§ MR. WHITEsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, If it be true that, the War Office has contracted with the Manchester Ordnance Company for two 15-ton 9-inch Whitworth guns, at the rate of £3,000 per gun; and, if so, whether those guns are intended to be used in the armament of the Royal Sovereign and Prince Albert turret-ships, and whether a proper course of experiments or trials have been made prior to such order being given, and why the War Office does not avail itself of the experiments made with the 7-inch 150 cwt. competitive rifle guns during the last two years, as grounds of comparison with the hexagonal bore, and direct that a heavy Whitworth gun, of like dimensions, should be subjected to a similar trial before adopting a system as yet insufficiently tested; and whether the War Office would have any objection to furnish a Return of all the Whitworth guns, brass, iron, or steel, or any combination of those metals, which, up to the present date, have boon tried, with particulars of their weight and dimensions; number of rounds fired from each gun respectively; also under what conditions those rounds have been fired; the nature and composition of the ammunition employed; the whole summarized in a tabular statement with such other information as may be requisite to form a correct judgment of the resisting qualities of the Whitworth system of constructing, rifling, and venting heavy guns?
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, that the two 15-ton guns had been ordered at the request of the Admiralty. The Secretary of the Admiralty would be able to state in what ships they were intended to be used. Lord De Grey and the Duke of Somerset considered that the merits of the Whitworth system of construction and rifling had been sufficiently tested and established in the trials which were made by the Armstrong and Whitworth Committee to justify them in ordering a further practical trial on board Her Majesty's ships, In the present stage of the question fur- 839 ther competitive trials were not in their opinion necessary. There would he no objection to giving the Return asked for by the hon. Gentleman of the guns tried by the War Department, down to the word "fired." The remainder of his Motion was too vague to he complied with.