§ MAJOR ARBUTHNOTasked the Secretary of State for War, What number of annuities will be given out of the extra £5,000 taken in the Estimates for Artillery Retirement; what rank and length of service will entitle an officer to take advantage of them; whether promotion in both the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers has not been slower since the time when Mr. Childers' Committee sat; whether the remedial measures enumerated by the Secretary of State for War, on Thursday the 16th, are intended to meet the case prospectively, and to be a final solution, as far as the Government is concerned, of the difficulty, or whether they are meant merely as a temporary relief for the current year; and, whether Her Majesty's Government, either by a re-distribution of the money voted annually for retirement in these Corps, or any other means, intend to put an end to a system of retirement 337 which was pronounced by the Committee of 1867 on the System of Retirement in the Army to be "unsatisfactory, complicated, uncertain in its operation, based upon no clear principle, and inadequate for its purpose?"
CAPTAIN VIVIANSir, the annuities sanctioned by the Treasury are based upon £225 at 40 years of age, and vary with the age of the officer. It therefore depends upon the ages of the officers who accept how many can be retired. The power to retire upon these pensions will be limited to those officers who compose the block in the list of captains and subalterns. The measures proposed alleviate the difficulties under which the corps is stated to be suffering, and, if accepted, will do much to restore it to a normal condition. The promotion in the higher ranks of the Artillery has not varied during the last few years to any appreciable extent. The promotion to the rank of captain has been exceptionally slow; not, however, owing to the absence of vacancies, but to the absorption of supernumeraries, whose appointment had previously given abnormal promotion. Further consideration of the question will be given to it with the general question of retirement in the Army on the abolition of purchase.