§ MR. M'COANasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether it is within his knowledge that, outside the more specially Irish regiments, the Colonels of the great majority of regiments in Her Majesty's Service instruct their recruiting sergeants to refuse Irish recruits, with the result that, whereas the proportion of Irishmen in our Army was formerly above seventy per cent., it is now only about twenty-two per cent.; and, whether he approves of such exclusion of Irishmen from any regiment in Her Majesty's Service?
§ MR. CHILDERSSir, the hon. Member is probably not aware that the whole management of recruiting for the Army is now under the Inspector General of Recruiting. General Bulwer informs me that no such instructions as the hon. Member conceives have been issued either by colonels of regiments or by colonels of regimental districts. I am afraid that the halcyon days of the Army consisting of Irishmen to the extent of 70 per cent, if those days ever existed, are long past. The Army now contains rather more than the proportion of Irishmen which is due to it on the basis of the population of the three parts of the United Kingdom; but I should, nevertheless, gladly welcome any addition of Irishmen of the stuff of those who stormed the entrenchments of Tel-el-Kebir.