The Press.
London, England, 1855-01-13 00:00:00

26

ment after regiment came cheerfully out,
although both officers and men suffered
severe inconvenience. But the universal
feeling was, "We will not desert our regi-
ment." The men, in many instances, aban-
doned a far higher rate of wages, although the
diminution was serious to those who hgli
families. The officers left the management of
their estates, and quitted their avocations in
life, at great pecuniary loss. We need not
dilate on their exertions in their regiments.
Sufficient testimony has been borne by Lord
PALMERSTON and every speaker in Parliament
to the efficiency into which they brought their

eorps.
The embodied Militia formed the reserve
force of the country. It was small in num-
bers ; through the fault of Government, not
their own. Lord PALMERSTON tells WI that all
the regiments, without an exception, volun
teered for service. They came forward at a
time when no other force was in existence or
was thought of, and they filled up the void
occasioned by the departure of our regular
troops to the war.
Such services deserved reward. They
earned for the Militia the right to rank next
to the army, to be employed wherever our
regular forces required help, and to receive all
the promotion and honour to which such
assistance could entitle them. They consti-
tuted a claim to liberal and generous treat-
ment in any fresh service to which Government
might invite them.
_ _

No such acknowledgment has been given.
The first measure of the Administration was a
circular in November, asking every regiment
to send one fourth of its men as volunteers
into the line. To reward the officers, the
circular said, the Commander-in-Chief would
give them ensigncies in the line, without
purchase, in the proportion of one ensigncy for
every seventy-five volunteers. The circular
caused great dissatisfaction among the senior
officers commanding companies. The reward
was one which they could not accept, and yet
they had performed all the labour of bringing
their companies into a state of efficiency. In
almost every instance the ensigncies were
taken by junior officers, who had had no re
sponsibility and done little work.

The Foreign Enlistment Bill and the
Militia Bill were brought forward in Decem-
ber. Instead of having the first chance of
volunteering for active service, the Militia
found themselves degraded to the second
rank. Discharged land wehr and cast-off soldiers
of every foreign State were to be preferred to
them. These foreigners were not yet enlisted,
they were without arms, and might not have
borne arms for years, they never had been
drilled together, and yet they were declared
superior to the Militia of England ready
armed, ready organised, and accustomed to
act together. They were reserved to fight
our battles, while the Militia were condemned
to inactive garrisons.

The inconveniences of the service offered in
the Mediterranean are not slight. The volun-
teering regiment or provisional battalion is to
be enlisted for only one place, Malta, or Corfu,
or Gibraltar. It cannot be transferred to any
other place without a revolunteering and a re-
enlistment on the part of every individual.
The practical effect will naturally be to make
it irremoveable ; a local militia of the particu-
lalgarrison to which it was sent. It will be a
banishment from home, without the constant
change and adventure which alone render
such exile endurable. No hopes are held out
of future opportunities of acquiring distinc-
tion, or of rising to eminence in the service.
The only distinct intimation is that on being
disembodied at the close of the war no half-
pay of any kind will be given. An officer who
sacrifices his prospects at home, and gives up
several years of the prime of his life to the
service of his country, has only the certainty
that he will be thrown at the termination of
that period upon hie own resources. It is not
right or fair to any body of men, much less to
those who have rendered service to the State,
to offer them suoh a career. Itplaces them in
a false position. If they go, they injure their
own prospects in life. If the service does not
respond to the invitation of its Sovereign, it is
disgraced.