§ MAJOR GENERAL ALEXANDERasked the Secretary of State for War, If he can state why paragraph 19 of the Revised Memorandum of 1881, whereby it was provided that promotion should go regimentally for seven years from that date has not been carried out; and, if he will consider the expediency of compensating officers who have thus 1018 been deprived of the position they purchased in their regiments?
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONSir, the reasons which influenced my Predecessor in departing to some extent from the Revised Memorandum of 1881 as to promotions in the regiments were, I understand, that by keeping up separate lines of promotion for seven years the amalgamation of the two battalions would be postponed for too long a period, and that it had been laid down as a principle by Lord Penzance's Commission, upon whose Report the present system of promotion is mainly based, that—
No Purchase officers who have been or may be promoted at any time since the abolition of Purchase can claim exemption from any new Regulations affecting the rank to which they may have been so promoted.The right of officers to promotion in their own battalions is respected for seven years, provided they have had no promotion in the meantime, and that of the captain who was senior in his battalion at the date of the Warrant, notwithstanding that he had had one promotion. This is all that the justice of the case seems to demand.