The Sun.
London, England, 1854-02-25 00:00:00

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..,.._ s. ,---------.....eeesea.....esesss,a. - . • - Mr/Vrlfs.'°: promotion from one class to another ,ho a.: - ••:i...,` ;,
and by merit alone. (Hear, hear.) Iha suit -doubt that --
this would keep np a high state of efficien ,'the hope ,of
appreciation and reward being in this, as in they prof ss
sions, the best stimulus to exertion. (Hear, he
.),, In
not say that the result of this school system hail& y
prof
been extremely good, and that the army has derived great
advantage from its introduction. The house will perhaps
recollect—in reference to the education of officers, to which
I propose now to advert—that some few years ago the late
Duke of Wellington issued an order that no candidate for
a commission in the army should receive one, unless he had
passedsa certain standard examination. (H.) The Duke
of Wellington also stated that it was his wish that no offi-
cer of the army should be promoted from a subaltern rank
to a company, unless he had passed an examination proving
him fit for the transition. The duke then said, that in the
first examination all you need wish to obtain was the know-
ledge that the young man had had the education of a gentle.
man, and that he possessed the abinties to take full advan-
tage of that education. Rut of the second examination his
grace spoke differently ; and ho said that it should show not
merely that the candidate had had a liberal education, but
that he had applied it by turning his mind to military
studies, and to an acquaintance with the theory of his pro-
fession. The present examination for the first commission
is conducted at Sandhurst ; and about it .1 do not wish
to enter into details ; but my impression is shat the edu-
cation there is too limited, and within its limits too seveT'
It is too narrow, because certain text books only ale pub-
lished, a certain prescribed course only required, and the
young man who has not the best memory but the quickest
memory is most successful ; the consequence of whf ch is,
that young men are sometimes rejected for not knolving
things which it is almost ridiculous to expect them to
know. (Hear.) My own impression is, that that is "RA a
fair or a desirable system, and that it might be thus ios-
proved :—By allowing a young man who had had a fair
liberal education to be examined in what is stated he had
learned, by making that the test of his fitness as regarded
sufficiency of instruction, and by only considering further
his ability to take advantage of the education, the liberal
education, which he had received. This is all you want in
the first examination,' In the second it is different. You
then want a professional examination • you want to know'
that, in addition to his gentlemanly education, your officer
has applied his mind to mathematical and strategetical
studies, to such studies as will render him efficient as an
officer. I know there is an objection, which I consider fal-
lacious, to this examination, that, by it, you will get men
who are book-worms instead of gettingthe active spirits you
require. There is this answer to that, that if the officer
who has studied his profession is the worse for his studies,
then you must admit that the whole body of the Artillery
and Engineers are unfit for their profession ; and that I
am sure you will not do. (Hear.) There remains, how-
ever, this difficulty—a more reasonable one, to my mind—
that the means of study given to different officers would
not be the same, and that they-would, on the contrary, vary
extremely with the localities in which they were quartered.
For instance, the officer quartered in England had access
to all the best and newest books, while he who is quar-
tered in the backwoods of Canada, or elsewhere, was, of
course, isolated from all access of the kind. It is proposed,
by way of removing this difference of opportunities, to
establish at the head-quarters of certain districts an officer
whom you may call " Captain of Instruction," or what
you please, who will be known as professor of military
studies in that district ; and on whom it will be arranged
that every subaltern officer shall get leave to attend. Thus
every such officer would be able to go through a course of
instruction before he became a lieutenant, and through a
course of instruction before he became a captain. It is
intended that there shall be an examination on both these
occasions; but, of course, great care must be taken, and
will be taken, at first, not to make these examinations too
high. With regard to the instruction and education of
the men, I need only say that one proof of the degree to
which that instruction is popular among them is shown in
the increasing number of volumes which they use. The
number of books, 5,000 when the libraries were established,
is now 118,000, and the number of men subscribing is be-
tween 15,000 and 16,000. (Hear.) It was suggested by
the gallant officer (General Evans) that there is not at pre-
sent any sufficient means of education for the post of army
surgeon. (Hear.) With especial reference to this ques-
tion, I have made inquiries both at Paris and Vienna as to
the training provided for those who are candidates for
employment in their armies as medical officers. At Paris
I find they have gone into an extreme which works very
ill. They take medical students and educate them exclu-
kively for military surgeons, entirely forgetting that in
nine cases out of ten a military surgeon's duties differed in
no way from those of an ordinary surgeon. (Hear, hear.)
On the other hand, here, except at Edinburgh, it
is impossible to get instruction of the peculiar charac-
ter necessary to make a complete military surgeon.
Now, what we propose is not to diminish' by any
means the general studies of young men wishing to be-
come military surgeons, but to superadd to those general
studies a course of lectures on military surgery ; these to
be given in Edinburgh, Dublin, and London. (Har.) The
house will be aware that no army in the world requires
this so much as our own. Last year, for instance, in Bar-
badoes, which must be supposed to be most free from it,
the yellow fever broke oat, and, notwithstanding all that
the doctors there could do, it did not abate. At last we
were obliged to send out medical men from England ; but
what were they? Men who had studied every disease but
this, which they had had no means of studying in Eng-
land. It is most necessary that before young men become
army surgeons they should have the opportunity of becom-
ing acquainted with the diseases of tropical climates, as
well as the peculiar diseases, incident to the soldier's life.
(Hear, hear.) Under these circumstances, and such being
our opinions, we are going to extend professorships to Dub-
lin and Edinburgh, and we hope to make arrangements for
a course of lectures there by next autumn. These lectures,
I believe, will be attended with a doable advantage. Not
only will they be of the greatest value to students—a great
number of army surgeons also will gladly have recourse to
them for the purpose of adding to the stock of knowledge
they already possess. (Hear, hear.) Now, sir, let me say
in passing from this subject, let me remark that with this
system I have spoken of—consequent upon it, I believe—
of the education of the soldiers, there has been a very re-
makable improvement in their conduct. It was the cus-
tom for many years to govern in' the army almost entirely
by the fear of punishment • it has been the custom, for
some years, to govern ft by the hone of reward.
(Hear, hear.) The difference, I say, has been very
remarkable.. Under the former system the man entered
for life, at least for twenty-one years, during all which
time the best he could hope was not to be flogged, not to
be imprisoned, and so on. Under the present system he
has not this only motive of the dread of punishment—he
has the immediate hope of reward, by the increase of his
pas, and he has the assurance that ultimately, in the case
of long service, he will obtain an increase of his pension,
supposing his merits to entitle him. Lately, too, we have
made a difference with regard to men who have given 21.
years of good service. The practice was to give them a medal
after their discharge; but that, however gratifying to them,
had, for the purposes of example, but little effect. We have
changed that practice, and now we give this medal after 18
years, and he who has earned it wears it from that time till
the time of his discharge. We have likewise made changes
with regard to the accommodation of troops on board ship.
We have made arrangements with contract packets, and
the effect of all these changes has been most marked in the
conduct of the men, the excellence of which increases every
year. This year, I may mention, if anything were wanting
to prove the greater than ordinary frugality of the men,
that there has been an immense augmentation bathe amount
they have invested in the savings banks. (Hear, hear.) 111
1844 the number of depositors was 1,890, the amount de-
posited 14,849/. ; in 1853 the number of depositors wag
10,723, the amount deposited 124,0001. As to offences, the
number of persons in military prisons is diminishing, but
on this point I will read an extract from the governor of
the prison in Limerick :—" From a force comprising so
many men as that which sends its delinquents to this pri-
son, only 172 have been received during the last year, a
fact which, it is my privilege to say, exhibits a decrease in
the per centage admitted in former years. That this gra-
tifying result is to be attributed exclusively, or even chiefly,
to the dread of military prisons, would not, I think, be a
correct conclusion. Mere punishment, however rigorous
and severe, will not deter the soldier from offendin°. I can-
not, therefore, but regard the decrease of military offences as
in a great measure the happy consequence of that system
of education and reward which is now so beneficially ope-
rating upon the soldier, and teaching him to realise the
importance and advantage of respectability and faithful-
ness. The excellent conduct of the troops serving in this.
district is additionally gratifying and observable, since
during the past year drunkenness has, I regret to say, very
lamentably increased among the lower orders in this part
of the United Kingdom." Now, sir, having gone through
these heads, let me say that the military authorities, while
paying this attention to the individual comforts of our sol-
diers, and to the means by which the character of the men
could be formed, have not neglected to take measures for
securing the general efficiency of the forces. (Hear, hear.)
Last year I took from the estimates a sum for the purpose
of completing an establishment at Hythe, where we could
obtain—what it was very difficult to obtain—a sufficiently
long range for practice in shooting. Before the completion
of that establishment the practice of the musket had bee;
extremely neglected, and in some regiments there w
scarcely any ball-cartridge used in the course year.ofedihee_. a
(Hear, hear.) That state of things is now re
anl Tthat establishment a certain number of privates
,ainndthtehierntuthrney;
non-
commissionedtheynbtoaiffincperars
egtoiefero
there
to instru.ct those whom.
go back to their regiments, ableTheconsequence is that there id
they left behind them. ni
and eachinstruction regiment
hardly a regiment now
not thoroughly masters of what
lately
generallyneglected. A gentleman, a comp°•
thheerhaddays,eehn sving spent aday"
almost thawmore
he could believe. He saw 77 shots out of 100 .ut into se
target eight feet high, representing cavalry, at : I 1 yards.
at et
n 1
16 judge,
yt h was so
where,came
hoe me
told t h i
ne e , o
He saw men skirmishing, merely guessing their distances,
and not knowing them beforehand at all, and these men
put in 40 out of 50. (Hear.) And now, sir, I come to
the point which was mentioned by the gallant officer who
asked what are the Government's intentions—first, with
regard to the troops to be allotted to the colonies ;
and secondly, with regard to promotions in the army. I
agree entirely with what he said as to the distribution of'
troops in the colonies, but I must call his attention to the
fact that the return he has quoted is a misleading return.
The return of the Ist April, 1853, really gives the force
existing in 1852. The next which appears will give the
gallant officer the right figures for 1853, and by it he will
find that the number of troops in the colonies has sheers
very considerably diminished since the present Govern
ment came into office. (Hear.) Five thousand men, I
think, have been withdrawn from the Cape, North Ame-
rica and the West Indies. But you have to put against
these the augmentation that has been made in the garris
sons 6f the Mediterranean. During the last year, whilst
reductions have been taking place in Canada, the West
Indies, and the Cape, an addition has been made of up•
wards of 1,800 men at Malta, Gibraltar, and the lonian
Islands • and it is obvious that at the present momena
these three garrisons form the basis of our operations ill
the East. (Hear, hear.) I agree with the gallant gentle.'
roan that, the Government were right in withdrawing
troops from the West Indies. There have been complaint*
of that, though ; but there always are complaints if you
remove troops from any colony. Since the gold discoveries
Australia has maintained a regiment of its own—a regi-
ment which is given only on that condition ; and if they
want any further troops, they will be sent to them on the
same terms, and on the same terms only. In short, the
Government have male considerable reductions so far as re•
gards the gallant officer's first inquiry. With regard to
his second question, as to the age, of our generalg
cana
officers, ills° attention of the Government Iran
'
„atoointimiatia,saionnd,
Nth a view to its determining
thewhethervi Government have decided on issuing of
any measures can be
tirement of aged officers,
be
awnidth
trhegarde advtanoctehmeenret:
Lordspire
The names of that commission
h .t.
aut on ies Hard.
sal officers, General Cath.
occording to fitness, of men ofwiliac,tivil tythianknd vigour,
.
confidence. Two
inge and Lord Raglan ; two
twogceolonels, Lieutenant-General
neral Kaowlaesn, _of the Rifles. ;
cart and Lord Seaton;great
military
Boller eerx,-stiedretLai:iueeteenfanstta-Gete,
Earl
Grey
aJ.
pakin
too, two e.seoretarierat•War, Lord Yanranro and Air. ,