Commons Sitting of 26 February 1855

MINUTES.
NEW WRITS.—For Montrose, v. Joseph Hume, Esq., deceased; for London, v. Right Hon. Lord John Russell, Secretary of State; for Halifax, v. Right Hon. Sir Charles Wood, baronet, First Lord of the Admiralty; for New Radnor, v. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, baronet, Chancellor of the Exchequer; for Forfarshire, v. Viscount Duncan, Lord of the Treasury.
PUBLIC BILLS.—2o Militia (Ireland); Commons Inclosure.
Reported.—Consolidated Fund (£3,300,000); Consolidated Fund (£20,000,000).

NEW WRIT—MR. HUME.
VISCOUNT PALMERSTON: I rise to move that Mr. Speaker do issue his warrant to the Clerk of the Crown directing a new writ to issue for the election of a Com-

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missioner to serve in the present Parliament for the Montrose district of Burghs, in the room of the late Joseph Hume, Esq., deceased. Sir, I cannot in doing this simply confine myself to the words of the Motion. I am confident that I should not be doing justice to the feelings of the House if I were not to express my feelings of regret, which are shared, I am sure, by all who hear me, and my feelings of respect for the colleague, for the Member whose loss we are now going to replace. Sir, it was said of an eminent man who lived in former times—"That he gave to party what he owed to his country." Now, the very reverse of this must be said of our late colleague, Mr. Hume, for the party to which he devoted the labours of his life was his country, and beyond his country the general interests of mankind at large. Many men, Sir, have gained for themselves eminent positions in this House, by availing themselves of the assistance of a faithful band of friends, whose object was to acquire political power for the purpose of governing their country. Mr. Hume was a remarkable exception of a man who gained for himself an eminent position not only in this House, and in the estimation of the country, but who succeeded in establishing for himself a name, not only European, but of still wider range—by exertions disinterested as far as he himself was concerned, and equally distinct from any attempt to acquire, either by his own exertions, or by those of his friends, political power in this country. Sir, he was a man of whom it has been said, that he took the lead in almost every branch of improvement, and in every measure of improvement which has of late years been carried into practical operation. He possessed an industry which nothing could tire or overcome. His acquirements spread over the whole range of those matters which concerned the interest of his country, and the general welfare of the community at large. But Mr. Hume had still another claim on the grateful recollection of this House. He possessed great perseverance, and it is only due to him to say, that in the whole course of his pursuits and attempts to carry out his own opinions, he frequently had many opposed to him, and he was frequently exposed to those party conflicts which are the necessary obstacles in the way of any man who wishes to enforce his opinions in this House; but nothing ever passed between him and those most opposed to him which at any time left one trace of
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resentment, one particle of bitterness, in his mind. I remember it to have been said of a person who held a high position in this House, that whatever acrimony might have been created in party conflict, that feeling never went beyond the doors of the House. I am certain I may say of our late Friend (Mr. Hume), that any feeling which had been excited by party conflict never went so far even as to the doors. Sir, a man of greater industry, a man who devoted the whole labours of his life more entirely to what he considered good and serviceable to his country, never sat within these walls; and I am persuaded even those who most differed with him in opinion on matters which he felt it his duty to bring before the House, and to recommend to the adoption of Parliament, must do him the justice to admit that he acted from the purest motives and a sincere desire to advance the welfare of his country. Those who differed with him must do this justice to his character; and we must all of us admit that a man possessing his ability, his habits of industry, and his disinterested character must, at all times, be a great loss to this House. He was a peculiarity belonging to the age in which he lived. He had party feelings—that is, he was associated with those who agreed with him in politics; but his party feelings were totally independent of any question of political ascendancy. He never regarded anything but what he considered was for the good of his country when success rewarded his achievements, and when he failed he never relaxed an effort, but still continued the career of his public duty. In conclusion, he was a man on whom we must all look back with admiration and regret, and no man feels more sincerely than I do the cause which has led me to make the Motion which it is my duty to bring forward.
SIR JOSHUA WALMSLEY: Privileged, Sir, to enjoy for many years the confidence and friendship of the late lamented Member, I may, perhaps, be permitted to add one sentence to the well-deserved tribute which the noble Viscount at the head of Her Majesty's Government has paid to the memory of our departed friend. It may be justly said, that his unostentatious labours for the public good were only excelled by his private worth. Even in the arena of political strife, he never either made an enemy or lost a friend. And I would indulge the hope that the representatives of a grateful people will not suffer services at once so eminent

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and disinterested to pass away without some memorial worthy of them and of the country.
MR. BROTHERTONsaid, he wished to be permitted to pay a humble tribute of respect to the memory of Mr. Hume. He had been for twenty-one years a witness of his labours, and he never saw a man less actuated by feelings of party than Mr. Hume, or who had more claims to the respect and veneration of the country. If ever there was a honest Member of Parliament, Mr. Hume was one.
Motion agreed to.

MINISTERIAL ARRANGEMENTS.
MR. HAYTERsaid, he had now to move for a new writ for a citizen to represent the City of London in the present Parliament, in the room of John Russell, Esq., commonly called Lord John Russell, who had accepted the office of one of Her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State.
SIR JOHN PAKINGTON: Sir, in consequence of the Motion just made, I wish to avail myself of the opportunity of putting a question to the noble Lord at the head of the Government. It has just been stated that Lord John Russell has accepted the office of one of Her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State. The question I wish to put to the noble Lord is, whether the office which Lord John Russell has accepted is that of Secretary of State for the Colonial Department? If the noble Lord has accepted that office, I wish to ask from the noble Lord whether Lord John Russell is not about to proceed on his mission to Vienna, and, if he is about to proceed there, when it may be expected that he will return? I should be glad to know also whether there is at present any Under-Secretary of State for the Colonial Department, and also whether, in the event of the noble Lord proceeding to Vienna on the mission which he has accepted, by whom the duties of Secretary of State for the Colonies will be transacted in the absence of the noble Lord? I may venture to say that, from the limited experience I have had of the duties of that office, there can be nothing more seriously inconvenient to the transaction of public business than to have any protracted absence on the part of the Minister who holds the Seals for the Colonies. There are several colonial questions of great interest pending. I have had an interview with a gentleman who lately held a high position in the colony of Victoria, who has, at great
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inconvenience, left his family in a distant part of England, and who is now waiting in London to give the benefit of his advice in settling the new constitution of the colony of Victoria. I am also aware that there is also in London another gentleman of great eminence belonging to New South Wales, who has left his family on the continent, and who is now in London, to give his assistance in pressing forward the constitution of New South Wales. Under these circumstances, I feel justified in putting a question on this subject, and I hope, if it be true that Lord John Russell is about to be intrusted with the Seals of the Colonial Department, we shall hear that the noble Lord will very shortly return to England to prevent that extreme public inconvenience which must result from his protracted absence.
MR. ROEBUCK: Sir, before the noble Lord answers that question, I beg to state that I have been in communication with a gentleman who is here as a delegate from Newfoundland. He has already waited upon three separate Colonial Ministers. If Lord John Russell be appointed, and he attends on him, that will make the fourth. Now, as that gentleman is in this country seeking, on the part of the House of Assembly of Newfoundland, the removal of the Governor—nothing less—I think it will be seen that the question of the right hon. Baronet is of great importance.
VISCOUNT PALMERSTON: Sir, Lord John Russell has accepted the office of one of Her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State. The department which he will undertake will be the Colonial Department. He proceeds, nevertheless, on his mission to Vienna, and, in the meanwhile, my right hon. Friend who lately held that office (Sir G. Grey) will undertake to be answerable that no public inconvenience arises from the temporary absence of my noble Friend. There is, as the right hon. Baronet well knows, a permanent Under-Secretary and a permanent Assistant Under Secretary. The political Under Secretary is not yet named, but he will be appointed in a very short time. It is impossible for me to state the precise period when my noble Friend will return, but I have no reason for supposing, whichever way the negotiation terminates, that my noble Friend's absence will be so protracted as the right hon. Baronet appears to anticipate.
Motion agreed to.

INVALIDS FROM THE CRIMEA— QUESTION.
COLONEL HARCOURTsaid, he begged to ask the Under Secretary for War whether any of the offers said to have been made to the Government by the London or other hospitals to receive a certain number of the sick and wounded, who had come home from the Crimea, had been accepted; or whether the Government had themselves provided the necessary accommodation, and whether they had made, or were making, arrangements for the fit reception and treatment of those who might hereafter arrive from that quarter?
MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, the authorities of the hospitals had been informed that the Government would be very glad to avail themselves of their offers, should they have occasion to do so; but the Government were making ample provision for the reception of the sick and wounded soldiers in military hospitals, and at the present moment there was accommodation for no less than 1,600 sick men on their arrival from the East.

MILITARY SURGERY PROFESSORSHIPS —QUESTION.
MR. GROGANsaid, he would now beg to ask the Under Secretary of War—the Parliament having voted a sum of 400 l. in the last Session for the establishment of Regius Professorships of Military Surgery in London, Dublin, and Edinburgh, what steps had been taken for the establishment of such professorships in London and Dublin, and when we might expect that such professors would be appointed?
MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, there having already existed a Regius Professorship of Military Surgery in Edinburgh, it was proposed that the plan should be extended to London and Dublin. A Vote was taken last year, and would be renewed this year. A proposal had been made for assimilating the system adopted in the different colleges. He was not aware that it had been yet arranged, but he saw no reason why there should be any further delay, and therefore it was proposed that the matter should be disposed of as soon as possible.

THE CLOTHING OF THE CRIMEAN ARMY—QUESTION.
MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, he would be glad to know whether clothing for the troops in the Crimea, suited for the spring and summer months, was being prepared,
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and whether the winter clothing had been supplied generally to our soldiers now on service in that part of the world?
MR. FREDERICK PEELreplied, that a second suit of clothes, which, under the ordinary regulations would have been furnished at the commencement of the financial year, namely, in April next, had already been issued. Every soldier now serving in the Crimea had received his second suit during the current financial year. With regard to the issue of the warm-weather clothing, perhaps the hon. Gentleman would be satisfied with his (Mr. Peel's) assurance that every provision would henceforth be made by the Government for clothing the troops in a manner suited to the season.
COLONEL KNOX: Who is now responsible for the clothing of the army?
MR. FREDERICK PEEL: The Government.
COLONEL KNOX: But what department of the Government?
MR. FREDERICK PEEL: The War Office.

THE CASE OF SERGEANT SULLIVAN.
On the order of the day for going into Committee of Supply,
MR. FRENCHsaid, that having on a former occasion put a question to the noble Lord at the head of Her Majesty's Government, and not having been able to obtain a satisfactory answer, he now availed himself of the opportunity which the present motion offered him to repeat that question. It might be in the recollection of hon. Members that, on the noble Lord taking his seat after his election for Tiverton, he (Mr. French) felt it his duty to ask whether there was any reason why Sergeant Sullivan, who had carried the colours of his regiment and had signalised himself by great bravery in battle, and had been honourably noticed by the general of his division, should not have been promoted, and the House would, perhaps, equally bear in mind that the reply he received from the noble Lord was, that general authority had been given to the Commander in Chief of the army in the Crimea to promote one non-commissioned officer in each regiment; that another non-commissioned officer, belonging to the regiment in which Sergeant Sullivan served, had been recommended for promotion by the colonel of the regiment, and his appointment had been sanctioned by Lord Raglan. He must confess he heard

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that reply of the noble Lord with great surprise, and he certainly did not think it at all justified a feeling of confidence in the future administration of the noble Lord. The passing of the Alma, the glorious charge at Balaklava, and the desperate strife at Inkerman, were all achievements essentially of the rank and file of the army. When, therefore, such signal courage as that displayed by Sergeant Sullivan was passed over without one mark of recognition, it, in his opinion, was a circumstance calculated to check, if it had not already checked, the voluntary spirit of enlistment on the part of the people in the service of Her Majesty more than all the terrors that the present disastrous state of things in the Crimea could effect. The noble Lord could not for a moment suppose that there was any man, either in that House or throughout the country, who would suffer a system to be continued which rewarded staff officers, almost indiscriminately, for what was called "distinguished services," while it suffered such gallant but friendless soldiers as Sullivan to be wholly neglected and passed by. He would ask the noble Lord to reflect how our gallant ally acted under similar circumstances. If a French soldier had displayed the same heroic courage as Sergeant Sullivan had done he would have had his services acknowledged on the field of battle. Had Napoleon acted upon the system which England was pursuing, France would not now have to boast of the proud array of marshals which its military annals displayed. There would have been no Bernadotte. Nay, if Napoleon himself had been passed over at Toulon under such a system as that supported by the noble Lord, he, in all probability, would have died a subaltern of artillery. The attention of the public in Ireland had been drawn to this case by the leading journals. The Evening Mail, in a very able article, states—
"Had it been even necessary to make a post of distinction, in order to reward Sergeant Sullivan's bravery, a wise Government would not have hesitated an instant about it, especially at the commencement of a war, on which so much depends evidently upon the courage and intelligence of the 'rank and file,' and of which—according to illustrious authority—all the glory up to this moment pertains to the soldiery. If it be true, as we believe it is, that Sergeant Sullivan was mainly instrumental in saving the Second Division from a like calamity to that which nearly overwhelmed the whole army in a few days afterwards, he should have been promoted on the field of battle. Napoleon Bonaparte would have made
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such a man a captain before he returned even to his tent. General Canrobert made a chef d'escadron of the officer wounded in defence of their advanced battery before he was borne from the spot where he fell. It is discouraging to find Lord Palmerston, from whose masculine understanding, if not from his appreciation of worth and good service, better things might be expected, standing up to defend so perverse a denial of justice. What if Sullivan's Colonel did recommend another man for an ensigncy, and Lord Raglan approved the nomination, was that a fair reason why his signal merit, proclaimed by the general of division, should not have received a special reward from the fountain head and source of honour at the Horse Guards? It is quite excusable in the man's immediate commanding officer to leave him to the highest authority for the palm he had so nobly earned; it might have seemed like throwing away favours, designed for the other non-commissioned officers of his corps, to accumulate it on one already marked in the public and glorious records of the whole army for advancement. It is not a red tape fact that Sergeant Sullivan has had 'no recommendation.' His recommendation is extant in the Gazette, where his name stands recorded, and remains to shame those who allege so pitiful a pretence for passing him over."
He (Mr. French) felt that he would be fully justified in objecting to go into Committee to vote money for a service where the gallantry of the soldier was overlooked and unrewarded, and the recommendations of the generals of divisions treated with contempt, but he should content himself by asking the noble Lord, was Sergeant Sullivan to have his commission or not? In the latter case, if the hon. and gallant Member for Westminster (Sir de Lacy Evans) did not move an Address to the Crown, he (Mr. French) should. He also wished to inquire whether the attention of the Commander in Chief had been called to the alleged misconduct of the officer in charge of the stores at Balaklava, in refusing to supply some stoves to one of the vessels on the requisition of the surgeon who stated that they were essential for the health of the men, and that the death of some of those on board had been accelerated by cold? He found it stated by the Times correspondent in the Crimea that the Charity, a screw steamer, was in the harbour of Balaklava, for the reception of the sick and wounded under the charge of a British medical officer; that this gentleman applied to the person in charge of the stores sent out by Government for the use of the army for three or four stoves, stating that several of those under his charge had died from disorders brought on by the cold, and that unless he gut the stoves many more of his patients must

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experience a similar fate; that he was refused them unless a requisition was sent to Lord Raglan to head quarters, and returned properly signed. The medical man explained that the men would in the meantime perish; the reply was, "I cannot help it, I must have the requisition;" and that he even refused to lend the stoves on an undertaking to return them. He (Mr. French) wished to know from the noble Lord was this same officer still in charge of the stoves at Balaklava, and had any communication been made to Lord Raglan on this subject?
SIR JOHN WALSHsaid, that before the noble Lord answered the question, he wished to make an observation, in consequence of an expression which had fallen from the hon. Gentleman. The hon. Gentleman had stated that the battles in the Crimea, which had reflected so much glory upon British arms, had been won by the rank and file of the British army. Now if he meant by that, that the British soldier was the most gallant, and in all respects the best material for a soldier in the world, he (Sir J. Walsh) fully agreed with him, and in that sense acknowledged that it was to the rank and file—to the valour of the British soldier—these victories were owing; but if he meant to place the soldier in a distinct from the officer, and to position say that it was owing to the soldiers and not to the officers who commanded them, then the hon. Gentleman stated that which was not only not precisely in accordance with the actual circumstances which occurred, but which was absolutely impossible to be the fact. They never found yet soldiers fight well unless they were well commanded; and, with regard to the English officers serving in the Crimea, he believed they had shown as much or more valour in the engagements which the hon. Gentleman bad mentioned than had ever been exhibited by any similar class of men in any army in the world. In the cavalry charge at Balaklava there were more officers, in proportion to the men, than was usually the case, and more casualties amongst them in proportion than generally happened under similar circumstances, in consequence of the regiments having been at the time little more than skeletons of regiments, not filled up to their full complement.
VISCOUNT PALMERSTONsaid, the battles in question were won by the rank and file in the manner explained by the hon. Baronet—namely, that the dogged
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valour and sturdy courage of the troops were necessarily the main element of those victories, but the great number of casual. ties among the officers was a convincing proof that they had done their duty as well as the men, the number of officers killed and wounded on the field being quite as great in proportion as that of the men. With regard to the question that had been put to him, respecting Sergeant Sullivan, he could only state what he had explained before, namely, that in the troops under his command, Lord Raglan had authority to promote One non-commissioned officer in each regiment for distinguished conduct in the field, but of course it was left to the officer in command of the regiment to select the non-commissioned officer who was to be promoted; and, whatever might have been the distinguished bravery of Sergeant Sullivan, for aught they knew to the contrary, the non-commissioned officer who was recommended in that regiment for promotion, had as good if not a better claim than Sergeant Sullivan. It was quite impossible that the Government could Enter into an inquiry of the different claims of men who had distinguished themselves in the eyes of their officers, that must be done by those who commanded them. With respect to the second question, he believed that the attention of the officer in question had been called to the statement which had been made respecting his refusal to lend the stoves. More than that he could not say.
MR. WHITESIDEsaid, he considered the answer of the noble Lord with respect to Sergeant Sullivan perfectly satisfactory, but he considered that the rule which had been laid down, that one commission only should be given amongst the non-commissioned officers in each regiment was unsatisfactory, and ought not to be put forward against the claims of a man who had distinguished himself in the way that Sergeant Sullivan had done.
MR. H. HERBERTsaid, he wished to take an opportunity of correcting a misapprehension which had arisen out of a question which he had put to the Government a few days ago respecting the clothing of the militia in his district. He had stated on that occasion that some of the men had been compelled to mount sentry without greatcoats, and his observations had been construed into a reflection upon the general of the district. He was sorry that such misapprehension should have arisen, for as soon as that officer was

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informed of the real state of the case he sent a supply, a limited one certainly, being all he could spare, but which was sufficient for the use of the sentries, nor was he accountable for any delay in the supply of those necessary articles of clothing.

THE WAR AND ADMIRALTY DEPART- MENTS.
MR. LINDSAYsaid, he could not, when they were called upon to go into Committee of Supply to vote money for carrying on the war, avoid making a few remarks upon the subject of these estimates, and to protest against granting these large sums for the army while the present defective system was continued. If the House would permit him, he would endeavour to explain the system which prevailed in France, which he had had an opportunity of observing while there a few days ago. When he was in Paris he had the honour of an interview of the French Minister at War. He found him a plain man, easily accessible, and when he called upon him in the midst of the business of his office—which business he appeared thoroughly to understand—on one side of his room there was a map of Europe hung up, upon which were a number of patches of blue, white, red, green, and other colours. He (Mr. Lindsay) inquired what these meant. The reply of the Minister was that they represented the different armies of Europe. One colour represented the French, another the English, a third the Austrian, a fourth the Russian, a fifth the Turkish, and so on; and the positions in which they stood upon the map, pointed out their respective stations. Every morning, the Minister added, these coloured patches are removed by means of a pin from one place to another, according as I receive advices from abroad as to any movement made by either of the armies. He (Mr. Lindsay) then asked whether the Government had information as to the quantity of stores at the different depôts in connection with the Crimean army? The Minister at once replied by informing him of the quantity at Marseilles, at Constantinople, at the Crimea, and the amount which was being sent to Sinope. He thought it somewhat extraordinary that this French Minister of War should know everything, and be able to answer at once upon all these matters of detail connected with his department; while if he asked a similar question of any Minister here no information could be ob-
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tained, for no one appeared to know anything about the matter, and consequently he could not avoid expressing some anxiety with respect to the system by which such results were produced. That system he found to be exceedingly simple. Under the Minister of War for France it appeared there were five directors—one of transports, one of infantry, one of cavalry, one of Commissariat, and one of a department which at that moment he did not recollect. Subordinate to these five directors there were twenty to twenty-five different heads of districts, who were spread throughout the whole of France. Every day and every mail brought from these twenty to twenty-five persons communications as to the state of the stores, the transports, the state and position of the army, and of everything connected with it as far as it came under their cognisance, and the particulars of any change that might occur from time to time. The five directors having received the reports from their subordinates summed them up, and communicated the result to the Minister of War daily, by whom a condensed account was prepared and entered in a small book, to which he referred when he (Mr. Lindsay) asked him for information upon any point. Now this was an exceedingly simple system, and if it worked well with au army of 750,000 men, he could see no reason why it should not work equally well with a much smaller army like our own. He had been impressed with feelings of shame in allowing such vast sums as had already been voted for carrying on our military establishments to pass without protesting against that confusion which all admitted to exist in reference to them. Now, he would ask, why was there that confusion? He might, perhaps, be told it was want of time. Now, he must deny that, for it was not want of time, it was procrastination, that thief of time, that was the cause of all the evil. The hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Layard) the other night had been somewhat misunderstood when he said the knife ought to be applied. The hon. Member never meant to apply the knife to our glorious institutions, but to the cutting away of that stupid red-tapism by which our whole governmental system was incumbered, and by which the business of every department was incumbered by innumerable, useless, and unnecessary forms. He wished, before sitting down, to say one word as to the transport service, with which he was more intimately acquainted, the more so as he

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was not in the House the other night when the right hon. Baronet, late at the head of the Admiralty (Sir J. Graham), asked for and obtained a Vote of 7,000,000 l. for that service. He wished to direct attention to a return delivered on Saturday last of the number of transports now employed. He, a few months ago, moved for returns more in detail, including the names of the transports, the price paid for them, the quantity of stores sent to the army in the East by means of the transports, and the amount each vessel had taken. That return he was surprised to find hail not yet been laid upon the table; but, looking at the Return they had, he found that no less than 220,000 tons of shipping now engaged as regular transports were required to supply an army reduced at the present time to 25,000 men. But that was not all, for since the date of that Return 30,000 tons more had been engaged, making 250,000 tons of regular transports, besides about 100,000 tons of other vessels engaged in carrying stores, making a total of 350,000 tons to serve the remnant of an army of 25,000 men. With 350,000 tons of shipping he or any other man of business, would undertake to provide transport not only for our army, but for the whole of the French army now in the Crimea also, and to convey all the stores required. Of course he did not mean to say that this could be done by the system—or rather the no-system—now resorted to; but by employing the ships in lines, and keeping them regularly employed, instead of leaving some of the steamers of the largest power, and hired at a vast expense, to be used as hospital ships, besides others that were waiting in the Black Sea, doing nothing. These were matters the House ought to look to when they were called upon to vote 7,000,000 l. for the transport service. The right hon. Baronet the late First Lord of the Admiralty had admitted that there was something wrong in the transport system, and had stated that a remedy was to be applied. But how did the Admiralty propose to remedy the evil? By appointing a Transport Board. That was merely transferring the responsibility from one man's shoulders to those of a number of men. When they had one man responsible they knew whom to look to, but when the duty was transferred to a Board there was practically no responsibility. He therefore protested against this project of entrusting the management of the trans-
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port service to a Board, and hoped the responsibility would yet be placed in the hands of one efficient person. They need not go far to look for such a man—they had one already at the Admiralty, in the person of Captain Milne, who he hoped. in any promotion that might take place in that department, would be appointed to such service. It might be said that the sum granted for this particular service was too large to be placed under the control of any one man; but without going into that question, he might observe that, if Captain Milne was appointed, he would he under the cheek both of the Minister at War and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. [Mr. GLADSTONE: The Chancellor of the Exchequer has nothing to do with it.] The right hon. Gentleman the late Chancellor of the Exchequer says the Chancellor of the Exchequer has nothing to do with that money, but he thought, when a Bill for 7,000,000 l. was placed before him to pay, the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to have very much to do with it. He ought to know what it was for, and how the money was to be expended. He would just mention to the blouse that one company, the West India Mail Company, had no less than 17,000 tons of their ships employed as transports, for the use of which he calculated they were receiving at the rate of 600,000 l. per annum. That was an extraordinary sum, but he did not complain of it, nor did he say the company was not entitled to it; but, then again, the same company, for the use of the same vessels, were receiving from another department of the Government no less than 240,000 l. a year for postal services. He did not mean to say that the company were not doing their work efficiently, though he could hardly understand how they could do the work well while a large proportion of the ships were engaged by the Government in another service. The country, he believed, would never grudge any amount which might be necessary for carrying on the war, but they wanted to see the money properly applied; and, for one, he did not think it was properly applied, especially in the transport service. Before sitting down, he hoped he might be permitted to make a remark upon something which had fallen from the hon. Member for Aylesbury on a former evening. That hon. Gentleman had been accused of wishing to sever the aristocracy and the people. As one of the mass, essentially one of the people, he

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(Mr. Lindsay) never desired to see the day when any Member of that House, or any one out of doors, should wish to sever the connection between the aristocracy and the people. As one of the people, he felt proud of the aristocracy. He was proud of them when he compared them now with what they were formerly, and also when he compared them with the aristocracy of other countries; and if he saw any attempt to separate them from the people, he would be the first to lift up his hand against it. The people did not complain of the aristocracy, nor did they care whether a scion of the house of Redford or the child of some unknown man held the reins of Government. All they required was that the destinies of this country should be intrusted to men of ability and energy, who would carry us through the fearful crisis in which the country now was.
MR. ALCOCKsaid, he was of opinion that our worst foe in the Crimea had been our own mismanagement. Here was a country, occupying more than one-seventh of the entire world, with a frontier of 25,000 miles, with an army called in a general way 1,000,000 strong, and now likely to be augmented to 8,000,000 or 10,000,000; and yet we had attacked that enormous empire at only one single point upon the whole of its vast frontier. What had we done in this contest with Russia? In the north we had done nothing from which one particle of benefit could he derived. Nothing had been done in Poland, in Sweden, or even in Austria, and not a single practical benefit had yet been obtained from one of those countries. Sardinia certainly had come gallantly forward, and shown her spirit of independence, and he hoped by her conduct she would gain the position she deserved in the scale of nations. Then, what had been done with regard to Asia? No assistance had been given there to assist the tribes fighting for their own independence. The fortress of Anapa, on the Sea of Azoff, was still in the hands of Russia, and had not even been attacked; and although England and France boasted of their ascendancy in the Black Sea, it was not true that they had such an ascendancy until Anapa was in their hands. Georgia was also in a state of paralysis, because nothing had been done to assist her. How was the case as regarded Persia? Our Minister, Mr. Murray was certainly now on his way thither, but for nearly two years we had
1896
had no Envoy there. During that time Prince Dolgorouki had insulted the Persian Minister because he would not come into his views with regard to England. We had lost a great opportunity then, for if we had had an able Minister there we might have advanced the interests of England in Persia; but that was neglected, as we had no Envoy there. Persia was of more consequence than seemed to be generally thought; for it should be remembered that it was Persia which, at the instigation of Russia, stirred up the Affghanistan war.
MR. BAILLIEsaid, he wished, before Mr. Speaker left the Chair, to ask for one or two explanations, which he thought to be due from the Government to the House. The hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary for the War Department would recollect that upon a previous evening he (Mr. Baillie) had asked him some questions respecting the new establishment which was to be attached to the army—the land transport service—which appeared to be established upon a very large scale, and with regard to which at that time the hon. Gentleman was not able to give any details to the House. The hon. Gentleman stated, indeed, that it was to consist of not less than 8,000 men; but be was unable to state the number of horses, nor did he say whether it was to be a permanent branch of the army, or only to be attached for this special service in the Crimea. Upon a former occasion, the right lion. Gentleman the late Secretary at War (Mr. S. Herbert) had expressed his opinion that many of the disasters and misfortunes which had attended our arms in the East had been occasioned by the failure or imperfection of our military establishment, and he had drawn a very graphic picture of the state and condition of the English army, which he observed was no army at all, but nothing better than merely a collection of regiments; he had said that the superior officers were unacquainted with their duties; that there was no staff corps attached to the army; that there was no waggon-train attached to it; that there was no commissariat department; and, perhaps, he might have added, that there was no medical department, for that branch appeared to be as defective as any other of the establishments. That was a very melancholy picture of the state of the English army; but it was an extraordinary one to emanate from the Secretary at War. It appeared never to have occurred

1897
to the right hon. Gentleman that it might be his duty to represent this state of things to his colleagues, and to warn them before they sent out an expedition so imperfectly prepared for the invasion of Russia. They had received in due time ample warning of the consequences of their adoption of such a course, and spun that very question of the land transport service they had received advice from the most competent military authorities, but that advice they had wholly disregarded. He believed they had neglected to consult the Commander in Chief with respect to the management of the expedition, and, as far as he could learn, it would seem that that noble Lord had not even seen Lord Raglan's private dispatches. It was a matter well worthy of the consideration of the House whether they ought to appoint a civilian as Minister of War without a council of military men to advise him, or whether they obit not rather to fellow in that case the precedent which they found at the Admiralty, where the head of the department was assisted by a council of the most distinguished naval officers who could afford him information on all the necessary details of the service. At present it was not any part of the business of the Commander in Chief to give advice to the War Minister, and he could not reasonably be expected to give any, because if his advice were proved to be bad he would have to bear the blame of it; and if it should turn out to be good he would get no credit for having tendered it. He also wished to know who was answerable for the proper clothing of the troops? It had been stated that our army had been left to winter on the heights of Sebastopol without any winter clothing; and if that were true, could they be surprised that our soldiers had perished, not in tens, but in hundreds a day, and that one regiment was reported to have lost half its numbers in a space of not more than ten days? The Government declared that they were answerable for the conduct of the war. But he wanted to know who was specially responsible for the management of the different military departments? They had been told that there had not been any proper supply of medicine in the hospital at Balaklava; and if that statement were correct he wished to ask the hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary for the War Department who was answerable for that deficiency?
MR. G. DUNDASsaid, he rejoiced that the subject of the mismanagement of the
1898
transport service had been brought before the House by the hon. Member for Tyne-mouth (Mr. Lindsay), but, at the same time, he regretted that the hon. Gentleman had not stated some particular instances of that mismanagement. He had heard the statement of the hon. and gallant Admiral the Member for Gloucester, the other night, that there was little to reform in the transport service, with unfeigned astonishment, and the inquiries he had since made had satisfied him that the hon. and gallant Admiral's assertion could not be substantiated. He did not blame the department to which the hon. and gallant Admiral belonged, but he blamed the system, by which a department was managed by a number of people so that no single individual was responsible for anything that was done. He would state to the House the case of the steamer Eagle. A short time ago that steamer was taken up by the Government to convey stores to the East, consisting partly of a quantity of medicines, among which were some strong acids. It was thought advisable that these acids should be placed on the duck, above the other stores, and orders were accordingly issued for the rest of the cargo to be put on board, and for the steamer to proceed down the river to take in the acids. But when the steamer arrived at the place where she was to receive the acids, and they were brought on board, some one said, "Why, there is a large quantity of the same acids already in the hold." This was actually found to be the case, and the whole cargo had to be discharged before the steamer could proceed to her destination. Then the Government had taken up a vessel on account of which they lad paid the sum of 2,000 l. to the owner before she went to sea. Another case was that of the steamer Telegraph, said to be a very fast vessel. She sailed from Portsmouth, so heavily laden with stores, that some of the pipes of her machinery burst, and her hold was flooded; while at the same time she could only carry three days' supply of coal. None of those misfortunes to which he had referred would, in his opinion, have taken place if the care of the transport service had been confided to one man, on whom the responsibility would rest of seeing that the proper thing was done at the proper time. He did not wish to throw the slightest obloquy on the gallant officer who had been referred to by the hon. Member for Tynemouth, but he would press upon

1899
the noble Lord at the head of the Government the necessity of employing the service of men of talent, energy, and business habits, and, if be did so, he would add even to the reputation which he already possessed.
ADMIRAL BERKELEYsaid, he should have thought that, after the explanation of his right hon. Friend the late First Lord of the Admiralty, the speech of the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, and that of the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Lindsay), would have been unnecessary. It had been inferred that the whole amount of tonnage employed by the Government had been employed for the service of 25,000 men, but to that he was prepared to give a direct contradiction. The tonnage employed by the Government had not been employed solely in the service of the English army, but in the service of the French and Turkish as well, and, instead of their being employed in the service of 25,000 men, they were employed in the service of almost 100,000. Those two hon. Members had praised the management of Captain Milne; but, at the same time, both appeared to him to complain of there having been egregious blunders. Now, he could only say that he was ready to share the responsibility of any error which had been committed by the Board of which he was a member.
MR. MUNTZsaid, that about three or four years ago he was informed that a representation had been made to the Government regarding the improvements which had been effected in the staff of the French army, and, at the same time, it was stated that if it should ever be the bad fortune of this country to come into collision with France, although the bravery of our troops might prove successful in the outset, still, the more perfect organisation of the army of that country would enable it to overcome us in the end. He was informed that, in consequence of that statement, a Commission had been appointed to inquire into the circumstances of the case, and that, although the Report of that Commission had been laid before the Government, it had never yet been acted upon. He merely wished to state that, if the case which he had mentioned to the House were correct, there must be, in his opinion, great blame attached to some one.
MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, he was desirous of giving all the information in his power in answer to the questions of the hon. Member for Inverness-shire (Mr.
1900
Baillie). He did not know that he could add anything to the information he had already given with regard to the land transport corps. The principle on which that corps was established was the principle of the division of labour, of a proper superintendence and responsibility, so that care should be taken that everything should be done which was required for the service of the army in the field at the right time and in the right place. The land transport service had hitherto been under the control of the Commissariat; but as the duty of supplying provisions for the troops was fully sufficient to occupy the whole time of the head of that department, the land transport corps was established, and Colonel M'Murdo placed at its head, and that officer had already left England. He had previously stated, that when it was fully organised the corps would consist of 8,000 men, but of course the number was less now. Colonel M'Murdo's plan was to divide the force into divisions, one to be attached to each division of the army; and he had intimated that he should require one mounted native driver for each three mules or horses employed, and one European driver for every ten animals; so that there would be for every ten animals three native drivers and one European driver. Any improvements in the system which might be suggested would of course be adopted by Colonel M'Murdo, at the same time he might state that it was intended that this transport corps should form a permanent branch of the army. With regard to the clothing of the army, it was charged in the current financial year. Up to a late period the clothing was purchased and issued by the colonels of regiments; but those officers had now no pecuniary interest in the supply of clothing. Under the Votes agreed to for the present year, the clothing would be distributed under the direction of the War Office. That is, the War Office for the present year would use the agency of the colonels for contracting with the clothiers, but the bills would be sent in to the War Office, and paid there. Although the colonels had no longer a pecuniary interest in the issue of clothing, yet for the present year the soldier would have the advantage of the agency of those who had hitherto supplied them. With regard to the warm clothing issued to the troops in the field, that was issued by order of the Secretary of State for War, and the War Office had nothing to do with that extraordinary issue.

1901
With regard to the supply of medicine to the hospital at Balaklava, he was not aware that there was any complaint of a deficiency there, and the question of the hon. Member for North Northamptonshire (Mr. A. Stafford) the other night applied to the hospital at Scutari. With regard to quinine, there was no foundation for the complaint that there was a deficiency in that medicine. Dr. Smith had informed him that since our army left this country there had been sent out to the general store at Constantinople, whence all the hospitals derived their supplies, 850 lbs. of quinine, which was eight times the quantity which had been hitherto required by 60,000 men of the British army in a year, and there could not have been more than 2001bs. used yet, so that there was an excess of that particular medicine in question for the army. With regard to the remarks of the hon. Member for Birmingham, he could say that his suggestions had been anticipated, and a Commission was now sitting in Paris, comprising an artillery and engineer officer, to inquire into the system of the French army, and the French Government was affording it every facility. He hoped the Report would be ready before no great length of time.
MR. MUNTZsaid, he wished to explain that he had referred to the fact of no notice being taken of a Report made some time ago, but did not in the least mean to refer to what was being done at present.
MR. EVELYN DENISONsaid, when the army went from this country to the East it was little contemplated that such services would be cast upon it as it had since been called on to perform. Some thought the army would never go beyond Malta, and others believed that an entrenched camp at Constantinople would be all that would be required; but no one then dreamed that an expedition to the Crimea would be undertaken. He had a remark to make upon one subject, which had an important bearing on the efficiency of the army—the employment of men of advanced years who were past the period of their vigour and strength. It was no reproach to a man that he was between sixty and seventy years of age, but rather it was greatly to his honour that, instead of seeking repose at such a time of life, he would devote the remnant of his strength to the service of his country; but the consequences were very much to be regretted, when an arduous and difficult task was imposed on such an officer. He hoped that
1902
those in military command, who were disqualified by age and infirmities, would be removed. He was happy to observe that a precedent for this had been made in the case of Sir John Burgoyne, an officer of high standing, who had been not recalled, but relieved from the position in which he was before placed, and on whom a high encomium had been at the same time bestowed. He hoped the Government would go further in the same course. He did not intend, directly or indirectly, to point at the distinguished officer in the chief command of the army; there was a different question involved in his case, but no doubt it would be of great advantage that the Commander in Chief of the army should be more in the prime of life. At any rate, all the generals of division and officers of brigade ought to be men in their full vigour. He considered this a matter of such extreme importance that he should be inclined to estimate the disposition of the Government by the degree in which they gave it their attention.
COLONEL DUNNEsaid, that the Government were now about to form a transport corps, which undoubtedly was very necessary, but why, he would ask, was it not done when the army went out, instead of being left until the army was nearly exhausted? It was the Commissariat who were responsible for the transport, as well as for the provisioning of the army, and he believed that to the neglect of that department, not only abroad, but in the Treasury, where it was till lately administered, the losses of that army were chiefly to be attributed. In the Spanish war there were several departments established for the transport of the army, baggage, and reserve, and the minutest details were laid down by Sir George Murray, which might have taught the men who had to conduct the present war how to conduct it properly. But it was not until now, when we had lost one-half of the army, that they applied themselves to form a transport service. He felt confident, however, that under Colonel M'Murdo that transport service would be made complete as soon as could be anticipated. He did not believe the general officers deserved all the blame that was cast upon them. As for Sir John Burgoyne, there was not a more capable and efficient officer in Europe, and he did not think anything would be gained by exchanging him for General Jones, although this latter was also an excellent officer. He contended that the great fault

1903
of the expedition was its being undertaken without proper means. The commanders were forced to undertake operations for which their means were totally unfit; and although it might not be wise for the Committee to go minutely into these subjects, it would be found that there were difficulties pressing severely on the English forces, and that many excuses were to be made for our army which it would not be prudent to reveal. But he was sure the Committee would do much in bringing to light the total incapacity of the Administration at home. The French system of état major was no doubt superior to our own, but it was not applicable to our army; we might, however, select officers for the staff, from the senior department of the Military College at Sandhurst, where there were now fourteen officers of sufficient standing for such appointments, having served four years in some regimental rank, and having studied in order to qualify themselves for staff employment. He should like to know how many of them had been appointed to the staff; he knew that some of the most efficient had applied for such appointments, and had been rejected. The staff of our army in the Crimea had certainly not been the most distinguished part of the army, but it had been the best rewarded. If hon. Gentlemen would look at the distribution of rewards, as published in the Gazette, they would be surprised to see how large a proportion of those rewards came to the officers of the staff as compared with those of the line. Of the lieutenant colonelcies, given for distinguished services, two were given to officers of the staff out of seven altogether. Of the brevet rank of lieutenant colonel there were fourteen, the whole of which were given to the staff, with one exception. Of the brevet rank of major there were fifty-three who received it, of whom there were forty-one serving on the staff, and eleven in the cavalry or infantry of the line. Now that, certainly, was not a fair distribution of honours; and the staff was sufficiently desirable and advantageous in itself, without an unequal distribution of honours in its favour. This was not a new question, for he himself had given evidence upon it, four years ago, before the Committee upon promotion in the army; nothing, however, had since been done. Now, with respect to the clothing of the army: the system had been changed, and the War Office, instead of the colonels, made the contracts with
1904
clothiers, and a board of officers assembled to examine the quality of the clothing when it was sent down. That was an amazing improvement; but when it was a question, not of the quality of the clothes purchased, but of the sort of clothes that would be most convenient and fitting, then a clothing board, consisting of old officers, who might not have been in actual command for many years, was appointed to investigate, and that, he considered, was not the best authority; it would be better to assemble a board of lieutenant colonels, who were in active command of regiments, and had opportunities every day of seeing what was required. They would not have sent out such hideous and useless dresses as those which were provided. He must also refer to the delays which had occurred in deciding upon the length of the muskets for rifle regiments. Another subject to which he wished to call attention, was the want of barracks for the militia regiments in Ireland. At this time the Government were paying for billets in almost all the large towns of Ireland, and there were continual disputes between the inhabitants and the military authorities about it, and many people had been fined for not providing the accommodation required; whilst in those very towns there were buildings which could be hired much cheaper than the price of the billets. Unless the Government attended to this matter, considerable inconvenience would be caused.
MR. HARDINGEsaid, he wished to say one word with regard to what had fallen from his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Portarlington (Colonel Dunne). One of the charges which he brought against the Government, if he understood him rightly, was, that no officers from the senior department at Sandhurst had been appointed to the general staff of the army. Now, what was the case? No less than nine or ten officers from the senior department at Sandhurst had been appointed to the general staff. He would instance time names of the following officers in the Quartermaster General's Department:—Major Morris, who led the 17th Lancers at Balaklava; Captain Wetherall, Captain Sankey, and others, who had received certificates for high proficiency, and had taken honours at Sandhurst. He believed that the accommodation at the senior department of Sandhurst might be advantageously increased. At present only fifteen officers could be accommodated;

1905
that number, he considered, ought to be augmented; but as so many charges had been brought against the Government which might be answered, and so many misrepresentations had occurred, he hoped the House would excuse him for merely stating what he happened to know to be matter of fact.
MR. J. G. PHILLIMOREsaid, he wished to ask how it was that the 46th Regiment was without clothing in the Crimea; whether any person had been punished for that neglect; and whether it was disputed that, inconsequence of that neglect, the men had perished in a frightful way?
MR. W. WILLIAMSsaid, he wished to compare the number of men voted for the army in 1835, with the approbation of the Duke of Wellington, with the number voted in 1852, the year before this war broke out. The army and auxiliary forces had increased during that period to nearly double the number that was deemed necessary by the Duke of Wellington; the charges, consequently, ought not to be made, which had often been advanced against his late hon. Friend (Mr. Hume), that his frequent Motions for economy had tended too much to reduce the standing army. There was an increase of nearly 6,000,000 l. in the cost of our military defences in 1852, as compared with the cost in 1835, and it was not, therefore, to Mr. Hume's Motions that the present inefficient state of the army was to be attributed. What was the amount of our army in 1792? The whole number of men in the army, navy, and artillery, in the year before the commencement of the French war was 48,927, besides 33,000 militia; and the whole cost of the army, navy, and ordnance in that year was only 4,760,000 l. Now, let that be compared with 16,530,000 l, their cost in the year 1853, and it would not appear as if there had been any undue reduction. Mr. Pitt was charged at that time with having injured the public service by reducing the army; and he then said that if reductions had not been made since the American war, the country would not have been in a condition to go to work in the conduct of the French war with the energy it was called upon to display. He now wished to direct the attention of the House to the extraordinary cruelty in the case of the flogging of a soldier belonging to the 26th Regiment of the line at Newcastle, of which the following account was taken from a Newcastle paper—
1906
"The prisoner, after being stripped, was tied up to the triangles by the arms and legs, while the adjutant stood by, to count each stroke as it fell from the powerful arm of the drummer, selected from among the others for his aptitude in what is called slow time—a refinement of cruelty only known to the English army. I had expected a bloody scene, but the cruelty far exceeded all I had even dreamed of human torture. At the fifth stroke of the lash, the flesh rose up on the sufferer's back in welts almost as thick as my wrist, and the writhing of the body showed the agony he endured. As each successive lash fell on the lacerated and bleeding back, blood flowed about on all around him. After the fortieth lash had been inflicted, he was untied, but after staggering a few paces, fell fainting, when he was removed to the hospital, and placed under the medical officers. He has yet to receive the remainder of his punishment, 104 days of solitary confinement."
The editor of the Newcastle paper added—
"In justice to the officers, we have heard it stated that they were averse to flogging in this case, but were overruled by a recently arrived high military authority, well known as a martinet."
Now, he (Mr. Williams) did say, that when it appeared that Omar Pacha had remonstrated with Lord Raglan, in some cases, for having allowed the flogging of a soldier in the Crimea, it was most disgraceful to us that the only soldiers in Europe, except the Russians, who were subject to be flogged were the soldiers of the British army. He did hope the Government would take up this matter. He believed, that the practice of flogging operated strongly against persons entering our army; for who would like to become a soldier to be subject to such a punishment? And if scenes like that were often repeated, the Government might have to double the bounty, but they would not get men to join the army. Was it to be endured, he asked, that the British soldier, one of the bravest in the world, should be the only soldier, except the Russian, whose back was to be lacerated with a cat-o'-nine tails? No doubt there had been a great diminution in the cases of corporal punishment being inflicted; and he saw in the Army Estimates a charge of 21,000 l. for military prisons. He did not at all complain of that charge, because he presumed that it was applied, to a great extent, to supersede the system of flogging. He saw with gratification that in a majority of the regiments no flogging had taken place; and he hoped that, when it was found so many of the regiments could do without it, it might soon be abolished altogether, for he was certain there were plenty of other punishments to be found, without one so degrading.
MAJOR REEDsaid, he wished to know whether any reforms were intended to be made at the Horse Guards? He would not enter into details of the iniquities of that establishment, but he trusted the Government would turn their attention to it, as reform in that department was generally demanded by the country.
MR. OTWAYsaid, that with reference to the statement of the hon. Member for Downpatrick (Mr. Hardinge) concerning the staff appointments, he should like to know the date at which the nine officers who had been alluded to were appointed. But even if the fact were so, there had been fifty staff appointments made, and what he complained of was, that there should be one single officer appointed to the staff without such qualifications, so long as there were others serving in the army who had been instructed specially for that service in the senior department at Sandhurst. Those who had gone through the prescribed studies, with the understanding that they were to have staff appointments, could hardly ever obtain them, except by private interest, or on the application of some general officer. He denied that the ill success of our army was to be ascribed to any extraordinary inclemency of the season, or to any unprecedented difficulties. In the campaign of 1848 in Transylvania there was a large army moved without tents, and bivouacking on the snow, obliged to manufacture its own arms, and all its gigantic operations were carried on in a climate much more rigorous than that of the Crimea, and the circumstances were much less difficult in the present campaign, but our calamities were owing to the want of foresight in the authorities at home. He wished to ask one question of the hon. Under Secretary for War. At this time, when we had to vote so many soldiers, he wished to know why the country should be deprived of the services of two, belonging to a regiment now in England; he alluded to those two private soldiers who, as we saw in the papers, were lately tried by a court martial for the offence of making away with their ammunition, and were sentenced, private Gibson to fifty-two days' imprisonment, and private Gallagher to 162 days' imprisonment. He thought the severity of that sentence was really extraordinary, for surely the act of shooting at the Czar or at his portrait, of which these two men had been guilty, was one that might at this time be treated more leniently.
COLONEL NORTHsaid, he thought it would have been fairer towards the army and the officers of the 26th Regiment if the hon. Member for Lambeth (Mr. W. Williams) had made certain that there was any foundation for the report which he had read from some public newspaper. The other evening the hon. Member had favoured them with an opinion of the soldierly appearance of the Guards, and expressed his pleasure at observing their uniforms were changed from brickdust colour to scarlet. He could not tell where the hon. Member's eyes had been, but for the last twenty or thirty years the Guards had always worn scarlet. He quite agreed that scarlet was infinitely superior to brickdust colour, and, if the hon. Member and his Friends would support him, he (Col. North) would be happy to move that the whole British army should be clothed in scarlet. As an old soldier, nothing was more painful to him than to see the sentries pf the Guards at the present moment. He did not wish to say one word detrimental to the young soldiers now in the uniform of Her Majesty's Guards, and he had no doubt with time, discipline, and drill, they would make gallant troops; but where were the splendid specimens of the manhood of England whom they saw last year at the corners of every street, who, with their Herculean frames, soldierly appearance, gallant demeanour, and devotion to their Sovereign, were the pride of the country? It was a perfect farce now to boast of the appearance of the Guards. The hon. Member for Lambeth came down to the House stating facts with reference to the army that showed his ignorance of the subject, and before he talked of the Guards or of the army he ought to make himself better acquainted with them.
COLONEL SIBTHORPsaid, he must protest against men speaking about the army who did not know the muzzle from the butt-end of a musket. The hon. Gentleman's (Mr. W. Williams) speech was an electioneering speech, cooked up for his constituents. He hoped the House entertained a better feeling of regard for the army than the hon. Gentleman. As for his part, he had constantly heard him, but always with the same feeling of contempt. He would not take the hon. Gentleman as a member of an awkward squad.
MR. MONTAGUE CHAMBERSsaid, he could not resist saying a few words when he heard the Guards attacked. It was with the deepest feelings of anxiety

1909
that he had heard that a battalion of the Guards had been ordered to the Crimea, and that the order had been afterwards countermanded. He could not understand why they had forfeited the highest privilege of a soldier to be the first in the place of danger and peril. He had ascertained, however, that it was because they had not a sufficient number of able-bodied men to go out. These men, however, enjoyed the privilege of not being sent to the East or West Indies, although, upon an occasion of emergency, they had been ordered to Canada. In the Peninsular war the Guards had distinguished themselves—they had gone out 1,800 strong, and in six weeks they were reduced to 600.
MR. NAPIERsaid, he was anxious to call the attention of the hon. Under Secretary for War to the question put by the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Otway) as to the punishment of the two privates for firing at an effigy of the Czar. There were probably good reasons for it, but he thought it most desirable, in the present state of the army and the country, that some explanation should be given on this subject.
MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, that it would be irregular for him to speak on this at present, but that when they were in Committee he would do so.
COLONEL KNOXsaid, with reference to the countermanding of the battalion of Guards, he believed that the colonel had given orders without consulting the Commander in Chief. He believed that there were not enough of Minié rifles to supply the whole of the battalion, and it was therefore recommended to send them out in drafts. With regard to the offence of these two men, he considered it a most grievous one. Here were men making use of the ammunition given them for the public service, and firing in the midst of a crowded barracks. He never heard of such a thing in his life, and he thought that the punishment was a proper and a salutary one. He would suggest to the hon. Member for Lambeth whether it was very judicious to be reading ex parte statements from newspapers.
MR. W. WILLIAMSsaid, the statement he made was from a newspaper which had been circulated about the country. It was sent to him by a gentleman of high respectability, and was accompanied by a letter.
Motion of the House to go into a Committee of Supply agreed to.

SUPPLY—ARMY ESTIMATES.
House in Committee.
(1.) 314,984 l., Staff.
ADMIRAL WALCOTT said: This vote I cannot permit to pass without availing myself of such an opportunity to express that admiration which I, in common with this House and the country, entertain, when I review the exertions and self-denial of Miss Nightingale and her companions. With a wonderful fortitude and high religious purpose she left her happy home and country to go into a land of strangers, her one object to minister at the bedside of the wounded, in the midst of disease, trial, suffering, and sorrow, from which we shield our wives and daughters, and such as but few in this country could endure even to look upon; nor can I believe a more grateful tribute can be offered to that noble-hearted lady, since such womanly merit ever shrinks from praise, and such highsouled enterprise looks to God and not to man for commendation, than to mention here the names of two friends of hers—two associated with her in affection, and who accompanied her on her mission of mercy and kindness; they, having shared her anxieties, deserve a portion of the common praise. I need scarcely say I allude to Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, and it is only an act of justice to allude to one other source of aid, one great means of relieving her anxiety and forwarding her good work. Without warm clothing, without comforts, without the little luxuries, without the stimulants and all the indispensable appliances to cheer the drooping and invigorate the convalescent, the tenderest nurse and the most assiduous surgeon are crippled in any effectual service; they exhaust themselves in mind and body to little purpose. It is due, then, to that journal which holds so prominent a place among the daily press to say it became foremost in the van to point to succour to the sick and wounded in the hospitals at Scutari—it collected contributions for a public fund, as its own subscription it provided an able steward of those bounties at its own personal cost. What has been the result? Testimonies of gratitude, not only in Scutari, but in Balaklava, and in the trenches, and on board the transports, for lives preserved through this humane interference; only one word have I further to add, that it is a marked characteristic of this country, and one, though not without precedent in this century, yet without parallel, that from every age and condition

1911
should have been poured forth contributions to the Patriotic Fund, providing every earthly means to restore the sick and wounded, and give comfort to their families at home—the men who, in return, ennoble her name, who went forth with her prayers and shall return with her honour not only safe but doubled in their keeping.
MR. W. WILLIAMSsaid, he must complain of the attack which had been made upon him by the hon. and gallant Member for Marlow (Colonel Knox) for a statement which he had made on a former occasion. Now, what was it that he on that occasion stated? He complained that the Guards had a sum of 500 l. 5s. 8d. granted to them for table allowance, which was not allowed to any other part of the service of the line; and his comment amounted simply to the observation that the bill of fare for breakfast and dinner was very sumptuous. If the hon. and gallant Colonel supposed that by the adoption of strong language he would deter him (Mr. Williams) from observing upon these abuses and condemning them, he was most wofully mistaken. Although he was aware there was something thought to be very terrible in the name of a soldier, he begged to tell the hon. and gallant Colonel that he was neither afraid of him nor of any other man.
COLONEL KNOXsaid, he wished to call the attention of the Secretary at War to the inadequate allowance made to the officer in command of the South-Western district. It was known that an immense number of foreigners of distinction annually went down to visit the dockyards at Portsmouth, to whom every hospitality was naturally shown, and in the course of their visit they were generally shown over the garrison. The general officer commanding there was expected to keep up his station, although he possessed no other means whatever than his allowance from the Government. No less than four general officers under whom he had himself served had been placed in that situation; and he believed that one officer had left his appointment because he had been so much injured in his pecuniary resources by the demands made upon him. Now, he contended that no officer holding such a position ought to suffer any pecuniary loss.
MR. FRENCHsaid, he rose to say a few words in personal explanation in consequence of an observation which had fallen from him in the early part of the evening which had been misunderstood. It was true he did use the words "rank and
1912
file," in speaking of the gallantry of the army, but he most certainly at the same time recognised the services of the regimental officers.
LORD HOTHAMsaid, he wished to refer to a document of great importance, relating to the future administration of the army, which had lately been laid upon the table of the House. A Royal Commission had been issued last year for the purpose of inquiring as to the best mode of improving the system of promotion in the army, with the view of bringing to the higher ranks of the service officers at an earlier period of life than those who attained such positions in the ordinary course of gradation. The Commissioners having reported, Her Majesty approved of their recommendations, and directed the Secretary at War and the Master General of the Ordnance to take them for their guidance in their respective offices. Warrants were accordingly issued, laying down the principle that promotions, instead of following the order of seniority, as they had hitherto done to a great extent, should proceed by selection. The first item of the Royal warrant declared that the rank of field marshal should henceforth be conferred without reference to seniority. This provision he considered was wholly unnecessary, because under the previous system the rank of field marshal was conferred by the Sovereign upon great occasions without regard to seniority; and, to cite a memorable instance, the Duke of Wellington could not have been made a field marshal, as he was, after the battle of Vittoria, if only the oldest general could have been so promoted. The second alteration made by the Queen's Warrant provided that, instead of officers rising from the rank of lieutenant colonel by degrees to that of general officers, without reference to the service they might have rendered, henceforth a certain service as lieutenant colonels should be essential to qualify them for the rank of general officers; and the term fixed was a period of three years in command of a regiment, or as lieutenant colonel of a regiment, excepting in the case of an officer filling a post on the staff corresponding to the command of a regiment, and one or two other exceptions. One qualification which had been since added to the original recommendations regarding the promotion of general officers was of a most extraordinary character, because it entitled officers who had served for six years as equerry to the Sovereign to at-

1913
tain the rank of general officers. Now, without desiring to enter into the question whether the office of equerry was not a Ministerial appointment, there certainly was nothing in the functions such an officer discharged to justify his receiving military promotion or reward. It was very much to be regretted that the Report of the Commissioners contained no recommendation that the staff of the army should be placed upon a different footing from that on which it had heretofore stood. The officers of the staff enjoyed all the advantages of the army, such as higher pay, greater promotion and distinction, superior comfort, and lighter as well as more agreeable duties; and it was, therefore, self-evident that appointments to the staff should be held out as prizes to be bestowed on officers of the greatest merit, and on those who had rendered the most distinguished services. In his opinion, no one should be placed upon the staff but such as were fully qualified; staff appointments should be considered the reward of superior merit. Young men who entered the army should be taught to look up to them as the highest object of their ambition, and that they could only be obtained by devoting themselves to their duties and to the study of their profession. If they made the staff to consist entirely of educated officers, the country would have confidence in their ability to discharge their duty, and no other portion of the army would grudge them the advantages which they might possess. It could not be denied that at the present moment much irritation had been caused in the minds of regimental officers by the indiscriminate promotion of officers upon the staff, and believing, as he did, that every one had concurred in maintaining the credit and honour of the profession, there could be no reason why so large a share of the distinctions and rewards should be distributed among the staff. For himself, he expressed his perfect satisfaction with the Royal Warrant by which the recent promotions had been made; it had left him exactly where he was, and he hoped the house would not suppose that he was actuated in the observation which he had made by any lurking feeling of personal disappointment. It had been stated by the noble Lord the Minister of War that the Government intended to send out an officer who should report upon the whole state of the army. That officer, it was intended, should com-
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municate with Lord Raglan, and inform the Government of his views upon all matters concerning the operations of the army in the Crimea. A man in that position would require to be possessed of no common powers of judgment and discernment. He begged, therefore, to ask the Government if they had fixed upon any officer to perform this delicate duty, and, if so, whether there would be any objection to announce his name.
MR. LAYARDsaid, that in the last despatch received from Lord Raglan he observed with some astonishment the following paragraph—
"Forage is our only want, and this arises chiefly from the Commissary General not receiving from England the supplies of hay upon which he has reckoned."
That was, he was almost tempted to say, a most scandalous thing. Three months ago our horses were dying for want of forage, and it seemed most extraordinary to him that they were made to depend upon this country for forage, when within three days sail abundance of chopped straw and other forage were to be obtained. He hoped the hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary of War would explain the reason of this scantiness of forage. An hon. Member had also inquired what provision had been made to furnish forage for the Turkish troops. Now, if we were unable to supply our own, he did not very well see how we could supply the Turks. Another question which he wished to ask was with respect to the tents. This was a subject of great importance. At present no one knew what direction the war would take, whether peace would soon be concluded or whether we were to have a protracted campaign. As far as he understood, the tents at present provided for the army before Sebastopol yore bell-tents, suitable to the operations in which the army were now engaged; but if they were to have a protracted campaign, and operations were to he extended over a large district of country, tents of another description would be required, particularly such as would be useful in protecting the troops from heavy dews. Colonel Elers Napier, to whom he had referred the other night, had sent him a drawing of a portable tent, which seemed to be quite adapted to a lengthened campaign such as he had described. The French army had two descriptions of tents, and, where troops were advancing or making movements in a coun-

1915
try, small tents were extremely useful, especially in a country with the climate of Asia Minor. Then, as to the summer clothing for the troops, he trusted that before July the patterns might be prepared, and that before November the summer clothing might be sent out to the soldiers. He would remark that the usual summer clothing served out to the troops at home and in the colonies was not adapted to the climate of the Crimea. He earnestly entreated the attention of Government to the subject, as it was one of the very highest importance to the health and welfare of the army. There was another subject to which he wished to allude, as it affected in some degree the reputation of a gallant officer. Shortly before the Duke of Newcastle left office, Colonel, now Major General, Chesney, was summoned from Ireland to take charge of the foreign contingent about to be raised. That officer came over and entered into communication with the War Minister, but the Duke of Newcastle retiring shortly after, General Chesney was told, without any reason given, that his services were not required. He was thus summarily dismissed, although he certainly might have expected somewhat more courtesy and consideration. With regard to the staff appointments, which had been referred to, he might mention the case of a gallant officer, a friend of his, who he found from recent despatches had been, unfortunately, wounded. He meant Colonel Dickson, one of the most gallant officers in the army, who had rendered most signal services to his country, who had been mentioned in more than one despatch, and whose name was celebrated throughout Europe—that officer had received no distinction whatever, he remained still a captain of artillery, notwithstanding his meritorious services. That officer was on Lord Raglan's staff, and might have received all the honours and promotion which the other staff officers had enjoyed, but when the work began before Sebastopol he requested to be placed in command of a battery, and in that position he had remained during the whole siege up to the present time. However, he still remained a captain of artillery, having obtained his lieutenant colonelcy by brevet some time previous. He trusted the hon. Gentleman would excuse him for calling his attention to these subjects, which were of no inconsiderable importance.
MR. BAILLIEsaid, he wished to ask
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the Government whether they had taken any steps to provide suitable clothing for the wounded soldiers in hospital at Scutari? It was well known that for some time the wounded soldiers at Scutari were unprovided with clothing or necessaries by the Government, and were actually dependent upon public charity. Even the late Secretary at War did not think it improper to write begging letters on behalf of the troops, and to solicit the generosity of the students at the University of Oxford and Cambridge, to the Inns of Court, and to various individuals for old coats and trousers to cover the nakedness of the wounded soldiers. He (Mr. Baillie) had one of these begging letters from the late Secretary at War—a very great curiosity as coming from a Minister of the Crown. The letter ran as follows:—
"Mr. Sidney Herbert presents his compliments to the Bishop of Moray and Ross, and begs to say, that any contributions people are kindly disposed to make for the use of the army will be thankfully received and forwarded, if sent to Messrs. Hayter and Howell, 52, Mark Lane. It is requested an invoice of contents may accompany each parcel, and that the direction may be distinct either to Scutari or the Crimea, according to its destination. If a suggestion may be permitted, pillowcases and sheets for the hospital might be at present more acceptable than shirts."
There was a distinct admission that sheets and pillowcases were wanted for the hospital at Scutari. He wished to know why those things were not sent immediately by the Government? Were the soldiers to wait until the Bishop of Moray and Ross had been able to excite the charitable feelings of his diocese? It must be remembered that those who sent out shirts sent them as presents to the soldiers, whereas sheets and pillowcases would go into the stores of the Government. The letter was an extraordinary production altogether. The wounded soldiers were indebted chiefly to those gentlemen who had had the direction of the newspaper fund. It was by their exertions that many thousands of our wounded fellow-countrymen had been saved from dying for want of the common necessaries. It was by the exertions of what had been called a "ribald press" that England had been saved from infamy and disgrace, and her annals had been freed from the blackest page ever inscribed thereon.
MR. WARNERsaid, he thought that much of the mischief that had occurred in the Crimea had arisen from the inefficient

1917
state of our staff, which had brought down upon us the sneers of our allies, the indignation of Europe, and the disgust of every officer in Her Majesty's service. He trusted that the Government would take immediate measures for the thorough reorganisation of the staff.
MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, the object of the warrant of promotion referred to by the noble Lord (Lord Hotham) was to enable the Crown to employ comparatively young officers in command of brigades and divisions. It was therefore decided that lieutenant colonels who bad served a certain period in command of a regiment should be promoted at once to the rank of colonel, and then be eligible to employment as a general officer. The noble Lord at the same time had called attention to the first clause of the warrant, which said that rank should be given irrespective of seniority. He (Mr. Peel) presumed that the recommendations of the Commissioners embodied in the warrant had been taken as the best test for promotion. With respect to the case mentioned by the noble Lord he would observe that a lieutenant colonel serving as equerry to the Sovereign must serve double the period required by a lieutenant colonel in command of a regiment. With regard to the questions of the hon. Member for Aylesbury, he (Mr. Peel) fully admitted their importance, and he could assure the Committee that they would receive the earnest attention of the different departments connected with the administration of the army. In reply to the question of the hon. Member for Inverness—shire (Mr. Baillie) he could state that the Board of Ordnance had given directions to establish stores at Constantinople, whence all necessaries could be procured, and although it might have been the case formerly that soldiers upon quitting hospital had not received that proper attention to which they were entitled, yet now that these stores had been established, such a thing could not occur again. As to the reorganisation of the staff, it was so large a subject, and he had been to short a time in office, that he did not feel justified in giving any answer until he had had an opportunity of consulting his noble Friend the Secretary of State for the War Department.
LORD HOTHAMsaid, he must beg to say that the hon. Gentleman had wholly failed to answer his objection as to the promotion of equerries to the staff. The
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objection was not that the period of six years' service as equerry was not long enough to entitle them to such promotion, but that no period of service as equerries could properly be a title for any military promotion.
MR. MONTAGUE CHAMBERSsaid, he was desirous of asking some questions as to the reorganisation of the medical staff. It was a prevalent opinion that the medical staff in the Crimea ought to be placed on an entirely different footing from that it now occupied. In the first place, with regard to those who were appointed to attend to the sick, it was admitted that there had been great defects with respect to the individual surgeons whose duty it had been to attend to the sick. He thought it was perfectly clear, that with reference to their powers in the performance of their duties, however humane and skilful they might be, those powers had been very much crippled and overtaxed, and that consequently they had been unable to discharge their duties efficiently. There had been a defect—a routine defect—a defect arising from a kind of susceptibility in reference to the departments which had very much interfered with the efficiency of the medical staff. There had been, to his certain knowledge, many enthusiastic and skilful surgeons who had been extremely desirous of going out to the Crimea for the purpose of devoting themselves to one of the most admirable duties that could be performed by men in their station, and yet they had been met by impediments. It struck him (Mr. M. Chambers) that instead of impediments being put in their way, every facility should be afforded to such men, that when they went to put down their names their qualifications should be instantly inquired into, and that if they brought good testimonials they should that instant be marched for the station to which they were desirous of proceeding. But instead of that, when a man put down his name, being desirous of going to the Crimea, he might be despatched forthwith to Van Diemen's Land or Sierra Leone. He therefore thought it was the duty of every Member of Parliament, in the present critical state of affairs, to mention these little incidents to the authorities, in order that a repetition of the evils complained of might be prevented. He was anxious to know what new arrangements had been made to send out an efficient body of surgeons and other medical officers. The second question on

1919
which he sought information was with respect to the medicines. Every one knew that the medical department in the East had exculpated itself from blame on the ground of medicines not being forthcoming, for Dr. Andrew Smith had stated that, long before they were wanted, he sent large quantities to be forwarded to the Crimea, but when they were wanted they were not available; that they were considered as a sort of baggage in the vessels in which they were conveyed, because the medical stores were not sent out in separate vessels as was done by the French, so that before the medicines could be obtained the army stores had to be unpacked.
MR. G. DUNDASsaid, he believed that there had been no more fertile cause of complaint than the premature promotion of the staff officers. There were many deserving officers who had gone through the dangers of Inkerman, but had not been promoted nor mentioned in despatches, merely because they happened to be regimental instead of staff officers. For instance, one of the generals happened to be down at Balaklava on the day of the battle of Inkerman, but, on hearing of what was going forward, he made the best of his way to the front; he was accompanied by a young man—almost a boy, in fact—as aide-de-camp. He arrived on the field late in the day, but both the general and his aide-de-camp were mentioned in despatches, and the young man received his promotion immediately. The hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Layard) had complained of a want of forage at Balaklava, but what had struck him most when he was there was, not the want of forage, but the want of men to receive and distribute it. In fact, there was a very large quantity of forage lying at Balaklava at the very time that horses, within a mile, were actually starving for want of it. Shortly after his arrival, early in December, he rode out to the cavalry camp, about a mile from the town, and the state of the horses there struck him with horror. They were standing at their pickets—and this was after two or three days' successive rain, hail, and snow—without any covering and without even a rug laid over them. Every alternate horse almost lay dead, and the vicinity of the camp was strewed with their carcases. The mane and hair of the tail of many had been eaten off by their neighbours, showing the state of starvation to which they had been reduced, and yet, all
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this time, there was no want of forage at Balaklava, only a mile distant. The ship Cormorant came into the harbour of Balaklava laden with forage, on the 12th of November, and her captain, having with some difficulty persuaded the authorities on shore to relieve him of his cargo, a number of bran bags were taken on shore and laid on the beach; and there they were lying on the 1st of January. But this was no solitary instance of the mode in which affairs were conducted in the Crimea. When it was found that the men on the plateau required vegetables, the steamer Harbinger was sent to Constantinople to purchase some. On her return to Balaklava the captain could find no one to relieve him of his charge—no one would take the responsibility of receiving it. These vegetables remained on board until a strong remonstrance was made to headquarters, when an order was issued by the Commander in Chief that the officers and men should be allowed to go on board and take the vegetables by paying for them. At that time, however, vegetables were to be had on shore, though at a great price; and as there was some difficulty in getting on board, few persons availed themselves of the permission thus given. Time went on, and the great mass of the vegetables began to rot, and, further representations being made at head-quarters, another order was issued—the order which ought to have been made at first—that officers and men should be allowed to go and help themselves, without paying. The effect of this order was, that, though a great proportion of the vegetables had rotted, yet so much of them as could be used at all was very soon got rid of. Such things as these called for the institution of a strict inquiry, and he hoped that it would be made. The departments at home were probably to blame in many instances, but there could be no doubt whatever that the blame of much of the misery that had occurred to the army must be laid on the shoulders of the authorities in the Crimea. A great and grievous error had been committed in not having appointed men of vigour and ability for the discharge of stated duties, and in not making them responsible for the departments over which they were placed. Much misunderstanding had occurred on account of the want of knowledge on the part of different officers as to the particular duties they were to perform. He understood

1921
that one officer whose duty it was to see that a proper and fit road was made from Balaklava to the camp, was under the impression that that fell not under his care, but under that of the engineer; and, consequently, between the two, no road was made, or at least only such a road as aggravated immensely the calamities of the campaign. With respect to this road, which he had frequently passed over, he was a good deal puzzled to come to a conclusion about it; it had a good sound bottom, although he must confess it was very muddy and deep. Many hon. Gentlemen who had visited the Highlands of Scotland, knew very well the difficulties of a Highland road, and were yet aware that carts passed over it without killing the horses. The road from Balaklava to the camp was certainly a wretched one, but he believed that if the horses had been properly fed and attended to, and affairs had been carried on with a little more system, those grave and terrible calamities which had unfortunately occurred, never would have happened, and food would have been conveyed to the soldiers at the camp in sufficient abundance to enable them to maintain their strength. They would also have been supplied with clothing, for there was no want of that in the port of Balaklava, or of fuel, another most needful and indispensable requisite. Had the transport service not broken down between Balaklava and the plateau he firmly believed that the army would not have suffered one-thousandth part of the calamities they had endured. With respect to the officers serving at the camp, he might say that they had been singularly exempted from disease. Many of them were very comfortable, and nearly all in a state of health and vigour; but the reason was sufficiently plain. They were men of independent fortune, and could command the use of beasts of burden, and thus were furnished with a variety of requisites which were denied to the soldiers. Another grave evil was the enormous amount of work which the soldiers had to perform. The English undertook to defend a greater length of line than their numbers justified. The consequence was, that the men had to go into the trenches so frequently, and were kept there so long, that their strength was totally exhausted, and they were thus rendered unfit for duty. He had heard instances of good men going to the surgeons and declaring that, though they were quite well, they were worn out by
1922
fatigue and want of sleep, adding that, if they were to go on sentry they felt they should fall asleep. They said that if they were only put on the sick list and given a few hours' rest they would gladly return to their duty. He had known cases where the doctors, knowing the men, had complied with their request, and the men, refreshed and invigorated, had returned to their work. Repeated reference had been made within the last few weeks to the inability to obtain medicines at Balaklava. There was some signal mismanagement in that, as in almost every department there. A short time before he left the Crimea, late in December, a medical man told him that he had gone down to Balaklava for the purpose of procuring a considerable quantity of opium, which was a sine quâ non in reference to the disease which was scourging the army. On his arrival at Balaklava this medical gentleman found that, instead of so many pounds of opium, he could scarcely get so many ounces; and he returned to the camp compelled, much to his regret, to tell his patients that it was impossible to get the medicines requisite for the maladies they were labouring under. There was another subject to which he trusted the attention of Government would be directed—the state of the transports conveying the sick between Balaklava and Scutari. He believed that since he left the Crimea, this had been considerably improved; but, when he was there, great room for improvement existed. Anything more wretched than the condition of the poor men sent from Balaklava to Scutari could hardly be pictured. The ships which conveyed them were totally destitute of anything like blankets or bedding. He remembered, on one occasion, 600 men being sent down from the plateau to Balaklava, being conveyed by our generous allies, the French, on their ambulance mules. It happened to be a rainy day, and the men, when taken on board in their wet, dripping clothes, had nothing dry to substitute for these; they had only the great coats they wore, and some of them but one blanket; and in this condition they were compelled to lie down on the hard deck. Nevertheless, so great was the change from the misery they had been enduring at the camp, from wet, exposure, and want of proper sustenance, that, wretched as it might seem to lie down on the hard deck of a transport, these men looked upon it as the very acme of comfort. That does not, however, last long, for

1923
when a sick man has to lie for some time on a hard deck he suffers from it, though possibly for a couple of days he may do so with impunity. He had gone in a steamer from Balaklava to Scutari with 300 sick men. The passage was a quick one, for in two days they were brought abreast of the hospital; but, on arriving, there was no accommodation for the sick, and ten days elapsed before the greater number landed. This was a very trying period, and the men died rapidly. He believed that from the time of the vessel leaving Balaklava until the period when the last man quitted the ship, the mortality among the 300 men was at the rate of 11 per cent; but the greater number of these died during the ship's detention at Scutari. This arose from the want of hospital accommodation. Now the French managed these things very much better. They were not one-half so tender with the Turks as the English were. When they wanted a hospital they went and took one, whereas the English entered into a long correspondence, beat about the bush, and took so much time about the matter, that it generally terminated in their losing their chance. He believed that a scheme had already been carried out for the establishment of a hospital at Smyrna; but another excellent suggestion had been made by a gentleman of great military experience in India. His plan was to send out from this country a large wooden building, in separate pieces, to be put together at Sinope. Now, Sinope was but a short distance from Balaklava, and the advantages of the plan were many. One was, that the wounded might be carried from Balaklava, in a very brief time, to a comfortable hospital, in the event of another engagement taking place; and there the necessary operations might be performed. The sad experience of the surgeons had hitherto taught them that secondary operations were hardly ever successful; while those performed in the field had generally turned out satisfactory; but it was impossible to perform anything but a secondary operation, when the patient must be conveyed such a long distance as from Balaklava to Scutari. In the event of this plan being recognised as a sound and good one, as one which the Government would carry out, many valuable lives would be saved. Another advantage would arise from the establishment of this wooden hospital. Stone buildings contracted a deleterious atmosphere, that militated greatly
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against the recovery of patients. They seemed to become impregnated with disease, which hung about them. But in a clean wooden building that was not the case, and a very eminent physician belonging to the civil department recently organised to go out to Smyrna was so fully cognisant of this fact that he was endeavouring, by all means in his power, to bring the subject before the Government. He (Mr. Dundas) trusted, therefore, the Government would take the matter into their consideration, and not think it unworthy of their notice.
MR. MAGUIREsaid, that those who sat on the Treasury benches, though generally responsible for the failure of our troops, had cheered the statement that the men in the trenches had too much to do. But had the 54,000 men sent out there been properly cared for. they would never have suffered as they had done. It was merely another instance of the blundering which prevailed in the departments at home. He felt the profoundest sympathy, as did every Irishman, for our brave troops in the East. He was convinced that the blundering and stupidity of the late Government had caused more destruction in our army than had their Muscovite foes. Had those 54,000 men been watched over by a general like Wellington, would they, he asked, have been reduced to 24,000 effective men at this moment? The whole career of the Government mismanagement had been a huge disaster. He would mention one instance of mismanagement that had come to his knowledge. A large ship, with 190 bullocks on board, for the troops in the trenches, was about to enter Balaklava; but some wretched nincompoop of an official, by his blundering stupidity, kept the vessel waiting five days; and the result was that only eighty bullocks out of the 190 were landed alive. The troops had been literally starved and murdered in the trenches by the neglect of some department, at whose door their blood would lie. He would say this of Lord Raglan, that, from all he had seen and heard, until that general was replaced, we should not have a successful prosecution of the war. It was only through the newspapers that the public derived their information, and through them the Government had been galvanised into something like activity. At a moment when the greatest distress and despondency prevailed in the Crimea, Lord Raglan was never seen; he was not even known to the troops. Surely it was

1925
the duty of a man who had so great a responsibility placed upon him to take all the steps in his power for preserving the efficiency of his troops. These matters must be inquired into, and then it would be seen what answer could be given. The troops had even been denied the last consolations in their dying hours. Only two Roman Catholic clergymen had been sent out at first; of these one had died in the discharge of his sacred duties. Some pressure having been brought upon the Government eight others had been sent out; of these two had died and four were invalided. There were about 5,000 men sick in the camp and at Balaklava, besides those in the hospitals at Scutari and elsewhele. The few Catholic clergymen who were left were totally unequal to the duties they had to perform; and the Government, by neglecting the spiritual wants of the troops. Was nat treating the poor Catholic soldiers properly in this matter. The rev. Mr. Law, when he presented himself at the hospital at Scutari, had been refused admission. The French Government and the French generals were much more careful of their troops; the contrast between their forces and ours was disgraceful to this country. The French had a cavalry; we had none; it had been sacrificed at Balaklava either by the blundering of Lord Raglan or Lord Lucan, but it had the effect to raise high the moral character of the British army. But if soldiers were murdered by incompetency it was disgraceful to the British name. He had one idea; if ever it was the duty of the British Government and generals to make our forces formidable, it was now when we hail an ally from whom, not long ago, we were apprehending invasion. And yet our Government and generals had done more than the worst enemies of this country could have done to render worthless the valour and courage of our soldiers by official blundering and incompetency.
CAPTAIN ARCHDALLsaid, he begged to call attention to a few of the appointments recently made in the army, which were accompanied with a certain degree of injustice to old and meritorious officers. He alluded to the appointment of Generals Bentinck, Campbell, and Pennefather to the colonelcies of regiments. They were worthy, no doubt, of every reward, but in the way in which it was conferred an injustice had been done to old and deserving officers. He could not help expressing himself much disappointed at the
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answer given by the noble Lord at the head of the Government regarding Sergeant Sullivan. With regard to such cases, he might say that none but the officers in a regiment could judge of the fitness of a man for promotion. Some of the smartest men in his troop, men whose pluck and courage would have induced him to select them as a forlorn hope or for any service of extreme danger, were nevertheless men whom he could not have recommended for promotion from the ranks. Such was not the case, however, with Sergeant Sullivan. That soldier was a man of the greatest courage, much respected himself, and connected with a highly-respectable family, and he trusted the House would yet hear of his being rewarded in a way corresponding to his deserts.
COLONEL BOLDEROsaid, he had called the attention of the Government the other evening to the great improvement which had taken place in the health of European troops in India from the use of porter, the deaths in one regiment having fallen from ten to two per cent; and he need hardly state that this led to a great saving of money, apart altogether from motives of humanity. Indeed, there could be no doubt as to the advantages flowing from an issue of porter to the troops; and ho wished, therefore, to know from the Government whether they would furnish a Return showing the quantities of that beverage sent to the East?—what portions of it had been returned to England, and for what cause?—whether the agent who contracted for the conveyance of the porter had sent in a bill of expenses to the Government for the retention of the ship; and, also, whether there was any objection to lay on the table of the House the correspondence that had taken place with reference to the supply of the porter? He had also stated on a former evening that officers wounded in the army had no place of refuge at home such as was provided for naval officers, and the noble Lord (Viscount Palmerston) said he thought that was a subject worthy of consideration. There could be no doubt of the hardship entailed upon officers who were sent home wounded in being put to a great expense to effect a cure. He knew the case of a young man who had been severely wounded in the Crimea. The wound was very obstinate, and he came home, when after heavy expense and great care and attention he began to get the better of it. He went before the Medical Board and receiv-

1927
ed 50 l., one-half of his pay. Now, he was sure that no one would have grudged such a man 100 l. in those circumstances. This was only one case out of the many that had occurred, and he therefore hoped the matter would receive the serious consideration of the Government.
MR. WILSONsaid, that the hon. and gallant Member had on a former occasion put a question to him, which he would now take the opportunity of answering. The effect of the question, as he understood it, was whether or not cargoes of porter which had been despatched from this country had arrived at Constantinople, but that, from the circumstance of there being no officer appointed to receive them there, the vessels containing those cargoes had returned again to this country with the porter; and whether an action was not now pending against the Government for non-performance of their contract? He had great pleasure in informing the House that there was not the slightest foundation for that rumour. There had never been any question at all as to porter returning home, although, in the case of porter or of other provisions having arrived at different ports after the troops had left, there undoubtedly had been questions as to the amount of freight which the Government should pay, taking into consideration the difference of the length of the voyage which those vessels had to perform as compared with the length of the voyage for which they were originally destined. He might mention that porter formed no part of the rations ordinarily issued to the troops, but, with the view of furnishing it to them at prime cost, four cargoes had been despatched from this country. In one case a vessel was sent to Malta, but when it arrived the troops had left that place, and that vessel was subsequently sent on to Varna; another vessel had, in the same way, after having been first sent to Constantinople, been sent to Varna, and subsequently to the Crimea; another vessel landed her cargo at Scutari, where it was used; and the fourth of those vessels carried her cargo to Varna, and it was consumed there. There was no foundation for the rumour that any action for non-performance of contract was pending against the Government, although, of course, the claims made by the contractors for the additional length of voyage were under consideration. With regard to the method in which that porter was purchased, he could only state that it had been bought upon contract by
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tender, and he did not think that the correspondence referring to that transaction was of sufficient importance to be laid on the table of the House; but if the hon. and gallant Gentleman pressed for the production of that correspondence he would not oppose him.
Vote agreed to.
(2.) 151,108 l., Public Departments.
MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, he might, perhaps, be allowed to take this opportunity of making some explanation in reference to a statement made the other evening by the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Otway). The substance of that statement was, that two soldiers had been most severely punished for merely firing at a target representing the Emperor of Russia. Now, he (Mr. Peel) had perused the charges against these men, as well as the proceedings of the court-martial held on the occasion; but neither in the charges, the evidence, nor the finding of the court, was there the slightest allusion to the Emperor of Russia. The charges against the men were simply that they had fired away several rounds of ammunition, and had injured the barracks, the public property. The men were sentenced to various periods of imprisonment—the one, he believed, to 148 days, the other to 42 days—and the reason why a distinction was made between the cases was this, that one of the men, Gallagher, had been previously convicted three times, besides which, his general character was very bad.
MR. OTWAYsaid, he had never intended to make a charge against the Government, nor had he ever said that the men had been firing at the Emperor of Russia. He wished they could. All he wanted to convey was that he thought two soldiers had been too severely punished for a trivial offence. As he was on his legs, perhaps he might be allowed to express a hope that the Government would see the necessity of attaching to the War Department an officer whose duties would be analogous to those performed by officers in the countries. He wished to see an officer appointed whose special duty it would be to observe the military occurrences of other countries, particularly all new inventions in firearms, to take account of them and report on them to the department.
MR. P. O'BRIENsaid, he wished to know whether any order had been promulgated against Irishmen being recruited for the brigade of Guards? The Guards—more especially the household cavalry—

1929
received larger pay and enjoyed greater advantages than the troops of the line generally; and it became, therefore, a matter of some interest to know whether any indisposition existed on the part of those in authority to accept the service of Irishmen in the Guards. He believed, for example, that in the Royal Horse Guards (Blue) there were only six Irishmen.
MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, he had not heard of any such order having been promulgated.
MR. MAGUIREsaid, he had put a question relative to the number of Roman Catholic chaplains employed in connection with our army in the East, and, as yet, he had received no answer. As considerable anxiety prevailed on the subject in Ireland, he would repeat his question, and he would request that something like a distinct answer would be given to him.
MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, in reference to the question of the hon. Member for Dungarvan, he had only to repeat his statement whilst moving the Estimates—that of the forty-two clergymen employed for the service of the army in the East, twenty-four were ministers of the Church of England, eight belonged to the Presbyterian Church, and ten were Roman Catholics. It might be that that number was insufficient for the purposes of the Roman Catholic soldiers in the East, still it was necessary to preserve some distinction between the number of clergymen of each denomination.
MR. MAGUIREsaid, that two of the Roman Catholics originally sent were dead, four were invalided, and he believed only two now remained. What he wanted to know was, whether any steps would be taken to fill up the vacancies thus created?
MR. SIDNEY HERBERTsaid, he could give the hon. Member some explanation on that point. On a consideration of the relative proportions of the several denominations comprising the army it had hitherto been held that the Roman catholics constituted one-third of the whole army. Acting on that conviction the total number of clergymen originally sent out to the Crimea being twenty-four, of these, twelve belonged to the Church of England, eight to the Church of Rome, and four to the Presbyterian Church. Subsequently, however, it was proposed by members of different religious bodies that a certain sum should be subscribed, in order to supply an additional number of chaplains to the army, on the understanding that one-
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half of the cost would be defrayed by Government, the other half being borne by the subscribers. That proposal was accepted, and, in accordance with it, a number of gentlemen, recommended both by the Church of England and by the Presbyterian bodies, had been sent out as additional chaplains, and he had no doubt that the services of additional Roman Catholic chaplains would have been accepted had they been offered under similar terms. He might add that, since the original arrangement had been made, he believed that the relative proportions of the different denominations composing the army had undergone an alteration, and looking to the partial failure of recruiting in Ireland, it was very much to be doubted whether so large a proportion of the army as one-third was now constituted of Roman Catholics.
Mr. MAGUIREsaid, he thought it was derogatory to the dignity of the nation, and discreditable to the Government, whose duty it was to provide for the spiritual as well as the other wants of the army, that a bargain should have been entered into with the very poorest class of the community—the Roman Catholics of England, of Ireland, and of Scotland—by which they were required to pay a portion of the expense of the clergy who were sent out to minister to those who were fighting the battles of their country. He would venture to say that in the list of those who had been killed or disabled every third name was that of an Irishman, and the presumption was that those men were Roman Catholics. He believed that one-third of the soldiers who had been sent out from this country to the Crimea some eight or nine months since were Roman Catholics. The 23rd Fusileers was called a Welsh regiment, but he saw that regiment embark at Cork, and he was informed at the time, both by soldiers and officers who belonged to it, that two-thirds of the men had been enlisted in the south of Ireland. He believed that nearly one-half of the soldiers who had sailed for the Crimea were Roman Catholics, and he thought it was most discreditable to the Government and to the nation that such a bargain should have been entered into as that to which the right hon. Gentleman had referred.
Mr. W. WILLIAMSsaid, that the Under Secretary for the War Department had expressed his intention to reduce this Vote by the amount of the salary of the

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Secretary at War, but he thought that, by the union of that office with the office of Secretary for War, a considerable reduction might also be effected in the salaries of clerks and officers of the department.
MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, the relations subsisting between the whole of those departments and the War Office were under consideration.
COLONEL NORTHsaid, he was anxious to hear whether any extra pay or gratuity had been given to the Gentlemen employed in the War Department, in consequence of the additional work they had been called on to perform since the outbreak of the war. Many of them, as he was informed, were kept at work from nine o'clock in the morning until eight or nine at night; and surely it might be expected that in a country like England public servants would be compensated for the additional demands made upon their labours.
MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, he must admit that undoubtedly the business of the War Office had greatly augmented during the past year; still that increase of business had been principally met by adding to the number of clerks—an addition amounting to between forty and fifty.
MR. BERESFORDsaid, he at least had no reason to believe that the staff of the War Office had been unnecessarily increased. He therefore did not rise to object to the present Vote, but to make a few observations in reference to the Estimates of 1853, and which he was precluded from making at the time in consequence of his having been confined to bed. It happened that in the year 1852, in consequence of the embodiment of that force, the militia estimates were first brought forward. Having the honour at that time of holding the office of Secretary at War, be had deemed it his duty to make an application to the Treasury for a trifling increase in the number of clerks employed at the office, on account of the extra work to be got through. His application having been sent in in the beginning of July, a Commission was issued during the month of September, consisting of the noble Lord the Member for Buckinghamshire (the Marquess of Chandos), Sir Charles Trevelyan, Mr. Bromley, and Mr. Hawes, to consider the whole subject, and they continued their inquiries until the month of December. Well, on the 16th of that month the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli) then Chancellor of the Exchequer
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stated that the Commission, having duly inquired into the War Office, had decided that the extra duties must be got through without any additional expense to the country. However, he (Mr. Beresford) having taken leave of office towards the end of December, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for south Wiltshire (Mr. S. Herbert) succeeded to his place, when a renewed application for additional clerks was sent in, and the consequence was the number employed were increased by nine. Now, he wished to point out that although in 1852, at a period when the business of the office had been greatly and suddenly augmented, a much more trifling addition than that subsequently granted had been refused to him, without any further increase of business, no less than nine clerks were added to the staff. But a still more extraordinary circumstance remained to be shown—namely, that while the report of the Commission of 1852 had never been presented to Parliament, the Reports of two subsequent Commissions had been presented and printed. He could not help thinking that these two facts were exceedingly awkward, and open to suspicion; and he hoped very much Her Majesty's Government would examine into the matter.
Vote agreed to.
(3.) 17,795 l., Royal Military College.
COLONEL NORTHsaid, he was sorry that, owing to an informality, he could not the other day bring forward the Motion of which he had given notice. He did not now rise to offer any opposition to the Vote. He hoped, however, that the resolution which he had intended to propose would be considered by Her Majesty's Government, as it was quite evident, owing to the great increase of officers by the recent promotion from the ranks, that there must be a proportionate increase of clerks in the War Department. It was his intention shortly to bring this subject under the consideration of the House.
MR. BRADYsaid, he wished to make some remarks in reference to what had been stated a few nights ago, by the First Lord of the Treasury, when these Estimates were first brought under the consideration of the House. The noble Lord then endeavoured to shift upon other shoulders the blame that ought properly to be visited upon himself and his colleagues, and proceeded to and fault with the conduct of the medical men that were now in the Crimea. Now, he wished the Com-

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mittee to understand this fact—that the medical men in the Crimean army were not allowed independent action; they could not, consequently, be as efficient as under other circumstances they might be. He hoped, in the changes that were to take place in our army, that the medical staff would be placed altogether upon a different footing, and by being allowed to act independently of quartermasters and other officers who knew nothing at all of the duties to be performed by them, their services would be made much more effective than they were capable of being made at present. He found in the estimate now before the Committee that the sum allotted to the governor and lieutenant-governor of this institution was 1825 l. a year; whilst, at the same time, there were two officers whose duties were much more laborious and much more needed, and having yearly between them a sum of only 392 l. He alluded to the surgeon and assistant surgeon. It might be said that this was a self-supporting institution. There were, however, few officers' widows who could afford to pay 100 l. a year for the education of their children. He was given to understand that this institution did not only support itself, but it overpaid itself. There were 180 boys allowed into the school, and the chaplain was allowed 300 l. a year. He thought that this salary was out of all proportion too great. He also observed in the estimate the sum of 442 l. a year, allowed to the governor for forage. He wished to ask whether it was necessary that the govern should employ horses to ride after the boys? The country, he was sure, would never knowingly sanction such jobbery as this was.
MR. RICEsaid, he could not remain silent while an hon. Gentleman designated such an institution as the Royal Military College as a piece of jobbery. He must bear his testimony to the value of that institution. He hoped and believed that when the hon. and gallant Member for Oxfordshire (Colonel North) said that it was merely Royal by name, he did not mean to cast a stigma upon the institution. Now, instead of officers' sons having to pay 100 l. a year, those of a certain grade were only charged 40 l. When proof was given that the parents were unable to pay the usual sum with their children there was the greatest indulgence shown to them by the institution.
COLONEL NORTHsaid, that the sum demanded for children was in proportion
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to the rank of their fathers; some, for example, had to pay 80 l., while others were admitted at a much lower rate.
MR. RICEsaid, he would be very glad to see some aid given to the institution, in order that the objects suggested by the hon. and gallant Member for Oxfordshire could be carried out.
GENERAL PEELsaid, great complaints had been made of generals and staff officers not having learnt their duties. He understood that a camp was about to be established at Ablershott, and he would suggest that the pupils of this institution should be in some way connected with that camp, in order that they might have an opportunity of learning not only the elementary portion of their duties, but also of acting with the men who would thus he brought together. He believed that the greatest possible benefit would result from the adoption of this suggestion. He thought that lectures might be given on military subjects at the camp, at which all the officers should be invited to attend, and he trusted that many of the sergeants, who he was happy to see were receiving encouragement by promotion, would have the same opportunity. During the last war the students in the junior department at Sandhurst were allowed to hold commissions by purchase, so that a boy of thirteen might hold a commission without discharging the duties attached to it, permission being given him to pursue his studies. He thought some such system might be adopted with advantage now, and that a boy—say of fifteen—at Sandhurst, having passed a certain examination, and it being understood that he intended to devote himself to the service, should be allowed to hold a commission by purchase, and remain at the college another year in order to complete his studies. If this system were adopted they would have younger men to fill commands, and the service would, he believed, be benefited.
MR. BRADYsaid, he must beg to explain that he did not wish to throw any slight upon the institution, but he only wanted to call the attention of the Committee to the glaring fact of the one-ninth of the whole Vote being devoted as salaries to the governor and lieutenant-governor of the establishment.
LORD LOVAINEsaid, it was not his opinion that the education in the senior department at Sandhurst was of the best character, or the most useful for the officers of the staff. In foreign countries,

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besides the education such officers must have, they were obliged to serve a certain number of years in other branches of the service. If officers were obliged from the senior department to attach themselves to certain branches of the army for a given time, he was certain that it would prove a much better system. There were great errors abroad as to the real meaning of the staff of the army. Many suppose that, like Lord Raglan's staff, the officers had nothing more to do than to convey the orders of the commander in chief to the different parts of the army. The quartermaster general's department, however, required men with much higher qualifications.
SIR GEORGE PECHELLsaid, he had no objection to support the proposition of the hon. and gallant Member for Oxfordshire in order to extend the benefits of the college at Sandhurst. He always believed that the money paid by cadets was much greater than it ought to be. He was of opinion that the office of governor could be very well abolished. The lieutenant-governor could do all the duty that was necessary—1,000 l. a year might be thus saved to the institution.
MR. W. WILLIAMSsaid, there was no complaint against the establishment itself, and he for one thought it ought to be extended; but such an item as that of 442 l. for forage for the governor and lieutenant-governor was very objectionable.
COLONEL DUNNEsaid, that what he complained of was that for several years the system of selecting the officers of the staff was not that of taking them from those that bad qualified themselves at Sandhurst. He said that the system hitherto pursued had tended to discourage officers from learning their duty. At Sandhurst an officer did not learn all that it was necessary for a staff officer to know; but he learned what was essential for him to know—the knowledge of surveying, of sketching, and of fortifications, which was not generally taught in other schools. He thought the suggestions of the hon. and gallant Member for Huntingdon (General Peel) most valuable.
Vote agreed to.
(4.) 23,367 l., Royal Military Asylum.
LORD NAASsaid, he wished to ask a question in connection with this Vote. It was stated the other night that a sum of 10,000 l. was to be taken from the unclaimed prize-money for the purpose of being devoted, to the Royal Military Asy-
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lum at Chelsea. He (Lord Naas) wished the hon. Gentleman to state the number of boys on the establishment, and also the number of additional boys. He hoped the hospital in Ireland would be placed on the same footing of increase as Chelsea.
MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, the additional number of boys was 20. He would consider the question of whether an addition ought to be made to the Dublin Hospital, although the mere circumstance of an addition having been made to Chelsea Hospital did not, in his opinion, constitute a claim on the part of the Dublin establishment.
MR. NAPIERsaid, he thought the claim of Dublin Hospital was quite as great as that of Chelsea.
SIR WILLIAM SOMERVILLEsaid, the hospital in Dublin was very efficiently conducted, and he hoped its claims would be taken into consideration.
MR. SIDNEY HERBERTsaid, the Government ought to be guided, in considering this question, by the number of orphan children who required education. When the school at Chelsea was first established by the Duke of York, the number of children placed there was much greater than it had been up to a recent period. The Secretary at War, in consequence of the reduction in the number of children, seized on a part of the building and used it as a normal school for training regimental schoolmasters, and, when the claim for the introduction of a larger number of soldiers' orphans was pr sed on the Government, it was necessary to provide an additional building in order to accommodate the same number of children as it had been originally intended to educate. There was no such reason for making a similar addition to the excellent institution in Phœnix Park.
MR. WHITESIDEsaid, if it should be found on inquiry that the school at Dublin had the same claim as that at Chelsea it ought to have a similar grant, but not otherwise.
COLONEL DUNNEsaid, he was perfectly satisfied that it had the same claim, for there were as many Irish as there were English soldiers' orphans.
MR. SIDNEY HERBERTsaid, the regimental schoolmasters educated at Chelsea were for the use of Ireland as well as of England.
Vote agreed to; as was also
(5.) 88,000 l., Volunteer Corps.
(6.) 3,813,383 l., Embodied Militia.
COLONEL DUNNEsaid, he wanted to know what were the intentions of the Government as to the embodiment of the Irish militia? At this moment hardly any of the Irish militia regiments, though fully drilled, had arms, and he would suggest that the arms of the pensioners, who were only called out twice or three times a year for a day or two's drill, should be given to the militia when not in use by the pensioners. There were many regiments of Irish militia not yet embodied, and unless they were so, no recruits would be obtained from that source.
MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, that the attention of the Government had been directed to both points, and he could inform the hon. and gallant Member that it was intended to call out the Irish militia as soon as arrangements could be made to provide barracks for them, without having recourse to the inconvenient and non-economical system of billeting.
MR. WARNERsaid, he was glad to hear that it was intended to do away with the objectionable system of billeting, and would suggest that temporary barracks of wood or iron would answer every purpose.
LORD LOVAINEsaid, he wished to inquire whether the Government intended to resort to the ballot for the militia?
MR. PARKERsaid, he must complain of the quality of the cloth of which the trousers of some of the militia regiments were made; he would mention an instance in one of the East Lancashire regiments, in which, when a hot iron was applied to the cloth, it took away not only the colour but the whole of the dressing. The cloth of which the militia uniforms was made was far inferior to that of which the uniforms of the rural police, and even of the felons, was manufactured. The boots, too, were of a shameful description, so bad that the soles frequently left the upperleathers as soon as they were brought into use.
VISCOUNT PALMERSTONsaid, he believed that in general the clothing supplied was of good quality, but there were some cases in which it was of an inferior description. The late Secretary at War had made an arrangement by which the colonels were themselves to look after the clothing. With regard to the question of the noble Lord (Lord Lovaine), he had to state that the Government had no intention to resort to the ballot at present. Representations had been received at the Home Office of the difficulty of raising
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men in some quarters, and recommending a resort to the ballot, but his answer had been that he was perfectly convinced that men would join in due time, and that the best course was to leave it to their good feeling.
COLONEL SIBTHORPsaid, that the men who had volunteered into the line from the regiment which he had the honour to command had been highly approved of, and were most efficient soldiers.
MR. MONCKTON MILNESsaid, he was aware of cases in which colonels of regiments had written to the War Office stating that they had men ready to recruit for particular regiments, and they had been informed that a sergeant would be sent down to recruit for the regular army from militia regiments. But after the lapse of some time the dispositions of the men changed. Now, he thought it would be better to give the colonels greater facilities for sending up men who wished to join the regular army.
COLONEL KNOXsaid, that the transmission of pay from our soldiers in the Crimea to their relatives in this country was a subject with respect to which a considerable amount of dissatisfaction prevailed. It was alleged that the applicants for money so transmitted had in many instances been informed by the authorities here that they knew nothing whatever about it. The answer which they almost invariably received at the War Office was, "We are extremely sorry that we cannot give you any information about your money, but we have had no account upon the matter from the Paymaster of the forces." Now, it was highly desirable that habits of frugality upon the part of the soldier should receive every encouragement, but nothing could tend more to prevent the acquisition of such habits than the fact that there was no security afforded him that he could transmit his pay with safety and regularity to his family at home. There was also another subject to which he wished to call the attention of the Government—it was in reference to the system of hospital service in the East. The general system was, that when the soldier went into hospital, the sergeant entered a description of the man, his name, that of his native parish, &c.; and also took an account of the amount of money of which he might be possessed, with the view that, in case of his death, there might be no dispute as to how it was to be disposed of. He regretted, however, to have to state

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that at the hospital at Scutari no such system prevailed, and that plunder and robbery to a disgraceful extent were the consequences of the neglect of the necessary regulations. Soldiers were known to have entered that hospital with 8l. or 10 l. in their pockets, and the moment they ceased to breathe the whole amount of their money had disappeared.
VISCOUNT PALMERSTONsaid, he perfectly concurred with the hon. and gallant Member in the opinion, that every facility ought to be given to the soldiers in the East for the purpose of transmitting money to their families at home. The delays which had hitherto occurred in its transmission must, he apprehended, be attributed to the fact that at the time of application for the money being made to the War Office the regimental pay lists had not been received, and of course until that list was received, and the authorities here were thus enabled to ascertain what pay was actually due, they could not pay over the money to the applicants.
COLONEL KNOX: Therefore it is that I think it is impossible you can get on without the assistance of a Paymaster-General of the forces.
VISCOUNT PALMERSTON: The Paymaster-General would have nothing to do with the accounts of the regiments.
MR. MONCKTON MILNESsaid, there appeared the other day in the newspapers an account of a proposition having been made to the War Office to transmit a certain sum from this country to persons lying in the hospitals at Scutari and Constantinople, and that the War Office not only declined to receive the money, but stated that the persons lying in the hospital at Scutari had received every comfort and everything that money could supply, and that such assistance was perfectly superfluous. He should be happy if the Under Secretary of War could inform the Committee whether he would be able to afford the means by which the charity of this country could reach those brave and unhappy men.
MR. A. STAFFORDsaid, he was exceedingly glad the attention of the Committee had been called to the subject. When he was on a visit to the hospital there was not a single day on which the matter was not pressed upon his attention. There were soldiers to whom pay was due who could not send any portion of it to their relations in England. They said, "We do not ask charity, we do not ask
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subscriptions from private benevolence, but we say that in our sickness caused by the performance of our duty we ought to receive what we have earned, and send it to our wives, sisters, and other relatives in England, but by the regulations at Scutari we have been over and over again refused." He had seen letters from female relatives stating that unless money was sent to them to purchase a mangle or set themselves up in some way of business, there was nothing left for them but the workhouse or prostitution. It gave him great pain to hear these brave men make such complaints day after day. There was no redress, and the reason was that no regimental pay-list had come from the Crimea. The late Secretary at War (Mr. S. Herbert) stated that he had given orders and instructions to remedy this evil at Scutari. Far from hearing that statement with satisfaction, he had heard it with great despair, because it was his firm conviction that it had not arrived yet, so that the great evil which existed at Scutari, when he was there, existed, he believed, in full force at this very moment. We ought to enable the poor soldier to draw, not as a matter of favour or private benevolence, but as a matter of justice, such sums as he might see fit, not only for his own comfort, but to send to his relations. With respect to the men who had been obliged to come home, none of them had been paid since they arrived in this country. A man came here with the loss of a limb; he wished to go to see his friends; but he was unable to do so because he could not get his money from the Horse Guards. The Minister of War, on the other hand, had very justly said that it was the duty of all, in their several localities, to do their utmost to induce men to enlist in the army. But what could individuals do in that way, when these young men who desired to enlist, were told by others whom they met in the streets, "We have served our country abroad; we came home wounded; but we cannot get our money!" Such was another proof of the reign of routine. He was sure that the noble Lord at the head of the Government, and the hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary of War would be most anxious to remedy these and other evils, and he therefore implored them to depart from the spirit of routine in the present instance, and do justice to those who had fought so bravely and suffered so much for their country.
MR. SIDNEY HERBERTsaid, the

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hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had not given a correct description of the regulations under which pay was issued to the soldiers. The hon. Gentleman stated to him some time ago, upon his return from Constantinople, that there was great difficulty about paying the men in the East. Now, there could be no doubt that even by official routine the men were entitled to receive their pay as the hon. Gentleman stated, and they were likewise entitled to have facilities which would enable them to remit the money to their friends at home. When the army went out to the Crimea, in order that the circumstance he had just mentioned should be generally known to the men, Lord Raglan was requested to publish a general order directing the attention of the troops to the regulations with respect to the issue of their pay. That was accordingly done, and when the sick and wounded were removed to Scutari, an officer was sent to act as paymaster at the hospital; but it would appear that he was totally ignorant of the regulations of the service, for he departed from the official routine, and did not afford the men those facilities to which they were entitled. When the subject was brought to his notice in that House by the hon. Member for North Northamptonshire, he instantly wrote to Scutari that those men who had not had the facilities to which they were entitled had been grossly ill-treated, and that they ought immediately to be made aware of their right to remit money to their friends at home. It was true that when the men arrived at Scutari from Balaklava they had no statement as to the amount of money due to them. He was not surprised that that should occasionally have happened; but the officers at Scutari ought to have done immediately what he knew they had done since—paid every man on account from the day he left Balaklava. He hoped the evil was now rectified; if not, he trusted his hon. Friend the Under Secretary of War would look to it, and would select the best men he could find and send them out to replace those who were inefficient. He ought to mention that the hon. and learned Member for Enniskillen (Mr. Whiteside) asked him some time ago whether it was true that the men in hospital at Scutari had 9d. deducted as stoppage from their pay. He announced at once that the men in hospital from injuries or sickness contracted during operations in the field were not liable to any stoppage beyond the ordinary stoppage
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for rations. No more they had; but the hon. and learned Gentleman had some reason to put the question, for he found afterwards that the regulations had been violated, and the men obliged to submit to a stoppage of 9d. out of their pay. He might add, however, that upon hearing that fact he instantly wrote to Scutari, to the effect that, whatever might be the inconvenience, every farthing of the money so taken from the men should be paid back.
MR. WHITESIDEsaid, it was observable that whenever any abuse was brought before that House, it was sure to be attributed to "routine." Was there no way of killing routine?
MR. A. STAFFORDsaid, that since the right hon. Gentleman the late Secretary at War seemed to be dissatisfied with the result produced by his letters he could not do better than to try what would be the effect of his presence at Scutari in person. The right hon. Gentleman might do so now without any considerable inconvenience, inasmuch as he was relieved from the responsibility of office. If his Parliamentary duties stood in the way of the right hon. Gentleman's taking that step, he (Mr. Stafford) could only say that he should be happy to pair with him for the remaining portion of the Session, and should they proceed together to Scutari, he would promise to point out to the right hon. Gentleman much to remedy, to which he might with advantage apply his official knowledge.
MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, that he did not think that the communication upon the part of the War Office, to which the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. M. Milnes) had referred, was altogether free from the objections which had been urged against it. He thought it was but right that under present circumstances every facility should be afforded to those who wished to assist our soldiers in the Crimea. At the same time it was but fair to say that the communication in question was well-meant, and the intention of the writer had been to convey the impression that the soldiers at Scutari were not in want of money. It was also right to observe that that communication had not been sent to the War Office. The only letter which had been addressed to that office had been a simple inquiry with reference to sending out a certain sum of money. He believed that every facility had been given to our soldiers to remit money, and he might

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state that 18,000 l. had been sent from Lord Raglan's army, and had, in small sums, been paid, through regimental paymasters, to relatives of the soldiers in this country.
CAPTAIN ARCHDALLsaid, he was sure there must have been some exaggeration in the statements in the letters from the female friends of soldiers in the hospital to the effect that if they did not receive remittances they would be obliged to resort to prostitution. The Central Association had been established for the express purpose of supporting the wives and families of soldiers sent to the East, and he knew it had supported no less than 13,000 persons at an expense of about 1,000 l. per week.
MR. H. HERBERTsaid, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Wiltshire (Mr. S. Herbert) had stated that some stoppages had been made at Scutari, contrary to the regulations of the service. Was it not possible to ascertain whose fault it was, and to visit the offenders with punishment.
MR. SIDNEY HERBERTsaid, he thought he had stated that the fault lay with the paymaster at Scutari, and that he desired a proper person to be sent out to replace him.
MR. CRAUFURDsaid, he wished to know what the Government proposed to do with respect to the billeting of the militia in Scotland, where the system was different to that of England, the men not being billeted in public-houses, but on householders. He had received communications from Oban and another place, pointing out the inconvenience which resulted from the system. He wished to know whether barracks were to be built, and buildings set apart for hospitals.
MR. WALPOLEsaid, he wished to ask the noble Lord at the head of the Government whether he had heard that the principle of voluntary enlistment had been very seriously interfered with by the Bill passed before Christmas, which empowered the Crown to send out the militia to garrison our colonies and military stations abroad? And if so, he would suggest that, instead of sending the militia to those places, the draughts which were now made from them into the regular service might be sent to those places. The chief object of the Militia Bill was to keep in this country a constant standing force in a state of preparation for the national defence; but that object would be interfered with if, as soon as the men
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were trained, they should be sent out of the country.
VISCOUNT PALMERSTONsaid, the amount of militia to be sent abroad under the Bill passed in December last would be so comparatively small as to enable the bulk of the militia to remain in the United Kingdom. There was no answering for erroneous impressions which might be made in men's minds; and it might be possible, though he had not heard of it, that some men were deterred from entering the militia by the notion that they would be sent abroad; but under the recent Act no man could be sent out unless he individually agreed to go, and therefore any such apprehensions were unfounded. With regard to another subject, namely, the holding back of some men in the hope that they would get larger bounty by and bye, as substitutes, the answer to that was the statement he had already made—that there was no intention to have recourse to the ballot; so that such persons would find themselves mistaken.
Vote agreed to.
(7) 22,000 l., Rewards for distinguished Services.
COLONEL KNOXsaid, he could not allow this Vote to pass without observing that, after what they had recently seen, it was perfectly obvious that some system should be adopted of recognizing military merit different to any that had hitherto been pursued. He should not have ventured to mention the subject, as it might in some respects be considered as trenching on the prerogative of the Crown, if the late Minister of War had not shadowed forth some distinguished "Order of Merit" as being likely to be established that would embrace all ranks in the army. He must own that he felt very strongly on this point. There already existed an Order, which was conferred both on the army and on the navy—he meant the order of the Bath. It was known that that order was granted not only to those officers who obtained the rank of colonel, but also to post-captains in the navy. Now, what he would suggest was, that this Order should be extended to other classes in both services. It was a hard case that meritorious men, whether captains of companies, lieutenants, and ensigns, or non-commissioned officers and privates, who had behaved with gallantry in the field, and conducted themselves well in every other respect, should not be rewarded with some mark of distinction; and if he wished to put the

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army on a proper footing, let us institute an Order of Merit to be conferred for services of this character. Such an Order of Merit to have due effect, must carry with it double pay and double pension in the case of the non-commissioned officer or private; and if this were done, the greatest stimulus would be given to emulation among all ranks in the army, from the lowest to the highest. An Order of Merit, accompanied by double pay and double pension, would do infinitely more good in this respect than all the commissions that could be given to men who had not adequate means of supporting themselves in their new position. The day did not appear to be far distant when the purchase of commissions would be abolished, but in effecting this change justice must be done to the claims of those who had invested large sums of money to gain an entrance into the service, otherwise a gross act of spoliation would be committed against them. The military Order of the Bath he therefore trusted would be carried a little further, and be extended to deserving captains and subalterns, without additional pay. It was earnestly to be hoped that the Government would take this matter into their serious consideration, and speedily carry into effect some such plan with regard to it as had been shadowed out by the noble Duke late at the head of the War Department.
MR. APSLEY PELLATTsaid, that what he had to complain of was that sergeants were placed at a disadvantage in comparison with privates and corporals, who received good conduct money, which the sergeant lost when he reached that step. This appeared to him an anomaly, and an injustice that required to be redressed. As the colonels and generals in the House did not come forward to advocate the interests of these subordinate officers, but confined all their sympathies to the higher class of officers, he would come forward in their behalf, and do his best to get the injustice remedied. When a sergeant was promoted he paid 3d. a day for his clothing more than corporals did, and in reality promotion placed him in a worse position than before. If the war was to be popular, the interests of the army ought to be properly attended to.
LORD HOTHAMsaid, he wished to call attention to an abuse which was a consequence of the mode in which this vote was administered. When a colonel
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was promoted to the rank of a general officer he did not, unless he had served a certain number of years as an effective field officer, receive the half-pay of a general, but only that due to him in virtue of his previous commission. In more than one case a general not entitled to general's half-pay had received one of these pensions for distinguished services, and had then been put upon the list of general officers receiving general's half-pay. Now it might very likely happen that a meritorious officer might not have served long enough to entitle him to general officer's pay, and it might therefore be very right to recompense him by a pension for good service. But it was not right then to proceed also to give him general officer's pay because he had obtained this good-service pension. The result of that was that those who had not served long enough to obtain general officer's pay might be better off than those who had. If definite rules were laid down for the guidance of the service, they certainly ought to be abided by.
COLONEL DUNNEsaid, he quite agreed with the hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Pellatt) in thinking it very hard that a corporal should lose his good-service pay on being promoted to the rank of a sergeant.
MR. WARNERsaid, he would take that opportunity of expressing the regret with which he had heard hon. Members attack the conduct of Lord Raglan and the officers in the Crimea, because at the present moment he did not believe that they possessed sufficient data to judge of the conduct of those officers. It rested on the responsibility of the Government to recall them or continue them in their commands if they felt satisfied with them; but he was convinced that an inquiry perfectly independent of that moved for by the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield, or the Commission which had been sent out, would take place before long at the bar of public opinion with respect to the calamities which had befallen our army in the present war. If that Tribunal should acquit the late Ministers and Lord Raglan, he was confident that there was no class of men upon whom suspicion would more immediately fall than those officers, and he thought they were prejudging the question by granting them rewards at the present moment. He should move that the Vote be reduced by 200 l., being the amount to be paid to the Quartermaster General and Adjutant General in the Crimea.
COLONEL NORTHsaid, he believed that our disasters in the Crimea had been owing to the smallness of our troops there in proportion to the duties imposed on them. Could the Quartermaster General be blamed if men could not be spared for making roads? He did not know how England could expect to get either generals or admirals to serve her; for no sooner had those officers undertaken their commands, than their reputation was pretty sure to be assailed.
VISCOUNT PALMERSTONsaid, that the pensions proposed to be given to the Quartermaster Generals and Adjutant Generals of the army in the Crimea were to be awarded to them for good service in the face of the enemy at the battles of the Alma and Inkerman, and he did not think that giving rewards for such conduct could at all fetter the House in coming to a judgment upon the general arrangements for the management of the army made by those officers, which was to be the subject of investigation before the Select Committee of that House.
VISCOUNT EBRINGTONsaid, he thought that some provision should be made for defraying the cost of the outfits of the sergeants to whom commissions were to be given.
MR. FREDERICK PEELpointed out that a sum of 5,000 l. was proposed to be granted for that purpose.
MR. OTWAYsaid, he thought there was no period in history where our officers had met with treatment so unjust as had been awarded to Lord Ragan and our officers in the Crimea, they having been condemned by many hon. Members without being afforded the least opportunity of being heard. He could not concur in the proposition of the hon. Member to reduce the Vote by depriving the Adjutant and Quartermaster General of the sum awarded to them. Great blame had been attributed to some officers in the Crimea, especially those on the staff; but he hoped that when the matter was fully investigated, they would be brought before a tribunal a little less vague than that of public opinion.
MR. WARNERsaid, that he had no intention of bringing any charge or of prejudging the matter.
MR. W. WILLIAMSsaid, according to the statement he had seen in the public press, the Commander in Chief had been authorised to promote one sergeant in each
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regiment. He wished to know why the sergeants in each of the three battalions of guards were not appointed to Commissions in their own regiments?
LORD HOTHAMsaid, he thought the hon. Gentleman had arrived at an erroneous conclusion. The order was that a Commission should be granted to a noncommissioned officer in each regiment; but, in order to lose no time in carrying that order into effect, Lord Raglan had power to give temporary rank to the new Commissions, each in his own regiment.
MR. W. WILLIAMSsaid, he would be glad if the Under Secretary for the War Office would answer his question.
MR. FREDERICK PEELwas understood to say that he was not aware of the distinction, and that the matter rested entirely with the Commander in Chief.
MR. CRAUFURDsaid, he thought that in granting the promotion it was impossible to separate those who received it from their own regiments. He trusted that his hon. Friend (Mr. Warner) would press his Amendment.
MR. WARNERsaid, that in deference to the opinion of the Committee he would not press his Amendment.
Vote agreed to.
House resumed.

WAYS AND MEANS.
House in Committee.
Resolved—
"That, towards making good the Supply granted to Her Majesty, the sum of 17,183,000 l. be raised by Exchequer Bills for the Service of the year 1855."
Resolution to be reported To-morrow.
House resumed.

MILITIA (IRELAND) BILL.
Order for Second Reading read.
MR. KEOGHmoved the second reading of this Bill, and said he hoped that no objection would be made by hon. Gentlemen opposite.
COLONEL DUNNEsaid, he would not object to the second reading of the Bill if the last clause were struck out. The Bill professed to remove doubts as to the Commissions of officers of militia in Ireland who had omitted to deliver descriptions of their qualifications, and to indemnify them against the consequences. He knew prosecutions were going on now, and there could be no objection to put an end to them, but there was a clause giving power

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to the Lord Lieutenant to remove any colonel of militia at his pleasure.
MR. NAPIERsaid, this was a perfectly Irish Bill. One part of the 6th clause gave power to Her Majesty to signify her pleasure to the colonel or other commanding officer of any such regiment of militia to displace all or any officers or officer of militia, &c. It then went on to remove doubts which had been entertained whether such provision included the removal of the colonel, by declaring that it should be lawful for Her Majesty to signify to the colonel her pleasure that he should be displaced from his command. The first clause, too, was so framed that it enabled any person, simply by lodging a certificate of qualification, to become qualified whether he had any property or not.
MR. KEOGHsaid, he must maintain that the intention of the clauses was clear enough, although their wording might be rather obscure. Any alteration, however, that was thought necessary might be considered in Committee.
Bill read 2o.
The House adjourned at One o'clock.