CAPTAIN LEICESTER VERNONsaid, he begged to inquire of the hon. Gentleman the Clerk to the Ordnance whether, of the fifty-six gentlemen who it was said were to be commissioned in the scientific corps in the course of the month, it was intended to give precedence to the thirty admitted to the practical class in March last, without examination, over the remaining twenty-six, all of whom entered as cadets at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, and many of them at the Ordnance School at Carshalton, and all of whom had passed through all the examinations of the theoretical course, which up to the present time was the absolutely necessary qualification by which commissions could be obtained at all, it being rumoured that one, if not more, of these thirty-six gentlemen had failed at the examination for admission to the academy, when others of the twenty-six cadets had succeeded; the reported sole reason for such precedence being, that the thirty gentlemen were between the ages of seventeen and nineteen, whereas the ages of the twenty-six cadets were something under seventeen years.
MR. MONSBLLsaid, that the practical class at Woolwich was composed of two divisions; that the civil cadets had now, in their regular turn, become the senior division to be commissioned; that, under ordinary circumstances, this senior division alone would be commissioned in August, but that, owing to the pressing exigencies of affairs, the junior division would be commissioned at the same time. It was thought, however, that it would be unjust to the senior division not to commission 452 that division the first. The matter was entirely under the control of the Lieutenant General of the Ordnance.