The Press.
London, England, 1857-08-22 00:00:00

THE PURCHASE SYSTEM.

IT seems not improbable that at some not
very remote period a considerable addition
may be made to our standing army. Should
such be the case, it will become more important
than ever to determine the character of our
officers. Whether they are to continue what
they have been, and now are, or whether they
are to become something else. To be merely
English gentlemen, with a little professional
knowledge and great physical superiority, or
a peculiar order of men, caught early and
taught early, kept apart from their fellow-
citizens, and drilled and moulded into a
strictly professional class. To what extent
we shall continue the purchase system depends
very much upon our solution of this previous
question. For that that system could only exist
to a very limited extent, if tat all, in combi-
nation with such a change as we have de-
scribed, scarcely requires demonstration.

We shall confine ourselves on the present
occasion to two points— first, how far the
people of this country really wish to see their
army approximated to continental models ,
secondly, to what extent the system of selec-
tion alluded to bylthe Commissioners would he
free from the danger of conversion to political
uses.

" Jealouay of a standing army !" Does not
the phrase at once carry us back to the excise
and the land-tax, and the partiality for Hano-
ver, and twenty other grievances of our great-
great-grandfathers? Does it not seem a ques-
tion to be debated by representatives in flow-
ing wigs, velvet coats and ruffles, silk stock-
ings and high-heeled shoes ? To be denounced
in King-street, and defended in Shire-lane ?
It is almost impossible, in fact, to get a hear-
ing. The dangers seem so utterly chimerical.
And yet, in truth, there are even to this day
reasons which may make Englishmen look
with suspicion upon the increase of the stand-
ing army. We may glance, in the first place,
at the enormous amount of patronage which
the exigencies of modern government have
already placed in the hands of the Ministry.
There is a strong opinion in the country that
it would not be desirable to increase it. Yet
such an increase must inevitably be the result
of adding to our standing army under any cir-
cumstances whatever. How much more so, if
promotion by purchase were abolished ?
Our ancestors feared a standing army as a
direct instrument of oppression. But the
reason why their fears proved groundless was
the fact that English officers then, as now,
were gentlemen of standing in the country,
interested either in person or through their
connections in political questions—a part, in
fact, of the general English public quite as
much as of the English army. Hence they
neither learned to look on themselves as a
body having separate interests from the people
at large, nor as owing a blind obedience to
their commander-in-chief, if ordered on illegal
services. Whether, if English officers ceased
to possess these attributes, a larger standing
army could ever become dangerous to public
liberty, is a matter for conjecture alone. But
it appears to us that the purchase system has
a tendency to preserve them, and the competi-
tive, or selection system, a tendency to destroy
them. The purchase system is the cause of a
number of young men entering the army for