§ SIR GEORGE CAMPBELLasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether the purchase money proposed to be given to the relatives of purchase officers killed in action, without regard to "wealthy circumstances," and with retrospective effect from 1871, is a clear addition to the national burdens in favour of this class of officers, and a payment beyond the whole of the regulation and non-regulation prices which could have been obtained before the abolition of purchase; if he will consent, as regards the past, to limit the grant to necessitous cases of widows and children, and, as regards the future, to assess all purchase payments towards this provision for families so that the Country may not be called on to pay more than the former legal and illegal prices to which Parliament is already pledged; and, whether any sum for this object is to be included in the Votes to be submitted to this House in the present financial year?
§ MR. CHILDERSIt would be quite impossible to reply fully to my hon. Friend in the compass of an answer to a Question where no debate is allowed. But if on Vote 20, he will raise the question, I shall be happy to give him the fullest information. Perhaps I may add that this question has several times been fully debated in the House, especially last Session; but that I cannot find that my hon. Friend ever gave us the benefit of his assistance in solving it.