MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS. (Hansard, 6 March 1884)

THE EARL OF GALLOWAY

, in rising to move for an humble Address to Her Majesty for a Copy to be laid on the Table of the House of the instructions 612 received by the Committee, of which Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Alison, Baronet, K.C.B., was appointed President, on the subject of change in the head-dress of the Army, to which reference was made by the noble Earl the Under Secretary of State for War (the Earl of Morley) in reply to a Question on the 21st of February last, said, it had been rather a surprise to him to hear the statement of the Under Secretary of State for War, that General Macpherson and Sir Archibald Alison, two of the most representative Scotchmen in the Army, had reported in favour of the abolition of the Scotch feather-bonnet. He moved for an Address, in consequence of the discussion that had recently taken place in that House upon the subject; for it had since come to his ears that the Instructions received by the Committee to which he referred was such that they were precluded from giving any opinion as to the advisability of retaining the old head-dress. They had simply been called upon to recommend something to take its place, it having been decided to abolish the headdress which he held to be still considered in Scotland as the national one. He therefore asked for a Copy of the Instructions in question. He also desired to call attention to the speech delivered by the noble and gallant Lord the Adjutant General to the Forces (Lord Wolseley) at the Fishmongers' Hail on the 28th of February last—as reported in The Times of the 1st March—and particularly to the following sentence:— Knowing the recent difficulties and the enormous tax made on the Profession, and knowing also the manner in which the character of the English soldier had been vilified and traduced on many occasions, it was not only a duty but a pleasure on his part to defend the character of the men in whose military worth he believed. His object was to ask the noble and gallant Lord whether he had made use of the words quoted; for in regard to the latter portion of the extract, he wished especially to know who had vilified the character of the English soldier? He had, however, received a letter from the Clerk of the Parliaments, to the effect that it was not in accordance with the Standing Orders of the House for one Peer to address a Question to another unless he sat on the Ministerial Bench. He was not aware of the Standing Order, and hence the form in which it appeared on the Paper. Had the noble and gal- 613 lant Lord been present—and he (the Earl of Galloway) regretted he was not—he should have liked to call attention to other remarks made in the speech referred to. His reason for calling attention to the subject was that he could not understand how it could be of advantage to the Service, or the country generally, that anyone in the responsible position of the Adjutant General should give way to temptation and make use of remarks of that sort. He could not imagine what the noble and gallant Lord meant. He (the Earl of Galloway) always took a great interest in military matters, and therefore made a point of reading every speech upon the subject; and he would like the noble and gallant Lord to fully state to the House by whom, upon what occasions, and what was, at any rate, the approximate language which, in the words of the noble and gallant Lord, "traduced and vilified the character of the British soldier;" for language of that sort he (the Earl of Galloway) deprecated. He could not conceive to whom or to what the noble and gallant Lord had been alluding. He begged to move the Motion standing in his name.

THE EARL OF MORLEY

, in reply, said, the Notice had been put upon the Paper in consequence of a misapprehension of what he had said the other day. He had never made any reference to any such Committee as that mentioned by the noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Galloway); there were two reasons why he had not done so—first, because he would have been guilty of a great breach of Parliamentary practice in referring to a document which was not in the possession of the House; and, secondly, because the Committee, if it ever sat, which was very doubtful, had never made any Report. The Report to which he did refer was a document of very great importance—namely, a Report which was laid on the Table of the House in February 1881, of a Committee appointed to consider the formation of territorial regiments, as proposed by Colonel Stanley's Committee. The words he quoted were as follows:— 614 It (the proposal) would necessitate the kilting of four additional regiments, which would considerably increase the cost of their clothing. This increase would be counterbalanced if the ostrich feather head dress now worn by kilted regiments were done away with. This head-dress is costly and is never worn on active service. As it has no national origin, we recommend that it should be replaced by the true national headdress, the bonnet. That Report was signed without a word of dissent by Sir Archibald Alison and Colonel Macpherson, the Commanding Officer of the Black Watch. The Committee was under the Presidency of Sir Charles Ellice; its other Members were Generals Radcliffe, Bulwer, and Elkington, Lieutenant Colonel Briggs, and Mr. George Ramsay. Was it really worth while to lay on the Table of the House Instructions to a Committee to which he had never referred, and which had never made any Report? He thought it would be absurd to do so. With regard to the second part of the noble Earl's Notice, the noble Earl had scarcely any proper reason for calling attention to those words; for if he had carried his eye a little further down the Report, he would have seen what the noble and gallant Lord (Lord Wolseley) meant. Lower down he said— Was it wise or politic to go about declaring that the Army was composed of miserable creatures drawn from the dregs of the population? No doubt, in after-dinner speeches, noble Lords did not use the same guarded langauge they used in the House. He really could not see anything in the words quoted to call for serious comment. All the noble and gallant Lord meant to do was to defend the character of the soldier of the present day. Although it was said nobody had impugned the character of the British soldier, he (the Earl of Morley) had often heard, in the speeches of the noble Earl (the Earl of Galloway) himself and "elsewhere," remarks made to the effect that the Army was full of "immature boys" and "untrained lads," expressions which, as the noble Earl knew, did not agree with the Adjutant General's opinion of the Army. He (the Earl of Morley) quite agreed with the noble and gallant Lord in deprecating such uncalled-for statements.