ADDRESS MOVED. (Hansard, 15 June 1860)

COLONEL LINDSAY
rose to move that an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that She will be graciously pleased to reconsider the eleventh Clause of the Army Medical Warrant of October, 1858, as far as relates to its retrospective application to the Medical Officers at that time serving in the ranks affected, having due regard to the Public 533 Service. The clause to which he alluded was as follows:— With a view to maintain the efficiency of the service, all medical officers of the rank of surgeon major, surgeon, or assistant surgeon, shall be placed on the retired list when they shall have attained the age of fifty-five years, and inspectors general and deputy inspectors general when they shall have attained the age of sixty-five years. He did not mean to attack this compulsory system of retirement generally; on the contrary, he thought that, acted upon in the case of all subsequent entrants it would be productive of great public advantage; but he did attack the retrospective application of the clause to those who were already in the service. The junior ranks would derive advantage from it, but they would obtain that advantage at the expense of their seniors. He admitted that the public good ought in all cases to be paramount to all other considerations; but when that public good did not clash with existing interests, those interests ought to be respected. On this subject he might quote the opinions of two Commissions which sat on the subject of general promotion in the army. The Commission which sat in 1854 stated, If the system recommended were at once substituted for that which has been hitherto in force without adopting some means to protect the interests of those whose prosperity would be affected by the change, much injustice would be inflicted on those who have relied on the continuance of the present regulations. We are of opinion that a liberal view ought to be taken of the claims of those officers, and that in introducing a change which the public good requires, they ought to be carefully protected from injury and from having their just expectations disappointed. In 1858 another Commission was issued, and they reported that, It appears to us that an officer enters the army subject to any changes in the existing regulations which Her Majesty from time to time may think necessary for the good of the service to make. Yet, on the other hand, we are of opinion that great care should be taken to introduce these changes in the manner which shall as little as possible prejudice the interests of the officers affected, and that every consideration should be shown which may be compatible with the public objects in view. When great changes are necessary for the advantage of the public service, we hold it to be expedient, because just, to give to individual interests and claims every consideration which is compatible with the attainment of the public objects in view. He regretted that the same view was not expressed by the Sanitary Commission. They said— It is true that all general rules must occasionally press hard upon individuals, but at the same time they inflict no individual injustice, though they may produce individual hardships, 534 for all are aware of the existence of the rule and of the effect it may have. But all officers were not aware of the existence of the rule. One gentleman—he believed it was Dr. Lucas—who received the first intimation of his removal from the service by seeing his name in The Gazette. That was a mode of dismissal in which he apprehended no gentleman would treat his servant. He would now state some cases of the hardships of this rule. The first was the case of an officer who had been thirty years in the service, twenty-one of which were spent abroad, and he was still in full vigour. His colonial service had in fact ruined his prospects. During the Crimean war he was in the Colonies; he had, therefore, no war employment; having no war employment he had not been promoted; and not having been promoted to the rank of Deputy Inspector, he was removed at the age of fifty-five instead of sixty-five. There was another case, that of an officer who was first for promotion when the warrant came out. The rule by which an Inspector General should retire after having served three years had previously been issued. An officer at Malta had not only served these three years, but had been removed from the service; he was, however, kept at Malta when the late Director General should have gone out. It was not convenient to send the latter gallant officer out, and the other was kept at Malta though not in the service. He was afterwards replaced in the service, and received his full retiring allowance, but the effect was, that the officer who had been first for promotion, and who under other circumstances, would have become Deputy Inspector General, lost that advantage in consequence of the delay, because he was fifty-five years of age, and was consequently, by the terms of this warrant, compelled to retire. What did he (Colonel Lindsay) now ask? That those officers who had been forced to retire in the full vigour of life, under a warrant which had no existence when they entered the service, should be fully compensated, inasmuch as by quitting the service they forfeited the high pay and allowances to the enjoyment of which they had a right to look forward under the former warrant. The compensation which a staff surgeon of the first class was to receive was an advance of 1s. 6d. a day. That was what had been said to him (Colonel Lindsay) by way of answer when he brought this matter under the notice of the House on a former occa- 535 sion. He must, however, say that the answer was anything but a satisfactory one. Eighteen pence a day was not a sufficient compensation for officers, who had passed so many years of their life in the service of the country, and who had been deprived of that higher rank to which they had looked forward, and which they would have received only from this alteration. In the proposals just circulated by the Admiralty for the compulsory retirement of naval officers at the age of sixty the scale was much more liberal. It was there proposed that naval officers who would have been in receipt of 10s. 6d. a day should have their half-pay increased to 18s., and those whose position entitled them to 12s. 6d. would receive 20s. He hoped he should hear from the right hon. Gentleman that some change would be made, especially as there was in the retiring allowances proposed for some of the naval officers a precedent, which might, in this case, be followed with great advantage, and with a due regard to what was just on all hands.

§ MR. SIDNEY HERBERT
regretted very much that he could not accept the view which the hon. and gallant Member took of this question. The hon. and gallant Gentleman admitted that compulsory retirement even in the army was necessary for the public good. [Colonel LINDSAY: In this particular case.] Well, that compulsory retirement was necessary in this particular case; but he complained of the age at which the retirement was placed; that it was placed at an earlier age in the case of surgeon and surgeon major than in that of deputy inspector and inspector. But there was this difference between the two cases—that the former officers were executive—they prescribed and operated; but the deputy inspector and inspector were simply administrative. That was the reason why the retiring age was placed, in the case of the one class—surgeons major and surgeons— at fifty-five, while in the other—deputy inspectors and inspectors—it was fixed at sixty-five. He believed that the rule was a perfectly sound one, and had been pro- 536 ductive of much advantage to the medical profession, though like most other regulations it might in some cases be productive of individual hardship. He believed that compulsory retirement in the case of medical officers was less disadvantageous than was supposed. As a general rule, medical officers on their retirement from the army got into practice in civil life as consulting practitioners, and in most instances a fair amount of practice was the result. In fact they themselves had always urged that they should be allowed to retire at the age of fifty—five years earlier than that fixed for their compulsory retirement—if they wished to do so. As to the question of the retrospective operation of the warrant, it was true that the warrant was retrospective, and acted upon all men who were already in the service; but to postpone a change of the kind till every man in the service at a particular date had left, would be to postpone to an indefinite period an alteration which it was admitted was beneficial to those now entering the service. He must ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman, had no advantage accrued to the medical officers from the warrant of which he now complained? Had there not been established by that warrant an increase of rank, an increase of full pay, and an increase of half-pay, in favour of those officers? Their position, as a class, was immensely improved by it. But if they allowed officers to say, "I shall take this because it is an advantage to me, but I refuse to submit to this other, because I consider it a disadvantage to me," they would get into inextricable confusion. The hon. and gallant Member had referred to individual cases of hardship; but he (Mr. Sidney Herbert) did not admit that illustration by personal cases was the best kind of argument in cases of this kind. He should prefer to deal with the case generally. He admitted that there was a particular provision in this warrant that was open to argument against it; but it was counterbalanced by those which conferred the advantages to which he had just alluded. In the case of the captains of the navy there was nothing to gild the pill for them when they were compelled to retire, and, therefore, it was necessary to give them a larger retiring allowance; but there were several excellent medical appointments in military establishments which did not require any great activity, but might be regarded as retirements. The Government had exclusively devoted those 537 to officers who were affected by the warrant of 1858. One of those was in the College of Sandhurst, another in the Asylum at Chelsea, a third in the Hibernian School, a fourth at Enfield, and so on. He thought it was mischievous to be constantly changing, or trying to change, that which had been done. Had he yielded to the suggestions made even during the present Session for alterations in military regulations of recent date, the Army Estimates would have been increased by some £40,000 or £50,000 per annum. He was anxious to do all in his power to meet what he admitted to be cases of individual hardship, but he thought the best mode of doing this was to give to the officers who had been affected by the warrant priority in appointments to the different situations which might fall vacant and to which they were eligible.

COLONEL DICKSON
thought that the provision in the warrant by which higher ranks were given to medical officers was in some respects unwise; but he concurred with his hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Lindsay) in thinking that an injustice was done to many of those officers by the retrospective operation of the warrant in the manner so clearly pointed out by him; and for that reason he should support his hon. and gallant Friend's proposition. In dealing with such cases as these expense ought never to be allowed to outweigh the claims of justice.

COLONEL LINDSAY
in reply quoted the evidence given before the Sanitary Commission by the director general, Dr. Smith, in which he stated that the rank of first-class staff surgeon was generally not executive but inspectorial—that was, that the first-class staff surgeons did not, for the most part, treat disease, but inspected those who did, and took their share in the administration of the Hospitals. As he (Colonel Lindsay) thought that his object might be effected by the ventilation of the matter, he should not press his Motion.