§ COLONEL SYKESasked the Financial Secretary of the War Office, Whether, in the Return No. 311, Session 1871, headed "Army Recruiting," the following sums—namely, £756,611 8s. 9d. for 5,536 1872 Cavalry recruits for Home Service, and £1,760,054 19s. 4d. for 27,752 Infantry recruits for Home Service—enlisted in the years 1867–68 to 1870–71, both inclusive, are not merely multiples of the estimated charge to India for each Cavalry recruit of £136 13s. 11d., and for each Infantry recruit of £63 8s. 5d., and have not any relation to actual outlay; and, whether, as far as relates to the years 1867–68, 1868–69, and 1869–70, the now completed Recruiting Accounts in the War Office could not give the actual outlay instead of an Estimate to be laid upon the Table of the House?
CAPTAIN VIVIANSir, the "actual cost" of a recruit cannot be given. No separate record of the cost of a recruit, as distinguished from a trained man, has ever been kept in the Army. It is not and cannot be known in the accounts when a man passes from the status of recruit to that of a trained soldier. Added to which, recruits and trained soldiers occupy the same barracks and consume the same stores, and are under the same superintendence, so that the cost of these items, as divided between the two classes, can never be anything but "estimated."