MR. PERCYasked the Secretary of the Ordnance whether it was true that a circular was sent in February last by Sir Hew Ross to the head masters of some of the principal schools, inviting them to send up the names of some of their pupils for the Royal Engineers or Artillery, and promising that thirty commissions should be distributed among them? Whether the names of forty pupils were not sent up accordingly, on the faith of that promise; and whether, notwithstanding that promise, the forty pupils so sent up from schools are to be subjected to competition with the 300 or 400 persons from seventeen to twenty-one years of age, who by open competitive examination, are to be selected according to the arrangement contained in the advertisement dated the 11th day of June, 1855, and signed by the Secretary of the Ordnance?
§ MR. MONSELLsaid, when it was determined to appoint certain young gentlemen of greater age than those generally appointed to the army, Sir Hew Ross directed letters to be sent to the public schools, to say that such arrangements were in contemplation, and to ask if they would assist. Altogether seventy were nominated, between eighteen and nineteen years of age, and of these seventy, thirty were at present in the practical class at Woolwich, and had been so for three or four months, 518 and, if they passed their examinations, would receive their commissions. Of the remaining forty, only nine were from public schools; the others were selected by patronage. When Lord Panmure took charge of the Ordnance Department, and found that this arrangement subsisted, he considered that very great injury might accrue to the Artillery and Engineers if forty young men of inferior attainments, as a class, to those who generally received commissions were to be grouped together at one period, and in one place, and he therefore determined to open the examination to public competition; but at the same time it was determined to give directions to the examiners who presided at that public competition that they were to take special note with regard to the forty young men to whom these expectations were held out, and in the event of any of them not being successful in obtaining the cadetship, but who nevertheless showed a fair amount of ability, so as to make it probable that they might make good officers, it was the intention of Lord Panmure to consider their cases.
COLONEL DUNNEasked whether those persons so selected, and especially those selected by patronage, were to be subjected to as severe an examination as was ordinarily required at Woolwich?
§ MR. MONSELLI should say rather more severe.