§ MR. WHITESIDEsaid, he wished to call attention to the anomalous and unfair practice of making deductions from the pay of certain Cavalry Officers for the Forage supplied to their horses. Those officers must have horses in order to perform their duty, 1330 and it was most unjust to make them bear the cost of feeding them. The whole expense to the country for remedying the injustice would not exceed £20,000 a year, an amount which could not break the Treasury, especially as they had a prosperity Budget, with the prospect of everlasting peace. It was not an affair of the Horse Guards—all the evil must be laid at the door of the Treasury, as he believed that if the Commander-in-Chief could do what he liked the complaint would not have to be made. He hoped it was only necessary to mention this matter to the noble Marquess to induce him to make such a representation to that obstinate Department, the Treasury, as might cause an act of justice to be done to a very meritorious body of officers.
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, that the pay of the officers of the army had not been altered for the last seventy or eighty years, and the stoppage in question had always been exacted from cavalry officers, in consequence, he supposed, of the increased pay given them. The suggestion of the hon. and learned Gentleman was nothing less than a simple suggestion to increase the pay of cavalry officers by the sum of 16d. a day in the case of subalterns, and by a larger sum in the case of captains and field officers. It was more a Treasury than a War Office question; and on the abolition of the stoppage being proposed by the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (General Peel) when in office, the Treasury, of which the hon. Baronet the Member for Stamford (Sir Stafford Northcote) was then Secretary, refused to entertain it. The argument of the Treasury was that these officers had purchased their commissions with the prospect of receiving a certain amount of pay, and that to increase it would be a boon to the present holders of commissions only, and would not benefit their successors, because the price of the commission would rise in proportion to the extra advantage attached to it. Whether that was a good argument or not he was not prepared to say; but there did not appear to be any reason which should induce the Treasury to assent now to a proposal which it had rejected in 1859, and again in 1861, when Lord Herbert was in office, and when there existed a reason for offering some additional boon to cavalry officers. In 1861 there was the greatest difficulty in finding cavalry officers at all, and a great number of commissions were vacant. The 1331 attention of Lord Herbert and the Commander-in-Chief was then directed towards a remedy for that, and an increase of pay was recommended, but the Treasury professed to be unable to see that such an increase would benefit any future class of officers, and therefore it refused to carry out that part of Lord Herbert's plans. The plans of Lord Herbert had been perfectly successful, and there was no longer any difficulty in finding cavalry officers. Under those circumstances, he thought it would be idle to renew that proposal at the Treasury, and he did not believe the army required it.
COLONEL NORTHsaid, that he had brought forward that matter almost every year for the last ten years. It might be all very well to insist on the stoppage of forage money if these officers were not bound to keep horses, but in the exercise of their duties they were obliged to keep two. The noble Lord said the pay of the officers of the army had not been altered for seventy or eighty years, but the same argument would have equally applied to the allowance of command money, which he had succeeded in getting altered last year. The stoppage was a very great piece of injustice to cavalry officers, and he did not blame one Administration more than another, as every successive Treasury had refused to meet the case. He regretted that the Treasury always refused every fair demand for the army or navy.