Note 79 — Chapter III · THE COURT AND THE CABINET.

This great inventor and armourer had been offered £10,000 a year for life by Napoleon III. if he would go to France and manufacture his new cannon exclusively for the French. The offer was refused from patriotic motives, which was perhaps the reason why the British Government never could be got to behave as fairly to Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) Whitworth’s guns as to those produced by the engineers in the employment of Mr. (afterwards Sir W.) Armstrong at Elswick.