§ THE EARL OF MALMESBURY,in rising to ask Her Majesty's Government, If it is their intention to return to the widows or children of officers killed in action during the late wars, and who had purchased their commissions, any part of the money so laid out by them under the past rules of the service? said, the hon. and gallant Member for Brighton (General Shute) brought forward this question in "another place" last Session after these wars had lasted 18 months. Now that they had lasted six months longer, it was only right to bring it under the notice of their Lordships. It had reference entirely to officers who purchased their commissions before the Rules of the Service in respect of commissions were altered to their present form. Officers were then obliged to purchase their commissions, or they could not receive due promotion and their juniors were promoted over their heads. This was a hard thing to boar to men who wanted to rise in their Profession, and many officers, therefore, spent all their means to purchase their commissions. Every possible excuse should be made for officers under these 670 circumstances. He would not go into the question whether the old system was a good or a bad one. Many anomalies worked well in practice, and British officers, under the purchase system, nobly did their duty; but the system of retirement offered to the purchase officers made England a gambling table, at which the Government were thecroupiersand the officers were the victims. With officers who had entered the Army since the Rules were changed the present question had nothing to do. Considering the enemies to whom they had been opposed in the late wars, and the number of battles in which they had been engaged, there had been an extraordinary number of officers killed. That circumstance it was for military men to explain; but there was this to be said—that they had shown the courage habitual to their race, and had proved it in every case. Parliament had abolished the old system and established a new one, and ought to take care that under the latter no injustice was suffered of the nature to which the Question referred. Under that system those who had purchased their commissions lost to their families the money so invested. It was on behalf of the widows and orphans, therefore, that he pressed the subject on the attention of their Lordships. They ought to have returned to them in such, an event a portion of the money, or have the benefit of interest upon it. The noble Earl concluded by asking his Question.
§ VISCOUNT BURYobserved, that the noble Earl who had put the Question to the Government had expressed the opinion that Her Majesty's Government ought to adopt a certain course in regard to the widows and orphans of officers who had fallen in action. He must remind the noble Earl that Her Majesty's Government could not exercise a discretion in this matter, and that all they could do was to act on the Royal Warrants which had been issued, and on the Code of Regulations in force. Their Lordships would remember that previous to the Crimean War the families of purchase officers killed in action lost the value of their commissions. In 1855, however, under Lord Panmure, a Royal Warrant was brought in, providing that if an officer was killed in action his widow should receive the purchase value of his commission, providing she was not 671 in what might be called affluent circumstances; and, of course, the word "affluent" was distinctly defined for the information of the War Office, and a certain scale of income was laid down, within which a widow might receive the regulation money. Then, when the system of purchase was abolished, Lord Cardwell laid it down, in a very distinct manner, that officers should be placed in the same position after the abolition of purchase as they were in before that abolition—that they should be in no worse and in no better position in consequence of the abolition of purchase; and that the State and not the next senior officer succeeded to the vacant position. That canon, so laid down, had been acted on in several Royal Warrants issued since that time. Under those Warrants, when an officer was killed in action, and his widow was in indigent circumstances, she received either the regulation compensation for her husband's commission or a pension; but if her circumstances were such that she would not be eligible for a pension, then she would not be entitled to claim the value of her husband's commission. He quite admitted, with the noble Earl, that very great hardships frequently arose under those circumstances; but it was not a hardship which had been created by the present Government. They succeeded to it from their Predecessors, and their Predecessors also succeeded to it from former Governments. No substantial alteration had been made since Lord Panmure's Regulation in 1855, which was still in force. A great many cases had been already decided in accordance with the Regulation promulgated in that year; and if there were to be any modification now, it must be not only prospective, but retrospective, and cause considerable inconvenience. The question had been before his right hon. and gallant Friend the Secretary of State for War (Colonel Stanley), and he had consulted some of his financial Colleagues to see whether anything further could be done. Further than that he could not say; but there was every disposition to construe the law laid down for the guidance of the War Office in a manner that would afford the greatest consideration to the claims of the widows and children of officers.
LORD ELLENBOROUGHpointed out that it was a great anomaly, now that purchase was abolished, that, in the same regiment, one officer should be 672 serving, having purchased, and the other not having done so. Thus the death of one officer might cause a great pecuniary loss; whilst, in other circumstances, the officer just having purchased, the widow and children of an officer killed in action might, in a pecuniary point, be benefited to the extent of the allowance or pension granted them. He trusted Her Majesty's Government would eventually see the way to, in some measure, modify this injustice.