§ LORD PANMUREI take this opportunity, before your Lordships adjourn for the recess, to present the Report of the Commission appointed by Her Majesty to inquire into the system of purchase and sale of commissions in the army. The Report has already been presented to the other House of Parliament; and it is on account of the evidence given before the Commission that I am anxious that evidence should be in the hands of your Lordships during the recess. I carefully abstain from making any remarks on the Report, which I shall now lay before your Lordships; but there are some facts with regard to it which I think it right your Lordships should know. Ten Members were originally appointed under the Commission. This Report is signed by six Members, including my noble Friend the Duke of Somerset, the Chairman of the Commission; but one of the six, Sir De Lacy Evans, entered a protest at the end of the Report, and intimated his intention to send, through the Chairman of the Commission, a separate document stating his own opinion. Four other members of 2077 the Commission have refused to sign the Report, as they differ from the opinions which it contains; and Mr. Ellice, one of those Commissioners, has intimated to me officially that it is his intention to send in a separate Report in his own name, and also in the names of Sir H. Bentinck and General Wynyard, which will reach me during the recess, and which I shall be prepared to lay upon the table at the commencement of next Session. I may add further, that the other Commissioner—Colonel Wetherall—before the evidence was entirely complete, was called away on active service in China, and is in China at present, discharging military duties. I shall have an opportunity of communicating with him before Parliament meet again, and I dare say I shall be able then to announce his opinion with regard to this very important subject. I thought it necessary to make these remarks, because it is quite clear that, as the Report is signed by only one-half of the Commissioners, it ought not to go forth to the country as a Report unanimously agreed to by the whole of the Commission.