly unfit to take any part in the undertaking.²⁰ The great majority of those employed belong to this class, and their misery beggars description. If the limits of a letter would permit me, I could detail to you the sufferings of numbers of unfortunate Irishmen, who, after having been lured from their homes by an ignis fatuus²¹ hope, have been dismissed without a fault from their employment, and thrown upon the world houseless and penniless, in a country whose sympathies often run counter to the name of Irishman. I could show you the quondam²² Ordnance surveyor craving at the workhouse door for a morsel of bread, and more than once repulsed as an imposter. I could show you the faithful servant of the survey, toiling along a miry road on public business, on a fearful night in December, the rain and snow beating in his teeth, until, overpowered with toil, he sinks and dies, while his lifeless body, instead of receiving decent interment, is thrown like a cumbersome clog into the grave, at the expense of the parish in which he lost his life! I know there are persons whose interest it would be to damn the credibility of one who, in their parlance, will doubtless be dubbed an ‘anonymous scribbler’. With reference to such, I have only to say: Let them contradict me if they can. Why, I would ask, is there not a single Englishman employed on the Ordnance survey? – Because an Englishman would spurn the paltry meed²³ which the rulers of the survey offer for his services. The Ordnance surveyors are, to a man, natives of Ireland. I have before stated that there are many men of talent to be found among them; but the most unfair advantage has been taken both of the peculiar circumstances of these men and those of their country.

It may be thought that I have wandered from the proper topic in the course of this letter – that I have forgotten the subject with which I commenced; but this, Sir, is not the case. The revealing, though partially, of the machinery of the Ordnance survey, and the treatment which those employed on it receive at the hands of their Lords and masters, will, I trust strengthen the credit of what I have before stated – that the civil profession are able to execute the survey of London no less quickly, and more cheaply than the Royal Engineers; and that, therefore, the work should be left open to competition.

Spectator. | Dublin, August 15th., 1843.²⁴

RI MS JT 1/11/3907–10