COLONEL DICKSONsaid, he rose pursuant to notice to call the attention of the Secretary of State for War to the hardships entailed on the officers, noncommissioned officers, and men, of the embodied militia regiments by their sudden disembodiment. He could not but regret that regiments which it had taken such time, trouble, and expense to bring to their present state of discipline should be wantonly disembodied. A sufficient reason for such a step was, he might be told, to be found in the fact that a certain number of regiments of the line were about to return from India; but it should be borne in mind that those regiments were but mere skeletons, and would, as a consequence, by no means supply the deficiency which the proposed disembodiment of militia would create. Perhaps he might be told that economy must be considered, and that, to use a familiar phrase, they must "cut their coat according to the cloth;" but he could not admit the force of that argument, especially when he saw the expenses that were incurred in other departments of the State. He could not understand how, under any circumstances, economy could justify injustice. It was a great hardship that the senior officers, who had in many instances sacrificed their domestic comfort,—that the junior officers, many of whom had frequently spent three or four years in learning the duties of their position,—and that the sergeants and men, who had nobly come forward at the call of their country, but whose training had unfitted them for the discharge of those duties which they had previously performed, should receive so sudden an intimation that their military services were so soon to be dispensed with. Perhaps they would be told that this was a time of peace; but after the statement just made by the noble Lord, he thought it was too soon to disband this portion of so newly-raised a force at present. He would give all credit to the Emperor of the French as a loyal ally, and as the last man to attempt the invasion of this country; but, great man as he was, he was still the creature of circumstances. France had entirely delivered herself up to the will of one man, and a country in such a case could not be implicity trusted on every oc- 525 casion. He (Colonel Dickson) did not, of course, mean to contend that the militia should be made a permanent institution of the country, but he was at the same time prepared to maintain that the various regiments of which it was composed ought not to be disbanded without sufficient notice. The subject was therefore one which he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would take into his consideration and place the militia on such a footing that they might know what duties it was intended that they should perform.