SUPPLY.—ARMY ESTIMATES. (Hansard, 28 May 1858)

COLONEL NORTH
said, he rose to express his hope that the assistant chaplains in the Army, who had rendered most valuable services during the war in the Crimea, would be placed upon the same footing as regarded half-pay and retirement with the same class of officers in the navy. He believed that if the whole of the military chaplains were commissioned the increased annual charge to the country would only be £850.

THE CHAIRMAN
intimated to the hon. and gallant Member that he was out of order in bringing the question forward upon the Vote before the Committee.

§ SIR DENHAM NORREYS
said, he the wished to know when the Survey Report would be laid on the Table. He hoped no supplementary Estimate with respect to it would be taken until they had had an opportunity of considering the Report.

GENERAL PEEL
said, that he had received the Report just after the adjourn- 1106 ment of the House for the holidays; he had forwarded it on the same day to Her Majesty, and should lay it on the Table as soon as he got it back. He had given orders that no alterations should be made in the terms laid down by the Treasury in the matter.

§ SIR DENHAM NORREYS
said, that last year skeleton maps were appended to the Report, in order to show the progress of the survey. He understood there were no such maps this year.

GENERAL PEEL
said, he believed that they would be produced.

GENERAL CODRINGTON
said, as the Vote had reference to the establishment at Carshalton he thought he was in order in calling attention to the case of the chaplains of the army. He could confirm all that had been said as to their services both in the Crimea and in Bulgaria, in the midst of fever and cholera.

THE CHAIRMAN
informed the hon. and gallant Member that he was out of order in alluding to the subject on that occasion.

COLONEL NORTH
asked if he would be at liberty to bring the case of the chaplains forward on the bringing up of the Report?

THE CHAIRMAN
replied in the affirmative.

§ MR. MONSELL
said, he wished to call the attention of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman to the various rates imposed upon the students at Woolwich and Sandhurst. Those establishments cost the country nothing, but it was right to inquire out of whose pockets came the funds for maintaining them. The sons of private gentlemen at Woolwich paid £125, while the sons of general officers having regiments paid only £80, the sons of those who had not regiments £70, and so on in the lower ranks of officers. It must be clear, then, that the cost of maintaining the establishment came from the pockets of private gentlemen, who were required to pay £125 per annum. He did not mean to say that the sons of officers were not entitled to some advantage, but he thought that advantage should be paid for by the public, and not by private persons.

COLONET NORTH
reminded the hon. Gentleman that Sandhurst College was originally intended for the sons of officers only, and the first class thought of by the Duke of York was the orphan class, which existed for some time, until that House thought fit to withdraw the allowance, 1107 thereby inflicting great dishonour upon the country. When he (Colonel North) was a cadet at Sandhurst he met there a brother of an hon. Baronet, now a clerk of that House, who was the son of a gallant officer, the founder of the institution, who fell in one of the most brilliant charges of the Peninsular war. The orphan class, however, was no longer considered by the public. In 1815, at the close of the great war, there were 412 cadets at Sandhurst, all the sons of military or naval men, and of whom 156 were orphans, who paid nothing, but towards whose education the country paid £21,300 a year. He quite agreed that one class should not he unduly taxed for the education of another class, but thought it was the duty of the country to provide any funds that might be required.

MR. W. WILLIAMS
said, he thought it desirable that a statement should be laid before the House of the amount received as well as of the amount paid for such an establishment.

§ SIR DENHAM NORREYS
said, he concurred in the opinion that it was unjust to tax one class for the benefit of another. It was monstrous that a civilian should have to pay £125 per annum for his son, when a man of property, who might also happen to be a general, had to pay only £70 or £80 for his.

§ LORD HOTHAM
said, he was anxious to call the attention of the Committee to the subject of Military Rewards. Those rewards were of two classes—pecuniary, which were met out of the Vote now proposed, and the highest military reward which an officer could receive, the Order of the Bath. It might be supposed that when the latter decoration had been conferred upon an officer for distinguished services, he would be permitted to wear it during his life, and upon his decease to bequeath it as an honourable heirloom to his family. That was not the case; for the decoration was conferred only for life, and immediately upon an officer's death an official demand from the Herald's Office, which was signed by His Royal Highness the Prince Consort as the head of the Order, was made upon his representatives for the return of the mark of distinction which had been conferred upon their gallant relative. Again, the decoration which was delivered to an officer when at home by the hand 1108 of his Sovereign, or transmitted to him when abroad, was of so mean and miserable a description that no officer could wear it in the state in which it was handed over to him, and that the very first thing he did after the investiture was to go to his own jeweller and get him to furnish him with a silver decoration, devoid of which he was almost ashamed to be seen in public. The practice, indeed, had been found so objectionable that it could not be carried into effect with reference to those foreign officers on whom the Order of the Bath had been conferred. At the conclusion of the Crimean war, when many French and Sardinian officers, along with several British officers, were decorated with the Order of the Bath, the English officers were placed in this disgraceful position — that while they saw the foreign officers receive the decoration in silver it was given to them, the English officers, in tinsel and pasteboard. He took the liberty of mentioning this subject to the House last year, and on that occasion he received from the noble Viscount then at the head of the Government an intimation that that part of his complaint was reasonable, and should be redressed. Since then, however, nothing had been done, and it was his (Lord Hotham's) intention, on the meeting of Parliament this year, to have made this the subject of a distinct Motion for an Address to the Crown; but he would now leave it in the hands of the Minister for War, hoping the right hon. and gallant Gentleman would take it into his consideration and give such advice to his Royal Mistress as would lead to a removal of this just cause of complaint, which would be received as a matter of grace and favour on the part of the military and naval professions.

COLONEL NORTH
said, he could confirm the statement of the noble Lord as to the distinction made in the decoration given to our own officers and that conferred on foreign officers, and as to the pain with which that distinction was regarded by the former. He thought, however, the matter could not be in better hands than those of the present Minister for War.

§ GENERAL BUCKLEY
said, he wished, on the part of the 64th Regiment, to make some remarks on the statement made by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer in reference to the present Sir Henry Havelock having been singled out to receive the Victoria Cress, given on 1109 account of the gallant attach which that regiment made on a battery during the first siege of Cawnpore. On that occasion the right hon. Gentleman had said that Sir Henry, then aide-de-camp to his father, had, without orders, placed himself at the head of the regiment, and had ridden in front until the battery was taken. Now, a gallant relative of his (General Buckley) had commanded that regiment, and had written to him to say that the whole regiment was extremely surprised and displeased on finding that an aide-de-camp had been so rewarded for doing that which they could have done without his assistance. He reminded the Committee that the 64th Regiment had behaved with the greatest gallantry during the campaign; that not the slightest imputation rested upon it, and that, on the contrary, it had received the thanks of its commanding officer for its services in the field. He must say, in justice to the present Sir Henry Havelock, that he was highly averse to having the order conferred upon him under the circumstances.

§ MR. BRISCOE
concurred in the objections expressed by the noble Lord the Member for the East Riding of Yorkshire, with respect to the mode in which the decoration of the Bath was at present bestowed.

SIR GEORGE LEWIS
explained that in some remarks he had made to the House on a previous occasion his intention was merely to state circumstances which he thought redounded to the credit of Sir Henry Havelock, and not to cast the slightest reflection on the commanding officer of the 64th Regiment, or on the regiment itself, which he had no doubt behaved on the occasion in question with the utmost gallantry and propriety.

GENERAL PEEL
said, he was obliged to the noble Lord (Lord Hotham) for calling his attention to the subject which he had brought under the notice of the Committee; and with regard to the remarks of the hon. and gallant Member for Salisbury (General Buckley), he would only say that he could not believe that there was a more gallant regiment, or one more gallantly led, than the 64th, as would be seen, when the letters of Sir Colin Campbell were published.

§ MR. MONSELL
said, he should be glad to hear the right hon. and gallant Gentleman at the head of the War Office, express some positive opinion with respect to the mode in which the decoration of the Bath was at present conferred. He (Mr. Monsell) believed that the House was 1110 unanimous in disapproving of the existing practice in that matter.

GENERAL CODRINGTON
said, there were two points involved in the present mode of conferring the Order of the Bath. There was, first, the tinsel star, which he believed was a subject of general condemnation. He had himself given a silver star to the French officers in the Crimea, who had been admitted to the Order, because it had been found impossible to confer the decoration upon them in the mode in which it was given to English officers. The other point to be considered in the matter was the size of the decoration. Considering the limited number of cases in which the Grand Cross of the Bath, and the Knights Commandership of that Order were conferred, he thought the decoration might be made smaller, if expense were grudged; for it was not the value of the thing which caused it to be prized, but the honour denoted by it, and the decoration would be much enhanced in value if it could be transmitted to the children and relatives of those who were fortunate enough to obtain it. Moreover, it was at present inconveniently large, and an unnecessary expenditure was thus imposed on officers who had to supply themselves with a valuable imitation of the mean material which they received from the State.

§ LORD HOTHAM
said, he believed there could be no doubt but that convenience and economy would be promoted by reducing the size of the decoration. It was at present so heavy that it could only be held on by being very tightly sewn, and even then frequently tore itself off by its own own weight when the officer was on horseback.

MR. W. WILLIAMS
said, he did not wish to object to the conferment of rewards for distinguished military services, but he was surprised to find upon the Estimates a grant of £2,240,000 for half-pay and pensions—a vote exceeding that of last year by £18,000. The Russian war having terminated, he should rather have expected a diminution than an increase upon these items.