RESOLUTION.

HC Deb 06 July 1880 vol 253 cc1788-813

MR. TREVELYAN,

in rising to move— That steps should be taken to reduce the active list of generals to the point at which it, is adequate, and no more than adequate, to the actual requirements of the Service of the country; that no appointment should henceforward he made to honorary colonelcies, due regard being had to the interest of existing officers; said: Sir, there is this drawback about an exceptional case, that its possessor finds it hard to determine at which end to begin; and a stronger case than this, I venture to say, was never laid before the House of Commons. I have been long enough in this House to know that what it likes are facts; and facts it shall have—so clear, so strong, so plain and self-evident that, without comment or explanation, they constitute an argument in themselves. Englishmen— and small blame to them—are not accustomed to look abroad for instruction; but there is one country to which they are not ashamed to look for instruction with regard to Army matters, and that is Germany, or rather Prussia. We are never ashamed—it would be the height of folly if we were—to ask how Prussia treats any question relating to the maintenance of a National Army. The Prussian Army, in time of war, comprises 600,000 men present with the Colours. That Army is under the command of 150 generals. There are 13 generals in command of districts, 31 cavalry generals, 28 infantry generals of division, and 52 of brigade. 13 generals of artillery, and an average of 10 or 12 engaged in military administration. Every one of those generals is on the active list; and, as soon as he is unable to perform his duties, he leaves that list. To command the British Army of 400,000 men there are on The Army List 215 generals, 169 lieutenant generals, and 242 major generals, or 626 generals in all. That is to say, the list of generals, as shown on our Army List, for 400,000 men equals the active and retired list of the Prussian Army of 600,000 men; or, to put it in another way, our list of generals is more than four times as great as the Prussian list of generals who command the Prussian Army. Our retired list of generals is one which no man can number, and it is difficult enough to say how much our generals, active and retired, are paid; for the Estimates, framed more reasonably than they were 10 years ago, are not yet of a nature to assist the researches of an independent Member who is interested in military matters. But it stands something like this. Staff pay on the English Establishment, £19,000 a-year; honorary colonelcies, £203,500; salaries for administrative duties, say, £25,000; full-pay of general officers, £130,000; distinguished service money, £15,000; reduced and retired generals of Royal Artillery and Engineers, £47,000; half-pay to officers of the rank of general, say, £50,000; pay to general officers in India, £70,000; pay and pension, including colonels' allowances, to general officers of the Indian Service resident in England, taken approximately, at £240,000 a-year. These sums, added together, reach the enormous total of £784,500, or three and a-third times as much as that paid for commanding the greatly larger Army of Prussia. The larger part, but not much the larger, is borne by India; but I do not distinguish between what India and what Englandbears. We are here to protect the unrepresented millions of India. If we are not their protectors, if we do not see that their interests are not sacrificed to the private interests of individuals, there is no amount of exaction to which they will not be exposed. Well, that is the sum which, under the head of General Officers, the taxpayers of the British Empire are out of pocket yearly; and what is the value which they get for their money? Here I must ask hon. Members, who are not acquainted with the details of our military system, to prepare themselve for the incredible. Count- ing His Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief, we have 20 general officers employed in military commands at home. Engaged on administrative duties at home we have 14 general officers. Seventeen of our generals are actively employed in India, and 12 in the Colonies; so that, in all, 63 of our generals are actually at work at any given time—that is to say, while on an average every general in the Prussian Army, who is actually employed, costs his country £1,460 per annum; every general in the British Service, who is actually employed, costs the yearly sum of £12,444. The cause of this monstrous state of things is that, instead of a fixed list of generals, a list to which a man is promoted, not because he is to be called a general or to get the emoluments of a general, but because the country requires the services of a general, we have an immense, an amorphous, an unmanageable agglomeration of generals, old and young, effective and non-effective, men capable of discharging any military employment in the world, and men so notoriously incapable that no Minister in his senses would intrust them with the charge of a brigade. No less than 34 are not generals at all, but colonels and lieutenant colonels with temporary rank as brigadiers. The country ought to know that while, with the help of India, it is paying £750,000 to maintain a perfect army of generals, when there is duty to be done in India of the nature which falls to the lot of a general, proper men for the purpose are not to be found on this endless roll; but 34 officers of a lower grade have to be selected, and their pay raised, in order to fulfil the duties to which our list of generals, as at present constituted, is, by the confession of the Horse Guards and the War Office, unequal. And, no wonder; for instead of making the position of a general a business, and one of the most honourable businesses, we have turned it into a mere rank with no attributes except the name and the pay. When there are vacancies on the list of generals, instead of choosing the best man and the fittest man, we shovel in all the names that happen to stand at the top of the list of colonels. There may be here and there an exception; but that is our system. Are hon. Gentlemen aware what, in deal- ing with the appointment of general officers, a system of seniority means? In many callings age is no disadvantage. But it is not so with a general. Youth, or that excess of vital power and redundant health which, except in a few very fortunate people, advancing age too surely impairs, is a definite and indispensable qualification. Just think what the duties of a general are. To be awake when others are sleeping; to be about when others are stationary; to have at his fingers' ends the details of the transport, the commissariat, the exact local distribution of all the force under his command. And, with all this on his mind, to conduct the military operations; and, when the day's marching or fighting is over, to sit down and do another day's work at his desk. During his first and, perhaps, his most remarkable campaign, Pichegru relates that he himself only slept, on an average, one hour in the twenty-four; and, to come to our own successful general, I should just like to have a return of the number of hours a-day which Sir Garnet Wolseley spent in his saddle in South Africa, and on his legs in Canada and Ashantee. Let us look at our great wars, and at the age of the men who did so much for the glory of their country. The Duke of Wellington became a major general at 33; Lord Anglesea at 34; Lord Hill at 33; Lord Beresford at 39; Lord Combermere at 31; Lord Londonderry at 32. On the morning of Waterloo there was only one man in the British Army over 50; and that solitary individual was General Picton. That is the state of things that must exist in a fighting army, if it is to fight successfully. Let us see how it stands with us. In 1854, on the eve of the Crimean War, a Commission was appointed to inquire into the condition of the higher ranks of our Army. It was a most distinguished Commission, whose recommendations and observations were worthy of the closest attention; for it included the names of Lord Hardinge, Lord Raglan, Lord Seaton, Sir John Burgoyne, Sir Hew Ross, Sidney Herbert, Lord Dalhousie, and Lord Grey. The Commission reported that— The average age of existing major general is not less than 65, and that the lieutenant generals who will command divisions are, of course, older still. They enlarged with great force and ability on the danger of intrusting troops to commanders who were past their prime, and who, if they gained experience as commanders in one campaign, would be superannuated before they had time to make use of it in another; and then, as a remedy, they proposed to give commands to colonels and lieutenant colonels—that was to say, they could think of nothing better than to intrust the duties of a general to others than a general, because the generals whom we possessed were too old to exercise them. Now, that was a poor and weak remedy. It did not go to the root of the evil, and could be called very little better than a palliative; but that was the worst that could be said against it. It is left for a Government of our own day to invent a remedy that is a great deal worse than the disease. Things did not mend after 1854. In the year 1873, for instance, the four lowest officers on the list of major generals were aged respectively 53, 57, 55, and 51. The four lowest on the list of lieutenant generals were aged 73, 56, 73, and 82. The four lowest on the list of generals were aged 65, 72, 77, and 73. The evil is as great as ever; but the time has come when it can be mended. Purchase has been abolished, and a clear field has been made on which the new construction of our Army can be built. Where there has before been a vast and complicated multitude of vested interests, there is a tabula rasa, on which the authorities might make what sketch they choose, and might fill it up as they like. There never was such a chance for a bold and great Administration. And what was done? On Army questions I have never been and never will be a Party man; and, therefore, I cannot help saying that both the Liberal and Conservative Governments were to blame for what followed. The Liberal War Office, which had abolished Purchase, which ought to have had cut, dried, and ready, the organization by which it proposed to supersede the old abuses that had grown up under Purchase; which did not require a Bill, to be carried with difficulty through the two Houses, in order to effect what was wanted, but by a simple exercise of its volition and a few strokes of the pen, might have accomplished all that the nation had a right to demand. The Liberal War Office put off dealing with that question through the latter half of 1871, through the whole of 1872, through the whole of 1873, and left the work which they themselves were absolutely bound to complete, to be made or marred by their successors. And how did those successors fulfil the task? In 1877 Lord Cranbrook issued his Royal Warrant for Promotion and Retirement. What did Lord Cranbrook do? Did he reduce the enormous burden on the country., and provide us with young and effective generals by diminishing the list to the size that was wanted, and by promoting on to that list by selection? Nothing of the sort. He began by fixing the establishment of generals for the Guards and Line alone at 200, or quite thrice as many generals as are wanted for the service of our entire Army. Then he announced that that was to be an active list, and, consequently, that all general officers over 70 were to be retired; a process which reduced his list to about 200. And then, having fixed a list twice as large as the nation wanted; having reduced the number of generals to the size of that list; he then proceeded to create an enormous number of fresh generals, which eventually increased the list to a great deal more than half again the size which I have named, and announced that it would be the business of the War Office of the future to reduce the list to 200 by checking the rate of promotion for the next generation of officers. Was there ever such a device heard of before? It was foreseen by the Commission of 1854 that a compliant War Minister might some day be persuaded into such a course by the military men who surround him, and they have emphatically condemned it by anticipation, and warned the country against being ever infatuated enough to adopt it. But a Minister has been found to adopt it; and the consequence is that for the passing moment, indeed, we have some younger generals on the list. Here and there among men of 60 and 65, we find a man of 46, 47, and 48. But the advantage has been purchased by the certainty of a block in promotion, such as 10 or 15 years hence would make a major-general of an age for active service a thing to be stared at as a phenomenon; which would break the hearts and ruin the careers of all the ambitious and energetic colonels and officers in our Army. Before promotion returns to the same miserably slow rate of pro- gress at which it crept along before the abolition of Purchase, the list of generals in the Guards and Line alone will have to be reduced by the slow, the cruelly slow, system of absorption of vacancies from 302 to 200. If we require 34 colonels on temporary rank to help our present comparatively young generals to do their duty, how many do you think we shall require when the full effect of Lord Cranbrook's scheme has had time to show itself? To fix the list of generals twice as large as is required, and then to swell that list more than half as much again by giving promotion to the officers of the present, at the expense of the officers of the future, is the most signal instance of subordination of private to public interests that has taken place in the time of any man living. Against that indefensible proceeding the Liberal Party protested, as a Party, in 1877; and I now call upon the Liberals, and upon as many Conservatives as put the interests of the Army before Party considerations, to condemn and to undo it now. To that Resolution which calls for an active list of generals, which should be an active list in fact, and not in name, I have, I believe, the assent of every every energetic and aspiring officer in the Army; and for that Resolution which calls for the abolition of the honorary colonelcies I claim the vote of every economist in the House. What is the real cause of the enormous cost of our Army, in its higher ranks, and what is the great difficulty of ascertaining and reducing that cost? It is that in the case of the Army we have lost sight of the great principle that always should govern the relations between the public and the servants of the public—the principle that those servants should be paid either in the shape of salary for the work that is still doing, or of pension for work that has been done. But these honorary colonelcies are neither salary nor pension. They are nothing more nor less than offices —old sinecure offices, which have descended from the bad old days of corruption and jobbery, and which, even in those bad old days, were distinguished by being especially obnoxious to a public sentiment which was then so little squeamish as to swallow almost anything. In the middle of the last century, people who were revolted at nothing else were revolted at the idea of the so-called leader of a battalion turning a few shillings by the clothing of every live soldier, and a few pounds by the clothing of every dead one; filling the muster-rolls with fictitious names, for which he drew pay, and making a small fortune when the regiment was decimated at a battle, where he was not present, or in an unwholesome climate where it was quartered, while he was comfortably seated over his whist-table in a London Club. And in the middle of this century, public opinion at last became too strong for the continuance of such an evil system. In 1854, Sydney Herbert gave the colonels a fixed allowance, in lieu of their old gains as contractors; but continued to them the responsibility of superintending the clothing of the regiment. But, in the next year, Lord Palmerston took away from them that responsibility, and turned the honorary colonelcies, for good and all, into pure, unadulterated, and unmitigated sinecures. They are not salaries, for the essence of a salary is that work shall be done for it; and, except attending, possibly, the regimental dinner, a colonel did no work, as colonel, from year's end to year's end. And, if possible, still less are they pensions. The characteristic of a pension is that it should be a fixed annual sum, proportioned to the salary and length of service of the person who receives it, beginning from the moment that he retires from service, never increasing in its amount, and, above all, never being enjoyed at the same time as salary. So strictly is this last condition observed in all other Departments, from the highest to the lowest, that when a Cabinet Minister, who has earned a pension, again takes Cabinet Office, his pension is withdrawn. But it is not so in the Army. The Field Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, while he draws £4,432 a-year as Commander-in-Chief, draws £2,200 a-year as colonel of the Grenadier Guards. The Military Secretary, while he draws £1,500 a-year as Military Secretary, draws 1,000 a-year as colonel of a regiment of the Line. The Adjutant General, while he draws£2,000 a-year as Adjutant General, draws£l,000 a-year as colonel of a regiment of the Line. One year and another, there are 20 high placed officers who enjoy these so - called pensions contemporaneously with, and in addition to, most ample salaries. I ask the House of Commons what it would think if it was proposed to introduce this precious system into any other Department of the Public Service? If our Judges of the High Court and our Lord Chancellors were to have, in addition to their salaries, honorary Recorderships or Masterships rising from £1,000 a-year a-pieee? If our admirals were to be gratified by having among them a hundred richly paid honorary post-captaincies, of which the snuggest and best were reserved for themselves by the high naval officials who distributed the rewards of the Service at Whitehall? The truth is that the whole thing is indefensible, and all War Ministers for a long time past have known it. I am not at all disposed," said Lord Card-well, "to enter upon a defence of the system of honorary colonelcies. Lord Hampton went further— I desire," he said, "to disclaim on my own part any defence of the system of honorary colonelcies; for I think that the system is not a good one, and might very easily he improved. There never was but one tenable ground of defence for them, and that ground can be held no longer. There was a time when they were employed to compensate officers for the vast and frightful losses of money which they endured under the system of Purchase in the Army. In the year 1833 a Committee of the House of Commons sat to inquire into military sinecures, which, at that time, included the honorary Governorship of a great number of old unused castles, such as Berwick, Scarborough, Tynemouth, and Pendennis, but which, then as now, consisted mainly in the honorary colonelcies. The Duke of Wellington appeared as a witness to defend these sinecures, and to defend, at the same time, the enormous size of the list of generals. The ground of his defence was nothing more nor less than that officers must be compensated by sinecures for the money which they had sunk in buying their commissions. They have purchased," he said, "their commissions for large sums, and, being colonels of regiments, they cannot sell out; their money is sunk in the Service, and lost to them and their families for ever. The officer sunk his money, and was half ruined, and the public had to maintain the expense of a great mass of sinecures in order to ease the burden of those whom the Purchase system had stripped bare of their property. But now Purchase has gone—has gone long ago; and all this mass of honorary offices, and this great overgrown list of generals, ought long ago to have gone with it. Since the day when I first asked the House, more than nine years ago, to stop the appointments to honorary colonelcies, no less than three-fourths of the present generals have obtained their promotion to the list, and have taken their place among the claimants for these offices. When the day conies for them to be abolished, as it surely will, heavy and grave will be the responsibility of the Parliament which, by rejecting the Resolution which is now submitted to it, entails such an immense and needless additional burden upon the Exchequer. The prospects of lieutenant generals and major generals who look forward to colonelcies should be accurately reckoned, and made good to them in the shape of pensions, immediate or deferred; but the injustice, for it is nothing less, of a system under which officials at the Horse Guards being allowed to draw, in addition to their salaries, these great sums of money which they themselves defend, upon the ground that they are pensions for meritorious officers, should be put a stop to now, at once and for ever. The right hon. Gentleman at the War Office is the man to do this. He it was who, by a well considered and most successful scheme, depleted the over full ranks of admirals and post captains in the Navy with advantage alike to the officers who went and the officers who remained. Let the right hon. Gentleman ascertain how many officers are wanted for actual employment; how many generals to command at Gibraltar and Aldershot, in India and in Ireland; how many lieutenant generals are required to command divisions; how many major generals to command brigades; just as the Lord Chancellor ascertains how many Judges are required in each section of the High Court. Then, having ascertained what the duties are, and having allotted an officer of the proper rank to each, let him allot to each officer an adequate salary. I am not one of those who think that a working major general is overpaid on £700 a-year, and 12s. a-day allowances. And let nobody thenceforward be made or called a general, unless a general is wanted to do general's duties; and then let the fittest man be taken. Now that we have no longer got Purchase we must have selection. There is no real difficulty about it. Before Purchase was abolished the Duke of Cambridge came before a Royal Commission, and announced that he, as responsible head of the Army, did not feel equal to selecting lieutenant colonels to command battalions. But Purchase was abolished, and His Royal Highness found himself quite competent to appoint lieutenant colonels. So, if Parliament insists upon it, he will find the selection of generals no impossible task. The truth is that when the duties to which a man is promoted are real duties promotion almost makes itself, and the best man is sure to be selected. Let the Government give the country the 100 generals for whom it has work, and restore to the name of general the prestige which will accrue to it when it is a reality instead of being, as it so often is, a sham; and you will do as much to educate the public spirit and maintain the efficiency of the Army as, in the end, you will do to save the pocket of the taxpayer. And, when generals are past work, let them retire on a fair and certain pension proportioned to their rank. Two or sometimes even three deserving officers might be pensioned for the sum that now is consumed in addition to a salary by one man or another who is not a retired officer at all; by reducing the Active List of generals to what the Service required; and by retiring superannuated generals on a fixed and well-ascertained scale of pension, you will save to the nation an annual sum the capital of which will more than cover half the capital which was expended, and, wisely expended, in abolishing Purchase. That course is one which, as Englishmen solicitous for the condition of the Army, and as Members of Parliament who are guardians of the public purse, we are equally bound to take, and in the confidence that many present will agree with me, I beg to move the first Resolution of which I have given Notice, and, subsequently, if that is carried, the second.

MR. ANDERSON

said, he had great pleasure in seconding the Motion of his hon. Friend (Mr. Trevelyan), and he hoped the same success which attended a portion of the Resolutions moved some years ago would follow that now before the House. What he alluded to was a set of Resolutions, one of which was for the abolition of Purchase, which had been rendered unnecessary by being taken up by the Government of the day, and which had been moved by his hon. Friend and seconded by himself. The reforms which the hon. Gentleman proposed to carry out, and the abuses which he had pointed out in the great age of our generals, and the great number of them, were matters which had been pointed out over and over again, and still remained mi-reformed; and he thought, considering the opportunity presented to the country so excellently by the abolition of the Purchase system, it was not creditable to Parliament that it had not occupied itself since that time in making the necessary reforms. But there was a great obstacle to all reforms in the Army; and he felt satisfied that, strong as the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Childers) was, he could not overcome the vis inertia which prevailed at headquarters, which was at the Horse Guards under the old system, and was now at the War Office; while the Commander-in-Chief was not only a Royal, but a sort of life appointment. It was worse long ago, for not only was the Commander-in-Chief, but the Military Secretary as well, was a kind of permanent appointment. By agitation in the House they got rid of the Military Secretary, and got that office turned into a five years' appointment, and he was afraid there would be no geuuine reforms in the Army until the Commandership-in-Chief was made a Staff appointment of the same five years' duration. He believed the Commander-in-Chief was a most excellent officer. He, no doubt, thoroughly understood the Army as, perhaps, no other man did; but he was prejudiced by belonging to the old school, and while he understood the Army he managed it in the old school way. He believed there would be no reform as long as the present system remained. There was another way in which that difficulty could be got over if the right hon. Gentleman would treat the Army government in another manner. There used to be a Lord High Admiral to manage the Navy; but that was so in- convenient that it was abolished, and the Navy was put under a Board of Admiralty. Why not abolish the Commander-in-Chief, who bore the very same relation to the Army which the Lord High Admiral did to the Navy, and let the Army be put under a Board similar to what the Navy was put under? He believed under such a system, with younger men, they would have reforms which, without it, they could never have. His hon. Friend the Member for the Border Burghs had so completely covered all the ground that he would not detain the House long, or stand in the way of those military Gentlemen who wished to take part in the discussion. He should, therefore, only say a few more words, and those would be on the honorary colonelcies. The hon. Member had stated that the cost of them was £203,000. He understood that in 1871 the figure was £162,500, and he was sorry to find that the amount had increased by some £40,000 since that date. He had hoped that the amount had decreased; because he had seen that, time after time, certain regiments had been given to Royal Dukes. Now, he would like some little explanation about that, and he had no doubt the right hon. Gentleman knew how that increase had taken place. They were informed by Lord Cardwell that when several regiments were given to Royal Dukes they were only paid for one of them. Thus the Prince of Wales was paid £1,350 for the 10th Hussars, and the Duke of Cambridge £2,200 for the Grenadier Guards, while they were told that the other regiments they held were purely honorary. He wanted to know if that remained the fact now, and if the other regiments since given to those distinguished personages were entirely honorary. He found the Prince of Wales had not only the 10th Hussars, but also the Rifle Brigade; and the Duke of Cambridge had not only the Grenadier Guards, but the 17th Lancers, the Royal Artillery, the Royal Engineers, and the 60th Rifles. He wished to know if the whole of them were honorary. He believed they were, and he hoped that was the fact; but, in recent discussions, he had seen it stated otherwise in print; and he thought the facts of the case ought to be made known to the country. If they were honorary, he, for his part, hoped that before long the Duke of Cambridge would get the whole of them. That seemed to him an easy way out of the difficulty. If the colonelcy of every regiment was given to the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Cambridge without pay, as an additional honour, as soon as it became vacant, they would in that way get rid of all that they complained of, and in a satisfactory manner. The hon. Member had spoken about there being no defence of the honorary coloncies by anyone; but he (Mr. Anderson) remembered very well that they had sometimes been defended by Lord Cranbrook—then Mr. Gathorne Hardy—who had stated that these positions were fair rewards for an honoured career, and that such prizes were given for long and high services. But if they were really so, it was rather a remarkable fact that so many of them went into the War Office or Horse Guards. In fact, they were entirely the result of a system of selection, and of a kind of selection that seemed to have become pure favouritism. That was one of the grounds on which he thought these appointments in the highest degree unsatisfactory; and he agreed with the hon. Member in thinking that the sooner the country got rid of them, and instituted some more satisfactory system, the better it would be for the Army. He had great pleasure in seconding the Resolution.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That steps should at once be taken to reduce the active list of generals to the point at which it is adequate, and no more than adequate, to the actual requirements of the service of the Country."—(Mr. Trevelyan.)

COLONEL LOYD LINDSAY

said, he had listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan), and had closely followed up all the facts and deductions that had been adduced; but he entirely failed to see that he had succeeded in establishing his ease. The hon. Gentleman began by drawing a comparison between foreign Armies— especially that of Germany—and our own; but he (Colonel Loyd Lindsay) must at once say that such comparisons were really of little worth, unless a similarity between the two cases could be proved; and it should be borne in mind that we had large Colonial possessions to watch over, where officers had to be constantly sent to fill important appointments and carry out various duties in connection with those places. His hon. Friend went on to describe a state of things which, as a matter of fact, had entirely disappeared from our Service. He showed how, in former days, general officers who commanded regiments were men engaged in all sorts of business connected with the clothing and establishment of their respective corps; but his remarks on that head, though they might very well bear on the circumstances of 25 years ago, were in no way applicable, as hon. Members knew, to the present condition of affairs. At the present moment, the honorary colonels who had been denounced had nothing to do with the discipline or conduct of the regiments they commanded. What was their position? They were simply men in receipt of a pension for long and honourable past services in the Army, and nothing else. That was, in his opinion, the only defence which could be set up with regard to those colonelcies; and if they were abolished, what gain, he would ask, could be arrived at except an economic one? and he was unable, he confessed, to see how any such gain would arise. These general officers, who were borne on the Establishment of the Army, were receiving £450 a-year. Anyone looking at The Army List would find that they were borne on the non-effective side of the Estimates; and surely £450 a-year was no large pension for a man who had served, perhaps, 40 years in the Army. What, he would ask, was the position of an officer who had ceased to be in command of his regiment, his five years having expired? Reviewing his position, an officer so placed would find that if he retired he would receive as colonel £420 a-year, and the difference between that and £450 (the pay of a general officer) was only £30 a-year. Beyond that, it was, he thought, without doubt, very gratifying to such a man to be allowed to call himself general. If his hon. Friend desired, as he understood he did, to limit the number of appointments, and to lay down a rule that there should be only a certain number of general officers—as many as there were appointments to give away—the result of the adoption of his proposal would be to narrow the field of choice to such an extent that it would be impossible for the authorities to pick and choose the men they would wish to select. Now, in every business in life, if a man desired to be master of the situation, it was better, he maintained, to have half-a-dozen persons from whom to make a selection than to be limited to one; and, as matters now stood, the Secretary of State had the whole list of general officers from whom to pick. If an officer retired, he had to consider that £420 a-year was his retiring allowance; but he might say to himself that he would rather run the risk of going on and taking the chance of becoming a general officer. Before he could attain to that he would have to wait, perhaps four, five, or six years, and what pay did he receive during all that time? Two hundred a-year; while supposing that he had retired as a colonel on £420, there was a distinct gain to the State of the difference between those two sums. His hon. Friend, he might add, in the comparison which he drew between our own and foreign Armies, did not say a single word about the Militia, the Re-serves, or the Volunteers, nor give the House any idea of what the establishment of general officers for that large number of about 450,000 men would be. His hon. Friend made a great point of the age of the generals who served in the old days. But those days had now gone by; and though the services of young officers were very desirable, it should not be forgotten that some of the most successful generals of our times were advanced in years. What did his hon. Friend say to Moltke, Blumenthal, and Sir Colin Campbell, who was already old at the time of the Crimean war, but who still was subsequently selected to command our Forces in the Mutiny? Why, his hon. Friend, by his system of excluding men at 65 or 70 years of age, would have prevented these eminent men from rendering service to their countries. In our existing system, against which the proposals of the hon. Member were levelled, there were, no doubt, blots; but he maintained that it had on the whole worked satisfactorily, and it should, therefore, continue to have his support.

SIR HARRY VERNEY

thought the real question for the House to consider in connection with the subject under notice was whether the Army was overpaid. He was of opinion, upon that point, that no comparison could be made between our Army and that of any other nation, for the British Army did much more important and dangerous service, and received less pay, than any other Army in the world. Its circumstances were very different from those of the Armies of any other country, being liable to service abroad at any moment, whereas the Prussian Army resided in its own villages and in its own homes. For his part, he did not mind whether generals had pensions or regiments, but to bring the interests of the Service into account, he should prefer their having regiments, as the honorary colonels often did everything they could to benefit the regiments with which they were connected and to minister to their comfort. There was one great advantage in having a large number of general officers — namely, the advantage gained by having many men from whom to make selections. For general officers they wanted to be able to select young men, and he regretted that there were not more of them to choose from. No man could be more opposed than he to favouritism; and he was convinced that his right hon. Friend (Mr. Childers) would not fail to introduce many of the reforms in the administration of the Army of which it stood in need.

MR. CHILDERS

said, he was sure the House would permit him to congratulate his hon. Friend (Mr. Trevelyan) on the instructive statement with which he accompanied his Motion. No one would appreciate that statement more than himself (Mr. Childers), because he could not help remembering the time when his hon. Friend stood shoulder to shoulder and side by side with him (Mr. Childers) at the Admiralty, to fight a question very similar to this, in going through the details of the very great reforms found absolutely necessary for the administration of the Navy; and for which, however great might have been the differences of opinion at the time, both as to principle and details, he believed they might now claim that it had been entirely successful, and that not only the Service generally, but the prospects of officers, had been greatly improved. For that reason, on whatever points he and his hon. Friend agreed or did not agree, he begged to thank him for having brought forward so manfully a great scheme of reform in connection with the higher ranks of the Army. He felt sure that the debate, whatever their individual opinions or the intentions of the Government might be, could not but be beneficial and helpful to those who, sooner or later, would have to deal with the question. His hon. Friend would, perhaps, allow him to say that it would, however, be rather hard upon those who were now responsible for the administration of the Army, if it were held that on the spur of the moment, when the Government had not been two months in Office, it was their duty to take steps for greatly reducing the list of generals, or to put an end altogether to the appointment of honorary colonels, and commence from the present month a totally different system from that now in existence. That would not be a reasonable proposition. What he should, in reply, endeavour to do was to show in what respect he felt himself bound to agree with his hon. Friend in the principles which he had laid down, and in what respects his views were open to considerable question. He should then indicate what course the Government had intended to follow, irrespective of the Motion his hon. Friend had brought forward, and he would appeal to his hon. Friend to say whether or not he considered the Government were pursuing the right path. He must ask the indulgence of the House, considering the enormous mass of complicated questions which he and his advisers found unsettled when they took Office, if it should be thought that they were not proceeding so rapidly as could be wished. There might be some appearance of slowness; but he might speak for himself, and he thought also for his Colleagues, that when they had once made up their minds they would not hesitate to carry their plans into effect. But it must not be forgotten that those who had held responsible positions like the charge of the great Services had to balance considerations of a very delicate character; and in the case before the House there were especial considerations to be borne in mind, as affecting both the feelings and claims of those who devoted their lives to their country. The Government felt it incumbent on them to proceed with caution and deliberation. He thought his hon. Friend had failed to realize some of the essential facts of his case. He had referred to the perfect organization of the German Army. That organization had involved enormous labour on the part of its authors, and there was much for us to learn from it. But, at the same time, he must remind his hon. Friend that the conditions of the Service were totally different from those which existed in the English Army. Germany had no India and no Colonies; her Armies could never have occasion to go more than 500 or 1,000 miles from her frontier. She was, essentially, a compact Power, both in respect of her internal and external requirements. The requirements of the English Administration extended from pole to pole and all round the world; probably over a greater distance than had ever been subject to any Power, unless it were Spain under Charles V. and Philip II. That was a valid reason why the German Army could not be taken in all respects as a model for us, and why it was by no means easy to adopt the proposition of his hon. Friend to follow her in fixing the number of generals. But he must say he did not understand where his hon. Friend got his figures from. He could not accept their accuracy. His hon. Friend had given the number of general officers on the Active List as 600; but that was not correct. He (Mr. Childers) had before him statements of the actual number of British general officers, whether in connection with the Army proper, or the Indian Staff Corps, and under no possible arrangement could he see there were 600 Generals on the Active List of the Army. The number was very considerably less than that. Perhaps the House would allow him to state what the present arrangements of the Army were as to the numbers of general officers, and the nature of the emoluments, whether they were called pay, pension, or salary. Now, the state of things appeared to be these. There was a List which was called the Establishment of General Officers. That consisted of a body of 292 general officers of Cavalry and Infantry in England, and 50 general officers of Artillery and Engineers; but it was contemplated by the Warrant of 1877 to reduce the number 292 to 200. The Artillery and Engineers were intended to be left as at present. That was, strictly speaking, what might be called the Active List of general officers, and it was supplemented by the Retired List of general officers under the War- rant of 1877. He must admit that he thought it was in many respects a curious anomaly that the general officers on the Active List and the body of retired general officers under the Warrant of 1877 received precisely the same emoluments. In either case it was £450 a-year, and in either case the general might receive at some future time £1,000 a-year in the shape of some honorary colonelcy. But there was no question but that this was a very remarkable anomaly; and he was bound to say that, in his opinion, it was quite indefensible in principle. His hon. Friend who moved the Resolution had clearly defined what a pension ought to be, and none of the conditions of a pension were to be found in the case with which he was dealing. In fact, all the arrangements in this respect were curious and anomalous, and, in his opinion, had nothing to justify them but their antiquity. He would also admit that the arrangement for the pay of general officers seemed to him almost as anomalous. A colonel, when he reached that position, had the option of either taking a pension of £420 a-year, with the ordinary rank of general, or remaining in the Service on pay at the rate of £200 a-year, hoping some day to succeed to the establishment of general officer. When he attained the establishment he received a rate of pay which never altered, whether he became a lieutenant general or a full general; but waited on in the hope that a vacancy on the list of honorary colonelcies would provide him with £1,000 a-year. It was quite true that in awarding honorary colonelcies he believed the Army universally felt that the Commander-in-Chief very wisely exercised his discretion, and with great fairness. But both as to progressive pay, and as to the system of pension, he was bound to admit that, in his humble judgment, the view expressed by his hon. Friend (Mr. Tre-velyan) was precisely the view on which the great reform was introduced at the Admiralty which had worked so well; and it was a view which they ought to take into consideration in any arrangement affecting the superior officers of the Army. He would go a little further. With respect to what his hon. Friend had said in reference to the size of the list, it was, no doubt, the case that the late Government followed gene- rally the advice of the Royal Commission; but, in one respect, the Government went very much beyond the Report. There was to be a considerable reduction in the list of general officers; but, instead of taking full advantage of the large retirement for age, the Government had filled up the vacancies, creating an enormous promotion in 1877, and left to their successors the disagreeable task of gradual reduction. Whether that was a wise arrangement or not was not for him (Mr. Childers) to say—it was a matter which had passed, and could not be re-considered now. The Report of the Royal Commission made mention of honorary colonelcies, not defending them in principle, but stating that the system was not unpopular; and they also pointed out that disqualifications which might apply to active service would not apply in time of peace, and that it would be erroneous to regard the Establishment as if it were only composed of officers who were intended for active service. He had always regarded that Report as having added very greatly to their knowledge, and guided them satisfactorily to many changes which had to follow the abolition of Purchase; but he was bound to admit that, in his opinion, the Commission did not give sufficient time to the consideration of the proper position of the Establishment of general officers. He would not blame the War Office, because the changes which were recommended and effected by the Commission were so vast and the difficulty so great; but the full deliberation which it deserved had not yet been given to the important question of the proper construction of the Active List of generals. He did not think, for instance, that it was in consonance with what they had found to be advantageous of late years that the Active List should consist of persons admittedly not fit for active service. He would sum up with three or four suggestions. He thought it was well worthy of consideration whether it would not be advantageous to the Public Service to carry the change effected in 1877 by the construction of the Retired List a good deal further, so that the Active List should more nearly represent the numbers of officers really competent for active service, and should bear a nearer relation to such number as might be required, not only in time of peace, but also in time of war. In that respect, they ought to take time and care to see how far they could move in that direction; and also, they should, as soon as possible, and with a due regard to vested interests — which the hon. Gentleman himself was anxious to respect—see whether it would not be possible to abandon the anomalous system which made the emoluments of officers on the Retired List the same as those of the Active List, and which left open to the one as to the other that enormous jump from £450 to £1,000, the latter sum being one many officers for a long time on the Active List or on the Retired List never attained. His hon. Friend had referred to the arrangements that had been made in the Navy. He (Mr. Childers) did not say that those arrangements ought to be literally copied. But they must remember that the depletion of the Active List of the Navy was effected not only by the limit of age, but by that most important condition which it was, in the first instance, somewhat difficult to carry out—namely, that officers should, after a certain period of non-service, be compelled to retire. That was the most effective weapon for keeping the Ser-vicein anhealthycondition. Thehalf-pay of a rear admiral was the same as that of a major general on the Establishment— about £450 a-year; but the pay of a vice admiral was nearly £600 a-year, and the pay of an admiral was something over £750 a-year, while the lieutenant generals' and generals' remained a constant quantity. So, also, the retired pay of a rear admiral averaged £600 a-year, that of a vice admiral £750 a-year, and that of an admiral £900 a-year. He hoped the House would encourage and assist the Government, if they should find it practicable, to apply a similar system to the Army—a system which would, in time, get rid of the colonels of regiments, except as honorary officers connected as such with the regiments to which they had belonged, and would be so adjusted as not to disappoint the legitimate expectations of those who were on the major generals' list. Of one thing he was perfectly certain. The Royal Commission of 1876 said that the only justification of the present arrangements in the Army was to be found in the fact that they were not unpopular; and he was certain that if they adapted to the Army the system in the Navy to which he had adverted, it would not be unpopular, provided that great pains were taken to respect vested interests. In that case, he felt sure that such a reform as he had indicated would be beneficial to the Service. He, therefore, hoped that the House would accept the statement he had now made as an earnest of a genuine intention on the part of the Government to do what they could to put the future arrangements as to the appointment, the promotion, the number, and the retirement of general officers of the Army on a satisfactory footing. His hon. Friend knew as well as he (Mr. Childers) what were the difficulties which they had to go through at the Admiralty, and the complexity of the details of the settlement there. All this would have to be gone through in regard to the Army; and he trusted that his hon. Friend would admit that his statement showed their earnest desire to grapple that subject, and to proceed with it in the direction which had been approved by Parliament in the case of the sister Service. If his hon. Friend, and those who thought with him, would leave to the Government the task of seeing with what details and conditions such a change as that should be effected, he would probably not deem it necessary to pledge the House in the words of his Resolution to an immediate alteration, which it would be impossible to carry out without very considerable difficulties, and also without injury to the Service, but which, if accomplished with discretion and after due inquiry, would, he believed, be acceptable alike to the House, to the Army, and to the country.

LORD EUSTACE CECIL

said, he understood that his hon. Friend the Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Tre-velyan) had advocated a scheme of reform that deserved considerable attention; but he (Lord Eustace Cecil) must admit, from his own official experience, that there was much to be said in favour of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Childers) refraining from taking the subject in hand at once, because there were a great many questions connected with the Army still pending, and likely to be pending for several years; and it was hardly fair, therefore, to expect that the right hon. Gentleman should have already made himself master of all those questions, and should have been able during the short time he had held his present Office to give the House a complete idea of any scheme of reform which he might hereafter propose. He (Lord Eustace Cecil) understood that the hon. Member for the Border Burghs had drawn a comparison between our Army and foreign Armies; but in looking at the list of generals in foreign Armies, he thought that that hon. Member had only obtained the list of those who were actively employed. When, however, they compared the number of generals in our Army with the number in foreign Armies, it should be remembered that, whether the system was bad or good, tradition had long established the custom of amalgamating the generals of all branches of our Army together; and it was only since the Warrant of 1877 that what was called a Retired List had been placed in The Army List, so that those generals who were ineffective from age were put aside by themselves. He admitted that a re-arrangement of the list would be desirable; but that was, after all, a matter of detail. As to the number of generals, his right hon. Friend said, and said truly, that the hon. Member for the Border Burghs did not state the number correctly. The list of generals, said the hon. Member, was as many as 600. In l878 the number, no doubt, was 632; but he (Lord Eustace Cecil) looked into The Army List for June, 1880, and found that the number had dropped down to 476. As to the question of economy, the hon. Member for the Border Burghs thought that by some arrangements he might save certain portions of that rather miserable sum— something like £300,000 a-year—that they paid to general officers. When they compared the pay of general officers with the emoluments of the Law, the Church, or several other Professions, he thought that £400 or £600, or it might be £1,000 a-year for an honorary colonelcy was not, after all, too much to be received by a man who had been in the Service 30 or 40 years, and who, perhaps, had been wounded in the service of his country. The hon. Member for the Border Burghs might wish to abolish honorary colonelcies; but he did not believe that the hon. Member wished to abolish pensions. He believed the hon. Member wished to see an Active List—that there should not be anything further than a re-arrangement of the present system. The question as to certain allowances which were received by illustrious and distinguished personages who had to deal with our Army was a very delicate one. Whether the actual sum they received was too much for the work they did he must leave to Ministers of the Crown to decide. He thought there should have been a little more consideration on the part of hon. Members who looked with a certain amount of jealousy upon some honorary colonelcies held by illustrious Princes in this country; but he thought that those hon. Members ought to inquire into the facts, and consider them more carefully, before they referred so publicly and invidiously to the offices and emoluments of these illustrious personages. If it could be shown that the pay and pensions which the latter received were more than the duties they discharged entitled them to, they, he was sure, would be the first to offer to resign these emoluments. He could only repeat that whenever the right hon. Gentleman brought forward his promised reforms they would be considered on that side of the House without prejudice; and he hoped they would be just and characterized by a spirit of fairness.

MR. TREVELYAN

, in reply, said, he should not trouble the House with many remarks on the criticisms which his views had undergone. The right hon. Gentleman at the head of the War Office (Mr. Childers) had spoken with courtesy, and he thought also with wisdom and thorough knowledge of the Department over which he presided, in what he had said; but he (Mr. Trevelyan) could not concur in the remark he made to the effect that the Resolution was somewhat premature. So far as the right hon. Gentleman was concerned, it certainly was not. It was 10 years ago that Purchase was abolished, so that there was little ground for alleging the Resolution to be premature; and he did not think it was premature as regarded the public feeling on the subject. The right hon. Gentleman had called in question some of his (Mr. Trevelyan's) figures; but there could be no doubt that England and India, one year with another, were now spending £750,000 annually on their generals, and only 63 were employed, so that each really cost the country £12,000 or £12,500 a-year. The answer of his right hon. Friend was satisfactory to his mind. He gathered from it that the honorary colonelcies were going. That was the necessary corollary from the re- arrangements which they were told were to take place between pay and pensions. What he was still more interested in, however, was this—that henceforth the rank of general should imply that certain duties were to be discharged by the officer who held it, and that he should be taken by seniority, and not by selection. That was enough for him. And as to promotion by selection, not by seniority, he took leave to draw the inference that when the list of generals was only adequate to the performance of the duties of generals, the officers on that list would be promoted by selection. After the speech of the right hon. Gentleman and the feeling which the House had manifested, he felt he should not be justified in asking for a division, and he left the subject with the most perfect confidence in the hands of the Government.

GENERAL BURNABY

said, he would say, with reference to the remarks of the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson), that the Commander-in-Chief had most important duties to discharge, and it would be most unfortunate if his tenure of office was limited to the term of five years. The Duke of Cambridge, abstracting himself from all other avocations, had devoted himself to the welfare of the Army. So far from being prejudiced, he was opposed to change for the mere sake of change, it was true, but there was no man who was a stronger advocate for all those rational and well-considered measures which the lapse of years and altered circumstances had necessitated. He was an officer endeared to the Army and trusted by the nation, and it would be extremely unwise to limit the tenure of his office as proposed. The hon. Member who brought forward the Motion (Mr. Trevelyan), he might add, had left entirely out of account the Militia and Volunteers, who, with the Regular Army, constituted a body of something like 500,000 men ready at any moment, to say nothing of another 500,000 who had passed through the ranks, many of whom, no doubt, could be raised, and who would require to be officered.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.