COMMITTEE. (Hansard, 10 February 1860)

§ MR. SIDNEY HERBERT
moved a Resolution granting the sum of £407,649, to cover the excess of expenditure over the Army Estimates of 1859, explaining that this apparent difference arose partly from the payment of certain sums due from the Indian Government for the supply of stores not having fallen within the year, and partly also from the extra expenditure upon the 890 manufacturing establishments which supplied various sorts of warlike material. There was a large item for excess of forage supplied to the regiments of cavalry which were intended to have been sent abroad, but countermanded.

§ SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBY
said, that this was another example of the inaccurate mode of framing Estimates, which rendered it impossible for any Minister to guarantee that the sums named by him to the House would not be exceeded. He had not the slightest faith in the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that not more than a revenue of £70,000,000 would be required. The estimate for the levying and embodying militia in this very Vote now moved was put down at £150,000; but what was the fact? No less a sum than £821,000 had been expended on the embodied militia. The truth was, he believed, that the excess of particular Votes was, with the consent of certain members of the Government, who possessed the power to give it, handed over to purposes entirely different from those for which it was voted by the House of Commons. He earnestly protested against a system so unconstitutional. If such a system were to be acted upon, the functions of that House would be superseded. The naval expenditure was always brought before the House in a clear and explicit manner, and he could not understand why information equally decisive should not be afforded by the military Departments. Either the whole responsibility of the public expenditure should be thrown on the Government or the law ought to he altered.

GENERAL PEEL
did not wish to shirk any responsibility which properly attached to him, but he begged to remind the House that the Army Estimates for 1858–9, which were now under discussion, though passed under the Government of Lord Derby, were prepared by their predecessors. An excess occurred upon only one Vote. There were at that time 30,000 militia embodied, but the entire sum taken for their pay and allowances was no more than £150,000. The first thing he did was to disembody 10,000, and by retaining the remaining 20,000 he was enabled to send to India 10,000 additional troops, whose arrival there was one of the principal means of putting an end to the mutiny. 130,000 men were voted as the British establishment for the year. That force would have required at least a sum of £4,321,000, but the House voted only £3,681,027. 891 The fact was that the Army Estimates could never be depended upon so long as the liabilities of one year were carried over to the expenditure of the next, and the deficit in 1858–9 was caused mainly by the non-payment of a debt of £400,000 due by the East India Company. He trusted the House would agree to the Vote now proposed.

COLONEL DUNNE
wished to know what had become of the stores supplied to the Indian Government at the close of the mutiny and not used? He did not think it possible to conceive waste like that which had taken place in disposing of the surplus stores after the Crimean war.

COLONEL DICKSON
said, that he thought the money which had been spent on the militia had been literally thrown into the dirt. When he saw these monstrous sums voted for the military expenditure of the country, he thought that at least some return should be found for it. He hoped the militia about to he disembodied would be allowed to receive fourteen clays' pay, as was done on a late occasion. He hoped the Secretary of War would at least treat the militia with common justice, and not deprive the militia officers of the only advantage they were likely to reap from having joined that corps.

§ SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBY
could not make out why, when £821,000 were spent on the embodied militia, though £150,000 only were voted, a Supplemental Estimate was not brought before the House.

LORD BURGHLEY
observed, that a large number of men belonging to the militia, who had served on permanent duty abroad and at home for two years, and were perfectly acquainted with their duty, would leave early in March. Unless some inducement were offered, these men would leave the service altogether, and he trusted that the Government would not, merely to save a small bounty, let these men leave the militia when their time of service was up.

§ MR. SIDNEY HERBERT
confessed that there was great difficulty in distinguishing between the Votes for the Militia and the Line. He thought it would be much better to do away with the separate head for the embodied Militia and place it along with that relating to the troops of the Line whose number was annually voted by Parliament; but it would be impossible to form an exact estimate in these two Votes, or adhere exactly to the proportion 892 fixed in the first instance as between the regular forces and the embodied Militia. With regard to the circular issued by the War Office, it mentioned specifically that the men upon disembodiment were to receive fourteen days', and the subaltern officers six months' pay. At a time of great exigency, commissions were granted to Militia officers who brought a certain number of volunteers into the Line; but it was impossible to continue that privilege now, except by adopting one of three courses—first, by stinting the grant commissions without purchase to old and deserving non-commissioned officers; secondly, by diminishing the number of commissions without purchase given as prizes at Sandhurst; or thirdly, by moving in this House for a Vote enabling the War Office to buy commissions and present them to these Militia officers.

LORD BURGHLEY
thought it was unjust to depart from the promises which had been originally held out by refusing to give commissions to young officers, who, after a service of some years in the Militia, were now totally unfitted for any other employment.

§ MR. SIDNEY HERBERT
believed that these young men were all the better for having enjoyed the advantages of military discipline, and that they would never regret the years they had spent in the Militia.