The Sun.
London, England, 1855-12-22 00:00:00

A FEW FACTS AND A PARTING WORD
ON THE GUARDS' PETITION.

London, Dec. 19.
"One who has served Six Years in the Cavalry and
the same time in the Infantry," in writing tiontaslntetmhe-
porary, says there are yet some few po
much-talked of Guards' Memorial which should be
And as a simple llus.
made plain to the public at large.
tration of the enormous advantages " the Brigade i
has
hitherto had over the rest of the army in the matter of
promotion, I would refer your readers to last night's
War-Office Oaa
tte. In it we find a Captain of the 84th
Regiment, by name
William Radcliffe, who (after a ser-
vice of 24 years in various par's of the world—after
having purchased all his commissions, and whose corps,
after being, since 42
18, in the Madras Presidency, is now
in Burmah), last night, the 18th of December, 1855, re-
ceives the rank of Brevet Major. Not one day has this
gentleman been upon half-pay since, in 1831, he re-
ceived his first commission, and yet Guardsmen in their
Memorial talk of the great hardship of having to wait
24 years for the rank of full Colonel, after having passed
the whole of their time in London, and on a service so
absurdly easy as to be much more fitting for yeomanry,
a national guard, or trainbands of military-inspired citi-
zens, than for regular soldiers.
Another point I would like to explain to civilians is
this : these " mounted officers or acting majors " (of
whom the Guards' Memorial makes so much mention,
and who are thought to be ill-used, because it is only
after three years service as such they can obtain the
rank of full Colonel) have merely an arbitrary rank ;
and moreover the practice of making the Senior Captains
(remember these officers, although Lieutenant-Colonels
in the army, are but Captains in the Guards) acting field
officers in the absence of their superiors, exists in every
regiment of Infantry in the service. I have seen regi-
ments of the Line in the colonies, where, owing to one
Major being in England with the depot, and the other
perhaps on leave, the two Senior Captains did for years
the duties of mounted officers. But for this, the unfor-
tunates of the Line—the mere hard-working drudges of
the army—receive not one particle of advantage in any
way. A Line Captain who has to do Major's duty, has
to find himself in a horse, and to keep that quadruped
out of his pay without any extra allowance. As to any
prospective advantages in regard to promotion, snob
exist not in the line. On the other hand, in the Guards,
after three years' duty as a mounted officer, a Cap-
tain in the corps receives the rank of full Colonel in the
army, and starts fair in the race for the highest grades,
with men who have worked their way to that point
through the most deadly climates and the weapons of
every savage land. Such, I say, are the existing
rules of the service, and really when men " ask for
more," as the Guards have done, the patience of the
public will hardly endure the impudence of the request.
Knowing as I do scores of veterans who have re-
spectively for more than s quarter of a century been
working their way up the list, and who have sacrificed
health, comfort, family ties, and fortune for promo-
tion, the cool impudence of the Guards' petition fills
me with indignation. If any man thinks I speak too
strongly, let him take up " Hart's Army List," and
read over the list of officers in any of the following
corps—the 9th and 12th Lancers, the 14th Dragoons,
the Bth, 10th, 24th, 27th, 29th, 35th, 37th, 43d, 52d
53d, 60th, 61st, 64th, 70th, 74th, 75th, 78th, 81st,
83d, 84th, 86th, 87th, 98th, Ceylon Rifles, or either of
the West India Regiments, and then compare the pe-
riod the senior officer of each rank in these battalions
has served with the time those in the Guards have
borne her Majesty's commission. I will take one single
instance, that of Lieutenant-Colonel Williamson, of
the 27th Regiment. This officer has been thirty years
in the army ; was never on half-pay ; has served in Eu-
rope, Asia, Africa, and America ; has purchased all his
commissions except the last (which be obtained when the
regiment was augmented in May, 1854, to go to India),
and yet he will not obtain the rank of full colonel until
May, 1857. Compare this gentleman's *claims with
those of the ill-used Guardsmen. In the same corps the
two Majors have been respectively 30 and 26 years on
full pay, but neither of them are Brevet Lieutenant-
Colonels, and the senior Captain has been 18 years on
full pay, but is not yet a Brevet Major ; in fact, he
would only rank with the subalterns of the Guards ; and
now allow me to draw your attention to another cir-
cumstance respecting this much-talked-of petition. It
is now certain that Prince Albert, the Duke of Cam-
bridge, and Lord Strafford—the three colonels of the
three regiments—have signed the document. Of the
latter nobleman I would speak with all the reverence
due to a soldier who has served his country for 63 years,
and who consequently cannot be a young man. Let his
age, and the Peninsular as well as the Waterloo decora-
tions which he wears, be his excuse for what he has
• done, and our apology fur silence respecting him.
As regards the Prince Consort and the Royal Duke,
is not their acting as they have done a lamentable in-
stance of their utter ignorance which (in high places)
prevails respecting public opinion iu this country ? It
there are in all England two men who aro eagerly catch-
ing at every occasion to make themselves popular with
the public at large, those two are Prince Albert and
the Duke of Cambridge. It must be obvious to all,
that hal they had the slightest idea that the knowledge
of this petition being even prepared would have called
forth the storm of popular indignation which it has
amused, neither one ncr the other would ever have lent
his name to the undertaking. And yet every person in
the middle or higher classes would, if previously ques-
tioned, have been perfectly able to foretel the certain
conseluences of any such attempt to foist the private
interests of the " upper crust " above those of the army
at large. How such men as Colonels Wood, Upton,
and Moncrieffe, the three Lieutenant-Colonels of the
Regiments of Guards, were mad enough either to sign
or sanction the petition ie truly a marvel.
I had written thus far, when a letter by the lait mail
from India reached me. The writer is an old and valued
friend, who after serving his country for twenty years in
the East, and having paid for all his various commis-
sions, finds himself still a captain, and, although able
and willing to purchase, without any hope or prospect of
promotion. One portion of his letter is so apropos to
my subject that I ant sure you will hold mo excused f.-r
quot.ng it entire. It would almost seem as if by some
magical means the writer, though stationed in the Upper
Provinces of India, had been made acquainted with the
pretensions now put forward by " the Brigade," and
had determined to show how the working portion of the
army look upon the privileges which this most favoured
irpe already enjoys. Ifere is the extract from his
Ater :
It is reported here that a number of Queen's regiments
aro to be sent from India to the Crimea this cold weather.
Of course we all look forward to the chance of meeting
a European enemy with no little pleasure and anxiety ;
but still there aro some considerations respecting such a
• move, which to old soldiers like myself are by no means
consoling. What would the past services I, and many
others belonging to the royal army in Judie can beast of,
avail me in the Crimea? As you know, I was under Lord
Keane, in the first Affghan campaign ; under Pollock, at
the taking of Caboul ; under Gough, at Gwalior ; and in
the Punjaub campaign of 1844-15, as \tell as 1848-49. Out
of 20 years' service I have spent but two at home, and of
those two was obliged to do twelve months' duty at the
depot. I have four medals on my breast, and two of these
have claps. All my patrimony has been expended in pnr-
ehasiug my commissions, and my brother is now ready to
buy me a majority. Yet' if I go to the Crimea I should
run the chance, if detached, with a party of the Foot
Guards, of being commanded by boys who entered the ser-
vi,e after I obtained my present rank. To say nothing of
the double promotion these drawing-room soldiers enjoy
at every step, nearly half their subalterns have therank
of Major (and many of them are Lieutenant-Colonels) in
the army. The latest Army List I have by me is ot'
and in it I see that in the Grenadier Guards there aro no,
less than seven Lieutenants who are Brevet Majors in the
army, whilst the other two regiments have together
eleven officers, who, although mere subalterns in their
corps, are Majors in the Army. so that, in all, the
Guards have no less than eighteen Lieutenants, who, by
virtue of their being Field Officers, can command, in the
trenches or elsewhere men who were Captains before there
youngsters left school. Now, as there are in the Queen's
troops in India very many officers who have been a long
time in the junior ranks, a great deal of discontent would
be caused were we to join the army in the Crimea. The
officers of the Line who have gained brevet rank since the
war broke out are quite of a different list. Their good
fortune no one objects to, for it has been fairly achieved,
but the Guards' system of promotion is an infamous in-
justice on the rest of the army, for it is by their double
steps—by their Lieutenants being Captains and their
Captains Lieutenant-Colonels -that they gradually creep
upwards and fill every high position throughout the ser-
vice, although, goodness knows, their experience is of the
very smallest. Of the 10 Captains in the 9th Lancers
have bad upwards of 18 years' service, and of these 8 but
two aro Brevet Majors, which they gained by being men-
tioned in general orders, and, with one exception, all the
10 have been in action over and over again. So of the
14th Dragoons, in which all the Captains save one have
been repeatedly in the field against the enemy, but of
which no one holds brevet rank, although they have to a
man been each upwards'of 12, and some more than 20 years
in the army. Compare this with the Guards, many cf
!whom, although but Lieutenants in their corps (and who
but 7 Veers ago were at school), are now Brevet Majors,
and would command men who have nearly a quarter of a
eentnry'a experience.
Surely this shows that great reforms are wanted in the
service—that the iniquitous
be done away with—if we
want an army in which every
good officer can have the same chance of winning the
prime In times of peace we heed not the advantages of
the favoured regiments ; but in war, when every officer
looks forward to rising in the service, the
injustice of being
j
shoved aside by
men who started years later in the race, is
too glaring, too insulting to common sense.
Such are the opinions of one of the best officers and
most gallant soldiers now holding her Majesty's cam-
miFs.on, and I art certain that the sentiments he ex-
presses are held by ninety-nine men out of every hundred
who are serving in the cavalry or infantry of the Line.
If the hundredth officer does not think like the others,
it is Lecause he hopes by his interest to pass from the
Line to the Guards.
And now for your correspondent "A Civilian," who
in your paper of yesterday says that in my various letters
on the eubject of rectifying army abuses I have "never
yet touched on what, after all, lies at the root of the
evil —the well-nigh ineradicable vice of aristocracy, not
only in the Guards, but permeating every branch of the
rrne I force of this country."
In a great measure this is corre, but not altogether
so. The officers of the Eo lish army may be divided
into three classes, namely :—g
1. Those who have money, and by means of their
wealth look forward to making their way in the service.
2. Those who, in addition to money, have good in-
terest.

3. Such as have neither one nor the other, and hope
by their good conduct and professional knowledge to
get o❑ in the army.
To the first class nearly all the officers of our Cavalry
regiments may be said to belong, as in that branch money
carries the day against every other advantage.
To the second belong the Guards, and a very nume-
tong class for whom unattached promotion, staff appoint-
snorts, and brevet rank, make matters pleasant until