The Express.
London, England, 1855-03-02 00:00:00

and sale of commissions in the army as a remnant of an an-
cient system, not peculiar to the army in those days, but
which has now ceased to exist in almost every other branch
of the public service. (Hear.) Well, now, abstractedly,
I have no hesitation to saying that it is an evil
in itself. (Rear, hear.) I do not defend it. But,
at the same time, one must also admit that,
like many other things which may in the abstract be
evils, it is not unsecompaaied with certain advantage.,
which in some degree counterbalance the inconvenience.
(Hear, hear.) Now one great evil in the military system
is the slowness of promotion, through which you get in the
upper ranks of the army men who are by age disqualified
for performing the duties of their respective positions. It
is manifest that in a service where there is no purchase and
sale, where officers go on by regular gradation, there
is a tendency to fill the upper ranks with a great
number of men of advanced age. That is, I believe, the
case, comparatively, in the artillery ; it is also the CAW,'
think, in a certain degree, in the Bast India Company's
service. Thee ystem of tne purcheseand sale of commissions,
by enabling officers to leave the service who have come to
an age when they have no prospect of employment, and
when they would wish to retire into private life, accelerates
the current of promoti n, and tends to brine a greater
number of young and able men into the higher ranks of the
service. (Hear) Why, sir, that is one counterbalancieg
advantage connected with the system of purchase snd sale.
It is manifest that the contemplation of the entire abolition
of that system involves considerations of great magnitude,
requiring a very deliberate examination, and also involves
considerable expense to the public. (Hear, hear.) lam
not, therefore, prepared to say that her Majesty's govern-
ment could assent to the sort of offhand resolution which
my noble friend proposes, by which the house and
the government would be committed at once to
an opinion as to the practicability of chang-
ing the system to which that resolution relates.
Sir, it is a great mistake to say, as I have beard it said or
implied tonight, that the purchase and sale of commissions
implies that commission are put up to auction, and to the
highest bidder, and that they are given solely to a man be •
cause he bas the money to buy. Although a man is com-
pelled to pay the price of the commission to which be may
be appointed, still the Commander-in-Chief exercises the
same discretion in selecting the man who is to be permitted
to „purchase, as he would if he were choosing a man
to be promoted without purchase at all. Com-
plaints bad been made on the one band that
the system of purchase in the army prevents able men
from riaiag to the higher ranks ; and then my hon. friend
and gallant officer, who sits behind me, stated that the sys-
tem of promotion with purchase in the navy tended to pro-
duce the same result. Why, the fact ie, that every system
by which members of a profession—of a numereue profes-
sion—are raised from rank to rank by superior authorities,
always will be liable to the same imputations.
Where one is to be promoted, twenty or thirty,
Of a hundred, are to be passed over ; and every
man who is unsuccessful; imagines that his own
qualifications are equal, if not superior, to those
of the candidate who is preferred; and whether it be in
this country, or whether it be in any other country, you
will always find that in a large profession, such as the
army or the navy, there will be an immense number of men
complaining that promotion is given, either for interest or
by favouritism, or in caprice, or from some motive or other
different from that of a real desire to choose the fittest and
ablest man. (Hear, hear.) No arrangement can possibly
be made which would prevent imputations and feelings
of that sort from prevailing among the members of
a profession. Now, sir, with regard to the other part of the
subject—namely, the promotion of non-commissioned officers
to commissions in the army, I think that the line which my
right hon. friend the late Secretary for the Colonies, when
Secretary at War, pursued, i. the line which ought to be
pursued, and which will continue to be followed. (Cheers.)
Sir, it is a mistake to suppose that a peculiar talent is con-
fined to any particular class of men in the com-
munity. Nature has scattered with an undiscriminating
hand among every class of society those intellectual
and those moral qualities which fit a man for any ' ,
situation in which high qualities can enable him to
act. (Cheers.) You will find amongst private soldiers
in the army, as you will find amongst the humblest
class of society, men, as was well said by my hon. and gal-
lant friend, who are nature's gentlemen—men who are, by
their strength of mind and by their nobility of feeling,
qualified, so far as that goes, for any situation in which
they might have to be placed. (Cheers.) Bat for purposes
of military command more than natural qualities are essen-
tially required. There must be cultivated intellect, there
must be acquired knowledge, there must be the capacity
and the experience which enable a commander to
deal with the events of the day, and which
also entitle him to the respect and obedience of
those who are under him. Now we are told
to look at the experience of France, and of other continental
commies. But my right hon. friend hes well pointed out
the essential and fundamental difference that there is
between the armies of those countries and our own. In
France and is other continental countries, the army is
raised by conscription, and that conscription sweeps men
from every class of society; it takes the educated as well
as the uneducated ; sad amongst the privates of the French
army you find young men who have received perhaps as
good an education as any one who moves in aoy rank or
,sphere of life. (Hear, hear.) That man, when
he has passed two years as a private, is as
fit to be an officer as any man in this country who, after
the beat education, is allowed to purchase his commission.
But our army being recruited by voluntary enlistment, the
privates naturally come from the humbler classes of society
They are taken, too, at an age when education can hardly
have made any considerable progress with them ; and what
portion of the humbler classes is it that are likely to enter
the army ? Why it is not thou who by their antecedents are
likely, in the occupations of civil life, to find profitable em-
ployment. Those who enter the army are young menet aspir
log and daring characters,men of action rather than of study,
men who like the exertions and the dangers of a soldier's
life, and who therefore, perhaps, have not paid, or have not
had the opportunity of paying, any great attention to the
cultivation of their minds. It is true that after they go
into the army they do, under the arrangements made by
my right hoc. friend, acquire an education which perhaps
they never could have acquired if they had not enlisted into
the ranks. But even with these advantages in the army, it
Is not every private, nor every non-commissioned officer,
who can have attained that kind of intellectual cultivation
which would fit him for the condition of an officer. (Cheers.)
Well then, again, the position of an officer involves certain
expenses, which if the promoted sergeant is not able to
meet, will render his position disagreeable and painful to
his feelings. Moreover, we all know that men who have
passed a certain period of their lives in a certain position do
not readily adapt themselves to become members of a diffe-
rent clan of persons. It may often happen that the promo.
tion of a sergeant instead of being an advantage to him is
really attended with circumstances painful le his feelings,
although he must be gratified with the honour which has
been oonferrei upon him. Still, sir, I entirely agree
that it is desirable to hold out to the privates
and non-commissioned officers of the army that
good conduct, that bravery in the field, that distinguished
services before the enemy, will obtain for them the reward
of a commission, if a commission they are desirous to have.
(Cheers.) In the course of this last year, I helloes that
very tl lit e short of one hundred commissions had been so
given. My hon. and gallant friend stated that thou com-
missions which were given to the arm yin the Crimea were
not all disposed of in the manner in which I am sine they
were intended to be applied ; but I am certain that it
over was intended that those commissions should
be given as matters to be distributed in favour or
patronage by the colonels of regiments. The only
intention with which those commissions were given
must have been that they should be conferred upon
those non-oommisaioned officers in each regiment who had
most distinguished themselves in the course of the cam-
paign ; and if, in any cue, the commanding officer did not
select the non-commissioned officer most worthy of promo-
tion, that man did not properly execute the intention with
which the commander-in-chief gave him the power so to
reeenimend. (Cheers.) Sir, then I say, that I can assure
the house that it will be the anxious desire of her Majesty's
government that this auto= of admitting a certain propor-
tion of well-conducted non-commissioned officers to com-
missions in the army shall he continued. (Cheers.)
And I am satisfied that, by the increased education
which is given to the privates and non-commissioned
officers of the army there will always be a very considerable
number of sergeants who will be fit to receive commissions,
and who, by their education and good conduct, may hope to
rise to higher ranks and commissions in her Majesty's ser-
vice. (Cheers.) Sir, suck being thedesire and intentioa of
the government—such being the opinion which st e entertain
upon the matters which the motion of my noble friend im-
plies—l should hope that he would not, by dividing the
house upon this matter, give an erroneous impression to the
public that upon the main principle which he has incuica-
sated there is that difference of opinion and sentiment which
• division would appear to indicate ; and that he would leave
it to her Majesty's government to follow out that course,
which has been lately so ably and properly begun under the
auspices of my right hon friend the member for Wiltshire,
roared that we appreciate folly the great importance of
bolding out to the humbler risks of the army those prima
which, I will not say are necessary to stimulate their exer-
t:l4ns, because their own sense of duty is sufficient for the pur-
pose, but those prises which are the proper rewards of good
conduit, and which, while they gratify the feelings of those
who have received them, tend also to inspire in their fellow
comrade, a respect for the institutions under which they
live, and a confidence that good conduct, even in the hum-
blest class in the army, is sure to meet with fie appropriate
and distinguishing reward. (Cheers.)
Lord GODERICH said he would not trespass so late on
the attention of the house with any reply to the speeches
made, and he could add nothing to the effect of the words
Kea hon. and gallant member for Westminster. Bement
maim that the two speeches which had been made from
the Treasury bench, that of the hon. gentleman the mem-
ber for Bury, end the speech of the noble lord, did not lead
him tithe conclusion that he should be fulfilling the task
which he had undertaken if he were to withdraw this mo-
tion. (Cheers.) He thought the first part of the speech of
the noble lord quite answered the last part of his speech ;
end wider these circumstances, although he regretted to
trouble the hoses with a division, he felt it kis duty to
do en.
Mr. 0. STANLEY would vote fin the motion, as the
noble lord was determined to go to a division.
The house then divided, and the numbers were—
For the motion ll4
Against it
CRIMINAL CONVERSATION.
Mr. BOWYRR did not then iatead te trouble the house
with any argumeate In rapport of the bill he wished to