The Express.
London, England, 1856-06-13 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, JUNE 13.

IT is sometimes prudent and useful to allow the
warmth of friendly sod uninformed raise to exhaust
itself before attempting to redoes to their natural and
proper size the object of its exaggerations. This has
seemed to us the wisest mune to pursue in reference
to Mr. SIDNEY HERBERT'S late 'pouch on Military
Education and Ratormatios--enbjects in which we

have taken a deep interest, and= which we cannot I
be supposed materially to differ from that gentleman.
wing that very much of what he has suggested
has already appeared in this journaL Bat the
truth is, that Mr. SIDNIT HULBERT, like his great
political patron and his brother Peelites, is remark-
ably food of interposing at the last hour, when the
crop is ripe, and of reaping, with small labour and
great credit, the harvest which other more indus-
trious and persevering people have sown and
watered and tendered and reared, occasionally in
spite of his hostility and resistance, and thereupon
of assuming the airs not only of a great statesman
but a great reformer. Now, Mr. SIDNEY HUBERT
has really very little of either in his composition ;
be is simply a smart, quick, cunning, teachable, fluent
man of fashion, with a turn for politics and a love
of power, who, skilfully but mischievously eon-
bining with some half•dozen lapsed and fallen Tories,
occupies with them a position of armed neutrality in
the House of Commons exceedingly dangerous to the
progress of liberal opinions, and like a faded beauty
is falling into confirmed and somewhat ridiculous
habits of flirtation with the Court and Prime Minister.

The bent of praise ever, we have now a word or two
to say on this speech ; not, Indeed, on the points in
which Mr. HERNERT has already received inspiration
from us, or on the suggestion as to what is in mares of
preparation in the War Department, which, picking
up from his friends, he has converted into his own
" thunder," with as mach coolness as a year ago an
Irish Bishop plundered an English episcopal Charge.
We desire rather to show how unfaithful and un-
generous a reformer Mr. SIDNEY HERBERT is on
these occasions of self-sought prominence and tied-
Coos originality. Mr. Iflanrafe offence, are, no
doubt, both of commission and omission; but the
latter shall have preference just sow.
Military reformation differs from political reform in
this, that, though it is possible to make long speeches
on the subject, it is impossible to ',duos the matter
into either a bill or a single measure, and by thus pro-
daciog it en bloc, to make a great public sensation.
The subject Low of silent, gradual, unostentatious,
but not the less effective improvement in elaborate
sad sometimes perverse details. AU men are, how-
ever, agreed on the main features of the case; as, for
instance, that our army must no longer be mat-
tered in small bodies, or its of wasted far
polies purposes—that it most be massed and brigaded
—that education most be revised in afficers--that
a scheme of staff appointments mast be established—
and that the Horse Guards must be kept in subordi-
nation to the BECTISTART of STATE for WA*. But

to judge of the ease front Mr. SIDNEY Meagan's
speech, it might really be supposed that he was pro-
pounding these leading principles for adoption, in-
stead of repeating maxims which have already been
adopted, and some of them far advanced in execution.
Hu nothing been done to mug or brigade the
army ? Certainly there has. Aldershott, the Cerragh
of Kildare, and Shorscliffe, what are they bat camps
wherein to form corps crormes of instruction u soon
as we have an army at home to instruct P Has not
Canada already provided itself with an admirable
militia force; so that her Malan'. troops now re-
turning thither are to be concentrated in the great
Canadian garrisons, and there be trained in foreign
service ? And so in Australia and New Zealand;
there, too, local bodies are either railed, or being
raised, with that as well as other objects. And has
the Police Bill now before Parliament (to which Mr.
firmisr HiIBUIT has given no special attention
that we know of) no bearing on this impor-
tant military question P Why, only insist en
the aunties and boroughs having an efacieut
police force of their own, and then you can safely

maw your own troops, then you can soonomise your
barrack arrangements, then you can form deers of
instruction on such a scale as would admit of the em-
ployment of captains charged with that special duty ;
then you can bars a small army with time enough
to become perfectly formed, and officers in localities
when the spirit of professional improvement dwell.
All this is being done, although it did not suit Mr.
SIDNEY HERBERT ID nil it.
Bat Mr. SIDNEY HERBERT is said to have bit

the right nail on the bead in talking magnilogoently
about the necessity of having educated officers. Well,
,what has been done in that respect in the last twelve
'soothe? To give men the praise that is fairly doe
to them, the first thing Lord PANNUILE did on
amounting charge of the Ordained' Department,
was to dean& himself of all its military patronage;
and at the present mown' tbv political government
of this country has so more power to get a boy into
the Artillery or Engineers than has the corporation
of Wilton, a borough of which Mr. SIDNEY HEEIZILT
continues, notwithstanding his new lights on poli-
ties, to influence the representatioo. Competition
is now the only acme to tboae services; competition,
too, so open that the lowest school in Whitechspel is
on a level, as far as any preference apart from merit
is concerned, with Christ Church, Oxford. The only
preliminaries to competition are certlflostse as to the
moral character of the candidate, and a small peon-
sissy deposit am a teat of sincerity. Care and cantWs,
moreom r, attend upon ensues in this competition; for
all that esteem at first mecum is a provides'sl tom.
mission either in the Engineers or the Artillery.
The provisional appointment lasts for twelve months,
and the NI commission is only given on the most
satisfactory reports of conduct, of studies, sad of
fitness. This Mr. FIDNET Hzuots could hardly
have been ignorant ef; but not a word about it did
he tell the Horn of Commode—not a whisper of it
have we heard from his admiring friends.
"Abolish Carshaltoe iichool,"saggested, with an sir
of complacent iogenuousarer, Mr. SIDNEY linuas.
Why, Carshalton School has been condemned foe
twelve menthe past ; no new boys have been received
into it, and aa soon as the education of these who
entered before its coodemnatios is completed, the
establishment will be broken up sad the plea will
be told Mr. BERBLET may not have known this,
bat every one ides interested in thequedes on whisk
be udertakee to lecture Cabinets and to bulbul
the country did knew the feet, and it has been se.
pettedly commented on in this and other josrsab.
Either, Ulu, Mr. Humus knows very little of

what he talks about, or he talks with a very painful
want of candour.

The troth is that the principle of competition and
of prises for high competence runs through the En-
gineer and Artillery services. Exertion and excel-
lence in the Engineers are stimulated 17 special ap-
pointments under the Crown, in yr:2kb civil salary
is added to military pay. Yon wVil now And Engi-
neer officers of eminence and reputation in almost
every department of the State, and owing their selec-
tion to nothing but their high merits. So also in
the Artillery, there are, epeeist rewards in the various

departments of oor arsenals for merit and distin-
guished services. Mere, then, we have in aerial
Practice in these two services the principle of reward
for eminence, about which Mr. SIDNEY HERBERT
theorised

as • novelty of his own to the House of
Commons.

No doubt very much remains to be done in a similar
direction for the Cavalry and the Line. But there,
also, a beginning has been made. The whole 'object
of promotion has been referred to a Royal Commie.
*ion, of which Mr. SIDNEY HERBERT himself is a
member; the War Department is known to have in
band a plan for the conversion of Sandhurst into a
sort of Polytechnic School, with a view to give offi-
cer, of the Line a thoroughly good professional educa-
tion ; with that view a new and most competent
governor has been placed at its head, Sir HARRY
JONES; the organisation of the army into divisions
and brigades will at once enable and compel the
Horse Guards to provide a competent staff system;
and at Aldershott, the Cornish, and Shornchffe, we
shall in future have camps of instruction established
and in full pay. All these arrangements, known to
everybody else, were unknown, it would seem, to Mr.
SIDNEY HERBERT, who would really appear to have
made a flaming speech on Military Reformation for
the purpose of taking, in the course of an hour or
two, that credit to himself which others have dearly
earned by lengthened and devoted application to this
most important question.

VOTE Or CREDIT POE THE LATE WAlL—This
morning was issued an estimate of the sum required
to be voted towards defraying the expenses beyond
the ordinary grants for the years 1863.8 and 1868-7,
for military and naval services occasioned by the late
war. The sum to be sated for is two minion pounds
sterling.

DEATH OF CAPTAIN THOMPSON, ONE OF