ARMY—(SALE AND PURCHASE OF COMMISSIONS).—RESOLUTIONS,

HC Deb 19 May 1868 vol 192 cc514-78

MR. TREVELYAN

At the very commencement of what I have got to say I must entreat the House not to regard my Resolutions with the disfavour that is apt to attach itself to anything that promises to be an annual Motion. Whether the suspicion with which hon. Members meet a propositition that is renewed year after year be well-founded or not, at any rate it is undeserved in this case. I do not trespass on the time of the House in order to repeat the arguments brought forward lost year against the system of purchase in the army. My object to-night is to supplement those arguments with a definite plan, the adoption of which would allow us to abolish that system at once and for ever. Last year, both in the course of the debate and subsequently in private conversation, many Gentlemen expressed themselves strongly against the existing machinery of promotion in the army, but maintained that it was useless for anyone to meddle with it who could not produce a better. Now, Sir, it is very certain that no one should presume to stir so important a question without having previously thought out the subject to the end. And accordingly I had my scheme of retirement and promotion ready cut and dried. But it was necessary to preface that scheme with a full and complete statement of the shortcomings of the system which we propose to displace. It was necessary to say at length all that could be said against the sale of military commissions. And after the House had listened to me with great kindness for a good hour while 1 dilated on the main objections to the purchase system, it would have required a far greater right to its attention than a Member of my standing can claim to detain it for another hour over the details of a new system, necessarily extensive and complicated in its nature. Many hon. Members no doubt recollect the line which the discussion took last year. It is needless to recapitulate all that was urged by the speakers on our side of the question. They showed, to the satisfaction of at any rate more than two-fifths of the Members present, as the division proved, that the army could never be a profession in the proper sense of the word as long as the purchase system lasted; for the very essence of a profession is first, that the man who pursues it should he able to live by it, and next, that he should succeed in it more or less in proportion to his professional merits. They showed that both of these essential conditions do not, and could not exist under the purchase system. They showed likewise that all attempts to ameliorate the condition of the officers of our army were rendered nugatory and almost ludicrous by a state of things under which every boon or privilege which we conferred upon the officer, by a certain find immediate process, raised the price which he paid for his commission by exactly the capitalized value of that boon or privilege. And they showed, as indeed has been subsequently borne out by innumerable letters, both addressed privately to Members—in my own ease, ever since these Resolutions were on the Paper, they have been coming in at the rate of at least one every day—and inserted in the columns of the military papers, that there was commonly little foundation for the pet phrase so much in vogue at the Horse Guards, that the purchase system is especially dear to the poor officers.

And, Sir, in passing, it is worth observation that people in general do not sufficiently realize the reproach which is cast upon our army by the frequent use, whether at the Horse Guards or in society, of that very expression, "poor officers." In any other profession, when we talk of a person as poor or rich we refer to his success or failure in his professional career. When we speak of a poor barrister we mean one who cannot induce attorneys to give him briefs. When we speak of a poor author we mean one who cannot induce the world in general to buy his books. We do not insult civil servants or lawyers by constant allusions to the allowances which they receive from their fathers, or the legacies which they expect from their relations. But we are for ever throwing it in the teeth of many among the bravest and best of our soldiers that they are poor men—and rightly too— for their want of a good balance at their bankers is their professional fault and drawback, and they must be reminded of it at every turn, just as an idle apprentice must be reminded at every turn of his want of attention or industry. We come forward with our sympathy and compassion, instead of giving them the promotion which they deserve; instead of preventing anyone with money in his pocket from stepping over the heads of his elders and betters. What they want is not sympathy and compassion, but justice. Abolish the purchase system, and you will for the last time have heard any talk about poor officers. Well, Sir, during the debate last year these arguments, some of which I have briefly indicated, had their due effect, as was proved by the admission of the two Leaders of the House on army matters—the Secretary of State for "War (Sir John Pakington). and the noble Lord the Member for North Lancashire (the Marquess of Hartington). Sir John Pakington said— I am quite willing to admit, as the result of my own study of this question, that it is impossible to read the Report of the Royal Commission, the various correspondence of Sir Charles Trevelyan, and the pamphlets which he has published on this subject, without being convinced that there are great and serious anomalies in this system of army purchase. There are many things connected with that system which are fairly open to criticism, and which at least suggest very serious doubts whether, if we were to commence anew, we should found promotion upon the purchase system which now prevails."—[3 Hansard clxxxvi. 1814.] The Marquess of Hartington said— I quite agree with the Secretary of State for War that this system of purchase is full of anomalies and objections; and I believe that there is no true friend to the army who would not be glad to see the system abolished if we could only devise a system without similar anomalies and objections." —[Ibid. 1821.] Such a system, free I venture to hope from the anomalies and objections alluded to, I propose to lay before you to-night with all possible brevity and simplicity. And yet with all possible brevity I cannot be very brief, but must ask lion. Members to pay me the attention due not to the weight of the speaker but to the importance of the subject.

Now, Sir, there may be some lion. Gentlemen who hold, in a somewhat vague manner, that the present system ought to be abolished, but who regard the scheme on the Paper as too sweeping, too Radical, and, above all, as too expensive. They may think, as people at the first aspect of new questions are always inclined to think, that it would be better at any rate to begin with a partial measure. Now on this point I will quote the high authority of Earl Grey, than whom no one living has a keener and more correct sense of the defects of our military system; though, speaking with great diffidence and respect, I cannot but think that his Lordship is a little over cautious when the question relates to the remedying of those defects— My own conviction is, that if you touch the system of purchase at all it would be wiser to abolish it altogether. I can likewise adduce the authority of the Duke of Cambridge—for army reformers, it must be confessed, are always very glad to quote the opinion of the Horse Guards whenever it happens to tell for instead of against them— I am prepared to say this, that any change which is propounded should be n complete one, and not a partial one. And again— I should be sorry to see any partial change-adopted. I think that any change should comprise the whole question, so that there might be security to the officers of the army; for any partial change would lead to doubt and uncertainly. Now, Sir, this very decided expression of opinion in the highest quarters has been fully borne out by the fact. Two partial and piecemeal attempts have already been made to break into the purchase system. The first was that advocated by Sir De Lacy Evans and patronized by Lord Herbert, which went on the principle of checking purchase at the rank of major, and choosing lieutenant-colonels by selection. This fell through, partly owing to the untimely death of Lord Herbert; partly—as far as the outside world is able to judge of what passes in those elevated and irresponsible regions — from the opposition of His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge. There likewise wore inherent difficulties in the scheme, of a nature which many hon. and gallant Gentlemen probably know by painful experience, but with which, at anyrate at this part of my speech, I will not trouble the House. I refer to the impossibility which a major would in most cases experience, owing to his not having served the necessary twenty-five years, of making use of the half-pay list to perform that curious transaction by which a colonel about to become a major-general now contrives to get back part of the price of his commissions. This scheme for the mitigation of the evils of purchase never got farther than talk and paper; but unfortunately the next partial measure was carried into effect, in an evil day for the efficiency of the service. About eight years ago, I think, sixty-five cornetcies of horse were going a-begging for a purchaser. Young men could not be found who could support the extravagant current expenses of a Cavalry regiment, and at the same time pay the heavy price demanded for the first commission. About the same time the unattractive, hopeless character of an English private soldier's life in time of peace had succeeded in banishing from outranks the entire middle class of the country, and the best of the working classes; and it was found necessary to appoint a Commission to enquire into the falling-off of recruiting. So that our system broke down at both ends. We found ourselves hi this ridiculous position, that on the one hand we could not find men poor enough to serve us as soldiers, and on the other we could not find men rich enough to serve us as officers. Then the military authorities began to assist Cavalry officers to buy their commissions at the expense of the Infantry by means of the Army Reserve Fund—that abominable device, very wisely withdrawn entirely from the supervision of your honourable House, and carried on in some hole or corner beyond Parliamentary ken, by which the poorest and most hard-worked class of our officers, the Infantry of the Line, have in the course of five years and six months been forced to contribute upwards of £200,000 to bolster up this rotten and demoralizing system. And with what result? Why, Sir, with the result which must have been foreseen by everyone who has the most superficial acquaintance with the laws of supply and demand; with the result of leaving things exactly as they were, owing to the equalizing operation of the fancy, non-regulation prices. To quote the evidence of Colonel Halliday before Lord Hotham's Committee, an officer who has very clear and matured views on this question— The object aimed at- has not been attained, for the prices given for commissions in the Cavalry have not been practically diminished, nor is there any probability of their being so while the purchase system continues, since the purchaser naturally always fives the market value of the commission lie wishes to get; and therefore if at any future time it should be determined to compensate officers for their vested interests in the actual value of their commissions, it will be found that the total amount of the claims to be extinguished would be as large as if this expenditure to buy up the difference in the prices of Cavalry commissions had never been incurred. But the strongest argument against the partial and gradual abolition of the purchase system lies in the certainty that, as long as a single shred of the old system is legalized by the Government, so long men will go on buying and selling commissions by secret barter. While any traffic in military appointments is tolerated, the tendency to give and take their real value will be irresistible. There has been some talk in military circles, and some writing in the military Press, as to the probability of the Government abolishing purchase above the rank of captain, and now my lion, and gallant Friend the Member for Truro has embodied the proposition in an Amendment. Now, Sir, army reformers will be thankful for any mercies, however small. We should not repudiate the concession: we should, indeed, think it a very great prize to have been won in so few campaigns. We should consider it to be a step worthy of the Ministry, which last Session did something considerable to improve the position and increase the comforts of the common soldier, and which, during the Vacation, ventured on a bold and a very promising attempt to vivify and adjust the administrative Departments of our army. But we must not be blind to the defects of the plan. If the Government recognizes purchase up to the rank of captain, it is only too certain that every commission throughout the service of every grade will continue to be bought and sold for what it will fetch. Notice what goes on now. At this moment the following Act is in force:— Every officer in Her Majesty's forces who shall take, accept, or receive, or pay, or agree to pay, any larger sum of money, directly or indirectly, than what is allowed by any regulations made by Her Majesty in relation to the purchase or exchange of commissions in Her Majesty's forces, shall, on being convicted thereof by a general Court-martial, forfeit his commission and be cashiered: and the Commander-in-Chief is directed to take measures for giving full effect to the penalties attaching to such offence. Does the Commander-in-Chief take those measures? No, Sir. When examined before the Royal Commission of 1857, he acknowledged, almost in so many words, that his policy on the subject was nothing but a lifelong connivance. Do our officers observe the law? Do they refrain from accepting, receiving, or paying any larger sum of money than is allowed by the regulations? Sir, I leave it to every lion, and gallant Gentleman here to answer that question to his neighbour. I leave it to every hon. Member who has a son or a nephew in the army to answer it to himself. What young officer is there who has not a purchase grievance connected with the fancy prices? I met one the other day whose regiment had been ordered to the West Indies, and who told me that the junior lieutenant, who had recently purchased his commission for £600 over the regulation price, was willing to dispose of it for £100 less than he gave for it. The senior ensign was down for purchase, and very willing to buy; but his father refused to allow his son to give over the regulation price, and accordingly promotion was stopped for all the youngsters in the battalion. And then he went on to say—and I must beg the House to mark this—that it was foolish to refuse such an offer, because the pay would be capital interest on the money invested. I asked him, if the pay was regarded as interest on the money invested, what the officer would receive for his services? and, from his difficulty in understanding the question, it was evident that the idea had never occurred to him that his services were worth anything at all. Childish as the story is, it surely is important as an illustration of the lesson inevitably learned by our young officers from the teaching of the purchase system. They regard their position as their own right, bought with their own money. They look on their pay as the interest of that money, and they cannot realize that they are the servants of the Stale. Well, Sir, if the penalties threatened in the statute do not deter officers from exceeding the regulation prices, while those regulation prices are legally recognized, we may be sure that, as long as you leave a trace or vestige of purchase, so long will everything in the army be bought and sold in spite of all our efforts to the contrary. Colonelcies and majorities will be for sale no longer in open, but in secret, market; just as now adjutancies in the Militia and Volunteers are notoriously objects of traffic, and purses are made up for retiring officers in the non-purchase regiments handed over to us from the East India Company. But abolish this system root and branch—train the public spirit of the army to nobler things—cease to place before the eyes of our officers the spectacle of commissions sold, like patent razors, with the stamp of authority upon them, and you may confidently expect to see the day when our military men will scorn such a traffic, just as j it is now scorned by our civil servants, both j in India and at home. Cease to legalize purchase, and you will put the Commander-in-Chief on his honour to suppress all Bur-reptitious traffic in commissions. You will put our officers on their honour no longer to carry on that traffic; for, in spite of your official regulations, it is idle to say that they are upon their honour now. And when English officers are upon their honour we shall have a stronger guarantee than any written law, or ordinance, or Act of Parliament, by whatever penalties it may be strengthened and enforced. At present the Commander-in-Chief appears to be so ashamed of being unable to enforce these provisions, that in the last edition of the Queen's Regulations they have been entirely omitted, Our military authorities actually are so powerless against she prohibited custom, that they have been driven to ignore the prohibition, and their conduct in so doing must be regarded us a sign of grace. Finding the law a dead letter, we must all agree they did well to bury it. And this acknowledgment of the impossibility of preventing the abuse of the system must be accepted as a forerunner of the abandonment of the system itself.

And now, Sir, if hon. Members will look at the Paper, they will see that the 1st Resolution is general, following a great example which is fresh in the memory of the House. It was thoroughly argued out last year, and all that could be said about it was said then It is worth noticing, however, that it is proposed to fix a date after which no sale is to be legal, on the same principle—to use an uncomplimentary comparison, which I hope no hon. and gallant Gentleman will consider to be intended offensively—on the same principle that in calling in clipped money or depreciated paper currency, it is necessary to fix a date after which the condemned circulating medium is not to pass. And as the nation must expect to have to pay the difference between the real and the nominal value of the coinage which it is superseding, so, if we wish to abolish purchase, we must look the expense of that great operation boldly in the face. It will be necessary to compensate our officers not only for the sum which they paid for their commissions in open and legitimate market; we must make up our minds to pay them back all that they gave as a fancy price over and above the legal limit. The justice, the necessity of this hardly requires argument or illustration. The public have hitherto thrown upon our officers the burden of providing their own retiring allowances, and the public must re-pay, in some shape or other, the sums which have been advanced by individual? in support of the system under which their services have been engaged. It is, above every other cause, the respect shown by English reformers towards vested rights that renders English reforms so solid and so durable. A day, then, must be fixed on which every officer on full-pay will be cre- dited with the sum which he could get for his then commission, taking into account both the regulation and the non-regulation prices. The computation would be made by a Commission of experienced military men, versed in the transactions of the military market — men in whom their brethren in arms would feel an implicit confidence. And then if an officer, after whatever lapse of time, resisting the temptations of the revised system of retirements which I propose soon to describe, and unambitious of rising to the rank of general, determines to leave the army by a process which, under the present system, would have involved the sale of his commission, he would receive from the Treasury the sum which stood in his name.

And now perhaps hon. Members who have not had time to look into the more hidden mysteries of the purchase system, may wish me to say a few words about the 4th Resolution. The hon. Members to whom I refer, knowing that a colonel on his promotion to be major-general is not allowed to sell his commission, may be at some pains to understand why an officer in that predicament should under any circumstances be entitled to compensation, But under the present régime something of this sort takes place. A colonel has pretty certainly invested too much money in his commission to allow him to sacrifice the whole of it so he watches his progress on the list of colonels, and when he comes near the top, lie lets it be understood that he will retire on half-pay if he can obtain from the next officer down for purchase a sum varying from a, third to a half of the value of his commission. Sometimes a pin so will he made up in the regiment. Sometimes, if the money is not forthcoming in his own regiment, he will exchange into another where the officers are better off. In one way or another he generally gets back something handsome, unless, as is sometimes the case, while he is bargaining about to the right and left, there is a sudden gush of promotion, and he finds himself a major-general before he has completed his negotiation. This misfortune, which is a terrible bugbear on the military stock exchange, is popularly know as being "caught in a brevet." There was a famous instance in the person of, I think. General Bunbury, who was very widely pitied throughout the army. And it is only the other day that a Cavalry colonel had made himself unpopular in his regiment by refusing to retire when his officers had taken the trouble to make up a purse, preferring to wait his own time. By way of punishment, it was agreed that no one should deal with him when his own time came; and he was allowed to drift into a major-generalship without receiving a farthing back of nil that he had laid out. The poor man is said to have lost at a stroke £17,000. The authorities not only winked at all this; but actually in some cases regulated their appointments to high and important commands abroad, by the success and failure of the candidates in this most unprofessional system of brokerage. General Augustus Spencer, giving evidence before the Purchase Commission, speaks as follows:— I have seen inefficient officers get promotion for the purpose of enabling old officers to realize their capital, perhaps on the point of death. I have seen superior officers appointed to high commands, from their not having been previously able to recover their capital through an unexpected brevet. Now, Sir, there are two capital objections always ready to be brought forward against any proposal to abolish purchase: first, that it will stop promotion, and fill the army with old officers; secondly, that it will give great scope to favouritism in high quarters, because it is maintained that under the present system, however the poor man may suffer, at any rate the rich have a fair field and no favour. But, Sir, if the Government is willing to carry out in all its details some scheme virtually the same as that now upon the Paper, both these objections will full to the ground. For in order to obviate the first, in order to remove the apprehension lest the extinction of purchase should cause a glut in the channel of promotion, we must extend to the whole army the scheme of retirement with certain necessary modifications, pretty unanimously recommended by Mr. Childers' Committee of last year—a Committee in which there was a strong, and indeed, I may say, a preponderating military element. The main provisions of this scheme are the permission given to every officer to retire on a handsome maintenance after a certain number of years in the army; and the obligation to retire after he has passed the age at which he is fit for service in the field. Now, Sir, I know that the idea of cutting short an officer's career at any age whatever is exceedingly unpalateable to many military men; but the time is coming when in dealing with questions concerning the defence of the nation we must consult pub- lic utility and not private sentiment. We must propound this question to ourselves: Are we maintaining our army with a view to peace, or with a view to war? If the latter, we must look for our examples in the annals of war, and not in the annals; of peace. We should endeavour to fashion our army after the model, not of what it was when it fought in the Crimea after forty years of peace, but after the model of what it was when it fought at Waterloo after twenty years of war. Sir, it has been, stated, and as far as I can learn it has never been contradicted, that the Waterloo army contained only one officer over the age of fifty, and that officer was, indeed, n. brilliant exception, for he was General Picton. But whether this sweeping statement be true or not, there can be no doubt whatever that active service soons clears the ranks of all the elderly subalterns and captains. And, therefore, for the sake of the efficiency of the service, and in the interests of the younger officers, we should do for ourselves what the first year of war would do for us. This is the view of one of our best soldiers, Sir William Mansfield, who says— I would place every captain en retraite at forty-five years of age, and every field officer at fifty, the latter being available for higher offices if specially suited to hold them. This has long been the view of the French military authorities, who oblige a captain to retire at fifty-three, and a lieutenant at fifty-two. But, Sir, if this scheme be adopted, besides those officers, who retire compulsorily at a certain age, who, in my opinion, will be very few, and those who are tempted into retirement by a liberal scale of annuities, which, in all probability, will be very many, there will be the vacancies caused by the great numbers of young men of good family who then, as now, will seek the army for a few years as a worthy and noble pastime. I know, Sir, that we are told that it is the purchase system which attracts these young men into our service—which statement, if it means anything at all, must mean that eldest sons, and men of rank join the army because the army is the only profession in which wealth will tell. Sir, in behalf of the younger men of this country, I utterly refuse to credit that aspersion. It is not the right of purchasing steps over their poorer comrades that fills our army with the pick of our gentry and aristocracy. It is the free life of adventure and travel —the pleasant genial fraternity of the mess—and, above all other motives, the hope of doing something in the day of trial for the honour and advantage of Eng land. Change the system as you like, and you will have plenty of gentlemen. I do not believe that there is a. higher and better tone in any corps in any army than in our own Artillery and Engineers, where purchase is a thing unheard of. The advocates of purchase tells us that we want gentlemen. Well, Sir, if by gentlemen, they mean men who desire to get an advantage over their less wealthy brethren in arms, all I can Say is that those are a class of gentlemen whom we can very well afford to want.

Perhaps some hon. Gentleman may not be able fully to understand why it is that military men imagine that the purchase system quickens promotion by tempting men to leave the army, and acts as a sort of substitute for a system of retiring allowances. At present, when an officer wishes to marry and settle down, he tells his commission, say for £2,500, which is a pretty little sum of money with which to furnish his house and buy a brougham. But, at the first blush of the thing, it would certainly appear that if he had never had occasion to buy those commissions, he would have had the £2,500 in his pocket, with the interest in addition. But officers evidently have an instinct that such would not be the case, and, to a certain extent, that instinct is a true one; for the commissions of a young officer are frequently bought with money which he would not get under any other conditions. When a good opportunity comes for pushing a young fellow up a step, his father spares, and borrows, and begs every farthing he can scrape together. The family friends give something, and the relations anticipate the legacies which they intend to leave. Sir, to use a homely, or, perhaps, rather a vulgar expression, the purchase system is regarded by many of our young officers, and, to a certain ex tent, rightly so regarded, as a gigantic-machinery for screwing money out of the governors. A young officer who, at present, can lay his hand upon £2,000 whenever he thinks fit to sell out, knows very well that, if it were not for the purchase system, one of those thousands would be in his father's pocket, and the other in his maiden aunt's reticule.

And now, Sir, I come to another point. The most reasonable and thoughtful among the advocates of purchase, while they fear lest the abolition of purchase should close the door to rapid promotion, are still more apprehensive lest it should open the door to favouritism. It is to meet this objection that the 5th Resolution has been put upon the Paper, which, now that I come to look at it again, evidently comes too early, and should have chained places with the 6th. The experience of all good armies has proved that the true principle on which promotion should be conducted is that of selection, based upon seniority. According to the French law, the promotion from lieutenant to captain is two-thirds by seniority, and one-third by selection—for a captain to become a field officer, seniority and selection in equal proportions; and after the grade of chef de battaillon promotion is exclusively by selection. Colonel Claremont, who had rare opportunities of observation as Assistant Military Commissioner at the French head quarters in the Crimea, describes the system as follows:— Every year there is an inspection of every regiment in the service; and there are inspectors-general appointed, who are not general officers commanding troops anywhere, but independent men—a certain number for the Infantry, a certain number for (he Cavalry, a certain number for the Artillery, and a certain number for the Engineers. Before they start on their lour of inspection, they each get a printed form of instruction, pointing out exactly all the points to which they have to turn their attention; and it keeps up the most perfect uniformity throughout, because these men have not been commanding this particular regiment or that particular regiment. They go amongst them quite unbiassed; they have to turn their attention to the selection of officers for promotion; they are told that in such a district there are so many regiments and so many officers, and there will be so many vacancies The commanding officer of each regiment presents to the inspector about double the number if officers for promotion than there are vacancies for. The inspector sees these officers, examines them in every way, and marks the best men. All those confidential Reports are sent to the Minister at War, and the inspectors general meet in committee, and form a general return of promotion. In accordance with their return the Minister makes his promotions. After stating that the army thoroughly understands this somewhat elaborate proceeding. Colonel Claremont makes this most important observation—" They do not grumble at it. Every man seems to get his fair proportion." And he likewise assures the Royal Commission of this fact, in words that must surely have made it blush—'' There is not a single money transaction in the French army. Not one." His observations are fully borne out by what we know of French military opinion. General Trochu, whom I do not hesitate to call the Brat living military authority in the world, especially on all matters relating to the tone of armies, says—I will read his words if the House will excuse an English public school accent—" L'avancement est soumis à des regles fixees par la loi. It a consequemment rien d'arbitraire." But, Sir, we are told that this is all very well in France, but that the English army would have no confidence in the manner in which the Horse Guards would exercise its patronage; and, strange to say, this language is most common in the mouths of those very men who always, whether within the walls of this House or in the Committee-rooms upstairs, most vehemently resent it when any audacious civilian speaks lightly or disparagingly of that very institution which they dare not trust with the powers so liberally placed in the hands of the French War Office. Well may the Commander-in-Chief say, "Preserve me from my friends." It is the more hard on him that he should meet with such treatment from his trusted allies, because in the lost Queen's Regulations he has published very full and detailed instructions to the general officers who are to carry out our half-yearly inspections, which do not lose an atom by contrast with the instructions of the French War Office.

Now, Sir, these instructions afford an excellent substratum on which to found a solid and satisfactory system of selection. Though there is some danger lest hon. Gentlemen who remember the debate of last year on the Motion of my hon. Friend the Member for the Montgomery boroughs should receive what I am now going to say with the laughter of incredulity, it is the fact that, with some most notorious and unhappy exceptions, the promotions made by the Board of Admiralty give fair satisfaction to the service. And, Sir, if it be really the case, which I do not for a moment believe, that political intrigue, or aristocratic exclusiveness, or Royal partiality are so rampant in our public Departments that we must fly to a system which judges merit by the criterion of the longest purse, then indeed those time-honoured institutions of which we are so proud may be said to have been on their trial long enough. No, Sir, a high-spirited officer would surely far prefer some slight and occasional uncertainty about the justice of this or that appointment, to the miserable necessity of turning aside from the cares of his noble profession to the wretched huckstering and chaffering and bargain-making on which his career at present depends. Shortly after the debate of last year I got a very civil letter from an officer, whose name I do not recollect for I tore the letter up, and quote from memory, in which he expresses surprise that I brought forward Lord Clyde's authority against purchase, as Lord Clyde himself profited by purchase, and the writer went on to give his idea of what profiting by purchase meant. He affirmed that Lord Clyde, after waiting many years for promotion, obtained it at length by borrowing money from, if I remember right, a Demerara storekeeper and a Creole widow. Now, Sir, I do not vouch for the truth of this story; for in the first place I do not know the writer personally, and in the next place I have not got the letter by me. But it is worthy of note that any English soldier should believe that the greatest English soldier of our own time should have learned by such an experience to be enamoured of such a system.

Sir, I have no doubt hon. Members who wish to keep things as they are, will insist very strongly upon the ruinous expense which this proposed change would entail upon the country. The change unquestionably will be very costly. It will involve a considerable outlay, spread over a whole generation. For an economical army reformer it is an unsatisfactory reflection that, after the Crimean War, purchase might have been abolished at a comparatively trifling cost, on account of the great number of officers who held commissions which had been obtained without purchase, by death vacancies, and the other casualties of active service. At that period anyone who had contracted to buy up the saleable commissions for £1,500,000, would have gained by his contract. But the Horse Guards refused to take advantage of that most favourable state of the commission market, caused by a war in which the purchase system had confessedly broken down, to the shame and sorrow of the country; and, therefore, if the country should now have to spend three or four times the £1,500,000 which this most salutary and necessary operation would have cost it then, it is at the door of the Horse Guards and not at the door of army reformers that the unpopularity of the increased estimate should lie. If the Secretary at War came down to this House, or at any rate to the coming House, with a plan for the emancipation of our army from its ancient trammels, and asked us to pay the necessary price, is there anyone who doubts that that price would be paid as willingly as some years ago we voted £7,000,000 for the far more dubious advantage of the Coast Defences?

Several hon. Members have told me that my scheme is all very well, but that the House of Commons is a practical Assembly, and will regard it as Utopian. Sir, let hon. Gentlemen look carefully around the political horizon, and then ask themselves gravely whether Europe in its present condition is in any sense a Utopia! Look at Prussia, the best equipped and best organized of ail modern communities. Is she resting on her oars? Read Colonel Crealock's Report about Austria, and see what is being done in that most aristocratic and retrograde of all the continental armies. What is being done in France? Why, Sir, if there be one thing which French officers of the old school regarded as the secret strength of their army—if there was one principle more than another to which they attributed their great historical victories, it was the principle of picked regiments of corps d'élite. This belief was carried so far, that out of the annual multitude of recruits, the tallest men with the broadest chests, were taken for the Artillery and the Engineers. The Cavalry had the next choice. Then the battalions of Chasseurs a piéds had the right of selection, and what remained was considered good enough for the Infantry of the Line. But not even there did the system of selection stop. The best men who remained were all drafted off for the two flank companies out of the six which com pose a French battalion, and the four centre companies were made up exclusively of material which had been rejected on all hands. Well, Sir, it was but last year that General Trochu, in his most eloquent and thoughtful treatise, L'Armée Francaise, a work which has three times the fascination, and, I am glad to say, had three times the sale of the best sensational novel of the year, was bold enough to condemn utterly this system which ever since the last Empire had been worshipped as the special merit and glory of the French army. He courageously told his countrymen that it was because England had no corps d'élite that her Infantry was the best in the world. "L'Infantérie Anglaise," he says, "Est l'lnfantérie la plus redoutable du monde. Heureusetnent il n'y en a pas beaucoup." And what was the effect of his remonstrance? Why, Sir, in some of the last accounts from France, we read that the French War Office has determined to abolish the battalions of Chasseurs and the flank companies, and to take the best advice in the teeth of the most honoured traditions. No, Sir, this is not the time to talk of schemes as visionary and Utopian. That was how Austria on the eve of the Seven Weeks' War talked of the Prussian breech-loaders. Whatever we intend to do in the way of searching army reform, this is the end we must begin at; and the War Office knows it well. When the authority determined to reform our Transport corps, the first thing they did was to abolish purchase in the Military Train, and they did it by means of the Reserve Fund, at the expense of the Infantry officers. Let us to-night bid them carry the good work to its completion, avid let it be honestly done at the expense of the community.

And, now, Sir, I come to the 7th and last Resolution, which in importance bears the same relation to the others as a lady's postscript proverbially does to the rest of her letter. For if once we could obtain this point; if once we could prevail upon the War Office to set aside some fixed proportion of vacancies, say one-third or one-fourth, for men promoted from the ranks, all else would follow in good time. For that measure would necessitate a complete revolution; a revision of our military system from the highest to the lowest ranks. For, in the first place, men who depended for their subsistence on their calling, would obtain commissions in such numbers that they would feel their own strength, and would introduce into our mess-rooms professional habits and a tone of economy. They would bring pressure to bear which would force the authorities to come to their assistance by abolishing some of the unnecessary expenses, which, at present, weigh down our poorer officers. Regimental bands would no longer be paid for out of their scanty stipends; uniforms would be simplified and changed to the advantage of everybody but the army tailors; hundreds and hundreds of pounds would no longer be spent on sealskins, and embroidery, and gold and silver lace, for an unfortunate man who would fight much more comfortably in a suit of plain broadcloth, which cost twelve or fifteen guineas; there would be an end to the childish meddlings with the cut and pattern of their costumes which vex the hearts of good and poor soldiers; uniforms would be cheaper, and officers would no longer be ashamed to wear them when off duty—a custom which in itself is both a sign and a partial cause of the unprofessional spirit of our army. On the other hand the certain prospect of advancement would draw so many men of a better class into our ranks, that we should be both enabled and obliged to improve the condition and foster the self-respect of the common soldier. We should have such an accession of good recruits that we must then do what we ought to do at once, and that is, make it a point to get rid of all the bad bargains; and when the army is free from scamps and ruffians—when once, as now in the Police, dismissal has become the severest of all punishments—then all those degrading penalties, over which we fight so desperately year after year, will go with the consent of all parties in time of war and of peace alike. Flogging will be a thing of the past, and we shall have heard the last of that shameful stigma, the branding free Englishmen with the letters of shame. Why, Sir, when the Recruiting Commission of 1859 was told to make recommendations, by which the well-being of the English soldier should be increased, one of the remedies which they proposed was the more indelible marking of his back and shoulders—a proposition that was adopted by the Horse Guards with ominous alacrity.

I know we are told that the British soldier likes to be commanded by gentlemen. But I cannot forget that we are told so by the very same men who maintain that the well-conducted private soldier regards flogging and branding with pride and satisfaction. And. Sir, in the hour of need and peril the Horse Guards forgets its own favourite theories. During the stress of the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny it lost sight of the Tact that our troops objected to be officered by any but gentlemen; and in the five years between 1854 and 1858 no less than 483 soldiers were raised from the ranks. But when the danger was over, we went back to our old ways, and slammed the door of promotion in the faces of our rank and file. In the years 1861, 1862, and 1863, respectively, the promotion from the ranks numbered three, four, and eight. We must do something to attract into our ranks the hard-working, well-to-do classes, whether those classes go by the name of upper, middle, or lower: those truly working classes which, in their different professions, trades, and callings, have made England what she is in commerce and in history. We cannot go on much longer officering our army from the froth, and mnnning it from the dregs of society. An hon. and gallant Member told us last year that if we promoted a ploughman or a linen-draper, because he happened to be smarter than his fellows, and because he could read and write, he would destroy the whole tone of a regiment. Not so thought Cromwell, when he applied himself to form the last army which has ever really represented the full fighting strength of the English people. No, Sir, to use his own language, he sent all the tapsters and broken-down-serving people about their business, and took honest, God-fearing men of recognized position and calling: paid them well, and chose their officers from their own body. Napoleon always looked back with regret upon his first Italian army, as the best force which he ever led; because, as he himself said, that army had been raised from all ranks of society, during the early enthusiasm of the Revolution. If, on the march, he wanted a secretary, he bad but to call to the company which happened to be passing, and one-half of the men would start from the ranks; and it was from those very ranks that he selected the most famous fraternity of generals that the world ever saw.

Hon. Gentlemen will talk a good deal, ns they have talked in times past, of the system which produced the army which triumphed at Talavera, and Waterloo, and Goojerat: but, Sir, these are not our first or our only laurels. No English army ever gainéd such successes against such odds as the little bands of heroes who fought in the early wars in France. Crecy and Poictiers and Agincourt were won by national armies containing, in their disproportion, all classes, from the Prince to the peasant. Sir, in the year 1818, Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr introduced the admirable system of promotion, selection, and retirement, which, to this day, prevails in the French army. Referring to that event, the Due d'Aumale writes thus—"Then," he says, "France felt that she had recovered her army, and the army had got its charter." Sir, what the French can do, we can do. Of all the feelings which actuate the policy of hon. Gentlemen opposite, there is none more honourable than that profound conviction which they entertain, regarding the innate excellence of the British character. At all Conservative banquets and public meetings, we are told that it is ignoble and unpatriotic to be for ever comparing ourselves with foreigners, to our own disadvantage. Therefore, Sir, I appeal to those hon. Gentlemen to examine the system which France has long ago adopted; which Austria, taught in a bitter school, is beginning to adopt too late for her fame and power —and to tell us what those national failings are which forbid that system to succeed in England, You, at any rate, can surely not be un-English enough to say that red tape and favouritism, and nepotism are so peculiarly native to our soil that we dare not do here what is done at Paris and at Vienna. And to hon. Gentlemen on ray own side of the House—and more especially to those who, like myself, do not wince when their opponents stigmatize them with the name of Radical— I adjure them to do their utmost to provide us at the earliest date with an efficient, an intelligent, a national, and, in the truest sense of the word, with a democratic military force. Then, and not till then, England will feel that she has recovered her army, and the army will have got its charter.

MR. MELLY

seconded the Resolution.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Purchase and Sale of Military Commissions he discontinued alter a date fixed for that purpose."—(Mr. Trevelyan.)

CAPTAIN VIVIAN

was bound to say that his hon. Friend (Mr. Trevelyan) had advanced his arguments with great fairness, and with a certain amount of moderation, and that he was not surprised lie bad apologized for the form of his Motion, inasmuch as the Motion of that evening was not a sequence to the Motion of last Session, The Motion of last year was in an abstract form, to the effect that the system of purchase in the army did not conduce to the efficiency of the army. That was a proper and natural Motion to make. It was debated at some length, and was negatived by a largo majority. He should have expected that the Motion of this evening would have been a renewal of the one of last year, in the hope of obtaining a reversal of the decision then come to; but his hon. Friend now proposed a long and detailed scheme, whereby purchase in the army should be immediately abolished. The Motion of his hon. Friend was of a much more sweeping character than any ever advocated in that House or out of it, for Sir De Lacy Evans never attempted to abolish the system of purchase at once. He would ask the House to listen to what his view of purchase in the army was, for his hon. Friend had called it a miserable system of bartering and huckstering; but he (Captain Vivian) was amazed that a system said to contain so much vice and so few virtues should have endured so long, and more amazed that their armies should have obtained such glorious victories, which had been in a large degree attributable to the wonderful way in which our men had followed their officers and our officers had led their men. The reference to Crecy and Poictiers was a singularly inapt illustration in behalf of the change proposed; for those victories were won by an army led by one class of men and manned by another, yeomen following knights with marvellous fidelity. This was a question which had been discussed frequently in that House, and which had occupied considerable attention out of it; but it was one which the general public little understood. The hon. Gentleman had declared this to be a question of money against merit, as though money and merit could never go together; but it might as reasonably be argued that a man of merit could have no money. The fact was that money had a subordinate influence in promotion, at least to the higher ranks, because there were at present three requirements for promotion—seniority, efficiency, and, lastly, money. It was said that money enabled the less meritorious to pass over the heads of the more meritorious. No doubt such cases might be found; but, on the other hand, this very system of purchase enabled a man who had merit and money to pass over the head of the man without either. If that was the case, then the description of those who said the system was one of money against merit was unfair. He believed that Lord Clyde was induced to remain in the military profession by being able to purchase over the heads of three of his seniors. But then his hon. Friend would ask him why, under such circumstances, the purchase system was so unpopular in the army; but, so far as he knew, it was by no means unpopular in the army, either amongst the purchase or non-purchase men. If anything was unpopular in the army it was, not the purchase system pure and simple, but the abuses that had crept up about it, such as the increased extra prices paid for commissions now-a-days. That was an abuse which had gone on increasing, and which might well he done away with, but it had nothing to do with purchase pure and simple. If they attempted to do away with the purchase system it would only come up again in another form. In an army lately done away with, where purchase was unknown, there existed the bonus system, which was nothing more nor less than a system of compulsory purchase without control, as against a system of purchase under control. A friend of his, Mr. O'Dowd, who under stood the working of the system as well as anyone in England, had lately written a book, in which he described the purchase system as a "self-supporting retirement system by means of deposits." He trusted that the House would pause before they proceeded to revolutionize our regimental system by abolishing purchase. General Trochu stated that the part of our army system which was pre-eminently superior to that of any other country was our regimental system. The effect to enable our officers to obtain more rapid promotion than in any other army. He had sat upon a Committee presided over by the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers) to inquire into the dead-lock in the non-purchase corps. What did the Committee suggest? A system of purchase by the State, so that, after a certain number of years, the State should buy the commissions of officers and get them out of the way. There were grumblers in all professions; but be ventured to say there was not a single officer in that House who would not say that the purchase system was popular in the army. Lately there had been twelve non-purchase corps added to the army. Things had lately come to a dead-lock in these corps, and he had been informed that the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Stafford Northcote) had decided that, in order to secure a flow of promotion, an officer wishing to retire after a certain number of years should receive a sum of money out of the Indian funds. That would be neither more nor less than a system of purchase by the State. But then it was said that the purchase system was unpopular with the poor man, and the case of Sir Henry Havelock was cited. It was said that he was crushed down by the purchase system; and that if it had not been for the siege of Lucknow he would never have risen in his profession. But Sir Henry Havelock exchanged twice out of his regiments in order to get money under the purchase system, and he would have commanded a regiment long before he did if he had remained in his regiments. It was hard to attribute such things to a purchase system when they were acts done by a man himself in furtherance of his own views and objects in life. If the House should, notwithstanding, determine to abolish purchase, was it possible to abolish it in the lower ranks? His hon. Friend admitted that in the lower ranks promotion must go by seniority, and he believed that if he proposed to adopt the principle of selection in those ranks he would open the door to very great unfairness; for they could have in the lower ranks but small experience of the qualities of an officer, and it was not fair that promotion should go by selection. Depend upon it that if they adopted the principle of seniority they would have in one shape or other, a system of buying out. They might pledge an officer never to sell his commission; but what was to hinder him from selling his sword for £200, or his old cob for £500? His hon. Friend had shown a good deal of ingenuity in answering the question what it would cost to do away with the purchase system? His hon. Friend said it might have been abolished in 1856 for about £2,000,000; but he avoided telling the House what it would cost to abolish it now. He would submit to the House certain figures showing what the country must pay to buy up the vested interests of the army. Those figures were placed before the Royal Commission on Purchase issued soon after the Crimean War. Then there were many young officers who had served so short a time that they were not entitled to sell their commissions; but since then our army had been increased by two Cavalry and twenty-seven Infantry regiments. In 1856 the regulation value of the commissions was, in the Cavalry £1,335,290; in the Foot Guards £610,110; and in the Infantry of the Line, £5,180,630—making together, a total of £7,126,030. But justice required them to pay not only the regulation price, but also whatever additional sums had really been paid under the system now connived at, Mr. O'Dowd had gone pretty closely into that matter in his pamphlet, and, taking first, in respect to the Cavalry, one of the most expensive and one of the least expensive regiments, he found that the average amount above the regulation price paid by a major for a lieutenant-colonelcy was £6,800 in the dearest regiment, and £5,075 in the cheapest. That gave a mean of about £6,000 as the average sum paid above the regulation price for a lieutenant-colonelcy. Thus, it would be necessary to pay to the Cavalry £1,735,000 above the regulation price; to the Guards £435.000; and to the Infantry of the Line £2,849,000; making together £5,019,000 above the regulation price. To that had to be added the £7,126,030 before mentioned; and thus they arrived at a total of £12,145,030 as representing the real value of the vested interests in the army. He took off 20 per cent as a fair deduction for promotion to the rank of general, retirement on half-pay, and other vacancies. Therefore, the House must be prepared, not in the course of a generation, but at most in twenty years, to spend first of all £10,000,000 in; round figures to buyout the vested interests of the army. But that was not all, it would cost them to get rid of purchase; for they would have to revise their whole system of retirement. Officers in purchase corps were now entitled to retire on half-pay after twenty-five years' service; but in the Committee, of which he had been a member, it was suggested, as the only means of increasing the flow of promotion, that officers in non-purchase corps should be able to retire on full-pay after twenty-two years' service. Then, in addition to paying the sums he had already stated, they would have to provide for a system of retirement on full-pay after twenty-two years' service instead of on half-pay after twenty-five years' service. What that would cost, he was not in a position to say; but he thought he was much below the mark when he said that besides the £500,000 that would be added to the Estimates for twenty years at leapt, they would have to pay £1,000,000 a year for ever, or, in other words, an additional 1d. of income tax for ever. Surely, it was idle complaining of the extravagance of the Estimates if, in the pursuit of a chimera, they were to saddle the country with that increased expenditure. He confessed that he should feel much surprised at finding such a proposal supported by the Members of the Liberal party, who had always been the strenuous advocates of retrenchment. But he was not prepared to deny that a good deal of mischief had crept into our existing system. He believed that system had attained to overgrown dimensions, and he particularly objected to the practice of paying for commissions sums largely beyond the regulation price. That was, however, a subject which he would leave in the hands of the Executive, and more particularly of the right hon. Baronet the Secretary for War, who had already shown not only much good-will, but considerable ability, in dealing with military grievances. Another point which he would hand over to the right hon. Baronet was the question whether promotion should take place by seniority or by selection. The Resolution he wished to submit to the House was one a great part of which was not at all novel. The first portion of it provided that in the Cavalry and Infantry there should be no purchase above the rank of captain. Under it nobody could buy the rank of lieutenant-colonel. That would have been carried out by Lord Herbert, had he lived, and was endorsed by Sir De Lacy Evans. After all, it was simply applying to the responsible rank of the command of a regiment the system which at present prevailed in all other responsible positions in the army. They could not buy a major-generalship, nor any Staff appointment; and yet the due performance of the duties of a commanding officer of a regiment required a man to be possessed of qualities by no means inferior to those of the officers of the Staff. It might be said that if they touched the regimental system, and abolished purchase in one port and allowed it to remain in another, they would entirely unhinge it. But the principle he proposed now existed in a branch of the army which was by no means the least efficient. He referred to the brigade of Guards, where purchase ended with the rank of captain; so that when an officer retired lie received what he had paid for his company, and nothing else. He wished to engraft on the whole regimental system for the rest of the army simply the system now existing in the Guards. He might be asked how he proposed to treat lieutenant-colonels in the transition state? The regulation value of the commissions of field-officers was £883,700, and the extra money paid amounted to £436,000, making a total of about £1,320,000; and a deduction of 20 per cent for vacancies would reduce the sum to £1,056,000. But by the saving; effected through the reduction of the regimental ranks that sum would be brought; down to £971,000; and therefore, if the House adopted his proposition to abolish purchase above the rank of captain, £971,000 would be the sum which the plan would cost the country. The second part of his proposal, which was to reduce the number of regimental commissioned ranks to three—namely, lieutenant-colonel, captain, and lieutenant—was most impor- tant, but would probably meet with less opposition than the other part. He proposed it because at the present moment non-purchase officers met with four obstacles in their career. He might call them the four turnpikes which barred their passage. They had to purchase from ensign to lieutenant, from lieutenant to captain, from captain to major, and from major to lieutenant-colonel. He proposed to do away with three of those turnpikes, and to reduce the regimental commissioned ranks to three —lieutenant-colonel, captain, and lieutenant. He could not see what objection could be taken to that proposition. There were only three kinds of duty in the regimental system. There was the lieutenant-colonel, who commanded the regiment; there was the captain, who commanded a company, and then there was the lieutenant, who was subordinate to that officer. He knew that lie should be met with the objection that if the major were done away the second lieutenant-colonel would be made of the same rank as the officer commanding the regiment. That objection might easily be disposed of by giving the officer commanding some distinctive appellation, such as lieutenant-colonel commandant, and by placing him, consequently, in a superior position to the second lieutenant-colonel. He proposed that every major should, on a given day, become a lieutenant-colonel. This would not add considerably to the expenditure of the country, for those officers raised to superior rank might be treated as were officers in the Artillery, who did not get superior pay until they arrived naturally, according to the rota, at the superior rank, receiving only 1s. a day additional in the meantime. With regard to that part of his Resolutions relating to education, he thought that after the able manner in which the subject had already been discussed in that House, it was unnecessary for him to dilate upon it now. He proposed that the going through a course of practical professional training should be a preliminary condition to the acquisition of a commission in the Cavalry, Guards, or the Line; so that every officer j should, immediately on joining his regiment, be able to do his duty. He next came to the great question of whether or not it would be possible to reduce the number of officer in regiments of the Line? One thing was clear—either that the Artillery was under-officered, or that our Cavalry and Line were very much over officered. A battery of field artillery numbered 100 men, with 120 horses, besides guns, a very important command. There were five combatant officers —: namely, two captains and three lieutenants to each battery. A battalion of the Line at home numbered 700 men, with thirty-four combatant officers, or double the number of the Artillery. A Cavalry regiment contained about 500 men of all ranks at homo, with twenty-seven combatant officers, being also twice the number of the Artillery, The question, then, was whether a proportion of officers which was greater than in any army in Europe was necessary. The list portion of his Motion referred to the retirement; but that he was convinced would not be so expensive as its opponents anticipated. He fully understood that his hon. Friend who moved the original Resolution was actuated by a sincere desire I to promote the interest of the army; but he believed that the system of purchase had become so overgrown of late years that the cry against it would never end until some reform was effected. He proposed that the House, if it should give its sanction to these proposals, should furnish the sums necessary for currying them into effect, and he was sure that they would not shrink from the sacrifice which such a state of things would impose. He had trespassed at some length on their indulgence, and he then left the Amendment of which he had given notice in their hands.

Amendment proposed, To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the opinion of this House, the ground of complaint against the operation of the l'urchase System in the Army would be greatly diminished, and the efficiency of the Service improved, by the abolition of Purchase above the rank of Captain in the Cavalry and the Infantry of the Line,"—(Captain Vivian,)

—instead thereof.

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

MR. O'REILLY

said, his reason for advocating the total and immediate extinction of the purchase system was that he believed every step towards it would not only more firmly ingrain it in the constitution of the army, but render it more difficult and ultimately more costly to abolish it. The speech of his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Truro (Captain Vivian) divided itself into two parts— first, a glowing eulogy on the system of purchase, and. secondly, a recommendation of the abolition of at least one-half of it. His hon. and gallant Friend said the great object of the purchase system was that the army should be led by a different class from the rank and file. Now, he cordially accepted that sentiment. But was the distinction between the class that led and the class that followed to consist merely of this—that the one had so many hundred pounds more than the other? The distinction of the officers of our army was this; they were better educated, better trained, superior in acquirement, in elevation of mind and other qualities to those whom they led, and therefore it was the men followed them. His lion, and gallant Friend, in his praise of the purchase system, shut his eyes to the fact that, year after year, generation after generation, regulations had been framed and solemn oaths taken with a view to prevent the abuses of the system; but parties, who would be the Inst to be guilty of such conduct in any other matter, perjured themselves year after year till oaths and declarations had to be given up, there being no power to prevent this abuse. It was an abuse essential to the system, and one that could not be controlled. The hon. and gallant Member for Truro drew a parallel between compulsory purchase in the Indian Army and the British Army, but the two things were very different. It was generally argued in favour of the purchase system that it accelerated the; flow of promotion in the army, and if it was an advantage to have young officers in the army there was no doubt the service gained in that respect; but did it accelerate promotion for non-purchasing officers? Then they were told to look at the non-purchase corps and the stagnation which prevailed there. No doubt there were lieutenants of considerable standing —of ten and twelve years' service—but that was partly attributable to the large entries into those corps during the Crimean war. But in the first fifty regiments of the Line there were fifty-nine lieutenants of thirteen years' standing, and eight lieutenants of fourteen years' standing. These men were therefore all senior in their standing to the average of the lieutenants of non-purchase corps; but look to the list above these, and they would find captains who had entered the army in 1865, and it was for such that the purchase system accelerated promotion. It was said the system provided a retire- ment; and no doubt when an officer retired he found himself in possession of some few thousand pounds. But did the system give it to him? Why, it was his own money he had paid, and it was no more a retirement provided by the purchase system than if he had placed his money in the first instance in a deposit bank at a reasonable rate of interest. It was no doubt most desirable, that our army should be officered by gentlemen, and it always would be in a great majority of instances by men who were born gentlemen, with a few exceptions of men who bad fought their way and achieved nobility of blood; but if they fixed the standard of education and qualification as high as they pleased, they would find in the army, as in every other profession, English gentlemen who would qualify themselves for it. The system made everything in the army venal. It made English gentlemen believe that in that particular profession advancement and distinction might be not only purchased, but made the subject of bargaining and huckstering. The original idea was that there should be a regulation price for she various grades; but once admit the purchase system in any shape or for any grade, and it was impossible to even limit the abuses. At first there was no purchase for appointments to the staff of the depot battalions. But what had sprung up? Those appointments were found to be good positions; they were held during pleasure; and the consequence was that within n very few years large sums were notoriously paid for exchanges to depot battalions, The Commander-in-Chief thought, and very properly, that those appointments should be only temporary, and accordingly he limited the period for which they were to be held for five years; but his Royal Highness felt obliged to make that rule prospective. It did not apply to those who had been appointed before the Order, but it bore hardly on even many of those gentlemen, because, as the appointments were only to be held for five years, in future they would not succeed in getting back the money they had paid for them as permanent posts. Again, fake the office of adjutant of Militia, Every person appointed to adjutancy in the Militia made a solemn declaration that he had not directly or indirectly paid, or promised to pay, any sum of money, or given or promised any reward, for his appointment. The colonel also made a declaration that he believed in the truth of the adjutant's statement. But what was the case? Why, that adjutancies in the Militia were sold every day, and that there were offices in which their sale and purchase were made. It was the same thing with the adjutants in the Volunteers. As a Member of one of the Royal Commissions, he was sent to the War Office to make inquiry as to the declarations taken by officers. A gentleman had informed him that as a rule no hesitation was shown by officers to make the declaration required of adjutants of Militia, but that some officers were too conscientious to take it. On his asking the gentleman how those who did make it could get over the matter, when it was so notorious that the office was one which every day formed the subject of purchase, he told him that some of them covered over the body of the declaration with a sheet of paper, so that they might subscribe their name without seeing what they were declaring to. The hon. and gallant Member for Truro would permit purchase up to the rank of senior captain, and what would be the effect of that arrangement when the lietenant-colonelcy would no longer have to be purchased? Why, clearly, to make the senior captaincy worth so much more money in the market, and the removal of the three "turnpikes" in the lower grades would only have the effect of raising the demand of the two remaining to that which the five possessed before. The purchase system deprived the Commander-in-Chief of the opportunity of selecting the best officers for the superior ranks of the army. It might be said that the selection of those officers was well exercised. It was as well exercised as it could be under the circumstances; but the selection was confined within a particular pen. You could choose the best man out of those who had got in; but you could not choose the best man out of those whom your purchase system had kept out. Before an Army Commission which sat in 1857 it was stated that from 1817 not one officer had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel without purchase. He believed that during the Crimean War two officers had reached that rank without ever having purchased, and that one or two had done so since the close of the Crimean War; but not one man had ever obtained the command of a brigade in the field, who for the previous twenty years had not purchased a step. General Havelock had purchased one step, or he would not have reached the command, and so had Lord Clyde. The fact that these men had only reached positions in which they did such service to their country in consequence of the accident of their having purchased one step showed us what men were left behind from want of the ability to purchase. Theoretically it was possible for a man to reach the rank of lieutenant-colonel by death vacancies; but the fact that not one officer had succeeded in doing so between 1817 and 1857 showed that practically the thing was not to be done. His Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief could appoint no officer to the command of a regiment of Cavalry who had not £16,000 more than the regulation price, and no officer to the command of a regiment of infantry who had not £4,000 or £5,000. A few months ago there was a case of an officer of Cavalry standing out to give no more than the regulation price, and immediately everyone cried out, "What a shameful thing! "As long as you left one turnpike you left the whole system. One was as bad as three. He cordially agreed with the hon. Member's last proposal to extend, enlarge, and liberalize our system of military education. For many years he had pondered over this question, and he ought to state that at the outset he had a strong feeling in favour of purchase in the army; but the more he considered it the more clearly he perceived that it led to evils which were never contemplated when it was originally introduced. He was, moreover, convinced that the system would be soon swept away, and lie sincerely trusted it would be replaced by another system, under which we should obtain for our army a supply of gentlemanly and well educated officers. That desirable end could, in his opinion, only be attained by fixing a high standard of education. In conclusion, he expressed a hope that before long the gate of education, and not the gate of purchase, would be the entrance to our army.

COLONEL NORTH

said, he thought his hon. Friend who brought forward the Motion (Mr. Trevelyan) could not seriously suppose its result would be at all favourable to his views. Was it likely that the Treasury and the country would be prepared to pay a very large sum of money in order to enable his hon. Friend to carry out certain fancies of his own against the general feeling of the army? Undoubtedly the operation of "purchasing over" was a very disagreeable one to the officers affected by it; but, nevertheless, he had no hesitation in declaring his belief that the genera feeling in the army was in favour of the purchase system. He (Colonel North) was quite prepared to meet any case of real grievance, and he had shown this when he submitted to the House a Motion for meeting the case of officers who had rendered the country long service. It had been asserted by his hon. Friend that there had been, so far as he knew, no instance of an officer who had risen from the ranks to the command of a regiment, and that there was certainly no instance of a person rising from the ranks to the grade of a general officer.

MR. TREVELYAN

explained his meaning to have been that no one had so risen who had never purchased a step. He was referring to the period before the Crimean War.

COLONEL NORTH

said, he might remind his hon. Friend of the case of Sir John Elley, a distinguished Waterloo officer— at one time a Member of that House— who commanded the Blues for years. He could not at the moment give the names, but he had no doubt that previously to the Crimean War there were many officers in command of regiments and brigades who had never purchased their promotion. If his hon. Friend referred to the evidence given before the Select Committee presided over by Sir James Graham, he would find that the Cavalry had up to that time been officered by young men who either possessed large fortunes themselves or were the sons of gentlemen of property Many of these officers had graduated at the Universities; but at the time when the sixty-five cornetcies became vacant men of this class, although they would have been able to pass the examination, declined to do so because they did not choose to run the risk of being plucked. His hon. Friend had made a mistake respecting the £200,000 paid out of the Reserve Fund; for the real effect of that payment was to benefit the poor officers. It was true that when the army was despatched to the Crimea our officers had not that experience which the officers of every foreign army possessed; but this was due, not to the purchase system, but to the niggardly conduct of the House of Commons in refusing to grant sufficient supplies to enable our officers to perform their duties. The circumstance of the Army Transport Corps being a non-purchase corps had been particularly dwelt upon in the course of the present discussion; but in point of fact it was a non-purchase corps by necessity, being officered by non- commissioned officers mostly of the Artillery and Royal Engineers. The way in which these men were treated after their return from the Crimea was so shameful that the subject was brought under the notice of the House of Commons, and a Select Committee appointed which resulted in justice being done to them. A noble Lord, who knew the world as well as any one, and who died the Leader of the House, having himself been Secretary of State for War (Viscount Palmerston), defined merit as the opinion one man formed of another, which was sure to be disputed by many who were disinterested, and denied by the friends of the unsuccessful, and therefore that noble Lord doubted whether any system of selection would secure appointments which would be universally acknowledged to be made on the ground of merit alone. As to officers being pained by being passed over, would their feelings be much less hurt by a system of selection? One man knew that another was richer than himself; but would he acknowledge that another was more intellectual and better qualified for a position than himself? Mr. Sidney Herbert, when Secretary of War, had also expressed doubts of the wisdom of the proposed change. Under all the circumstances he felt bound to oppose the Motion. He thought the proposition of the hon. Member for Truro (Captain Vivian) much more reasonable; but it was utterly impossible to reduce the number of regimental officers. It might be done if they were never to be sick, or never to have a day's leave; but as things were the idea could not be entertained.

COLONEL SYKES

observed, that in the old Indian Service there were no less than 6,000 officers, and yet amongst them discipline, efficiency, and the highest gentlemanly feeling were maintained without the aid of purchase. Promotion was accelerated in the Company's armies by a regimental arrangement that was highly satisfactory up to the time when it was put a stop to by the transfer of the Government of India to the Crown. In the Company's army every officer entered as a cadet, and rose by seniority, as he himself had done; and the arrangement he referred to was the regimental bonus fund, out of which, when an officer up to the rank of lieutenant colonel retired, he received the conventional sum attached to the rank he held. Contributions to that fund were regulated by the proximity or otherwise of the officer to the head of the rank he held, and were not compulsory, as some hon. Member said; and he knew an instance in which an officer refused to pay his quota. This system still prevailed in the non-purchase regiments in India, and if the purchase system was abolished here, what was to prevent officers coming forward in the same manner, and giving the value of his commission to the retiring officer; the contributor knowing that he would receive back the value of his own commission when he himself retired: thus relieving the country from the payment of the value of the existing commissions? What, then, became of this bugaboo, this béte noire of £10,000,000 that it was said would have to be paid if the purchase system were abolished? No doubt, the change would be attended at first with some hardship in the lower ranks, but ultimately they would get the full benefit. If the purchase system was to be continued, in the name of all that was sacred, honourable, and just, he hoped they would not call upon a gentleman to make oath that he had not paid more than the regulation price for his commission when he knew that that was not the fact.

MR. H. HERBERT

said, that there was no such oath.

COLONEL NORTH

also said, that there was no oath of that kind, and never had been such an oath in the regular army.

COLONEL SYKES

said, he was sorry that he had made a mistake; but he had thought that there was some oath or declaration of that kind; and his impression still was that some declaration was subscribed by officers appointed adjutants of Militia and Volunteers. In illustration of his argument that the purchase system prevented meritorious officers from rising, he (Colonel Sykes) would mention the case of an officer now senior subaltern, who had been born in the regiment, became sergeant-major, and for distinguished service and high character had an ensign's commission bestowed upon him by the Horse Guards. He saved enough money to buy a lieutenancy, and he had now risen to be the senior subaltern. The regiment being about to go to India, two extra companies had to be added to it, and it became accordingly necessary to have additional captains. He made an application for one of the companies, but the reply he received was, that, as a matter of economy, it was intended to give them to captains whose companies had been reduced on their regiments coining home from service abroad. Such a decision was plausible enough in itself; but its effect was to deprive this meritorious officer of the chance of further I promotion. It was small consolation to him to be assured by the military authorities of the War Office, after his case had been brought to their notice, that he should succeed to the first death vacancy. This, however, might not occur for many years to come; and meanwhile officers with means at their command would pass over his head. This case afforded a practical illustration of what was going on in very many regiments. He trusted the time was coming when gentlemen would no longer desire to engage in pursuits so foreign to the military profession as bargaining with money for the attainment of position in the army.

GNEERAL PEEL

I do not feel myself called upon to defend the original introduction of the system of purchase into the army, or to deny the objection which in theory exists to anybody being enabled to attain promotion or preferment merely because of his having the means to purchase an advance, while another officer, his equal in point of ability and merit, does not possess that facility. But do not let it be for a moment supposed that the system of purchase is confined to the army. There is not a class of life, from the highest to the lowest, in which people do not obtain appointments by means of money. Take the highest offices in the Church. Livings, which are the first step to those offices, are notoriously purchased. Take, again, the highest offices in the State. These can only be obtained by passing through this House—by a system of purchase, as everybody knows. [Laughter.] When I say purchase, I do not mean a purchase of seats, but such an expenditure of money as the law allows. Lawyers, for instance, rise to the summit of their profession by incurring an expenditure which other lawyers, possibly as clever as the, are not able to sustain. Now, as far as the purchase system in the army is concerned there is this consideration, which is not out of place when the subject is discussed in the House of Commons. The system was originally brought into play in consequence of the niggardliness and neglect of the State in not making provision for those who, through sickness, long service, or other circumstances, were desirous of retiring. And even now, by the action of the Army Reserve Fund, money is extracted from the purchasing officers, in order to pay for that which, if paid for at all, ought to be paid for by the State. I certainly think we ought to have a fuller explanation of what the change of system will cost than has yet been given us in this debate. Large as was the sum mentioned by my hon. and gallant Friend (Captain Vivian) I am quite certain that if you are to do justice to everybody that sum will be largely exceeded. The hon. Member for Truro invites you by his Motion to declare— That this House will make good such sums as maybe required to give just compensation upon their retirement to existing officers who, in respect either to the then regulation value of their Commissions, or of sums paid by them in accordance with regimental usage, may be liable to pecuniary injury in consequence of the, adoption of the above Resolutions. Tell me what justice that would do in the case of men who are now serving upon the understanding that at the expiration of twenty-one years' service they shall be entitled to sell their commissions as if they had purchased every step. Surely, if you are to do justice, you must credit those men with the value of their commissions. Again, every officer is now entitled to receive £100 or £50 a year, as the case may be, for his service. Do you intend to recognize this, or not? If you act justly there is not a man in a purchasing regiment to whose credit you must not place some amount, whether in respect of what he has paid for his commission, or else in respect of his services. Is the House prepared to grant these officers the sum required, or do you think another House of Commons would be prepared to follow your example, and to carry out an abstract Resolution? This is far too large a question to be settled by a mere Resolution of this House. I object not only to the monetary part of the proposal, and to the great expenditure which it will cause; but I object to the alteration which it will make in the composition of the army. Whatever the faults of the purchase system—whatever anomalies may have attended its operation, at all events it is admitted, even by its opponents, that it causes a flow of promotion—that younger men rise to commands in purchasing than in non-purchasing regiments. Look at the non - purchasing branches of the service, the Artillery and Engineers. It has happened two or three times in my recollection that promotion in the Artillery has come to an entire deadlock, as injurious to the interests of the service as of individual officers. Sir George Murray, then Master General of the Ordnance, told me once that Woolwich had become "a nest of old women." By that he meant that, in consequence of the want of any retiring allowance, the officers held on till they were no longer able properly to discharge their duty, In 1858–9, when complaints were made to me that Artillery general officers did not get commands, I was obliged to point out that there were only four who had not passed the average life of man, there were only three or four at that time who were under seventy years of age. I need hardly say that was no advantage to the service. The Resolution of the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Trevelyan), if carried out, would alter the whole system by which you are to officer your army, and virtually lie admitted himself that his object was to democratize the army. By a profession a man should be able to gain as much as will support him. But the hon. Gentleman himself admitted that the military profession is one of the worst going, in a remunerative point of view. We have over and over again been enabled to resist in this House any demand for increased pay on the part of the officers, because the supply has exceeded the demand. On one occasion, it is true, there were vacancies in the Cavalry regiments. But the vacancies existed much more from the stringency of the examinations than from the price of the original commissions. I recollect last year the hon. Member pointed out what I am sure the House is exceedingly proud of, that we have two gallant officers representing the same county and both possessing the Victoria Cross, and he asked in a tone of triumph, "Will not such men be always found where Victoria Crosses are going?" I say certainly—where Victoria Crosses are going. In time of war you have no difficulty in officering your regiments; but we are a peaceable nation, and Victoria Crosses are not always to be had. It is in time of peace that an army becomes dangerous to a country, and no country in the world is so jealous as we are of a standing army. Surely, then, it must be some consolation to know that the officers as a body are men as much interested personally in protecting property as any Gentleman in this House or in the country. My hon. and gallant Friend (Captain Vivian) denied that the non-purchasing officers get any advantage from the purchase system. Why, the non-purchasing officer gets more advantage from the system than any other. There are no deductions from his pay in the shape of interest upon money expended in the purchase of commissions, and he also receives something every year for his; services. If any young man without money about to enter the army should ask my views as to the regiment in which he should enter, I should say, "If you can possibly do so get into a regiment where every man but yourself can purchase; as long as there is any one man senior to yourself in the: rank you hold you obtain an advantage from purchase. It is only when you become the senior in that rank that you are liable to be prejudiced; but in the long run you gain as much as you lose." The usual three courses are open to us with regard to promotion. There is, first, the present system; then there is the system of strict seniority, and lastly there is the system of partial seniority and partial selection. Now my hon. and gallant Friend who has just Bat down quotes an instance to show that contribution is not compulsory, for he says he knew a case in which an officer refused his quota. Well, I have no doubt the general feeling about this officer was that he was a very shabby fellow for thus obtaining an advantage without contributing his share to the cost of it. That sort of thing will always prevail under a system of strict seniority. As to the selection, I have greater objection to it than to either of the two other systems. Depend upon it, you will never introduce a system of selection without creating jealousies and suspicions of unfairness—in all probability perfectly unfounded—which will rankle in the minds of the officers, and which you will be quite unable to remove. Very often the system of selection would necessarily place at the head of a regiment men who are not fit for the position. Take the case of an officer who has gained the Victoria Cross. A man may have gained that distinction by rushing out of the ranks or by some gallant action which has brought his name into the newspapers, and public opinion would raise a loud complaint if he were passed over, yet he might be the most unfit man in the service to take the command of a regiment. It is far from my wish to depreciate the value of the Victoria Cross; but I do not hold that it is a certificate entitling the bearer to everything, command of a regiment included. But it is said, "All this will depend upon the Commander-in-Chief; he will have the power of selection." No doubt; but then cases of another kind will arise. If you give this power to the Commander-in-Chief, you must give him the power of removing officers without Courts-martial; officers guilty of no military offence, but who are thought, from temper or other circumstances, to be unfit men to command a regiment. Why, this House would be inundated with complaints from men so treated. Suppose the senior major is passed over. What is his position? He is pointed out as a man unfit to hold command, and what authority can he have in the regiment afterwards? Yet the commanding officer may be killed in action, and instantly this major will be called upon to command the regiment. Again, the officer under him may be a very fit man, yet because his senior officer is thought incapable, he sees another man brought in and put over his head. I say that nothing would more tend to create jealousies in the army, particularly in time of peace. In my opinion the good officer is the man who goes with his regiment everywhere, and who shirks no service where they may be; but if he goes, for example, to the West Indies with them, what chance has he of being selected for command? Then it is proposed that the army shall be officered by two distinct classes of men, and that a certain number of commissions shall be reserved for men who rise from the ranks. Then you would have on the one hand young officers highly educated, and officers much older than they are, who have risen from the ranks, and whose knowledge would be entirely professional. Do you not suppose that they would be jealous at having over them comparative boys, who might be good mathemeticians, but who knew little of drill or regimental duties? I hold in my hand a v letter from an officer who himself rose from the ranks and became adjutant in a regiment in which promotion was not very quick, and what does he say?— Born in the army, and having entered it at about sixteen years of age from school, I naturally feel the greatest interest in everything connected with our military service. I was therefore alarmed when I read in the public prints that in the proposed re-organization of the Departments it is contemplated to abolish the purchase system, and to a certain extent substitute promotion by selection. If the abolition should be adopted for selection, the greatest discontent will exist from the notion of gross partiality. I have the firmest conviction that it would be a most fatal blow to the good feeling which should pervade our ranks of officers (and which happily now exists to the fullest extent), it would engender feelings of jealousy, as no selection during peaceable times can be viewed as impartial (unless by seniority), where there is no opportunity for distinguished conduct. …. The sooner the rejected leave the service the better for themselves and the regiment, as their influence and authority as officers would to the greatest extent be lost with their men.…A father puts his son (a military aspirant) into the army, with a small allowance; be may be able to purchase a lieutenancy for him, but that is the most he can do for him; the purchase system brings numbers into the service who can purchase; these clear a way from the front of the non-purchaser, and give him by a death vacancy, &c, his company without purchase. I have a son-in-law, a captain, now serving in the Line, of about thirty-two years of age, who thus obtained his company under ten years, all without purchase, whereas if there had been no purchase in the army he would now, if a lieutenant at all, be a very junior one. Then he remarks, and I fear I must agree with him, that a great deal is said on this subject by persons who understand very little about it. He adds— The purchase system, as a rule, is no grievance to the non-purchaser; it in no way what ever interferes with the good feeling between brother officers. The man who cannot purchase feels that the purchase system clears away a great many of his seniors, and thereby gives him the best chance of early promotion without purchase. Of course there are a few grumblers in the service, and always will be under any system.… I feel certain that if the votes of the non-purchasing officers of the army could be taken on this question, the proposition to set aside the purchase system would be swamped.…Promotion from the ranks to a limited extent will no doubt be left open in any change. Great care should, however, be taken lest a good non-commissioned officer makes a bad officer, from imperfect education, irritability of temper, &c. These, I believe, are the feelings of a large majority of the non-purchasing officers; and I do hope that this House will not, for the sake of democratizing the army, engage to pay a sum of money which could not be less than from £10,000,000 to £12,000,000.

MR. GRENFELL

said, that the first step towards democratizing the army would be to establish the conscription; and if the country was ready to bear that burden it was entitled to enjoy the other privileges of the French system. Unless, however, hon. Members were prepared to go to this extent it would not be right to democratize only the officers. He thought that the proposition of the hon. Member (Mr. Trevelyan) was one that ought to be ex-examined not only by military officers, but also by those who were engaged in civil pursuits. It. happened that he was employed at the War Office when the Purchase Commission was sitting; and he held a position at the India House when the amalgamation of the Queen's and the Company's services was brought about, and from the experience thus gained he had the strongest doubts as to the calculations made in reference to the expenditure that would be necessary to carry out the scheme of the hon. Member (Mr. Trevelyan). He thought that it would require a far larger expenditure than had been proposed; and therefore that they might well hesitate before they assented to the proposition which was brought before them. Of the two he preferred the scheme of the hon. and gallant Member (Captain Vivian); for if they were to abolish the system of purchase to any extent, they had better make up their minds to abolish it altogether. It was hardly becoming a moribund Parliament and Constitution to lay the burden of so vast a change upon their successors as was included in the adoption of either of the two propositions before the House. And as he had the authority of the hon. and gallant Member for Truro (Captain Vivian) for saying that he did not intend to press his Motion to a division he (Mr. Grenfell) would move the Previous Question; and thus, without binding themselves in any way to the system of purchase for the future, they would simply decline, at such a crisis of Parliament and the Constitution, to express any opinion on the subject. There were a few points which had not been adverted to in the debate upon which he wished to touch. The object of Sir Charles Trevelyan—who was the real author of the scheme—was, as he said before the Commission of 1856, to make the army more professional, and to prevent wealthy men from serving in it. But how stood the case? During the long years of peace the military administration of the country under the Duke of Wellington and his illustrious brethren in arms, became exhausted and worn out, and precisely at the time of the Crimean War all those Departments which were not on the purchase system were, whether justly or unfairly he would not say, found fault with. The Staff Corps, which depended entirely on selection—at that time there was no system of examination— was very much decried; so was the Commissariat; the Medical Department was incomplete; the Military Train scarcely existed, and the whole Ordnance matériel was below the level of the science of the day. In fact, the only branch of the service which was considered to be in a state of complete efficiency, and admitted so by foreign officers, was the regimental system? Now, could they afford to throw away that which, after forty years of peace, had proved its efficiency, solely for the purpose of making the officers more professional and preventing wealthy men from serving in the army? One of the greatest authorities on questions of this kind—namely, Lord Grey—stated in his evidence before the Commission that he held it to be a benefit conferred upon the country and on the wealthy men them- selves that they should serve in the army. A great deal of evidence was given before the Commission to show that the officers of our army were at present indulging in all sorts of luxury, which could be done only by wealthy men. But he would ask, was it only in the army that an alarming increase in luxury had taken place? Did not young men at Oxford, at the Inns of Court, even in the navy, indulge in a similar way? Therefore, the two objects which Sir Charles Trevelyan had in view should not be sufficient to make the House at present declare that purchase should be entirely abolished, or to adopt the change proposed by the hon. and gallant Member for Truro.

GENERAL PERCY HERBERT

said, he was glad that the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Grenfell) had given notice that he would, if necessary, move the Previous Question, because he felt this was a very large matter, which ought not to be settled by a Resolution of the House. Though in favour of purchase in the army, as furnishing the best system of retirement that he was acquainted with, he was not so wedded to it but that he was ready to accept any other system which might accelerate the flow of promotion, without doing injury to the interests of officers, whether present or prospective. The hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Trevelyan), though disclaiming the accusation as far as he was concerned, yet mentioned, as if he believed there was some truth in it, an allegation that had been made by others—namely, that officers of family sought for employment in purchase corps because they wished to have the pleasure of purchasing over the heads of others. Now, the object of officers of family was almost invariably to get into crack corps; and these were the very regiments in which scarcely more than one or two officers would be found in the whole list that were not for purchase. Therefore, it could not be for the pleasure of purchasing over the heads of others that men of family entered the service. Then the hon. Gentleman said that the longest purses formed the criterion of advance. But he begged to remind the hon. Gentleman that the longest purse would not give a man a single step until he became the senior on the list. Ours was a strictly seniority system, tempered by purchase. The senior on the list was offered the step, unless he was disqualified and the Commander-in-Chief exercised his authority, which was very rarely done, to prevent his advance. That was a point which was very much misunderstood—not only abroad, but even in this country; and he believed he had once before stated to the House that foreign officers who had talked to him on the subject had been greatly surprised when they were made acquainted with the truth. It was an erroneous impression to suppose that a man with £10,000 could purchase any step he pleased in the army. The hon. Gentleman also said that it was a reflection on the Commander-in-Chief for military men to say that if purchase were done away with, and the system of selection adopted, it would open the door to jobbery. But he had always noticed that on occasions of this kind the name of the Commander-in-Chief was paraded with the greatest respect by Members who at other times were fond of denouncing the Horse Guards—the "Horse Guards" being merely a euphemism for the Commander-in-Chief. In fact, there was scarcely a Session in which some of these denunciations were not indulged in by hon. Members. Some expressly desired the army should be democratized; but the late Lord Raglan had told him, about a fortnight before his death, that a French marshal warned him, in the most earnest terms, against so fatal a measure. He offered this opinion of a French officer of high rank to the House, because the French system was continually being pointed out as a model. He was assured, also, that nothing gave the French Government more trouble than the system of retirements in vogue in the French army. Our own police system, too, was often lauded on account of the ease with which it was recruited; but every man in the police force received about £1 1s. a week, while the soldier only drew some 9s. How could it be expected that artizans would enlist in the army at that price? But, at the same time, it must not be supposed the army was recruited wholly from the vicious classes; the majority of the recruits, although simple fellows, were decent agricultural labourers. He gathered from the Army List that 350 officers sold out of the army last year. What would be the increase to the Estimates if the amount paid to these 350 officers on account of retirement had come out of the public purse? It would be very large, and hon. Members would do well to bear this view of the subject in mind. He con tended that the purchase system was a benefit, not only to the poorer officers, but also to those non-commissioned officers who were promoted without purchase, and who, by Belling their commissions, were able to make a provision for their families. He also desired to remind the House that the introduction of a system providing for succession to higher rank by seniority would result in a system of purchase such as grew up in the Indian army, from which the country would get no benefit whatever, but by which it would lose the inestimable advantage of having an army whose officers; were all comparatively youthful. He would not object to the change proposed by the; hon. Member (Mr. Trevelyan), if the country were prepared to pay for it; but before voting for the change he stipulated that the House should be enabled to judge of its probable effect on the army.

SIR HARRY VERNEY

said, that so large a question as this could only be dealt with satisfactorily by the Secretary of State for War, who alone would be able to obtain all the requisite information. The system which he should like to see tried would be to have young men enter the Infantry for four or six years, say from the age of eighteen to twenty-three. The effect, he believed, would be that almost every family of the middle and lower classes would desire a son to enter the army; and these young men would make excellent soldiers, while the discipline which they would undergo would be very advantageous to them. Many of them would be able to rise to non-commissioned officers, and some, perhaps, to officers. The difficulty that had to be met in our army was, that troops had to be stationed in all parts of the world; but he thought the colonies might, to a great degree, protect themselves; and the system he suggested would, of course, necessitate a separate Indian army—an arrangement which he had always advocated. With regard to officers, he was anxious that they should be better instructed. They were thoroughly brave; but the want of professional know ledge on the part of many of them led, he feared, to the loss of a large number of soldiers, especially at the commencement of a campaign. Every officer should have a certain knowledge of field fortification to enable him to defend himself for a time in any port where lie might be placed; and he should also be able to give some description in writing, and by a plan, of any part of a country where war was being carried on. He had been told that at the time of the Crimean war there were 1,600 officers in the French army who were competent for this; but he was afraid that very few in our own army would have been able to do it. Moreover, if good officers were wanted, they should be pushed on when young, and intrusted with important duties when in the vigour of life, and when labour was a pleasure to them. He recollected the Duke of Wellington once saying, speaking of the qualities of a Commander-in-Chief on active service, that he should not be more than forty years old. Every private soldier should be intelligent enough to understand the object of any movement, as was the case in the Prussian army; whereas, the Austrian troops were mostly men of little intelligence, and did not understand what they were ordered to do. The pay ought to be good; for men could not be expected to enter the army if other vocations were more lucrative. He trusted that the right hon. Gentleman would consider the question of enlisting, if it were only two or three regiments, for short terms. He wished to see the system have a fair trial, as he had much hope that it would be attended by success. If that were done, he believed that many a family would regard it as on honour and advantage that one of its members should go into the army, whereas now it is too often thought a misfortune.

COLONEL LOYD LINDSAY

said, he did not despair of the hon. Member (Mr. Trevelyan) being induced to alter his opinions, with regard to the very sweeping measure he had brought forward. It would have been more candid if he had separated from the purchase system that which in reality had no connection with the subject at all—the money paid over and above the price of the commission. His hon. Friend had alluded to the fact that at one time it was difficult to find officers for commissions in the Cavalry. That was not the case at present, or his hon. Friend would have referred to it in support of his argument. The fact was, that the army was at the present moment a very popular service, and there was no difficulty in obtaining officers, though the pecuniary inducements held out were very trifling. This was owing to the circumstance that there was, in this country, a very large leisure class, who were ready to place their sons or connections in the army. It was from this leisure class—consisting of tradesmen and men in all classes of business who had made money and who were anxious to seal their position by sending their sons into the army—and not exclusively from the aristocracy, that the officers of the army were principally obtained. There was no reason to expect that the supply would fall off; and as long as the two terms of officers and gentlemen were regarded as synonymous, he did not believe that any difficulty would be experienced in finding officers. The hon. Member for Tynemouth had advocated the admission of noncommissioned officers into the commissioned ranks. Now there were no men of whom, as a class, he had a greater respect than for the noncommissioned officers of the army; who, as a body, fulfilled very important duties, in such a manner, as to give satisfaction and procure for them the respect of their superior officers. But they were generally men of a certain age, contented with their position, and not influenced to any great extent by ambitious desires, while their wives were no more capable of entering a new sphere of life than they themselves were. The result of promoting a few of these men would, in his opinion, be to spoil the men so promoted, while the promotion of a large number would inevitably lead to a deterioration of the commissioned ranks. The experiment had been tried, and though it might answer to some extent in time of war; yet, where it had succeeded in one instance, in twenty cases it had failed. He did not believe that the proposal would find much favour even among the noncommissioned ranks. Under the present system of purchase, entry into the army was easy enough. A letter to the Commander-in-Chief, as a rule, at once secured the placing the name of the candidate on the list; and on lodging a certain amount of money, and passing an examination, a commission was obtained. That commission, however, was given in the order in which the candidate came out of the examination, and was not the result of bargain; for a man possessed of great wealth could not get his promotion one day earlier than the man who possessed only a fixed sum. Except in one particular case, too, an officer who had served a certain time would, on leaving the army, have his deposit money returned. Now, he would ask, from whom did the demand for the abolition of the purchase system come? Were they told that the Commander-in-Chief was unable to obtain the services of officers capable of performing the duties assigned to them? or did the demand for this sweeping change come from the officers themselves? On the contrary, those who were at all intimate with the officers of the army would bear him out when he said that they regarded the system with great favour. They did not enter the army without being fully aware of the nature of the system, and they knew, moreover, that by waiting a certain time their advancement would be a matter of great probability, if not of absolute certainty. He maintained that even those officers who did not purchase their promotions benefited by the present system. The hon. Member for Tynemouth said that the effect of the purchase system seemed to be that officers could not be persuaded that they were the servants of the Crown. According to his experience, on the contrary, it was their greatest pride and highest honour that they were serving Her Majesty, and for this they gave up the pleasures of home and took their turn of service abroad. It had been argued as a great advantage in the Indian system that at certain steps officers were called upon to pay a fine and make a contribution as a step towards buying out the officer at the head of the regiment. But these demands upon officers were made at uncertain and unexpected periods, so that officers were sometimes compelled to borrow money at usury. An officer was scarcely a free agent in the matter; for it was well known that if he were to show any spirit of contradiction and refuse to make the contribution expected of him means would be found to make him very uncomfortable in the regiment. Contrasted with such a plan the purchase system was much superior, because no attempt was made to compel an officer to pay more than was convenient to him. Then it was said that, without substituting any other plan for the purchase system, Parliament ought to place officers of the Cavalry, the Infantry, and the Guards in the same position as the Artillery. But had the system worked so well in the Artillery that it ought to be adopted in other branches of the service? On the contrary, promotion was so slow in the Artillery that an officer could hardly expect to be made a captain until he was an old man. He had never heard that officers in the Cavalry, Infantry, and the Guards were less efficient in the discharge of their particular duties than the officers of the Artillery and Engineers. The hon. Member for Tynemouth at the end of his speech made use of a phrase which, he confessed, lie hardly liked. He talked of the army being "democratized" Now, the word democratized was generally used in the sense of being less Royal or less the servants of the Crown, He did not think the hon. Member used the word in this sense; lie probably used it in the sense of the army becoming more popular. [Mr. TREVELYAN intimated his assent.] As he bad said, it was the pride of the army that they were the servants of the Crown, and it would be an evil day both for the country and the army if they should ever look to that House for their advancement. He hoped that the army of this country would always be the Royal Army. Certain he was that if promotion in the army were taken away from the Commander-in-Chief it would be a very unfortunate thing for this country. The present Commander-in-Chief had stated that it would not be in his power to do justice if the promotion, instead of being by purchase or seniority were on the principle of selection. There were, for instance, over 1,000 captains. How could it be expected that the Commander-in-Chief could out of that number select the proper officer for promotion? It might be said that this principle had succeeded in the French service. This had not been his experience, for he had found an opinion among officers of the French army that promotion by selection compelled them in many cases to behave in a much more subservient manner to their commanding officer in social matters than Englishmen would like. The French army, moreover, were generally at home or in Algiers, while the British army was scattered over the face of the world. In these distant colonies it would be quite impossible for the Commander-in-Chief to discover the qualities and capacities of the officers of lower rank. No doubt good officers at Aldershot, Windsor, or the Curragh who had influential friends would have a good chance of promotion, while an equally good officer at Jamaica or some distant post would have no opportunity of bringing his qualifications under the notice of the Horse Guards. The greater portion of the scheme of the hon. Gentleman seemed to point to a system of promotion by merit. and was therefore objectionable. Many officers who showed no extraordinary capacity when in a subordinate position had, when promoted, astonished their friends with the abilities they exhibited. It was impossible for a Commander-in-Chief to know intuitively who were good and who were bad officers. The principle of promotion by seniority was well understood, was recognized, and gave no offence. He should not like to see it set aside, and the principle of selection substituted for it.

MR. OTWAY

said, he was unable to agree in the remarks of the hon. and gallant Officer (Colonel Loyd Lindsay) with respect to promotion by selection. Selections were made in the French army on the reports of commanding officers by a Council of Marshals who met once a year in Paris, and no injustice was, as far as he could learn, done to officers who were serving at a distance. The same principle of promotion by selection prevailed also in the Prussian army, and with the best results—the difference being that in Prussia promotions were made by the King in consultation with his Military Cabinet. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Huntingdon (General Peel) had admitted that if the system of purchase did not exist no one would think of introducing it. It must be confessed that it had about it a surprising vitality, since before the Crimean War every one regarded it as doomed, and yet it was flourishing at the present day. The existence of the system depended, first, on the exceptional conduct of the officers of the British army, who had maintained a character for pluck and honour which was unsurpassed by the officers of any other country, which induced people to say that the system could not be a bad one which produced such officers; and secondly, in the extreme difficulty in getting rid of it on the score of expense. He felt himself placed in a little difficulty by the two different Motions before the House. He was fully sensible of the pernicious effects of the system of purchase, so often exemplified in the fact of an officer possessed of a few thousand pounds being raised over the heads of men who were immeasurably his superiors in professional knowledge and ardour. It was said that the system was a perfectly fair one, having no caprice about it; but this he was far from being prepared to admit. It was said that one illustration was often better than a hundred arguments, and he would mention a case that, in his opinion, remarkably exempli- fied its unfairness. He did this with reluctance, from the fact of the gallant officer concerned being a near connection of the hon. and gallant Officer opposite (General Percy Herbert) whose professional merits lie was happy to acknowledge, and who had well earned every step he had gained. He found by The Gazette that on the 9th: March, 1867, Major Herbert was the junior major of the 84th Regiment, the senior major having purchased all his steps, and Major Herbert not having purchased his majority. On the 25th April. 1868, this Gentleman suddenly stepped at once to the lieutenant-colonelcy of the 4th West India regiment, jumping at once by that one leap over the heads of 780 officers senior to him, many of whom must have been desirous of purchasing that step. It appeared, therefore, that the system was very far from being fair in its operation. The hon. and gallant Member for Truro (Captain Vivian) had observed that a major-generalship could not be purchased, and pointed out the desirableness of certain situations in the army not being acquired i by purchase. Now, was there any situation more important, or that more required to be filled by a man of thorough professional skill and ability than that of commander of a regiment? Yet that situation was placed within the reach of any one who had £1,500 or £2,000 at his disposal. The hon. and gallant Member for Berkshire (Colonel Loyd Lindsay) said that promotion in the Artillery and Engineers was so slow that these corps were in a state of complete stagnation; but was he prepared to introduce the purchase system into them. They had just seen a military expedition conducted with unsurpassed skill and talent; and who was the commander of that expedition? He was a man who had never purchased a step; he belonged to the Engineers and yet that was the man who had won bloodless battles by the superiority of his engineering and his artillery. Could it be said that the Artillery were inefficient? It was well known that the corps of Artillery, Engineers, and Marines, in which purchase never had existed and never would exist, were constantly referred to as the model corps of the British army. Why not, then, place our Infantry under the same system? He would grant that the systems of purchase might be retained with advantage for one branch of the military service—the Cavalry. That branch of the service was remarkably expensive, and looking at the cost of the uniform, the changes that often took place, and the general expensiveness, it was impossible for a man to enter the Cavalry unless he were possessed of means considerably beyond those which he derived from the State. It was said that many men entered the service for two or three years and then retired, conferring by their withdrawal considerable advantages on the non-purchase men. But he believed the disadvantages of this outweighed the advantages, from the unprofessional tone that was introduced. When the abolition of purchase was proposed in 1855, before the fall of Sebastopol, there had been so many vacancies in the army, and so many promotions without purchase, that if there had then been a Minister in power capable of appreciating the advantages of its abolition, that might have been effected at a cost which would have been but as a drop in the bucket compared with the vast total of expenditure for the Crimean War, and the whole vested interests of the officers of our army might have been purchased for a sum not exceeding £2,000,000. But that which would then have entailed only a charge of no great importance, would now be impossible without making demands on the public purse of a most onerous character. With the prospect of speedily separating and the uncertainty of their all meeting together again, would his hon. Friend (Mr. Trevelyan) like to answer that objection at the hustings? People would naturally say, "To carry out the new system would require an addition to the Income Tax of 2d. in the pound, and looking at the way in which your officers fight, and their excellent conduct generally, we do not think it would be at all desirable to saddle the country with such an expenditure." He believed that on account of the vast expense of a change, and for no other reason, it would be desirable that his hon. Friend should not push his Resolution to a division. His hon. Friend had done the cause good service by his able speech, and by eliciting the weakness of the arguments opposed to it, and he hoped and trusted they might live to see a change one day successfully effected.

GENERAL PERCY HERBERT

craved permission to say a few words in explanation with regard to a gallant Relative of his whose case had been referred to by the hon. Member who had just spoken. The senior major of Major Herbert's regiment had refused to purchase promotion out of the regiment before it was offered to his gallant Relative. Major Herbert had served with his regiment in India; he was serving for the second time in the West Indies; and he had also served in the Crimea, He might add that that case exactly exemplified what he had previously said—namely, that if promotion by selection were made the rule the House would he likely to hear more of these cases of selection.

LORD ELCHO

said, the vitality of the purchase system consisted simply in this— that them was both in that House and in the country a strong practical instinct which prevented them from being led astray by theories, and made them unwilling to do away with a system that was found on the whole to work well. His own opinion was that it would be most unwise and most unpractical to abolish the system of purchase as it now existed. Great misapprehension prevailed as to what that system really was. All the talk they had had about trafficking and huckstering, and the discouragement of youthful talent and merit, was only like giving a dog a bad name, and the hon. and gallant Member for Truro (Captain Vivian) had done good service by quoting the very able pamphlet of Mr. O'Dowd, founded on articles which had previously appeared in the Army and Navy Gazette. A definition of the purchase system was given by the Earl of Lucan, a general in the army, speaking in "another place" some years ago. The Earl of Lucan stated that it could searcely be truly said that commissions were purchased; that a certain regulated sum was deposited—he was speaking not of the irregular, but the regular system—when an officer received his commission, which might be held to a certain extent as a security for his good conduct; that it was only by permission that he recovered it; and that there was no transaction between one officer and another. Having lately had to purchase a commission for his own son, he had nothing to do with any other officer selling out, but he received an instruction from the Horse Guards to deposit n certain sum with the agent. Therefore there was no trafficking, no huckstering; it was only under the irregular part of the system that the abuse cropped up which required correction. The hon. Member for Longford (Mr. O'Reilly) had pointed out certain abuses; but they might all be corrected either by the Commander-in-Chief, the Secretary for War, or by the attention of the House of Commons being called to them; they were in no degree inherent, or a part of the system itself. He (Lord Elcho) maintained that the purchase system was not unjust to individuals; because an officer entered the service with his eyes open, and knew what was before him. No man was obliged to purchase, and no man who was willing to purchase could be passed over. The effect of the purchase system was to bring men on faster than any other system. If there were abuses in the system, it was to be hoped that by discussions in that House the abuses would be checked; but he maintained if the system were properly administered there could be no injustice to individuals. Could anyone say that, it was an injury to the public service? So far from its being true, as was alleged, that few officers under it could attain the rank of colonel, the fact was quite the contrary, for Colonel Lindsay, when in the House, had shown that between 1833 and 1854 no less than 428 officers attained that rank, and that the period which an officer had to serve before attaining it was on an average twenty-five years, the gallant Colonel stating that those who obtained it by purchase averaged a service of twenty-two years, and those who got the step without got it in twenty-seven, so that there must have been a sufficient number of officers who attained it without to enable the gallant Colonel to form an average, lie regretted that the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Trevelyan) seemed to cast a certain slur on the officers of the army when he said that the military spirit and tone would be encouraged by giving commissions to non-commissioned officers. It was a great advantage to the army to be officered by gentlemen, and the men themselves were more satisfied at being commanded by them than if they were commanded by officers of their own class. It was said that the French army was much more hugely officered by men from the ranks. He had been talking over this matter with an English gentleman who held a Staff appointment in the Crimea, and who told him that at a review of the English army a French Staff officer, after expressing approval of all he saw, turned round and said to this gentleman, "How many officers have you under arrest?" The reply was "None." "Ah" said the French officer, "that is because you are all gentlemen;" implying that a considerable number of officers in the French army were then under arrest. He admitted that the French army was much more likely to get good men for privates on account of the conscription, which brought in all classes, A common French soldier in the Crimea, he recollected being told, had been a civil engineer, and had built a famous bridge over the Loire, or some other French river, but being drawn by; the conscription, and not being able to pay for a substitute, he served as a private soldier in the Crimea. Therefore, the French army had privates and non - commissioned officers such as the English army did not possess. But with respect to the proposition of giving commissions to non-commissioned officers— and let it not be supposed that he was opposed to carrying out that proposition in reason and moderation—it was desirable to hear the opinions of the non-commissioned officers themselves on that point. He believed that the hon. Member for Ayrshire (Sir James Fergusson) stated on a former occasion that in his regiment in the Crimea eight non-commissioned officers refused commissions. The sergeant-major in the regiment of Volunteers which he himself commanded was sergeant in the Army in 1863, and, being offered a commission, replied, "I make a very good sergeant, but shall make a very bad ensign." Knowing that this discussion was to come on to-night, he asked that man to write a statement expressing his views and the views of other non-commissioned officers on the subject of promotion from the ranks. He had in consequence written a letter, in which he said that it was necessary that promotion by purchase should continue, or that otherwise promotion would be very slow; that it would take fifteen years to obtain a captaincy, thirty years to obtain a lieutenant-colonelcy, and forty-five years a major-generalship. He went on to state that the proposition to give commissions to non-commissioned officers was a great mistake; for after the first novelty was over the recipients found that they had made a great mistake in accepting them, and that they positively could not live on them; the consequence was that they were continually making applications to the Commander-in-Chief for small Staff appointments, and when they were refused they became more dissatisfied than ever. Very few ever rose to the rank of field-officer; for not being able to bear the expense to which they were put, they either left the service, or sought a living in the Colonies. Nor did the men like to be commanded by those who were formerly of their own class, but always said that they preferred to be commanded by gentlemen, who, if they did wrong, treated them with lenience, and like men; whereas a non-commissioned officer who had been promoted was much too sharp for them. The kind of commission which, in the opinion of the writer, should be given as a reward to deserving noncommissioned officers were commissions in the Commissariat, the Military Train, or the Military Stores Department, which were generally more lucrative, and did not require much moving about. The writer also thought, and he entirely agreed with his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Berkshire (Sir Charles Russell) in the justice of the claim, that every clerkship in the War Office, the Horse Guards, and the other military establishments should be given to men in the ranks. Civilians, he considered, had no claim to these appointments. He trusted his hon. and gallant Friend (Sir Charles Russell) would be supported in his Motion on this subject. There were 623 clerkships which, in the opinion of this writer, ought thus to be thrown open. There was a story current, he did not know whether it was true or not, that the office-keeper at the War Office—who was in receipt of a major's pay, a position which many an officer's widow would naturally be glad to fill—was held by a French lady's maid. This was the line in which they ought to work in that House, and it would do more in getting good men for the Army than the 1st Resolution of his hon. and gallant Friend (Captain Vivian). Mess expenses ought to be kept down, The purchase system was not responsible for them, but those who administered it. It was all humbug to say that regimental expenses could not be kept down. They could be kept down by having a Report on Regimental Expenses from the General inspecting, and there ought to be no difficulty in the matter. He wanted to know on what authority the present proposition had been brought forward. He maintained that the authorities were all the other way. The Commission of 1840, the speeches delivered in that House, the opinions of officers of the At my, of the civil administrators of the Army — the Duke of Wellington, Lord Raglan, the Duke of Cambridge, Mr. Ellice, Lord Grey, Lord Dalhousie, and Lord Herbert; for no one more strongly objected than Lord Herbert to total abolition—all these were in favour of the purchase system. Who were against it? Were the civil administors of the army against it? They were all in favour of it. Were the generals? They were all in favour of it. Were the non-purchasing officers? Nineteen-twentieths of them were in favour of it. Were the purchasing officers? Five-sixths of them were in favour of it. Were the non-commissioned officers? The letter he had read showed their opinion. Were the privates against it? They preferred to be commanded by gentlemen rather than by those who had risen from the ranks. They were in favour of it. What, then, was the opposition reduced to? Sentiment and theory, and nothing else. It was all very well for that House to indulge in a generous fit before an Election—and they saw the effects of an immediate Election in his hon. and gallant Friend (Mr. Otway), it made him so very cautious seeing he must go to the hustings next week, or perhaps the week after. What was the cost they would have to pay for the hobby of his hon. Friend and that of Sir Charles Trevelyan? Apropos of Sir Charles Trevelyan's view of this question, it was very curious, they had heard a good deal of the crisis in Ireland which was Fenianism, and required the abolition of the Irish Church—Sir Charles Trevelyan had published a very able pamphlet, and he re-published it with a second preface; and here also he had discovered a crisis— that Fenianism with the abolition of purchase should be driven out of Ireland, by holding out the prospect of military service to her martial sons. The hobby of his hon. Friend was rather an expensive one. It was to cost at least £10,000,000; and to this they would have to add a retiring list of £1,000,000 per annum, which, if capitalized, would amount to more than another £10,000,000, so that the cost would be £20,000,000—a sum equal to that which was paid for emancipating the blacks in the West Indies. With reference to the substitute proposed, if they did away with purchase would they adopt a seniority system? That was the defect in foreign armies. The feeling of officers was that the present system gave a security against favouritism and jobbery which no system of selection could supply. On these grounds it appeared to him, looking practically at this question as an army reformer, that, whether they began at the top or bottom, whether they followed the course suggested by the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Trevelyan) or by the hon. and gallant Member for Truro (Captain Vivian), they were beginning at the wrong end in dealing with army reform. He could not do better, in concluding, than to quote words used on an occasion similar to the present by Mr. Ellice, who was liberal enough in his views on all such matters. Mr. Ellice said: — Be careful how you touch the regimental system of this country, because the English soldier is the best pawn on the chess-board of the military world.

SIR JOHN PAKINGTON

Sir, this discussion has occupied so many hours, and so many Members have, like my noble Friend who has just sat down (Lord Elcho), spoken in opposition to the Motion before the House, that I hardly think I can add anything to the arguments by which the Motion has been opposed; but, considering the position I hold, I hope the House will indulge me for a short time while I make some observations on points to which —while endeavouring to avoid repetition — I think I ought to address myself. Before I touch on the question itself, I wish to express my acknowledgments to the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Trevelyan) for his kindness in postponing his Motion, in consequence of my illness, at a time when he held a very advantageous position on the list. I can assure the hon. Gentleman I am glad that, despite the postponement, he has had an opportunity of bringing forward the question under such favourable circumstances. Only a year has passed since it was my duly to meet the hon. Gentleman on the same subject. He then, as he has done on this occasion, brought it forward in a speech of great abilty and earnestness—a speech in which I believe he was entirely actuated by patriotism and zeal for the welfare of the British army. As I before stated, I am by no means the champion of purchase in the army. On abstract grounds, as a matter of theory, I think there can be no question that the purchase system is full of anomalies and opens up a very serious consideration. I agree with my hon. and gallant Friend who spoke in the early part of the evening, if we were now commencing to form and organize our army, no reasonable man would be likely to think of adopting the purchase system. But all our institutions are full of anomalies and flaws that may be detected by hostile criticism. In our military system there are certainly many anomalies. Is it not an anomaly that, without any question, ours is the most expensive army in the world? Past, present, and future Chancellors of the Exchequer are protesting that there never was anything so abominable as our Army Estimates. But, notwithstanding all that, this House and the country are content to go on with the most expensive army in the world. It does not suit the spirit of our generous people to submit to a conscription or compulsory system. It is the determination of the country to have an army on the voluntary system, and to have that in a highly-civilized country like England makes it necessary that our army should be a very costly one. Is it not a great anomaly that our generals are paid as they are a very inadequate salary, which may become a very handsome one when they are appointed to the honorary command of a regiment? Is it not an anomaly that we should give our soldiers an extravagant rate of pay as compared with what is given to the soldiers of other countries, while we pay our officers a small pittance which is hardly enough—indeed, I may say it is not enough — to enable them to maintain their position? No doubt, in respect of all those matters the Government should introduce such reforms as they may consider necessary; but my duty in dealing with a question like the one now before the House is to consider, not what might be best in the abstract, but what the interests of the army and of the country really required. I hope I may say without any presumption that I have shown I am not indisposed towards army reform. I am at present engaged in the laborious duty of endeavouring to reorganize the Administrative Department; and recently I have introduced a system by which the whole of our Reserve Forces are put under one officer—a system which has already been attended with most beneficial results. When the noble Lord the Member for South Essex (Lord Eustace Cecil) the other day proposed that there should be a Commission on Education in the Army, from the moment he gave his Notice I had no hesitation" about supporting his Motion; because I agree with the hon. Member for Longford (Mr. O'Reilly) that the military training of the army is one of the most important questions connected with the subject of military reform. If you persevere in your present system of purchase in the army, it is most important that your officers should have the advantage of a good military education. On the other hand, if the sys- tem is to be changed, it would be equally important that you should have well-educated and well-trained officers to take the place of those now attached to the army. Before I proceed to notice more particularly the objections urged against the purchase system, this admission I most distinctly make—namely, that, in one class of cases, a severe grievance does arise from that system, as it is at present in operation. I allude to the cases in which young officers who have bought their commissions die. Many distressing cases of this character have been brought under my notice; and I have no doubt that, speaking of his own experience at the War Office, the noble Lord opposite (the Marquess of Hartington) could make a similar statement. Under a regulation made in recent years, if an officer is wounded, and if he dies within six months, the money paid for his commission is returned to his family; but in case of death from climate or disease, this is not done, and frequently much distress is the consequence. I do think it is well worthy of consideration whether something may not be done to prevent the purchase system from working the harm which it does in that way. Let me now touch on the alleged hardship of the rich man being enabled to purchase over the head of the poor man. I believe that no portion of the subject has attracted so much public sympathy, and created so much prejudice, if prejudice there be, against the purchase system, as this idea of the poor man being purchased over by the rich man. But, I believe—and I think I may challenge contradiction of my statement—that this is an idea rather than a fact. The truth is that the non-purchasing officers of the Line obtain promotion more rapidly under the purchase system than they would in a non-purchasing corps. I hold in my hand a statement of all the lieutenants promoted between April, 1867, and March in the present year. The whole number promoted was 183 by purchase and 51 without purchase. The average service of the former was nine years and sixty-four days; that of the latter eleven years and thirty days — that is, less than two years' longer service than those promoted by purchase. We heard a great deal this evening about the Artillery, and I think there is a great deal of misconception about the present state of that branch of the service. The fact is that if the promotion in the Artillery is not very rapid, the officers have had very little to complain of since the Crimean War. The present state of the Artillery is most satisfactory. The stagnation spoken of this evening may occur some years hence, but certainly it has not come as yet. I find the average period for which an Artillery officer now serves before being promoted to the rank of captain is between eleven and twelve years; which shows that at a time when the Artillery branch of the service is in a very satisfactory state, the officers who do not purchase are not longer in obtaining their promotion under the purchase system than are the Artillery officers, among whom there is no purchase. This fact shows that there is not in the purchase system the hardship to non - purchasing officers which many persons suppose. As to another misconception of the hon. Member, I think the House will be rather surprised to learn that the present average rate of entries for first commissions in the army is as follows—400 officers enter annually by purchase, and 140 without purchase. The number of the latter is much larger, I believe, than hon. Gentlemen are generally led to suppose. Then there is another serious fallacy, to which, I think, Sir Charles Trevelyan and the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Trevelyan) have lent themselves a great deal—namely, that the present system of purchase is the cause of our army being officered solely by the aristocratic class. Now, I am sorry to see so high an authority as Sir Charles Trevelyan adopting so complete a fallacy. I found the other day in one of the London newspapers a letter signed by Sir Charles Trevelyan, in which he says that the abolition of the purchase system is necessary, if you desire to open the British army to that great body of the British people who occupy the space between the highest and the lowest classes. Here, then, is a broad statement, that the army is composed exclusively of the highest and the lowest classes. But what does experience show us? I see military men around me on all sides; and we all of us know who are the officers in our army. 1 would ask any man to take up an Army List or a newspaper containing the gazette of military promotions and read the names. Why, you do not see there many names which are well-known to every Englishman as the aristocratic names of England; on the contrary, nine times out of ten you see a lot of the oddest names that can be imagined. Indeed, it always seems to me that the oddest names in the country get into the Army List, These are the names of the respectable middle classes of England. There is, it is true, a sprinkling of aristocratic names, and I hope there always will be; but the majority are names borne by country gentlemen, small gentlemen, and the respectable trading classes. In fact, if there be one body more than another the members of i which are derived from the middle classes, it is the British army. And now I must; touch upon that part of the scheme of the hon. Member for Tynemouth where he advocates so very decidedly—as Sir Charles Trevelyan also advocates—promotion from the ranks in a defined proportion. I am entirely opposed to that, as I believe the proposed change would be one of the most unwise which could be introduced into the army think we cannot improve on our present system with regard to promotion from the ranks. Proper consideration is shown in the army for every non-commissioned officer who deserves promotion; and, in point of fact, a considerable proportion of them are promoted and receive commissions. And if one fact can be conclusive against a more extended system of promotion from the ranks it is the letter which my noble Friend the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho) has read to us this evening, and which was evidently written by a very I competent authority. Every well-conducted soldier knows that if he accepts a commission he must try to make himself a gentleman, and that, although he may have been a good sergeant, he is not likely to become a very good gentleman; and, however generous and right it may be to give him an opportunity of attaining a higher position, it is a very doubtful boon to bestow. I cannot help thinking that the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Trevelyan), in advocating so zealously as he does a more extended promotion from the ranks, is led away by the examples of Prussia and France, where the military system is entirely different from ours. My noble Friend the Member for Haddingtonshire has most accurately stated the facts in regard to this part, of the subject. In France there is a conscription, and in Prussia a still more widely extended system prevails, as all classes are compelled to serve in the army for a time. The consequence is that you have in the ranks a considerable number of men who are by birth gentlemen, and who, after being in the ranks, are quite fit to be promoted to commissions. I think the hon. Member for Tynemouth is under the impression that if we do away with purchase we should induce a very different class of men to enter our army as privates. Now, I doubt very much whether that result would follow, and whether we should succeed in obtaining a supply of men qualified to become officers. Before quitting this branch of the subject I must refer to the desire of my noble Friend the Member for Haddingtonshire in connection with this question of promotion—that the object of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Berkshire (Sir Charles Russell) should be carried out, and that retired soldiers should be employed as clerks in the public offices. I believe he has impressed upon the House the advisability of extending that system to other public offices; but, as regards the War Office, I may say that it is now, and has been for some time, in full operation. [Lord ELCHO: How many soldiers are there out of the 623 clerks?] I cannot state just at present the exact number; but it must be borne in mind that the system has not been long established. It ha3 only been lately tried; but soldiers are being constantly appointed to such clerkships as they are competent to hold. As to what my noble Friend said about the appointment of a French lady's-maid as housekeeper at the War Office, I can only state that it was not made by me, and that I know nothing about it. I think the cost of doing away with the purchase system would be so great as to justify me in urging the House to pause before they venture on making so large an expenditure for so very doubtful a result. The hon. Gentleman has not even mentioned the whole expense which would be incurred. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Truro (Captain Vivian) indeed referred to the fact that, in addition to the purchase money of all the commissions you must also be prepared with a retirement system. But even that is not all, because, upon the showing of the hon. Member for Tynemouth, you must, if you adopt his plan, not only pay the price of the commissions and provide a system of retiring pensions for officers on their leaving the service; but you must in addition introduce a class of officers who would not be content with the present low rate of pay. Thus of course we should be involved in the additional expense of a much higher rate of pay. To these very serious considerations let me add a warning, founded on our practical experience of what is going on at this moment with regard to the Royal Artillery—a non-purchase corps. Last year a Committee was appointed, and presided over by my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers) who understands this subject better than most men in this House. My hon. Friend presented a very able Report as the result of the labours of that Committee, in which a system of retirement in the Royal Artillery was recommended, and he has evinced upon several occasions a great desire that I should carry that proposal into effect. I suspect, if he were a Member of any Government that came into power, he would find it very difficult to induce his Colleagues to carry out so costly a plan as was recommended. I have had the subject under anxious consideration, and, if I may be allowed to say so without pledging myself, I do hope, if I retain my present position, in the course of the present Session to submit a plan which may do something for the Royal Artillery without embarking us in the expense involved in the course proposed by my hon. and gallant Friend. I confess I am rather surprised by the references made to the French army. Without meaning to disparage that noble army, the courage and achievements of which are indisputable, I would say that it furnishes a warning of arrangements with respect to officers to be avoided rather than followed. You ought to have young and vigorous officers; but it is notorious that the French army is not officered by such, and if you see a regiment of French infantry with the line different to what it ought to be, the probability is the irregularity will be due to some portly old captain or lieutenant. In the French army there is a system of compulsory retirement at a certain age, and the retiring pension is so small that the officer clings on to the last moment that the regulations will allow him before exposing himself to the privations eon-sequent on retirement. I rejoice sincerely at the tone of the debate in reference to these proposals for sudden and violent change. I do not pretend that the present system is perfect; but we must be cautious how we deal with our army. I will say the less of the Amendment of the hon. and gallant Member for Truro (Captain Vivian) as I understand it is his intention to withdraw it; but in candour I must say that I cannot view the Amendment in the light in which it has been regarded by some of the speakers who have preferred it. Many seem to think that it would be a great disadvantage to the service if any distinction was drawn between purchase in the higher ranks and purchase in the lower ranks; but it must be remembered, whether purchase in the upper ranks is good or bad, it was recommended by a Royal Commission, myself think it is wrong to leave so important an appointment as the command of a regiment a matter of purchase. In 1860 Lord Herbert boldly announced his intention to carry out the Report of the Commission, and to arrange a scheme by which promotion should stop after a captain or a major The Cabinet of Lord Palmerston had consented to this, and the Commander-in-Chief, notwithstanding his objections to the principle, had intimated his readiness to do his best to give effect to the wish of the Government. The matter seems to have gone as far as a change could go I which was not carried out; but nothing was done, and the reason was not the death of Lord Herbert, which did not occur until more than a year after. In 1862 Sir George Lewis said the Government had determined to give effect to the recommendations of the Commissioners in regard to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and the intention was communicated to the House by Lord Herbert, then Secretary of War; but soon afterwards it became necessary for him (Sir George Lewis) to consider the details of the subject with a view of carrying out the decision of the Government; and upon approaching the question more closely it was found to be embarrassed with great difficulties of detail, one of which arose from the amalgamation of the Indian with the British army, and the incorporation of twelve non-purchase regiments into the latter. Lord Palmerston closed the debate in a speech i of the same tenour. I do not think the difficulties have been sufficiently appreciated in the course of the debate. The Prussian army is always in Prussia, and i that of France in France; but a portion of the British army is habitually scattered all over the world; and whatever may be the inherent difficulties of a system of selection, they will be greatly aggravated when officers have to be found for vacancies in Australia, India, or other parts of the world. Turning, again, to the financial view of the subject, I have a statement which does not accord with that of my hon. and gallant Friend (Captain Vivian). I It states that the lowest estimate for compensation is £1,500,000, and the extra prices would make it £2,000,000. The financial cost, although small as compared with the immense cost of doing away with purchase in the Line, still amounts to a considerable sum, and, under these circumstances, I do not support either the Motion or the Amendment; but I am quite willing to accede to the suggestion that this matter should be disposed of by moving the Previous Question. I do not think the hon. Gentleman bears in mind the antiquity of this system of purchase. We have had it, good or bad, for 200 years in the army. All the glory and power of this country have been achieved under it; and I do not think, in the history of this country or of any other, you will find an achievement more creditable than that wonderful expedition to Abyssinia, which has reflected so much honour on Sir Robert Napier, and not so much upon the gallantry as upon the endurance of the force. The facts of that expedition are enough to show that the purchase system has not weakened in any degree the gallantry and spirit of British officers, and I hope no steps will be taken which will undermine the character of the army in this respect.

MR. TREVELYAN

, in reply, said, that his principal object had been to lay before the new or, if necessary, before the old constituencies the system under which our army was officered—a system, as he believed, ominously and dangerously at variance with what promised to be the opinion of the English people. It was now clear that the real argument against the abolition of purchase was the argument of the cost which it would involve; and if that could he got over, they would not hear much of the advantage which poor officers derived from the purchase system. To cite the success of the Abyssinian expedition in proof of the efficiency of the existing system was rather unfortunate, for Sir Robert Napier belonged to a non-purchase corps, the most highly instructed branch of the service—namely, the Royal Engineers. As the debate had thoroughly satisfied him, he did not propose to divide the House.

Amendment and Motion, by leave, withdrawn.