RESOLUTION.

HC Deb 21 February 1871 vol 204 cc590-646

MR. TREVELYAN

, who had given Notice of his intention to move the following Resolutions:—

1. "1. That, in the opinion of this House, no scheme for Military reorganization can be regarded as complete which does not alter the tenure of the Command in Chief in such a manner as to enable the Secretary of State for War to avail himself freely of the best administrative talent and the most recent military experience from time to time existing in the British Army:
2. "2. That the consideration of the cost involved in the abolition of the Purchase system urgently calls for the immediate removal of obsolete and antiquated sources of military expenditure,"

said, the House would probably be at no loss to understand why the first of the original Resolutions he had intended to move was withdrawn; but he might remark, before proceeding to refer to the remaining ones, that the reason the former Resolution was withdrawn, consisted in the fact that the announcement made by the Secretary of State for War on Thursday night, that the system of purchase in the Army was to be abolished, had given great and unalloyed satisfaction to Army Reformers. ["No, no!"] He believed that to be the case, and also that the satisfaction was not confined to the mere followers of the Government, because he knew that several hon. Members opposite had approved the scheme of the Secretary of State for War, and that many military men who had formerly opposed the abolition of purchase, but who preferred to yield the point rather than subject the service to the disadvantage of the method of officering the Army becoming the subject of continual and acrimonious discussion, thought that if the non-purchase system was to be adopted the Government scheme was satisfactory, it being just to the individual, thorough in its scope, and economical to the public. He congratulated the Government upon having acknowledged the principle that officers were to be compensated not only for the sums they had actually paid out of pocket, but for amounts to which they would have been entitled had the purchase system continued in force, with the exception, of course, of what might be termed "fancy prices." The principle of compensation propounded by the Government was the right one, because it placed the Government in the position towards the officer which would have been occupied by his brother officer had things continued as they were at present. No doubt a great expense would be involved; but he regarded it as a good omen that, when the expenditure was mentioned, the cheers indicating the feeling that the sum was large came from the Opposition Benches, the occupants of which never grudged money when the national honour was concerned, while those hon. Members who were generally supposed to be rather scrupulous guardians of the public purse remained in silent acquiescence. As was inevitable, a proposed change of this kind had created a certain amount of discontent, because it had injured certain interests and rudely shaken some old cherished beliefs. For this reason, he and those Army Reformers who acted with him would always look back with great pleasure upon the fact that by taking the present step they had relieved Her Majesty's Government of some share of the unpopularity attaching to the question. Before leaving this branch of the subject he wished to make a personal statement, and he hoped it would be received in the spirit in which it was offered. What he wished to say was that the peculiarity of purchase was such that those who objected to the educational and moral effect of the Army system of promotion and first appointments were obliged, in expressing their views, to say things annoying to officers who held their commissions under that system. During recent discussions he had no notion that there was any chance of purchase being abolished, and therefore in speaking of it he adopted the tone which men used in speaking of a position they believed to be impregnable; while if he had believed purchase was about to be abolished he should have adopted a different tone. With regard to the second Resolution, he had been told by a great many hon. Members that, having got to a part of what he wanted, and a most valuable part too, it was time to withdraw the rest, as he must not be exacting and impracticable. In his opinion, however, a man need not have been many years in that House to know what was the precise point at which it was best to his individual interest to withdraw from a question in which he had gained a certain amount of success. But, in his opinion, and in the opinion of many others who had advocated the question in the country, he had no right to arrange away the object of a Motion on which he had been engaged with any considerable success. The cause was not theirs to bargain with or compromise; and although he adopted with unfeigned gratitude the concessions which had been made as generous and real, still as regarded what had not been conceded he felt bound to submit the issue to Parliament. This was the course he intended to pursue. He had no doubt he should be beaten. Four years ago he and those who thought with him were well beaten on the purchase system. Three years ago they brought forward exactly the scheme the Government was now proposing, except that Government had made certain alterations which he fully acknowledged to be ameliorations on his scheme. He should, therefore, state his case to the House in the firm belief that it would not require many more annual Tuesdays before the present exceptional tenure of the office of Commander-in-Chief should have gone where the purchase system had gone before.

The Secretary of State had made several excellent and sweeping changes in relation to the War Office and Horse Guards, particularly as regarded the number of letters which had passed between the Departments; whereas nothing should have passed except Minutes. He strongly recommended hon. Gentlemen to read the evidence of Mr. Godley, the late Deputy Assistant Secretary for the War Office, before the Army Organization Committee of 1861, in reference to this subject. Mr. Godley there said that the feeling of the Army towards the War Office was quite different from that of the Navy towards the Admiralty, the former regarding with jealousy the civil departments which checked and controlled the heads of the Army. Now, how did the Secretary of State for War propose to remedy this? The first step was to alter the wording of the patent by which the Commander-in-Chief was appointed. The right hon. Gentleman soon found that this alteration was not sufficient, and Lord Northbrook, Sir Edward Lugard, and Sir William Anderson concurred in that view. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War then proposed to amalgamate the two Departments by a change of locality. But this would not, in his (Mr. Trevelyan's) opinion, be sufficient. It was not by an alteration of the arrangement of any rooms and passages in a public Office that he could alter the relations between a Parliamentary temporary officer and a permanent public servant of the highest rank, who had held office for 14 years under a system of administration and in a position entirely different from that which now existed. If the Secretary of State were to sit at his desk at one end of the room, and the Commander-in-Chief at his desk at the other, the present relations would still exist so long as the military adviser of the Secretary of State was a permanent officer with the rank and title of Commander-in-Chief. It was idle to say that the the office was not permanent because it was held only during the pleasure of the Crown. In such a state of things the Commander-in-Chief could not be removed from his office without some stigma being inflicted, which no Government had a right to inflict, especially on an officer who had always done his very best — as the present Commander-in-Chief had done—to the Army and his country. So long as the Commander-in-Chief was a permanent officer, taking precedence in men's minds of every officer in the Army, the post must, of necessity, be conferred on a Royal personage, or upon a general of great age and classic reputation. In the great majority of cases the Commander-in-Chief would be drawn from the second of the two classes he had mentioned, and in that case he must almost necessarily be a man who had lived so long as to be past his work, with the further disadvantage that, once appointed, he could not be removed, although the older he grew the less efficient would he become. How could a Secretary of State—a young man perhaps, go to an officer, who at the period of the Secretary's birth was engaged in fighting and beating the French, the Affghans, or the Sikhs, and tell him that he was behind his time, and must give place to a younger man. And war having become more of an art, it was every year more necessary that there should be a rapid succession of new ideas at head quarters, instead of a series of men who would stick to the experience of their youth until that experience had become obsolete. In addition to this consideration, it would, in his opinion, be a great advantage if the position of Commander-in-Chief could be offered as a reward to a great number of the ablest soldiers in succession, in which case officers would be stimulated to greater exertion by the prospect. Who had been the Commanders-in-Chief of the British Army within a recent period? First, he would mention Lord Amherst; then the Duke of York, who filled the office from 1794 to 1809; next Sir David Dundas, who merely occupied the place as a sort of warming-pan during the two years in which Lord Palmerston vindicated in his person the position of Secretary of State for War; and he, in turn, was followed by the Duke of York in 1811, after whom came Lord Hill, who filled the office for 14 years, and was succeeded by the Duke of Wellington. Hon. Gentlemen opposite would perhaps not care to hear anything that he might say of the Duke of Wellington. But what was said by Lord Grey, who was better acquainted with military affairs than any other civilian? Lord Grey stated that the Duke showed an indisposition to any change of system in the Army; that he objected, in the strongest manner, to giving up the old musket for the new rifle; and that he pertinaciously opposed any alleviation in the extreme severity of corporal punishment then in vogue, and the exemption of well-conducted men from that punishment. Now if the Duke of Wellington had been Commander-in-Chief only for a few years immediately after the Peninsular War, the country would have had the greatest administrator in the world filling that office; but as it was, the Duke remained at his post till he did more harm than good, because he was opposed to changes in the material of war essential to the defence of the country. This, however, must be said for him, that though he left the country undefended he was always a great economist, and though he left the country undefended it was undefended at a very little cost indeed. Lord Hardinge next filled the office, from 1852 to 1856, and of all Commanders-in-Chief he did most good; but, unfortunately, he died before he had filled the office four years. The reason why his career was looked upon as a bright spot in the history of the Horse Guards was that nature did for him what the Army Reformers proposed to do for the Army by this five years' appointment. Suppose that, instead of a succession of old officers, they had had a succession of comparatively young men, ranging from 45 to 60, would the Army now be in the state in which the Secretary for War found it? He saw a noble Lord opposite (Lord E. Cecil) with whom he had not often agreed during the course of the last autumn, though he was quite sure they were still on very pleasant terms, and that noble Lord proposed, in a letter to The Times, that a colonel and major should hold an appointment for three or five years. Well, if it was important that the man at the head of a regiment should hold a limited appointment, he thought it was more important that the officer at the head of the Army should hold a limited appointment. In India the Commander-in-Chief, whose business was administration, held a five years' appointment, and the Military Secretary, whose business was promotion, held a five years' appointment. Why, then, should the Commander-in-Chief, who united in his own person the administration and promotion, have a permanent tenure? Another method of dealing with this question was to give the work of the bureau to a man of humbler title than that of the Commander-in-Chief. He might be called chief of the Staff, military secretary, or adjutant general, still having the command-in-chief at the head of the whole Army. If we looked at the example of Prussia, it was most important that the head of the whole Army should be relieved from all paper work, and that he should spend his days in going about from district to district, and seeing that the generals of those districts did their duty, and in seeing whether the arsenals were in a proper state—he (Mr. Trevelyan) hoped we should soon have local arsenals—and in seeing that the general Staff were thoroughly educated in military matters, and did what was required of them. On that point he had the very high authority of Lord Grey, who strongly recommended that we should have a board at the War Office, which board should have the advice of military officers, just as the Admiralty had a board who had the advice of naval officers. He did not venture to point out to the House what remedy should be proposed for the present state of things; but he asked them to affirm by their vote that night that the permanent holding of the office of Commander-in-Chief was not to the advantage of the Army or the country. The Secretary of State for War, in his very interesting speech on Thursday evening, dwelt almost entirely on promotion with regard to the duties of the Commander-in-Chief. He said it was necessary that the person in whose hands those very large powers were vested should be appointed by the Commander-in-Chief, subject to the approval of the Secretary of State. Now, in the year 1869, out of 571 promotions only 116, or one-fifth of the whole, were without purchase. What an enormous responsibility, therefore, was left on the shoulders of the Commander-in-Chief! When the right hon. Gentleman remarked that the purchase system did away with favouritism, he was much cheered by hon. and learned Gentlemen; and no wonder, because so long as the present system was continued promotion would run very much in the same set of persons. It was curious to see how the five years' rule had been set aside. One single officer obtained a series of five years' appointments. He was for 10 years quartermaster general at the Horse Guards, after that he was Governor General of Gibraltar, then he became adjutant general, and he had no doubt that when his time was up he would become quartermaster general again. The result of this permanency of office was curiously shown in the ideas current at the Horse Guards. He now came to a point on which he was aware he was trenching on delicate ground. After he had said things on the platform in the country he was not the man to be afraid of saying them, he hoped in becoming terms, in his place in the House of Commons. The Secretary of State for War, on Thursday, said Her Majesty's Government thought that the position of the Commander-in-Chief must be looked upon as exceptional, and that time could not be taken into account with reference to his continuance in or removal from office. In case of invasion everything would depend upon who would lead our soldiers in battle. How would the commanders of our battalions be chosen? The Commission which sat in 1857 recommended that the Commander-in-Chief should be authorized to select them from the heads of battalions. His Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief, being asked by the Commission whether he thought that what was applicable to colonels should not also be applicable to lieutenant colonels, said he thought not, because a colonel did not command a regiment; he was a mere nominal head; he was selected for services performed in former days, and his appointment was given to him as a reward for services. He was asked, if the Commander-in-Chief were backed by public opinion could he not go a step further than the rejection of bad officers and select the fittest men? His answer was— I think not. My opinion is very decided that the power of selection is impossible, whether exercised by a military man or a civilian, and I do not think that any man having that power would hold his position for six months in the country. And, again, the Commander-in-Chief said—"I don't see how you can make a standard of selection." [Cheers.] Hon. Gentlemen seemed to think that in no country had the problem been solved. It had been solved in Prussia; it had been solved in France. [A laugh.] Hon. Gentlemen might smile when he mentioned the French Army as an illustration of the successful solution of the problem; but it was evident that when two nations, which officered their armies by selection, went to war one must win and the other lose, and the defects of the French troops were no argument against the wisdom of the principle of selection. But it was not in foreign countries only, but in England also that the question had been solved. Every service constituted on a proper basis had within it such a public opinion that promotion, to a great extent, could not be wrongly made against that public opinion. Let them look at the Indian Civil Service, in which though here and there a little favouritism might have crept in, yet no good man could be long kept back from the promotion which he merited. Again, take the case of the masters of our public schools. These posts were practically filled by the strictest open competition; and, whenever a bad appointment was made, the noise of it rang from one end of the country to the other. Of course, the public opinion of the Army could be brought to bear by calling for confidential reports from the officers in command of the various districts, and one of the advantages of localizing the Army would be that these reports might be sent in, and the duty of making the appointment left to the Horse Guards. The Secretary of State for War, the other evening, said— That you would do harm in the Army if, in abolishing purchase, you substituted seniority pure and simple. I believe the truth is that if you abolish purchase you must accept the principle of selection. … . You must not allow inefficient seniority or a system of pecuniary advantage to prevail. But the officer who was responsible had assured them beforehand that selection must end in seniority, for he had said, in order that the Commander-in-Chief might guard against the odium arising from promotion by selection, he must adopt the system of pure seniority. Now, it was a very formidable thing when the officer appointed to select not for the next five years, but for the term of his life, made such a statement. He now came to a most important point. The Secretary of State for War had said that there was one important consideration at the root of this part of the question—namely, that it was just possible, after spending the large sum of money estimated to be necessary for the abolition of purchase, they might be laying the foundation of a system of underhand purchase. And what said the Commander-in-Chief on that point?— That with the large fortunes which gentlemen in this country possessed it would be very difficult to abolish the purchase system, and that if it were to be abolished to-morrow, you would have—in spite of all the care and attention that the authorities could give—an underhand system of purchase going on the next day. Now, the nation could not be placed in such a dilemma if they had a Commander-in-Chief with a strong hand, who was determined to make his selections so as that no one should know beforehand whether he was going to be promoted or not, and who was also resolved to punish severely any officer immoral enough to give money for promotion after the right of purchase had been abolished. But it was to a Department animated by such a spirit that they were going to commit what General Trochu called the "corner-stone" of our military defences. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War had asked three questions the other night. First, he had asked—Were they prepared to deal with the question of retirement? He replied—Yes, they were prepared to take a national and lively interest in it, when they were once assured that the retirement money would not go to sinecurists, but to officers who had spent their lives in the service of their country. The right hon. Gentleman next asked—Were they prepared to adopt the principle of selection? He (Mr. Trevelyan) replied—Yes, if the task of carrying out that principle were not to be committed to men who had over and over again declared themselves to be unequal to the burden. The third question of the right hon. Gentleman was—Are you prepared to sacrifice a large sum of public money for the purpose of extinguishing purchase? He answered—Yes, if it were not that they had been told by those who were responsible that all that money would be sacrificed in vain. He did not feel justified, after having spent four or five months in recommending the nation to abolish purchase—[Ironical cheers]—he did not feel justified, now that purchase was going to be abolished, at a cost of £7,000,000 or £8,000,000, in letting the occasion pass without solemnly warning them that, unless the tenure of the office of Commander-in-Chief was limited as he proposed, every penny of it would be spent in vain. He did not think anyone who considered the largeness of the sum, and the importance of the issues involved, would hold that a Member of Parliament who had put the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief on selection before the House had made a gratuitous personal attack, or had exceeded his right as a taxpayer or his duty as a Member of Parliament.

The Secretary of State for War had dwelt very much on the question of promotion; but they must remember that the military advisers of the Crown had also other duties to perform. Military gentlemen had a very great distrust of the knowledge which civilians had of military matters. He could assure those gentlemen they had not a deeper sense of their deficiency than had civilians themselves, and there was no civilian who was more sensible of his deficiency than the man who from time to time was at the head of the War Office. Therefore, the more unable a civilian was to initiate a military policy the more necessary was it for him to have at hand military men who could give him the best advice. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State was the very last man behind the back of his responsible advisers to ask advice from other men. Nothing in official life created so many heart burnings as the adoption of such a course. But let the House consider for a moment how far the authorities of the Horse Guards were competent to give the Secretary for War sound and intelligent assistance in the solution of the great questions that would have to be solved in the course of the next two or three years. We should have to decide whether we should make a separation between the home and foreign battalions, because, until that was done, the Short Enlistment Act would be a nullity. We should also have to make up our minds whether we should localize our army by making a complete re-division of the country into military districts, and, when we had done that, whether we should have a system of local supply and local arsenals. He would go further, and place the supply in the hands of the generals of the districts. Then we should have to go into military education, which was almost an innovation in this country. On all these questions the latest information and the best advice would be required. He was aware the Government would say—"It is quite true we require good officers. We are responsible for our subordinates; it is not fair to attack them. If anything is wrong, attack us." His answer was—"It is quite true the Government are responsible for naming their executive; but the House of Commons is responsible, especially after the speech of the Secretary of State, for ordaining what the tenure of office is to be which those officers are to hold." Well, then, what was the policy of that Department on which they had conferred such high powers? The Horse Guards — and here he dropped any allusion to individuals—had invariably opposed every improvement in which the country, and he believed in which officers who best knew their business, had taken an interest. The Horse Guards had always opposed the abolition of excessive flogging. Two years ago flogging had been finally abolished, but the Horse Guards thought we ought to go on flogging still. The other night the Secretary of State spoke of "marking," that is branding, but he called it by the more pleasant name. The Horse Guards opposed the abolition of that. When a Committee recommended to the Secretary of State, with a view to the improvement of the position of the soldier, that he should be excused from paying for barrack damages, amounting to about a penny a month, the recommendation was not received with favour by the Horse Guards; but when it was proposed to increase the self-respect of the private soldier by marking deserters with the letter D, they assented to that with shameful alacrity. As to the question of long and short service, it was notorious that the greatest obstacles were thrown in the way of the carrying out of the long and short service Act by what might be called military men of the old school and the Horse Guards generally. Then came a question which related to a matter which was absolutely essential to the well-being of the Army—the turning out of incorrigibly bad characters; and it was well known that with respect to it the colonels could hardly get that authority which they all frequently wished to exercise. Then, with regard to promotion in the ranks. While he was not one of those who thought that elderly soldiers ought to be promoted, he was of opinion that promotion should be had recourse to in the case of young men who showed military aptitude, so that the feeling of hope in the lower ranks of the service might be kept alive. The Horse Guards seemed to be of that opinion also, because he found that during the years 1854, 1855, 1856, 1857, and 1858, when they were engaged in deadly struggles in the Crimea and in India, no less than 483 privates were promoted from the ranks; but when peace returned the door was shut in their faces, and during the years 1861, 1862, and 1863, the promotions from the ranks were respectively three, four, and eight. In a Minute issued by Sir William Mansfield in India, he said that the discharge of bad characters from the Army raised the condition of the soldier, and that he would make the discharge from it looked upon as a punishment and the remaining in it a privilege. It was well known that in time of war commissions were almost of no value whatsoever. Then officers were not able to leave the Army except owing to invalidity or death, and the consequence was that at the end of the war the value of commissions fell almost to nothing. In the Crimean War the value of commissions fell very low indeed, and the consequence was that men like Lord Clyde, Lord Strathnairn, and others would have abolished purchase at the moment when we might have got rid of it for a much smaller sum than at present. He recollected that at that time persons now in the Army would have thought it a good investment to get rid of purchase. Warning was given the Horse Guards at the time; but they refused to take advantage of the golden opportunity. On the contrary, the system had been extending ever since, and whatever might now be the cost to the nation of abolishing it—whether it should prove to be £7,000,000, or £8,000,000, or less, or, as some anticipated, as much as £11,000,000, the expense certainly would be some millions more than it would have been in 1856, and Army Reformers might fairly say that all that extra cost was attributable to the Horse Guards. Within the last 18 years £300,000,000 had been spent on the Army, and the yearly Estimates had gone up from £8,000,000 to £14,000,000, which were spent under the advice and auspices of that Department. Yet those very Gentlemen who were always praising the Horse Guards in Committee upstairs and at public dinners, did not hesitate to tell us that we were utterly defenceless, that we were a nation of shopkeepers, and that all the weakness of the country, in a military point of view, was owing to the parsimonious policy that had been pursued. The burden of proof ought, he thought, to be thrown on those Gentlemen and the Horse Guards, and they ought to be called upon to show why they wanted more money, seeing that so many millions had already been expended to render our Army efficient. They were told, however, that though the Horse Guards up to this time had been reactionary, they had now altered their tactics and were going to march with the times; that they had swallowed the abolition of purchase, and that therefore the new order of things might be safely initiated under their auspices. He begged to say, however, that what the nation wanted was not military advisers who, when no other course was open to them, could "swallow" this or that reform, but men who could themselves originate and devise the necessary innovations. The Secretary for War ought, he thought, scarcely to be called upon to expend so much vital power in forcing reforms down the throats of men who should have initiated them, as had been the case with his right hon. Friend now at the head of the Department during the last few months. The truth was, he ought to surround himself with men such as those whose services the First Lord of the Admiralty had secured, whom it would be his duty rather to regulate and restrain than always to be urging on in the path of reform.

He must add that the pleasure which he had derived from the statement of his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War the other evening was somewhat spoilt by the aspect of the Estimates. It was, no doubt, because his right hon. Friend had so much to say that he gave no explanation on points which were almost of as much interest as the purchase question. He alluded especially to the reappearance of certain antiquated and objectionable items in the Estimates which swallowed up a great deal of money. The right hon. Gentleman would, he hoped, seize the present opportunity to inform the House what was meant by those items. He had recently made a comparison of the cost of the English Army and that of the Army which it most resembled — or did two or three years ago — namely, the French. In 1868 the latter consisted of 400,000 men, and it cost something over £15,000,000, but a portion of that amount—perhaps a great deal—went to keeping up the Reserves. Still, he would argue as if the whole £15,000,000 were spent on the peace establishment, which would make the cost of each man £37 10s. In 1871–2 our Army numbered 133,000, and the cost was £14,697,000. If you deduct for the pay, pensions, and equipments of the Reserve forces £2,348,000, and for the issue of warlike stores to the Navy, £263,000; the result is a sum of £12,086,000 for the Army, or an average of £89 per man. Now, they would be told, perhaps, that theirs was a colonial Army, which cost a large sum for transport. But £250,000 is taken for transport on the Navy Estimates. We are told that we have voluntary enlistment, while Continental armies are raised by conscription. But let them consider what difference that made. The private soldier received 6d. a day. In any case, however the ranks were recruited, the nation must feed and clothe its Army, so that the daily 6d. was the whole additional charge, and that represented a total of £1,035,000. Deducting that sum from the Estimates, the cost of the British soldier was still £80, or more than twice that of the French soldier. What were the real causes of the difference? First, he would point out that we had 275 generals of cavalry, and 48 generals of artillery and engineers, 323 in all; whereas, in one year, only 42 of them were employed, and in the present year only 30 of them were employed at home. Of the whole number, 168 were over 65 years of age. It was evident that until they named exactly their working establishment of generals, and promoted only on it, there would be no end of jobbery. He must also say that 148 of those gentlemen were colonels of regiments, and that £162,500 was swallowed up in the payment of sinecure honorary Army colonelcies. He knew of one officer who, between the age of 32 and 52, had received £40,000 of pension in addition to his salary. The first condition of a pension was that it should not be taken at the same time as salary; but there was not a single officer, either at the War Office or the Horse Guards, who did not receive, or hope to be receiving, at some stage of his career from £1,000 to £2,000 a-year, in addition to a very adequate salary. The next condition of a pension was that it should be given upon fixed and impartial rules, and in certain proportion to the length of service and the amount of salary received. The fact, however, was that of two officers of equal service and merit, but unequal position and interest, one got a colonelcy with £1,800, £2,000, or £2,200 a-year, and the other languished in retirement on 25s. a day. He would pass over the half-pay list, because it was a sort of antechamber or succedaneum to the purchase system. It was used, to a great extent, to assist the purchase system; but it ought to be reduced by every officer who was not a temporary invalid. That was the proper use of half-pay. Above all, you ought not to have able-bodied men who were on unattached pay and promotion. What would our Civil Service Estimates be if we had a supplementary list of Judges, unattached Commissioners in Bankruptcy and Lunacy, and Inspectors of Schools? The proper rule was that no man should receive pay for work that he was not doing, or a pension for work that had not been done. An item which he (Mr. Trevelyan) was ashamed of seeing again in the Estimates was that of Army agents, to whom £37,231 had been paid this year. What were the duties of those agents? In the first place, they kept the banking accounts of the officers; but if the State paid men for being the bankers of officers, it might as well pay Messrs. Tod Heatley for being the wine merchants of the same officers' messes. Then they were credited with managing the purchase system, but that was only as bankers managed the transfer of balances, or as house agents managed the transfer of property; and you might as well, when a living was sold, pay out of the diocesan fund the agent who advertised that living. The Army agents handed over to the officers their pay after receiving it from the Paymaster General; but if the paymaster of a regiment could contrive to pay 800 or 1,000 men, surely he could pay some 30 officers besides? According to the most eminent of our living public servants (Sir William Anderson), it would be cheaper to pay that class £40,000 a year for doing nothing whatever. He next came to expenses generally allowed to be legitimate and normal, but which a household Parliament must certainly examine—the exceptional payments made to officers of the Brigade of Guards. These officers now paid highly for their commissions, and, having regard to the money thus sunk by them, it would be unjust to reduce the salaries of existing officers. But in future why should a lieutenant colonel of the Guards receive 26s. 9d. a day and the lieutenant colonel of a Line regiment 17s.? Why should a major in the Guards receive 6s., a captain 4s., and a lieutenant 1s. more than officers of the corresponding rank in ordinary regiments? The special allowances to officers in the Guards must also be reduced. Then came the greatest and most useless expenditure on the Household Cavalry. To begin with, the officers were much more highly paid; but he would not go into that just now. Let him, however, contrast the average expense of the Household Cavalry and the ordinary cavalry. Including the cost of clothing and the pay of officers, the cost of a private in the former was £87 as against £57; while with the purchase of horses it was £114 as against £83 in the cavalry, and £46 in the infantry. The proportion of officers was as one to 13 men in the Household Brigade and in the cavalry of the Line as one to 16. Why was this Brigade wanted? The men were quite unsuited for modern warfare; they were too heavy for escort and they were not wanted as police. In the French Army, which was so much greater than ours, the Emperor's Cent Gardes consisted of only 221 men. In England the Royal escort consisted of 1,332 men, which was quite 1,000 too many. The nation would never believe the House of Commons was in earnest about economy as long as they paid £80,000 or £90,000 more than was necessary for the Royal escort. Next he came to Chelsea and Kilmainham Hospitals, which were of the same nature as Greenwich. Acting in the belief that old men might live far better in homes of their own, at a cost of £27 or £36, than pass a disagreeable and disreputable sort of monastic life at a cost of £90, Parliament wound up Greenwich Hospital, which might be said to be closed by the almost unanimous suffrages of the old men themselves. A Commission was appointed to consider the propriety of applying the same principles to Chelsea and Kilmainham; but the majority of the members had a stronger feeling in favour of retaining the good appointments held by brother officers than they had either for the welfare of the old men or the cost of Chelsea and Kilmainham to the State. Next came the largest of these items—£1,300,000 for men's pensions; and as bearing on it, Government should declare whether the short system was to be practically worked by the separation of the home and foreign battalions, and whether they would not say to a man—"We will take you for three years, and at the end of that time we will send you back to your business and your sweetheart." Till this is done—till you cease to reserve the right of keeping a man for six years, and sending him to Aden or Jubbulpore—you will never give a fair chance to short service, or diminish your pension fund. Another point was the expense of the Horse Guards. In 1794 Lord Amherst, who must have been a very economical administrator, left the expenses of the Horse Guards at £894. He got a War Office clerk, and paid him 10s. a day extra for his services as secretary. The Duke of York appointed an Army colonel as secretary, and the expenses increased; for, according to the Report of a Commission of Inquiry, they amounted in 1809 to £7,638. The expenses of the Horse Guards were now £49,311, of which sum £23,843 went to military men, in addition to their pay and their other emoluments. At the Admiralty the Senior Naval Lord had £1,500 a-year in addition to half-pay; the Junior Lord £1,000; and the Captain for the reserve business, £365; with a Private Secretary at £365—that was to say, that the Navy was well worked in that department of the business for £3,230, as opposed to £23,843. He spoke under correction; but if the pay of the present Military Secretary at the Horse Guards had not been lately docked, this officer alone received, including his honorary colonelcy, over £3,000 a-year. His successor would get £2,500 per annum, which was a very good salary for an amanuensis and a mouthpiece. The corresponding office at the Admiralty was filled by a captain on half-pay, who received £1 a-day in addition to his half-pay. He (Mr. Trevelyan) would be the first to own that the country was not in a condition for the Secretary at War beginning a great system of military re-organization two years ago. The Government had reduced the number of men by 20,000, and did so with the full approbation of the country; but it was to be regretted that the Government did not feel itself warranted at the same time to put an end to the rich sinecures of which he now complained. Every soldier under the administration at the War Office of the right hon. Baronet the Member for Droitwich (Sir John Pakington) cost £59; and every soldier at the present time cost exactly the same or a fraction more. There could be no doubt that the country was ripe for re-organization, as also for an immense and sweeping reduction in the expenditure. The practice hitherto had been to heap new expenditure on old; but in a place of business it was the custom to provide for new claims by the extinction of old, and, as had been well said by the First Lord of the Treasury, at Warrington, in 1868— Who supposes that expenditure of £70,000,000 a-year goes down every year to the same purpose? You cannot stereotype the wants of a great Empire. New wants are always coming forward; but where there are new wants, and where provision has to be made for new wants, that provision ought to be counterbalanced by new economies. The First Lord of the Treasury and the Secretary for War would have an opportunity at this early period of the Session to see where these new economies could be best made and what old abuses should be sacrificed. He was confident that the whole of these items, which had been so long subjected to hostile criticism, would disappear from the Estimates when the last vested interests had died out; and their disappearance would not only tend much to disarm opposition in that House, but also confer the greatest benefit on the country. There was at present a growing feeling that a vigorous re-organization, if accompanied by internal economy, would place the national defences on a good footing without adding a penny to the present Estimates. If the present Estimates were persisted in, it would be a cruel check to the interest the country was taking in its Army when they found that increased efficiency meant only increased expenditure on all the old items. The country had been imploring in certain dumb ways, but very earnestly, for a national Army, and it was cruel to answer it by giving another £3,000,000 to the Horse Guards, and by strengthening the hands of its officials by publicly endorsing their permanent tenure of office. Men judged the unseen by the seen, and when these objectionable items appeared every year it was thought tolerably certain that a reactionary military influence had power in matters removed from the world's notice. If the form of these Estimates was final, their passage through Committee would be one long protest. He and others would fight the Army agencies; they would fight the honorary colonelcies; they would fight every job and every sinecure from the first page of the Estimates to the last. But if the Government acted as their antecedents would lead men to expect, and their supporters had a right to ask, then—speaking not in name of any, but expressing the sense of many who sat around him, he would venture to say that, whatever abuse Ministers assailed, whatever expenditure they asked for not for the purpose of temporarily increasing, but of permanently consolidating the national forces, they would be met, from that part of the House, in a spirit of well-grounded confidence and gratified loyalty. The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving his Resolution.

MR. ANDERSON

, in seconding the Motion, desired to compliment the hon. Member on his exhaustive speech; and to join with him in thanking the Government for the bold step they had taken in abolishing the purchase system. But while he thought that did entitle them to some consideration for shortcomings in other respects, it did not atone for the conspicuous absence for three years past in their Estimates of any propositions dealing with abuses in high places. The Government had exhibited great tenderness and timidity there, though it was notorious that it was in the highest ranks that the expenditure was most lavish. The Government might think little of this omission, but the tax-payers—especially those of the large constituencies—did not think lightly of it; the public would be inquiring why the Government had not dealt with the redundant list of general officers, with the large half-pay list, and with the sinecure colonelcies. The other evening the Secretary for War passed a high eulogium on the disinterestedness of officers: he was so impressed by the greatness of the subject that he could only express his sentiments by having recourse to poetry; but the quotation he made, though somewhat high-flown, was so pertinent to the subject of sinecure colonelcies and other highly paid offices that he desired permission to repeat it— They are not covetous for gold. … Such outward things dwell not in their desires; But if it be a sin to covet honour They are the most offending souls alive. Had this passage not been used by the Secretary for War, whom he could not suspect of irony, he should have thought it was not free from a touch of sarcasm; but, as it was, he was left to wonder why the Secretary for War had omitted to put some of the honorary colonels and other highly paid officers under his control to the test. The question at issue was what should be substituted for purchase. The evils of promotion by seniority had been largely dwelt upon by the Secretary for War before announcing his preference for promotion by selection. Was it not almost certain that, under the system proposed by the Secretary of State—selection in the hands of the Horse Guards' Staff, in a very short time merit and private interest would become convertible terms, and that they would very soon have very great developments of merit in quarters where hitherto it had been quite unexpected? Why, selection by merit, as it was called, had been the basis of those very sinecure colonelcies of which his hon. Friend (Mr. Trevelyan) had spoken. It was under selection by merit that the present Commander-in-Chief was appointed in 1856 at £4,500 a-year; and, as if that honour and gold were not enough, in 1861 the Commander-in-Chief became colonel of the Guards, for which he received an additional £2,200 a-year. Again, the present Military Secretary was appointed either in 1859 or 1860 at somewhere about £2,200 a-year; and, as if that honour and gold were not enough, in 1863 he became colonel of the 81st Regiment with an additional £1,000 a-year. These were the things which selection by merit had given them under the present Horse Guards. He might be told that these sinecure colonelcies were intended as rewards for long and distinguished service. Well, they found that the Prince of Wales, for long and distinguished service no doubt, became colonel of the 10th Hussars, receiving for that £1,350 a-year, being both honour and gold. He believed that officers of the Army were not much afraid of the abolition of purchase, but were much afraid of what would happen to them under selection by merit in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief at the Horse Guards, and still more in the hands of the Military Secretary. He could not ignore the circumstance that the present Commander-in-Chief was a Royal Duke, and that many hon. Members might consider it very profane indeed to criticize the acts of so great a personage; but he (Mr. Anderson) referred to the Commander-in-Chief not as a Royal Duke, but as a public officer, and considered his rank should neither exempt him from criticism, nor on the other hand cause that criticism to be unfair. But there were other objections to the Staff of the Horse Guards quite irrespective of the present personnel. The present Staff had never worked well. There had always been a jealousy and a jarring amounting to a contest between the Crown and Parliament for the control of the Army. That contest culminated in the Order of November, 1861, "given at our Royal Court of Balmoral," in which the Crown attempted to wrest from the Secretary of State for War a large part of his powers. Very fortunately that Order was disregarded; but, nevertheless, they had had a sort of dual government in the Army ever since. And although the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Cardwell) had told them that there was an end of that dual government, and that he was himself the real head of the Army, circumstances cropped up every now and then which showed that, even if dual government was at an end, a great deal of the old jealousy still existed. It was evident that the Army did not acknowledge the right hon. Gentleman as its real head, and that the Horse Guards did not attempt to put down that insubordination. A glaring instance of that occurred the other day, when a distinguished officer made a speech, at Manchester, denouncing the reductions in the Army that had been decided upon by his chief. If that gallant officer had acknowledged the Secretary of State as his chief he would no more have made that speech than he would have allowed any of his own men to stand up at a public meeting and denounce his acts; and if the Horse Guards had looked upon that speech with such disapproval as it ought to have done it would have called that officer to account. The simple remedy for the evil was to discontinue the office of Commander-in-Chief, and to have the duties performed by Military Under Secretaries of State for War, or Military Lords, as they might please to call them—thus assimilating the discharge of the duties of the Horse Guards to those discharged by the Admiralty. It was long since they abolished the office of Lord High Admiral, and he saw no necessity for perpetuating the office of Commander-in-Chief. He would recommend hon. Gentlemen to turn to the Estimates and compare the Votes for the Horse Guards with those for the Admiralty. The First Lord of the Admiralty had £4,500 a year, the First Naval Lord £1,500, and the Secretary £2,000, as compared with £5,000 paid to the Secretary for War, and £4,500 paid to the Military First Lord. But what was the reason for the great difference of scale in the remuneration of the two services? The Navy was their senior — their old, cherished, national service — yet the Army was in every way petted and pampered in the highly-paid offices. Whatever the reason for it was, it could not be that the system of command in the Army was better than in the Navy, because in the Navy if the Senior Naval Lord happened to be ill or absent matters went on quite smoothly, whereas in the Army, as they found from Lord Northbook's Report, there was no arrangement whatever by which the duties of the Commander-in-Chief could be performed if he were ill or absent. The Military Secretary up to last year received about £2,230 per annum, and the sum was reduced last year to £1,500. At the same time, the salary of the Commander-in-Chief was reduced from £4,440 to £4,000. But those small reductions were actually to be replaced on the Estimates for this year; the pay of the Commander-in-Chief was again raised, and that of the Military Secretary went up again to £2,000 a year. The best course that could be adopted was to discontinue both those offices. The Government had been contented to apply the five years' rule to the Military Secretary, whom they agreed to make a Jonah, in order that by throwing him overboard they might preserve the larger abuse. But military reformers asked for more than this. They demanded that the whole military system should be put upon a sounder basis; that the responsibility should be better defined; that the Horse Guards should be more efficiently administered; that the Secretary for War should have more complete control over military affairs; and that the other offices should be held by Military Lords or by Military Secretaries. He had great pleasure in seconding the Resolution.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That, in the opinion of this House, no scheme for Military reorganization can be regarded as complete which does not alter the tenure of the Command in Chief in such a manner as to enable the Secretary of State for War to avail himself freely of the best administrative talent and the most recent military experience from time to time existing in the British Army."—(Mr. Trevelyan.)

CAPTAIN VIVIAN

said, he had listened with great pleasure to the speech of the hon. Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan), although he differed in opinion from him on much that he had said to the House; and all who had heard him to-night must admit that he had treated a subject of great delicacy and difficulty with admirable tact and ability. He must, however, confess that he was much disappointed to find that the hon. Member had thought it necessary to proceed with his Motion. He had hoped that after the speech which his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War made on Thursday night, his hon. Friend would have withdrawn his Notice. He was glad to hear his hon. Friend say tonight that he had entirely abandoned the view he had hitherto entertained, that there was a duality of government in military affairs. He (Captain Vivian) contended that there was no longer any dual government between the War Office and the Horse Guards. In referring to this point, his hon. Friend said he complained not of what the right hon. Gentleman had not done, but of what he had done. Before leaving this part of the subject he wished to correct an error into which his hon. Friend had fallen with respect to the steps that the Secretary for War had taken. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Cardwell), when he came into Office, found that the power of the Secretary of State was limited to a certain extent by a Memorandum which had been drawn up in the time of Sir George Lewis, and which had been signed by Her Majesty. By that Memorandum certain restrictions upon the power of the Secretary of State were imposed; the substance of which was that the Secretary of State was not to interfere with the military control or with the patronage of the Army. When the right hon. Gentleman came into Office he appointed a Committee to inquire into the administration of the War Department and the Horse Guards—and he should be doing an injustice to the Commander-in-Chief if he did not say that in that inquiry every facility had been given by His Royal Highness to Lord Northbrook, who presided over the Committee. Her Majesty then issued an Order in Council which defined the duties of the Commander-in-Chief as well as those of two new officers—the Surveyor General and the Financial Secretary for War. In addition to that, his right hon. Friend put a stop to all correspondence by letter between the Departments, and established a central registry for both Departments, to the effect that all correspondence should be carried on by Minute between the Secretary of State and the Commander-in-Chief. That change had effected a great economy both of time and labour. There was but one more step wanting to complete the union of the two Departments which had not yet been taken, and that was that both Departments should be under the same roof; and that was owing to the fact that there was not sufficient room in the War Office for the accommodation of the whole Office of the Horse Guards. By reason of the reductions that had been effected in the War Department, sufficient room had been now found, and both Offices would soon be under the same roof; so that everything that was needed to put an end to the dual government had now been done. But why, under these circumstances, did the hon. Member (Mr. Trevelyan) press his Motion? It was because he desired that the high officers should be subjected to the ordinary Staff regulation of five years' appointments. He (Captain Vivian) would, therefore, proceed to state some of the objections that had occurred to him against subjecting officers holding such high and important posts in the Army to the five years' tenure. In the first place, let them see how that rule would apply in the case of a most eminent individual holding such an appointment. They all knew how jealously and suspiciously both the House and the country regarded renewals of these appointments. But the Secretary for War and other Ministers had greater opportunities of judging of the fitness of an individual for a particular post than the public had; and, therefore, in the case of a man eminently fitted to discharge the duties of the post, they might possibly desire to retain him; but under the five years' rule they would be afraid to renew the appointment, lest the country should regard such re-appintment as a job. Then, how would the rule apply in the case of a man not quite so capable? Suppose there was a Commander-in-Chief who had done his duty without complaint, but there was another officer still better qualified; the Government would be afraid to dismiss the former before the expiration of his term, lest it should be said they were casting a slur upon his character. How did his right hon. Friend propose to meet that difficulty? He proposed that the continuance in office of the Commander-in-Chief and his removal should depend upon considerations of public policy. The hon. Member thought it was proposed to continue the Commander-in-Chief in perpetuity; but, so far from that being the case, no Minister would dare to retain a person in so high a post if he were unfit to hold the place. The hon. Member said that if this proposal were adopted effete men would be retained in office, and by way of an illustration—which was much to be regretted—he had referred to the case of the Duke of Wellington. On this subject all he (Captain Vivian) would say was that the Duke of Wellington's career and character lived in the remembrance of a grateful country, and would continue to do so as long as England existed as a nation. The hon. Member had referred to the case of foreign countries. He himself (Captain Vivian) would refer to the case of Prussia. Had the question of age arisen in that country, such a man as Moltke might have been removed because he was upwards of 70. Again, in the case of Austria, Radetzky, when he fought his last campaign, was nearer 80 than 70. The question of age was not the consideration; what a Minister was bound to consider was, who was the most fit and efficient man for the office. Whoever he might be, as long as he performed his duty well, the longer he held his appointment, whether for five, ten, or twenty years, so much the better for the country which had the advantage of his services. If a Minister retained a man in office after he had ceased to be efficient, he would deserve to be impeached. The hon. Member (Mr. Trevelyan) did not charge the present Commander-in-Chief with being inefficient, but simply desired that the duration of his appointment should be limited to five years. Now he (Captain Vivian) took issue with his hon. Friend upon that point. The hon. Gentleman had referred to the question of selection, and stated that hereafter the duty of selection would be left to the Commander-in-Chief, who had stated that it would be impossible for him to exercise that duty. No one who had considered the question of selection in the Army could fail to admit that it was beset with the greatest possible difficulty. It was not at all surprising that everyone should say—"I cannot possibly see how you purpose to select your officers." But he would remind the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Trevelyan) that though the Commander-in-Chief gave the evidence which had been quoted, he also said in the House of Lords that if the Government decided upon adopting a principle of selection for the future, he should do his best to carry it out well and conscientiously. When the language of the Commander-in-Chief before the Committee was quoted, his speech in the House of Lords ought not to be forgotten. It was no part of his (Captain Vivian's) duty, nor would it become him, to say anything in regard to the merits of the present Commander-in-Chief; but he might say that having been selected on several occasions, in the course of the many years he had had a seat in the House, to serve on Committees of Inquiry into military questions—some of them very complicated, and difficult ones—he had heard the Duke of Cambridge examined and cross-examined, but on no single occasion had he found His Royal Highness ignorant on any question put before him. He had come to the conclusion that so far as knowledge of the intricate details of our military administration was concerned, no man in England knew more than our present Commander-in-Chief, and he very much doubted whether there was any man who knew as much. He was not going to follow his hon. Friend through all the details of the Estimates; but he wished to refer to an error that he had made in instituting a comparison between the French and the English Estimates. Such a comparison was impossible, because a great many things—shakos, tunics, guns and barrack furniture — were entirely excluded from the French, but included in the English Estimates. Therefore, when his hon. Friend said the annual cost of a French soldier was £37 as compared with £80 for an English soldier, he was incorrect in both cases. A calculation had recently been made by the Government as to what the English soldier did really cost in pay, clothing, and beer money, and this showed that as nearly as possible each man cost £34 a year. Perhaps he might be permitted to say a word on the subject of agents, as his hon. Friend had referred to it, because it was to some extent his (Captain Vivian's) fault that the question was not nearer settlement. It was nearly a year ago since he was asked to report on the subject to the Chief Secretary for War in conjunction with the Accountant-General; and, though the Report was now complete, it had not, from pressure of business, been presented. He must, however, say that his hon. Friend did the agents but scant justice in his very terse explanation of what they did for the Army. While he admitted that it would be possible to pay the officers through other means, he must say, as the result of experience, that it was impossible to exaggerate the advantages which English officers derived from the services of agents. As far as the mere handing over of pay was concerned, that could easily be accomplished without the intervention of agents; but it must be remembered that agents transacted every conceivable kind of business for the officers employing them, and if agencies were abolished to-morrow the extra expense thrown upon officers would be so great that the nation would inevitably have to increase their pay. As his hon. Friend was not accurately informed in regard to the cases of Chelsea and Kilmainham Hospitals, and had been very facetious in comparing them with Greenwich Hospital, he would briefly state the facts to the House. Greenwich Hospital was capable of holding 1,500 or 1,800 men, the total number of naval pensioners being about 14,000, and, as a consequence, there were in the Hospital a large number of young men who infinitely preferred going to their homes with an increased pension to remaining in the Hospital. The Government was able to meet the views of these men, because Greenwich Hospital was the richest endowed charity in England, and had large funds to fall back upon in order to give increased pensions. But the case of the other hospitals mentioned was entirely different. Both Hospitals were very small; Chelsea would accommodate 500 or thereabouts, and Kilmainham about 130; while the whole number of Army pensioners was over 60,000, and the men admitted to the two Hospitals were the oldest and most feeble—not to be compared for a moment with the occupants of Greenwich. He had visited the Hospitals of Chelsea and Kilmainham, and found that while in the former there were a few men who would have preferred to go out with an increased pension, the occupants of Kilmainham were unanimous in saying that no amount of added pension could compensate them for the comforts they found in the Hospital. Let his hon. Friend consider what this question of increasing pensions would involve. If an additional 6d. per day were given to men as a premium to induce them to leave the Hospitals, the men receiving the same rate of pension who had not been in the Hospital would demand a similar amount as a reward for remaining out of it. He was glad to find that his hon. Friend approved the mode in which the Government proposed that the House should assent to the abolition of purchase. There could be no doubt there were but two ways of dealing with it. It was quite true that three years ago he submitted a scheme which was a modification of that now proposed by his right hon. Friend, and he believed that by the adoption of that plan at that time the question would have been settled; but he must frankly admit that when the purchase system again came under the consideration of the Government he saw no middle course between leaving it alone and abolishing it altogether. The plan of the Government was based upon the principle of doing ample justice to the officers, and he believed it would meet with the general approval of Parliament. His hon. Friend had been kind enough to express approval of the military reforms proposed by his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War, and, reminding him that Rome was not built in one day, he would ask his hon. Friend not to press his Motion to a Division. His hon. Friend had mentioned that there were circumstances with regard to the rewards to colonels in the Army which would have to be carefully weighed when the House came to consider the systems of promotion and retirement. In reference to this question, he could only say that it would be met and carefully grappled with by his right hon. Friend when the proper time arrived. In conclusion he would remark on the general subject-matter under discussion that he hoped his hon. Friend would be content with the success he had met with, and, taking hope for the future in what had occurred in the past, refrain from pressing his Motion to a Division.

LORD EUSTACE CECIL

said, the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Trevelyan) in his speech that evening had boxed the whole compass of military grievances. He had dealt with 17 or 18 subjects, including the Duke of Cambridge, purchase, selection, flogging, promotion from the ranks, bad characters, the Estimates, the Militia, the War Office, the defenceless state of the country, Army agents, Chelsea and Kilmainham Hospitals, men's pensions, the Horse Guards' Office, the Horse Guards' Secretary, and the rewards to colonels and retired generals. It would, perhaps, have been better if the hon. Gentleman had treated the House to only one or two of the items of that enormous list, because it would be impossible in one, or even in a dozen evenings, to do proper justice to them all. The hon. Member spoke at very great length in reference to the Duke of Cambridge. It was not his (Lord Eustace Cecil's) province to say anything in defence of His Royal Highness; but he must observe that the hon. Gentleman only expressed his own opinions and those of hon. Members sitting near him, and said no single word about the general feeling of the Army in reference to the Commander-in-Chief; but if the officers of the Army were polled, they would say, by an immense majority, that the Duke of Cambridge was the best man that could be found for the office of Commander-in-Chief. Until a more efficient man was discovered, looking to the duties of promotion by selection—an office which, as Lord Grey stated, required superhuman powers—he thought the hon. Gentleman had better cease to say anything about the merits or demerits of the present holder of the office of Commander-in-Chief. But the hon. Gentleman did not content himself with speaking of the Duke of Cambridge; he spoke of the difficulty, as stated by the Duke before a Commission, of selecting officers. Now, he (Lord Eustace Cecil) knew that on one or two occasions His Royal Highness had declined to select particular men, and had refused to appoint them. An officer in his own regiment—he would not mention his name, which had since appeared in the public papers—was reported by his general as not being fit to command his battalion; the Duke of Cambridge entirely endorsed that report, and the result was the officer was told he must retire on half-pay; and immediately he brought an action against the general who so reported him. That was one of the many difficulties they would have to deal with when they came to consider the difficulty of selection on the reports of officers. The hon. Gentleman went on to speak about the Prussian Army, where selection was said to be the rule. Now, he (Lord Eustace Cecil) understood that in the Prussian Army seniority was the rule. There were very few cases of selection indeed; and in one or two branches of the Prussian Army no selection whatever was allowed. One of the schemes of the Government—should promotion by selection be agreed to—was that there should be competitive examinations. In the Prussian Army competition was almost unknown; officers were admitted on nomination by the Executive, and on approval of the officers of the regiment which they wished to join. With reference to the Army agents, the hon. Gentleman must be aware that in 1851 a Committee of that House had reported against their abolition. There could be no doubt that they were of great use. Bills were drawn very frequently at sight, and it would be impracticable for the Secretary at War to meet them; but the Army agents paid them over the counter. There would be no material saving by their abolition; indeed, the abolition of Army agents would be attended with an increase of expense to the amount of at least £9,000 a year. The hon. Member had made a remark about the great number of officers in the British Army in proportion to the number of men. Now, he had taken some trouble to compare the number of officers in the English Army and in the Prusssian Army with the number of men they command, and he found that in the Prussian Army there was one officer to 23 men, while in the English Army, according to the Estimates of this year, there was one officer to 22.1 men. In the Italian Army the proportion of officers was one officer to 16 men; and in the United States Army, which was supposed to be very economically managed, and always ready for service at the shortest notice, there was one officer to 15 men. These were facts, and if the hon. Member wished to have his authority for them, he would refer him to the Statesman's Year Book for 1871. The hon. Member had spoken with perfect reason of the large number of officers—one officer to something like 16 men—in the Life Guards, and in the cavalry generally, where it was one officer to 20 men. But when they took the whole service generally, and divided the whole number of men by the number of officers, he held that the English Army stood remarkably well as compared with continental armies. The hon. Gentleman went on to speak of retired generals and sinecure colonels; but he (Lord Eustace Cecil) thought he might have spared himself the trouble of running down veteran officers who, having served their country at the expense both of purse and health, received a retiring pension of something like the magnificent sum of £400 a year. He could not agree with the hon. Member in calling colonels in command of regiments pensioners. Such appointments were not pensions, but rewards—and very small rewards compared with those offered by the Church, diplomacy, and law, after 30 or 40 years' service. It was not for him to go into details about the Horse Guards' Secretary, and other matters. Something, no doubt, might be done. There might be a better system of pensions and retirement; there might also be a certain amount of retrenchment in other items of the Estimates; but, on the whole, when they compared the difference of wages and prices of articles of all sorts in this country with those abroad, he did not think our Estimates compared unfavourably with those of other countries. At the same time, he thought it quite possible there might be fair ground of complaint arising from the extra £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 now added to the Estimates, and the comparatively small return we had for them. He would not now go into the very intricate questions of purchase and promotion, which would require immense consideration before a proper determination could be arrived at. He hoped the hon. Gentleman would withdraw his Motion.

VISCOUNT BURY

said, he was anxious not to give a silent vote on this occasion, because, although he would yield to no one in his claims to be considered an Army reformer, he could not flatter himself that he belonged to the number of those whom the hon. Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan) had classed under his plural "we." The question was, whether they should vote for the Resolution which had been placed on the Paper. That Resolution appeared to resolve itself into two parts, which were totally incompatible with each other. One was a Resolution—which the hon. Member had a perfect right to bring forward if he chose, and to which he had devoted the greater part of his speech—that it was desirable to alter the tenure of the office of Commander-in-Chief—a proposition to which he (Viscount Bury) hoped the House would give a distinct negative. The next appeared to be a Resolution of a totally abstract nature, affirming that certain circumstances he detailed called for the immediate removal of obsolete and antiquated sources of military expenditure. He (Viscount Bury) quite agreed that if any such could be shown to exist they ought to be removed, and he was quite ready to vote for their removal. He thought it was hardly dealing fairly by the House to tack to such an important Motion as one dealing with the tenure of the office of Commander-in-Chief an abstract declaration with respect to another matter. It would be scarcely possible, if they devoted not only the present evening, but three or four succeeding evenings to the discussion, to deal with all the various topics touched on and mixed up together in a most extraordinary way by the hon. Member for the Border Burghs. The hon. Member had evidently some grudge—he would not say a personal grudge—but a grudge against the office of the Commander-in-Chief in respect to the mode of conducting the business, and he mixed up together the system of promotion from the ranks, the removal of bad characters from the Army, the enormous military expenditure, and a variety of other subjects, and making the Commander-in-Chief, of all persons, responsible for everything, he called upon the House to vote for an alteration of the tenure of the Commander-in-Chiefs office. The hon. Member's speech put him in mind of the lines— Who makes the quartern loaf and Luddites rise? Who fills the butchers' shops with large blue flies? In like manner the hon. Member put the question, who was responsible for the various matters he had adverted to? and replied that it was the Commander-in-Chief, and, therefore, he said, the office should be abolished. One reason given for the proposed abolition was because, as the hon. Gentleman stated, His Royal Highness had expressed himself adverse to the principle of selection in respect to promotion—a principle which must be resorted to on the abolition of the purchase system, and must be conducted by the officer commanding the Army for the time being. He was not going to prejudge the plan on which they would shortly have to decide; but the hon. Gentleman was so enamoured of his own scheme that he had prejudged the question, having quite taken it for granted that the alteration would take place, that selection would follow, and that His Royal Highness must be removed. He argued in a vicious circle. Undoubtedly the proposals for Army organization proceeded from one of the most powerful Ministries which had existed of late years, and though they probably would be carried substantially, yet no one knew what form they would assume before the Bill passed through the mill of a Committee of the Whole House. No doubt, many hon. Members would support the proposals of the hon. Member; but no one could say how far either the original proposals of the Government or those of the hon. Member might be modified by subsequent experience and debate. Therefore, when the hon. Member stated that the principle of selection could not, in the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief, be carried out in its entirety, it was quite obvious that the hon. Member thought that the Commander-in-Chief was unwilling to carry out many of the details proposed by the Secretary of State. That was not fair to the Commander-in-Chief. In the course of his remarks, the hon. Member said that he thought the office held by the Commander-in-Chief ought to be held for five years only, and he went through a list of the officers who had held the post in order to prove that, under the present system, only Royal Dukes or "officers of classical reputation" could be appointed. He (Viscount Bury) had been somewhat puzzled to conceive what was meant by the phrase, "officers of classical reputation"—more especially as the hon. Gentleman immediately afterwards said that if his system were adopted they would have the selection for the office the ablest officers of the Army. If that were so they would be officers of "classical reputation." He (Viscount Bury) failed to discover what distinction the hon. Gentleman could draw between his description of two of the ablest men in the Army—Lord Hardinge, whom he did praise, and the Duke of Wellington, whom he did not praise. The hon. Member likewise observed that the Duke of Wellington retained the office until he became so rooted and grounded in his prejudices as to refuse to move forward. In illustration of that statement — and he thought a very unhappy illustration—the hon. Member gave as an instance a dispute between Lord Grey and the Duke of Wellington, respecting the abolition of corporal punishment, the result of which was in favour of the Secretary of State and not of the Duke of Wellington; so that the illustration proved that, instead of the Commander-in-Chief overriding the Secretary of State, the Commander-in-Chief showed himself subordinate to the Secretary of State. Was it not the case, too, that His Royal Highness the present Commander-in-Chief considered himself subordinate to the Secretary of State? His Royal Highness had taken every public opportunity to declare that he was directly subordinate to the Secretary of War. It could not, then, be on the ground of want of subordination that certain Army reformers wished to get rid of the present holder of the office of Commander-in-Chief. Was his removal desired on account of any alleged incapacity? Why, it was well known—as had been stated that evening by the Financial Secretary for War (Captain Vivian) — that the Commander-in-Chief, on every occasion when he had given his evidence before a Committee or a military Commission, or made a public speech on military matters, had shown himself most minutely acquainted with all the details of Army organization, and proved that he knew more about them than any other officer in the Army. But it was said that His Royal Highness was unwilling to march with the times, and that he was as much rooted and grounded in prejudices as the late Duke of Wellington. Why, only a short time ago, when His Royal Highness was addressing a public meeting, he expressed his astonishment that he should have been so freely designated as a person desirous of remaining in the old, antiquated grooves, and disinclined to go forward with the times, and His Royal Highness declared that he rather wished to head military officers in the path of progress than to drag them back. Indeed, during the time His Royal Highness had held his present office, everyone must have seen that he had always acted up to that profession. The difficulty of regulating promotion by selection, if purchase should be abolished, whether the system were carried out by His Royal Highness or any other officer, must be great, and he did not believe that any officer would be able to stand for six months the odium which he would incur by conducting the system of selection. Indeed, he believed the system to be a vicious one, for this reason—that the Commander-in-Chief could not possibly select in every case from his own personal knowledge, and, therefore, the man most likely to get on under that system would be the man who had the best means for making his claims known. The House was told that that would be regulated by public opinion—that was to say, any officer who felt himself aggrieved or passed over would find no difficulty in getting his case brought before the House. Therefore, there would be a perpetual state of antagonism, more or less distinctly declared, between unofficial opinion in that House and officers at the head of the Army. That he regarded as one of the greatest difficulties with which they would have to deal when the principle of selection came into play. The hon. Member said in effect that an officer, remaining for years at the head of affairs of the Army, and being practically irremovable, acquired such an intimate knowledge of the details of the Army and of Army organization, that the Secretary of State could not cope with him. Now, if that argument meant anything it meant this—that because the Secretary of State was ignorant, therefore they were to select an officer who should be more ignorant than the Secretary of State. The hon. Gentleman's argument was that a civilian Secretary of State could not have the knowledge of Army affairs which was possessed by an officer who had been long at the head of the Army, and that, because the Secretary of State could not enforce due subordination on the part of the Commander-in-Chief, they must abolish the Commander-in-Chief altogether, and appoint an adjutant-general. The Secretary of State must surely say—"Defend me from my friends" when the hon. Member, in the interest of the Secretary of State, advocated that his ignorance should be protected by the abolition of an officer who knew more than he did. He would not deal with the latter half of the hon. Gentleman's Resolution. He had dealt with that question, which was the practical issue—whether the tenure of the Commander-in-Chief should be abolished. On that question he was entirely against the hon. Gentleman. On obsolete and antiquated items of military expenditure, that was not the time to express any opinion. The Financial Secretary of the War Department had told them that many things had been maturely deliberated by Her Majesty's Government, and that in due season they would be brought under the consideration of the House. When they were brought forward, he (Viscount Bury) would be ready to discuss them; but he would not be dragged, if he could help it, into the consideration of a series of abstract questions which had nothing to do with the practical question before them, and which ought not to be placed in the same category. He could not help thinking, while he listened to the hon. Member and his Seconder, that this was a Resolution on which the hon. Gentleman did not intend to divide, but that he meant it to be regarded as a general programme or syllabus of Army reform which he intended in the course of the Session to submit in detail to the House. Be that as it might, he (Viscount Bury) thought the House ought not to be led away by it, and that they should confine their attention that night to the distinct issue which the hon. Gentleman had brought before them—whether the tenure of the Commander-in-Chief ought to be altered.

COLONEL NORTH

said, the misfortune of introducing and discussing such questions as this was that they became party questions, which they ought never to be made, for our Army was not a political institution, and he believed that there was no political party outside the House, and he was quite sure there was no political section in the House, who were not equally alive to the honour and the efficiency of our Army. He was happy to say that it had not hitherto been treated as a political and party question; but he could only say it would not be the fault of the hon. Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan) if it did not hereafter become one of the bitterest party feeling. Instead of going about the country delivering speeches and exciting the public mind, it would have been far better if the hon. Member had waited and calmly brought it forward, and had it fairly discussed in that House. All would agree that a question of this importance ought to be discussed with the greatest calmness and the greatest fairness, and when the hon. Gentleman found it necessary to refer to evidence which had been taken before Royal Commissions, and before Committees of the House, the real and true sense of that evidence ought to have been given without collecting three or four sentences to suit a particular purpose. He was very much surprised on reading a good deal of what the hon. Gentleman stated in his speeches at Edinburgh, Brighton, and Birmingham. As they had been revised, corrected, printed, and distributed to his friends by himself, and the public could buy them, the House had a right to hold the hon. Gentleman responsible for all that he had stated in those speeches. At the beginning the hon. Gentleman made an attack upon Army agents. He said— The Army agents alone received £40,000 a year from the public, not one halfpenny of which should be paid after the first of April next. The hon. Gentleman said— It was a painful thing to think that that job should have lasted through the second year of a householders' Parliament, led by a Liberal Government. But the hon. Gentleman had forgotten that he was himself not only a Member of that householders' Parliament, but a Member of that very Government; and that it was not until he had ceased to be a Member of that Government that he had attempted anything towards getting rid of what he thought so very objectionable. The hon. Gentleman served upon a Committee which sat three or four months. Their recommendations, he (Colonel North) believed, were approved by officers both of the Engineers and the Artillery; but nothing was done to carry them out, because they were so expensive. With regard to the question of selection, that His Royal Highness was not singular in his opinion could be proved from the reasons given by three Members of the Royal Commission, one of whom was Mr. Edward Ellice, who had been Secretary at War, for not agreeing with the Report of the other Members. Lord Grey was also of the same opinion. So far from the Duke of Cambridge refusing to select, as stated by Mr. Trevelyan, His Royal Highness, referring to the opinions laid before the Commission, said in a speech in the House of Lords on the Mutiny Bill, that, as far as he was personally concerned, it would be his earnest and anxious endeavour, difficult as it might be, and as he must consider it himself, to carry out whatever decisions might be come to in such a manner as to promote the best interests of the Army, and, if of the Army, the best interests of the country also. His Royal Highness asked what were to be the standards of merit; and they all recollected the speech of Lord Palmerston on the same subject. Lord Palmerston asked—"What is merit?" And he went on to say that merit was only the opinion which one man formed of another, and that it would be an Utopian idea to hope that under any system individuals could be selected for merit alone. But not only was Lord Palmerston, but General Peel, Lord Herbert of Lea, Sir George Lewis, Mr. E. Ellice, Lord Grey, Lord Raglan, and Sir Charles Yorke were all against selection. So eager, however, was the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Trevelyan) to get rid of His Royal Highness that he was not satisfied with removing him from the Horse Guards without removing him from the Army. ["No, no!"] In his speech at Liverpool, on the 6th of January, the hon. Gentleman said—"When they had abolished the purchase system, how would they keep it from reviving? It would immediately revive if they kept the Duke of Cambridge in the Army." [Mr. TREVELYAN: I meant the Horse Guards, not the Army.] It was not in the power of the Secretary of State to transfer an officer of the Line to the Militia, and he hoped under the new system neither Secretary of State nor Commander-in-Chief would be able to move an officer who might be senior of his rank in the regular Army to similar rank in the Militia. We could never require to use officers of the Army to officer the Militia. There were plenty of officers on half-pay who would be content to serve, provided their interests were properly considered. The hon. Gentleman had also referred to General Forster, the Military Secretary, and stated the evidence of Sir Edward Lugard relative to the duties that officer was called upon to perform; but his remarks by no means conveyed the true evidence given by that gallant officer. The Military Secretary was, in truth, a most important officer, whose duty it was to lay before His Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief statements as to different officers who stood on the list for promotion, it remaining for His Royal Highness to select those officers with the approval of the Secretary of State. He could not also help thinking that the cause which the hon. Gentleman had espoused required a good deal of bolstering up when he found it necessary to select whatever was useful to his own arguments, and put aside the rest. The hon. Gentleman was bound to give a fair and just summary of any evidence he thought to bear upon the subject, and not take merely as much as served his purpose; and when he attempted to cry up the Artillery and Engineers to the detriment of the rest of the Army he must tell the hon. Gentleman that if he thought it would be grateful to one branch of the service to be praised at the expense of another, he was labouring under a great mistake. The hon. Gentleman, too, had spoken in a most improper manner of His Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief — ["No, no!"] — in a speech which he had made in 1869, and, recollecting the apology which he had to make in consequence of that speech, he was surprised that he should venture to repeat such statements again.

MR. O'REILLY

said, that while he agreed with his hon. Friend who had raised the present discussion (Mr. Trevelyan) that there were many sources of expenditure connected with the Army which were antiquated and useless, he did not think there was sufficient ground for recording on the Votes of the House such a general sweeping declaration with respect to them as that which was contained in his Resolution. Of the payments to Army agents, he saw the final extinction "looming in the distance." The extra payments, too, in certain branches of our establishments, such as the Guards and Household Cavalry, would have an entirely new light thrown upon them when the system of purchase was abolished. He was prepared to admit at once—and he thought his right hon. Friend at the head of the War Office would admit—that if there was to be a separate rate of pay in different portions of the Army, it must be based either on the score of higher service, or on a more careful selection of the recipients. That, however, was a question which could not be considered abstractedly at the present moment. With regard to the third class of items, relating to the number of generals, sinecure colonelcies, and the whole of the half-pay list, it was essential, in his opinion, that his right hon. Friend should take them into his consideration hereafter. His (Mr. O'Reilly's) view was, that they must all be taken into account in connection with the scheme of retirement which must follow the abolition of the system of purchase. He now came to the more precise and definite part of his hon. Friend's Resolution—that which related to the tenure of office by the Commander-in-Chief, and the interpretation of which he must take to be that the five years' rule should be applied to the office of Commander-in-Chief, as well as to other posts in the Army. Now, he should state very briefly the reasons which led him to the conclusion that it was not desirable such a change should be made. The Secretary for War, in speaking the other night on the principle of promotion which should be adopted, said that one thing must be guarded against, and that was, that promotion should not be vested in the hands of a political chief—implying that the selection must be vested in the responsible head of the Army. That being so, would the affairs of the Army be best administered by such a head, removable every five years? There were, as far as he understood the matter, two patent objections to such a state of things. In the first place, an officer thus removable would not have a sufficiently long time to make himself acquainted with the records of the Army on which his selections must be based; and, secondly, if the military head of the Army was to be chosen by its political head every five years, was there no danger that political reasons might influence his choice? Was it not better, therefore, that there should be such permanency in the office as should free its holder from the suspicion of having been appointed on political grounds? Would not a Liberal Secretary of State be inclined to replace from his own party a chief of the Army for one who had been appointed by a Conservative Secretary five years before? He (Mr. O'Reilly) thought it would be well if the Commander-in-Chief were compelled to retire at a fixed age—that would, he thought, be a far better remedy for the evil complained of than a compulsory retirement at the end of five years. As to the part of his hon. Friend's speech which was directed to the qualifications of the present Commander-in-Chief, he must say that, so far as he could see, he had made no observation which it was not perfectly competent to any Member of the House to make. But he must observe, without entering into any lengthened criticism of the high qualities which had been displayed in the office by His Royal Highness, that he believed he had given great satisfaction to the Army; and as to the allegation that he shirked the responsibility of the selection of officers, he would simply remark that he did not think he was the less qualified to discharge a difficult and honourable duty because he recognized its difficulties beforehand. His hon. Friend had gone on to observe that there was danger in abolishing the purchase system while we had at the head of the Army a Commander-in-Chief who had avowed that he held his high office in official ignorance of over-regulation prices, and who had stated that if it were abolished to-morrow a new system of purchase would be likely to spring up. Now, in making that statement, His Royal Highness spoke of a state of things which it was not proposed should continue to exist; while as to his official ignorance of over-regulation prices, his hon. Friend would seem to imagine that those prices had grown up under the administration of His Royal Highness, whereas he was in no sense of the word responsible for their existence; and if he was officially ignorant of them, so had been every Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of State who had preceded him in office. For the reasons which he had given he hoped his hon. Friend would not go to a Division; but if he should do so, he must, however reluctantly, vote against his Resolution.

MAJOR DICKSON

said, he wished to warn the House and the country against the danger of putting too great faith in the specious speech of the hon. Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan). Like many military reformers who had no practical knowledge, he had drawn many theoretical conclusions, advocating the abolition of systems of the working of which he had no experience, and the introduction of foreign systems — entirely overlooking the difference in the character of English and foreign soldiers, as well as many minor matters which, to a civilian, appeared trivial and unimportant, but the importance of which was fully appreciated by soldiers. With a confidence which might easily impose upon civilians, the hon. Member had spoken in favour of abolishing two systems which had always worked well, and had never broken down—our regimental system and the Department of the Horse Guards. The Commander-in-Chief had always performed his duty to the satisfaction of the Army, and, as he believed, of the country generally. The hon. Member had not, however, made any distinct charge against the Horse Guards, though he had heaped up against it many vague charges, which were, in fact, the shortcomings of the War Office, and ought to lead him to advocate a reform of that Department, not of the Horse Guards. As a soldier he could not protest too strongly against any change which would impair the efficiency of the regimental system, or transfer the control of the Army from a high military officer to a political official or a Board of military officers. Were the Gentlemen who advocated such a change so enamoured of the Admiralty that they wished to see a similar organization to that of the Admiralty? At present the Army had confidence in the administration of military patronage; but if this patronage were once transferred to a political department, political jobbery and favouritism would creep into the administration, and would give rise to discontent and distrust throughout the Army. He contended that the system of selection would strike a fatal blow at that esprit de corps which had led to such happy results in the past, and he felt convinced that there could be no safe rule for promotion but seniority pure and simple. To that it was objected that it would lead to the appointment of incompetent men at the head of regiments and that a short time would witness the re-introduction of the purchase system in another form. He would, however, ask whether there was no possibility of framing penal regulations, and whether there was not a Government sufficiently strong to carry them out? Was it not possible to establish a system that if any officer was reported incompetent, and this should be clearly established on investigation, he should be called upon to resign? He agreed in the remark made by the hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Colonel North) that military matters ought not to be made the subject of political agitation; but there could be no doubt that for some months past certain Gentlemen had been going up and down the country keeping up a political agitation, and he would put it to the good sense of the House, and of military reformers out-of-doors, whether it was not dangerous to carry on an agitation which might ultimately reach the Army itself, and utterly destroy that cheerful confidence which now existed in all ranks of Her Majesty's Service.

MR. H. R. BRAND

said, he did not agree with his hon. Friend the Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan) in his desire to limit the tenure of the officer Commanding-in-Chief. He believed that the removal of the Department from the Horse Guards to the War Office would give to the public that security that was desired, and would lead to increased economy. And it was his opinion that that economy was sorely needed in Pall Mall. He thought that the administration at the Horse Guards was anything but economical, for in addition to the figures enumerated by his hon. Friend who introduced the Motion, he might observe that whereas in 1853–4 the Estimate for the Horse Guards was £26,000, it had now increased to over £49,000. These figures would afford a convincing proof that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War had little chance of effectually reducing the overburdened Estimates unless he commenced at the top. But he did not wish the present debate to anticipate the discussion on the Army Estimates. It was to be regretted that the debate partook somewhat of the nature of a personal attack upon His Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief; but that was not the fault of the Mover of this Resolution, but rather the fault of the distinguished individual at present filling that office; for His Royal Highness had from time to time expressed himself adverse to the abolition of the purchase system, and had, before the Commission of 1857, over and over again declared himself unable to select officers for promotion. His Royal Highness prophesied, moreover, in the most solemn terms, that promotion by selection would resolve itself into promotion by seniority. If His Royal Highness had since changed his opinion, as they were told he lately had, so much the better for the service in which he was so deservedly loved and liked; but if he had not, he did not see how he could undertake those duties which it was proposed should be incidental to his office. He ventured, however, to submit that this was not a question whether this or that man should be appointed to the office of Commander-in-Chief, but whether it was to the advantage of the Army or the nation that the appointment to the office should be by selection, and should be periodically in the hands of the Secretary for War. He had in his hands a paragraph of the Report of a Select Committee which inquired into the relations which existed between the War Office and Horse Guards—a Committee over which the late Sir James Graham presided. With respect to the advisability of placing the patronage of the Army in the hands of a high military officer, the Committee thus reported— The Army is thus enabled to feel assured that the patronage of the Army as regards first commissions, and the ordinary promotions and appointments, other than those which are self-regulated by purchase or seniority, will not be distributed with a view to political objects, or to the necessities of successive Governments. But the case was stronger now, for the Government was about to give the officer Commanding-in-Chief new duties. He would have to select officers for promotion and for appointments, which would be no longer self-regulated by purchase or seniority. But, if the appointment of this high officer was to be placed every five years at the disposal of the Secretary of State for War, there would be some danger of running into the very danger which that House most wished to avoid. The appointment might be made for party purposes; at any rate you would never be able to eradicate from the minds of the officers of the Army the suspicion that the appointment might have been made for the purpose of serving the exigencies of party. Therefore, he contended that the office of the Commander-in-Chief should be a permanent appointment, but subject to the pleasure of the Queen and considerations affecting age. There was a great chance of effecting reductions in the Vote annually made for out-pensioners—a Vote which had attained its present proportions—upwards of £1,300,000—in consequence of our plan of enlisting men for such long periods of service that at their discharge they were utterly unfitted for all civilian occupation. A charge was also imposed upon the country for the prospective services of the pensioners, which, in many cases, were altogether worthless. The short-service system, however, when thoroughly worked, would do away with this source of expenditure. He was quite prepared to support the Motion for reduction when brought forward by the hon. Gentleman who had introduced this Motion; but the Motion itself he regarded as too vague in its terms. He hoped it would not be pressed to a Division.

SIR PATRICK O'BRIEN

said, he thought this subject would have been better brought forward in connection with the larger question of Army organization. That, unfortunately, was no new subject in Europe. The sad results had just shown themselves of a system of intendance worked not for the good of the service or of the country, but of the entourage surrounding the late Ruler of the French people. The Germans pursued a directly opposite system, for though the Princes of the blood took their full share of the dangers of the field, they avoided in their higher military appointments all considerations of aristocratic favour or Court influence, and the results showed themselves in the successes they had won. The hon. and gallant Member for Dover (Major Dickson) had taunted civilian Members with talking about military matters which they did not understand, and seemed to regard civilian interference in these debates somewhat as he, when a boy at school, regarded the efforts of a German professor to learn the art of swimming when in bed; but still the hon. and gallant Gentleman, though thus opposed to civilian interference, admitted that the Secretary of State for War, who was a civilian, under the existing system exercised controlling authority over the Commander-in-Chief and all the military men in the service. In the Army he (Sir Patrick O'Brien) believed this control was but nominal; but in the Navy, where it really existed, and where its Chief did not enjoy a perpetuity of tenure, they saw the results in their present Navy, which, he believed, was efficient enough to maintain its supremacy against the fleets of Europe and of America. As to land forces, battles were no longer won with gros bataillons, but with improved ordnance and more skilful handling. A crisis had arrived in our Army organization, and he would ask hon. Gentlemen opposite could they candidly say that they believed the Field Marshal Commanding-in-Chief was the proper person at this moment to be at the head of the Army? ["Yes, yes!"] Hon. Gentlemen had favoured him with an affirmative answer. He thought they would hardly have done so if they had been acquainted with some facts he would now bring to their attention. In 1857, before the Indian Mutiny broke out, he (Sir Patrick O'Brien) ventured to call attention to the propriety of reviving two regiments of cavalry—the 5th Lancers and the 18th Hussars—whose names had long been omitted from the Army List. The Horse Guards insisted that this could not be done; but in three weeks' time it was done, nevertheless. Again, a Staff College had been created which was costing the country many thousands a year; yet not a man who passed through the Staff College was appointed from it, until he called attention to the subject in that House. How had the Horse Guards dealt with the regulation providing that no officer should hold a Staff appointment beyond five years? Why, it was disregarded by the Horse Guards. There were well-known cases of men who had been 18 and 22 years on the Staff. ["Oh, oh!"] Were not hon. Gentlemen familiar with the names of Gordon and Cunningham? How was all this done? and was His Royal Highness unaware of these facts? If so, he was unfit for his position; while if he did know of the circumstances he was setting the example of a breach of discipline. To say that the office of Commander-in-Chief was not a political appointment was to utter an absurdity. In former times a Royal Duke was at the head of the Army; and was the strong speech which was delivered by His Royal Highness the Duke of York against the Catholic claims forgotten — a speech so strong, and so partizan, that the Tory papers of that day said it ought to be printed in letters of gold? ["Oh !" and Question!"] This was the question; and if he were not heard inside the House he would be heard outside the House. It was idle to say that a Peer of Parliament, taking his place in the other House, and expressing his opinions upon the questions of the day as they arose, had not political views of his own, and was a non-political officer. Now that a vast amount of patronage was about to be transferred to this distinguished personage, plenty of soothing speeches were delivered in that House, and those Members were laughed at who wished to state their honest opinions. Before introducing their plan for the reorganization of the Army the Government ought to have considered what would be their future policy were they to maintain only a system of insular defence? or were they to defend treaty obligations, and maintain the old tradition that we were to be prepared for every eventuality? It was very doubtful, in his opinion, whether the industry and wealth of the country would submit with a good grace to pay the increased taxes rendered necessary by the new Army Estimates. It seemed to him that too many persons in the present day—including some of those whom he was now addressing—were too like Punch's bumptious Englishman, who thought themselves the greatest and most influential people under the sun, until brought back to their senses when the Chancellor of the Exchequer stepped forward and said—"Mr. Giles, you will have to pay me 8d. in the pound income tax." Whatever might be said of the Irish people, they, at all events, often rose above considerations of material interest, and on a late memorable occasion would have given all they possessed to carry out an idea which was endeared to their country by old traditional associations. In conclusion, he said he could only support that portion of the Motion which related to the administration of the Army. [The hon. Member spoke amid much interruption.]

MR. OSBORNE

Whatever epithet may be applied to the speech of my hon. Friend who had just preceded me in this debate (Sir Patrick O'Brien), I scarcely think it will be considered to be one of a soothing nature. Indeed, it occurs to me that the further we go into this debate, the more we are practising the figure the hon. Gentleman alluded to, and are endeavouring to learn to swim by swimming in bed. While listening to the arguments brought forward in support of this floating Motion, I have been very much tempted to ask what has become of that band of bounding brothers of whom the hon. Gentleman who has introduced the present Motion is a type. One after another I see them rising in their places and saying that they perfectly agree with the hon. Gentleman, but begging him not to go to a Division. One only has been true to the cause. Faithful among the faithless, my hon. Friend (Sir Patrick O'Brien), who had roved from New York to Vienna, and back again to the streets of Dublin, is the only one who said he would support the Motion; but he does not give any reason for supporting it, except that the 5th Lancers and the 18th Royal Dragoons were disbanded on account of the Horse Guards refusing to re-raise them. I must say that having entered the House late, and not being fully aware of what was coming on, I thought there was some mistake. I was under the impression, until I saw you, Mr. Speaker, in the Chair, that you ought not to have been sitting there, but that the Chairman of Committees should have been presiding, and that the discussion was on the Army Estimates. I have heard very little—indeed nothing—about the dual government, but I have heard a flaming attack made upon His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge for reasons which I can neither understand nor approve. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Oxfordshire (Colonel North), and the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Dover (Major Dickson), have, I think, been rather hard upon, and have not made sufficient allowances for, the position of my hon. Friend the Member for the Border Burghs. He is a rising young man, of extraordinary ability, extraordinary energy, and extraordinary industry. He took up this question of Army Reform, the abrogation of purchase, and the abolition of the Horse Guards. While "starring" it in the provinces he made the same able speech he has delivered this evening. I am able to compliment him upon it, as I have read it on three previous occasions. ["No, no!"] My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Winterbotham), is not such a studier of the provincial papers as I am. I have even read his letters from abroad. If my hon. Friend will get the Edinburgh Courant for December last I think he mil find that identical speech. He will also find it in the Manchester Guardian. I repeat that I have carefully studied the provincial papers, and seen all these charges going from Edinburgh to Manchester, from Manchester to Liverpool, and, finally, cropping up at Birmingham. I read his speech, too, at Nottingham; and I think, therefore, the hon. Gentleman has been hardly treated. Well, this industrious young man joins the Ministry. He found that the Secretary for War last year did not hold out any very great hope of reform in the Army; consequently, this industrious and able young man leaves the Government. This was very creditable to him; but it must naturally have been a great disappointment for him, after he had made this great sacrifice and "starred it" in the provinces, to find that his right hon. Friend the Secretary for War had, without any previous information, taken the wind out of his sails, by coming forward with a proposal to bring forward all these reforms to abrogate purchase and to destroy the dual government, besides promising a great many other reforms. What does the hon. Member for the Border Burghs want? It is very hard for him to find these questions settled by the Secretary for War. What is he to do? Just let me ask hon. Gentlemen one thing. While we are all gaping at and admiring this great scheme for the abolition of purchase — on which I shall have something to say when the proper time arrives—are we prepared for the enormous outlay that it will render necessary? The sum at present named is £8,000,000. Now, I do not want to prophesy, but if the House of Commons gets out of it under £12,000,000, and £500,000 by way of a retiring list, I am very much mistaken. I do not wish, however, to debate this subject on a Motion as to whether the Duke of Cambridge is to be turned out of the Horse Guards. We shall have time enough to take it up on another occasion. This has degenerated into nothing more than an Army Estimate debate. If I accuse my hon. Friend who initiated it of having made the same speech in four places before, assuredly I have heard the same speech from his Seconder, the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson); and certainly he had a much larger congregation to-night than he had on the occasion I allude to. I have been always particularly anxious to hear what falls from that hon. Gentleman, because he is essentially a representative man; and I congratulate him upon having made exactly the same speech he did when he attempted last year to cut down the Vote for the Secretary to the Commander-in-Chief. However, I want to come to the question. My hon. Friend the Member for the King's County (Sir Patrick O'Brien), like a gallant and eloquent Irishman as he is, has taken the bull by the horns. He asks—"Is there a man in the House who will say that His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge is the proper man to be Commander-in-Chief?" I am the man who says that. I believe a more honest and conscientious man, and a man better fitted for the post, never presided at the Horse Guards. My hon. Friend (Mr. Trevelyan) brings forward trumpery instances of his having proposed Motions in a thin House. I dare say His Royal Highness was never aware that these Motions were made. What I complain of is that the hon. Member now, as then, proposes Resolutions which only nibble at the question—he does not go to the root of it. He endeavours to raise a cloud around the Horse Guards; he talks of purchase, Army agents, flogging, marking with the letter D, and contagious diseases. He puts all these together, and he endeavours to saddle the Duke of Cambridge with this olla podrida. What has the Duke to do with it? I protest against making the Commander-in-Chief the object of all this abuse. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War is the man who accepts all responsibility; if purchase has not been done away with before, it is not the Commander-in-Chief who is to blame—it is this House that is to blame for it; it is those new lights who have been made the victim of the petty larceny which has occurred, and whose pocket has been picked of their scheme. I heartily sympathize with the hon. Member, but as an old soldier who has seen something of the Army and its working, I say boldly that I believe there never was a man who was more conscientious in his appointments than the Royal Duke, and that he never condescended to a dirty thing or job. There is as much slavishness in abusing the Royal Duke as there may be courage in praising him. I have been very much struck with some of the instances the hon. Member for the Border Burghs has been perpetually giving the natives in the provinces, where they have always been received with enormous cheers. He cut that joke about Lord Hardinge at Birmingham. [Mr. TREVELYAN: I did not.] Then it was at Edinburgh. I suppose he could not have selected a more unfortunate instance than that of Lord Hardinge, who succeeded to the Horse Guards when it was known that the supply of artillery in this country was disgracefully deficient, and by the exertions of Lord Hardinge the country was put in a better state of defence than it had ever been in before. What I complain of is this—that the hon. Member has not spoken to this House as he has spoken to assemblies at Birmingham and elsewhere. [Mr. TREVELYAN made a gesture of denial.] No, he has not. The hon. Gentleman selects one man from among many, and he says—"You have got into a groove. Here is Sir Richard Airey who is perpetually employed." And why is he? Because, I suppose, he is one of the ablest officers this country has possessed; and if anything awkward arose on the Continent I suppose it very probable there is no man we should sooner place at the head of an Army than Sir Richard Airey. I have been an Army reformer in my time, and I am still an Army reformer. I have turned the Serpentine through the Horse Guards with greater success than the hon. Gentleman below me (Mr. Rylands) has turned it through the Foreign Office—by one of my first essays in Parliament I reduced flogging in the Army, therefore I feel I have some right to speak on this subject. However Parliament may interfere with the Estimates, as it properly may, I hope we may not get a more expensive Army—though I fear we shall; but if there is one thing I should deprecate more than another—if there is one thing I hope Parliament will never do — it is the taking the command of the British Army from the Horse Guards.

MR. CARDWELL

I shall be glad if any words of mine shall induce my hon. Friend not to press his Motion to a Division; for if he take a Division, he will do so on a point on which he does not carry the House with him. From the tone of his speech, I think his Motion was intended not so much to be levelled personally against His Royal Highnes, the Field Marshal Commanding-in-Chief as to raise the question of the tenure of that office. I shall feel it my duty to say a few words on both these points. With regard to the tenure of the office, I wish to say that a few years ago there was an exceptional warrant of the Secretary of State for War which removed the discipline of the Army, the appointments, and the promotions from the control of the Commander-in-Chief. A few years ago that exceptional warrant was withdrawn, and the matter remained without any clear and satisfactory arrangement until last year, when, by an Order of the Queen in Council, it was placed beyond doubt. Dual government cannot be said to have had any existence since that Order was passed; and we are now moving the Horse Guards to the War Office in Pall Mall, in order to obtain that greater convenience of administration which all Secretaries of State, from General Peel to the present time, have pointed out to be necessary, which Sir James Graham's Committee so strongly recommended, and which the Duke of Cambridge agrees with me in recommending to this House. By the Motion before the House—to which I shall confine myself—my hon. Friend asks that the tenure of the Commander-in-Chief should be altered in such a manner as to enable the Secretary of State for War to avail himself of the best administrative talent; and he explains that by saying he wishes to have the five years' rule, which applies to all other Staff officers, applied to His Royal Highness the Field Marshal Commanding-in-Chief. There cannot be anything more deceptive than to pursue an analogy where the reason does not hold. In all other Staff appointments, as has been justly pointed out, the selection is made by a professional officer, by the Field Marshal Commanding-in-Chief — by a person who has no connection with politics. Now, if there is one thing which would be more mischievous than another, it would be to have the smallest suspicion of politics introduced into this office. You have a most difficult problem to solve, because you justly hold the political officer who sits here responsible to you for the approval of the appointments; and, at the same time, you justly determine that these appointments shall not be made by a political officer. That is an extremely difficult problem to solve, and you solve it by taking care to hold high the just authority of the military officer who is at the head of the Army, while, on the other, you hold high the responsibility of the Secretary of State. But if you make the appointment of the Commander-in-Chief terminable at the end of a fixed period, you would, in my opinion, greatly impair and disparage the just authority which ought to belong to that office. Let us consider it in two ways. The appointment might be made either for too long a period or for too short a one. Suppose you had got, by misfortune or by accident, in that high place an officer who really was not competent for it—and the hon. Member for Truro (Captain Vivian) put this point in a thinner House with perfect clearness—would you, because he had a five years' appointment, desire to continue him in the office to the end of the five years? Quite the reverse; you would justly hold the Minister of the day responsible for bringing his appointment to a close. On the other hand, my hon. Friend spoke in disparagement of the Duke of Wellington as Commander-in-Chief; but if such a man as the Duke of Wellington were in the office, would anybody propose to substitute any other person for him? Suppose the eminent man who has so successfully commanded the German Armies were at the head of our Army, would anybody propose that, at the end of five years, he should terminate his office? Therefore, Sir, with regard to tenure, I hold that the office of the Field Marshal Commanding-in-Chief is distinguished from every other Staff appointment by essential differences, and that the continuance of anyone in it, or his removal from it, must depend upon considerations of public expediency and advantage. Therefore I hold my hon. Friend (Mr. Trevelyan) is mistaken in the Motion he makes, and I regret very much if, by persevering in it, he compels us to go into a different Lobby from him, as he is doing so much to support our general proposals. But I must also say a word or two on the ground he took for the proposals he makes with regard to the Commander-in-Chief, in the evidence of the Duke of Cambridge before the Committee of 1857. It would be very severe discipline to be applied to any of us if, in practical matters of this kind, we were to be bound by opinions we may have expressed some 14 years ago. Public opinion marches gradually, sometimes rapidly, and carries us along with it. The illustrious Duke was not the only person who, in 1857, entertained opinions adverse to the abolition of purchase; the Secretary of State of that day thought, under the circumstances, that abolition of purchase was not desirable; and why is the Duke of Cambridge to be held to the opinion he then entertained any more than the Secretary of State? It is admitted on all hands that he gave his evidence before the various Committees by whom he was examined with the utmost frankness. No doubt the opinions which were then placed on record were the opinions he then held; but he did not necessarily hold them for all subsequent time. I know perfectly well that what has recently passed on the subject of the abolition of purchase, and more especially the Report of the Commission over which my right hon. Friend the Member for Morpeth (Sir George Grey) presided, has had a material effect in influencing his judgment on the subject. At any rate the illustrious Duke has cordially assisted the Government in the preparation of their measures, and given us all the support and co-operation we could desire. Well, Sir, with regard to the constitution of the Horse Guards one important change is made. A great deal has been said about the Military Secretary—he has been spoken of as if he were the mere amanuensis of the Commander-in-Chief. But the office of Military Secretary is one of very great importance, because he has to record and tabulate the reports of the general officers inspecting, which are the foundation of promotions in the higher ranks of the Army; and the office will be one of far greater importance if the proposed arrangements are carried into effect. It is only justice to General Foster, the Military Secretary, to say that, in speaking of higher duties, no reflection whatever is intended or thought of with regard to the mode in which the former duties were discharged. Then, Sir, upon the second part of the Motion of my hon. Friend I do not think I need enter at any length to-night—that would be only anticipation. Of course I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that, speaking generally, whatever is obsolete and antiquated ought to be the subject of criticism and removal. I understand the principal object of my hon. Friend is to change the tenure of the office of Commander-in-Chief. I do not understand him to desire at all to point observation against the individual who now happens to fill the high office, but only against the tenure of the office itself. I hope my hon. Friend will see that what I have said is true—that this is an office the duration of which ought not to be measured by mere lapse of time; questions of expediency must be taken into account, and the officer holding it should be in harmony with the Government, assisting and co-operating with them in carrying forward their measures; at the same time you ought to take every means in your power for preventing the patronage of the Army being mixed up with political questions, and holding up as high as possible the authority vested in him. I have listened with admiration to the ability my hon. Friend has displayed to-night. I trust that ability will never be exercised on merely personal matters; and I shall be glad if he will be satisfied with the success he has gained this evening, and will not press his Motion to a Division.

MR. TREVELYAN

said, he would not, after the kind attention the House had given him in the early part of the evening, say more than a very few words in reply. He thought a little too much had been made of the five years' tenure of office; if the Governor General of India could be appointed for that period, and the arrangement could work so satisfactorily for so many years, he (Mr. Trevelyan) did not think that the Commandership-in-Chief was an office so very high that it should be regulated differently. He asked for no single remedy to night; he merely wished the House to pronounce that the present tenure was disadvantageous. As for the observations of the hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. Osborne), he did not attach much importance to them. It mattered very little what speeches he had delivered in various parts of the country; but this, at least, he could say, that what he had stated he was not afraid to repeat in that House. He should have been glad to accede to the suggestion of his right hon. Friend who was doing so much for this question and for the Army; but having promised the country to divide the House, and conceiving that to be a more practical mode of giving effect to his opinions than to make jokes about them for 10 years, he should do so.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 83; Noes 201: Majority 118.