CAPTAIN LEICESTER VERNON, adverting to the intention of placing the Ordnance Military Corps under the Commander in Chief, to the pressing necessity for keeping up the effective strength of the corps of Royal Engineers, and to the present half-pay list of that corps, wished to ask the Under Secretary for War, whether it was the intention of the Government to make any arrangements whereby officers of the corps of Royal Engineers on half-pay, who were able and willing to serve, but who, from its being a seniority corps, were debarred from returning to its effective strength, might equally, with other half-pay and unattached officers, be employed on the staff of the army, or be appointed to such civil positions under Government as were now held by officers of Royal Engineers on full pay, who would then be enabled to return to the duty-roster of the corps, whereby the State would have the services of every available officer of Royal Engineers, whether on full pay or on half-pay?
§ MR. FREDERICK PEELsaid, it did not appear that it would be necessary to make any arrangement to carry out the object to which the hon. and gallant Gentleman referred. There was nothing in the shape of a regulation in existence to prevent officers of Engineers on half-pay from being employed in the manner which the hon. Gentleman proposed. The number of such officers was very limited, and no intimation of a wish for active service had been made.