The Sun.
London, England, 1840-04-18 00:00:00

TRE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 1840.

GENERAL REPORT OF COMMIS-
SIONERS FOR INQUIRY INTO NAVAL
AND MILITARY PROMOTION AND RE-
TIREMENT.

(Continued from The Sun of yesterday.)
REPORT OF ROYAL ENGINEERS.

Upon proceeding to investigate the condition of the
officers of the corps of Royal Engineers, also under the
direction of the Muster-General of the Ordnance, and
which, like the Marines and Artillery, is a seniority ser-
vice, we were struck by the general approximation of
age throughout the corps, and could readily recognise
in that circumstance a sufficient reason for the com-
plaint which is preferred by the senior Captains and
Subalterns that the promotion has been unusually slow,
This approximation is shown in a return from the
Ordnance department to be so close that the difference
between the average age of the second and first Cap-
tains is but three years and a half, and but seven years
between the second Captains and the Lieutenant-
Colonels. The following is the statement of averages to
which we refer :

Average age.
10 Colonels
25 Lieutenant-Colonels 49 3-12th years.
40 First Captains
40 Second Captains
Colonel Fanshawe, indeed, reported that one-half
of the officers of the whole corps were between the
ages of .53 and 39 years.
It is obvious that in a corps thus constituted there is
not that fait prospect of promotion for the officers
holding inferior comm•sssions, which would be open to
them if the gradation of age were more in accordance
with gradation of rank ; and although we have not re-
ceived any representations as to any part of the corps
being inefficient for the important duties which are en-
trusted to it, we see some grounds for apprehension that
the energies of the officers will languish from the want
of promotion, and that the inefficiency which must in a
few years ensue, will, lions the very approximation of
age, to which we have alluded, not be limited to one
class only, but will be widely spread throughout the
whole of this valuable arm of the service.
There is one other circumstance connected with
this corps which prominently presents itself in
any consideration of its probable efficiency. It is
that almost entire abstinence from duty as 111ili-
tary Engineers, which, of necessity, results from
a time of peace, and the consequent fear that the
cessation of the demand for service may tend to gene-
rate a neglect of the acquirements already made, or may
lead to a less valuable estimate of those qualifications
than would be consistent with the improvement and
proper display of them at a seasonable opportunity.
In the absence of active employment as Military En-
gineers, we consider, therefore, that some encourage-
ment is needed to induce young officers to devote their
time to those studies which are best calculated to im-
prove the acquirements they have derived from their
education at the Academy and at Chatham, so that they
may be qualified in time of need to assume their places
as competent engineers in the field.

We are perfectly aware of the advantages which
have resulted from a course recently adopted upon the
recommendation of the Master-General of the Ord-
nance, which has opened civil appointments of the
highest class to Engineer Officers ; but we confess that,
in our minds, it is of importance with a view to secure
the military efficiency of the engineer, to maintain that
connexion between service and reward which is to be
found in the expectation of military promotion conse-
quent upon military efficiency.
Without a reasonable prospect of such promotion
(and the great approximation of age throughout the
corps of Engineers must operate against such expecta-
tions), the energies may droop, the habits of applica-
tion essential to the attainment of eminence may be
neglected ; and although the daily routine of service
may be carefully performed, the spirit of emulation will
will be wanting, the desire of distinction deadened, and
feelings of dissatisfaction and discontent will be nur-
tured, to the entire destruction of all the qualifications
calculated to form a good and efficient officer. If our
belief of the necessity of a stimulant be well founded
in regard to an individual who is daily called upon for
the display of some portion of his military acquirements,
it is evident that this necessity is increased, when the
daily portion of duty to be discharged shall call for
no such display of the acquirements with which the
officer is presumed to be invested, or shall be altogether
foreign to his professional studies and pursuits. This,
however, is very nearly the case of the engineer. The
stores of science and skill which it is his duty to acquire
in time of peace can only be proved or manifested in
war. As a military officer, his duties are dormant, or
his experience is directed to objects, not perhaps in-
ferior in value to his duties in the field, but not exactly
calculated to improve his science as a military engineer. 1
We desire to guard ourselves from any expression
implying disapprobation of the course of duty upon
which the engineers are now employed, both at home
and abroad, in regard to the building and repairs of
barracks. On the contrary, we think it highly expedient
that the public should have the full benefit of the
science and skill of the engineer ,during peace, in such
manner as may be most advantageous to the public in-
terest, and we think their employment will be best
directed to works either of survey, or of the building
and construction of barracks, as most analogous to their
more legitimate service ; and if proper encouragement
be given to study, we cannot anticipate any ill result
from the practical duties which the engineer officers are
now discharging, both at home and abroad, in regard to
barracks.

It is within the knowledge of the members of your
Majesty's Commission, that the delegation of this duty to
the engineers has produced a considerable saving of ex-
pense, and that military advantages have resulted from it
of the highest importance. But we are perfectly sensible
that the possible abstraction from study involved in these
peculiar duties, might tend to the deterioration of the
military capacity of the engineers ; and on that account
we venture to urge it upon your Majesty, that every in•
centive which can reasonably be offered, should be used
to stimulate the energies of the corps, and to induce
them to maintain their military efficiency. Study alone
can do this, but it must obtain its reward ; and the corps
must not be led to believe that, although their present
duties may call for little display of their scientific ac-
quirements, the country will be slow to claim their mili-
tary exertions in the hour of need, or to overlook their
endeavours to obtain the necessary qualifications in a
time of tranquillity.
Some consideration is also due to the circumstance
that the prevailing spirit of the age offers the greatest
possible encouragement to the acquirements of the engi-
neer in civil life.

New fields for exertion and new prospects of great
advantage are open to the man who devotes his abilities
to the exercise of his profession as a civil engineer ; and
under the protection thus afforded, it is certain that the
science has made rapid progress. It is therefore an
object of public necessity that the exertions-of the mili-
tary engineer should bo encouraged to corresponding
improvement by every prospect of advancement that can
reasonably be opened to him.
Under the present position of the corps, we think
there is reason to fear that the habits of application will
be abandoned, or that the officer will be enfeebled by
old age before he shall have reached a rank favourable
to the development of his science and skill for the benefit
of the public service, or calculated to ensure a com-
petent retirement for himself, if he is compelled to re-
linquish the service.
Before we enter upon the consideration of the reme-
dies we have to suggest to your Majesty, to correct the
evils of the present condition of the officers of Engi-
neers, it would be proper that we should place before
you the result of our investigation into the causes which
have operated to produce this unsatisfactory state of
affairs. Approximation of age in all ranks appears to
be the general complaint. We found that by all the
witnesses this was attributed to the continual demands of
the service for Engineer Officers during the progress of
the war, from 1803 to 1814 ; all of which demands
caused augmentations of young officers to the corps, to
such an extent indeed as, according to the evidence
of Colonel Fanshawe, to have introduced within that
period a portion of the present Colonels, all the Field-
Officers and Captains, and even some of the existing
Subalterns.
This remarkable influx of young officers rendered
the corps perfectly effective for all the purposes of the
war, and undoubtedly assisted in producing a course of
rapid advancement for some of the officers appointed
at an early period ; but there has been no outlet at all
corresponding
to this admission, and officers are now
holding Subalterns' rank after an equal length of ser-
vice to that which made some of their predecessors
Field-Officers.
It is impossible to consider this corps in a position
to promise a continued or permanent efficiency ; and
with reference to the great demand there still is for
Engineer Officers both at home and abroad, there being
of 217 officers only 10, including the Colonels-Com-
mandant, unemployed, it appears to us that it would
be most expedient to anticipate and prevent the evil
that would result from a nearly simultaneous failure of
energy on the part of all classes, and which might occur
at a moment when efficient service was most needed.

We desire, bye cautious and gradual removal from
the corps of all inefficiency, as it becomes apparent, to
obviate the necessity of an entire renovation, which the
progress of a few years may render essential ; and in
so doing, we are satisfied that we are pursuing a course
justified by that attention to economy enjoined by your
Majesty's instructions. If a measure of this descrip-
tion be delayed, we think there are reasons to appre-
hend a general inefficiency entirely destructive of the
usefulness of the corps.
The course we venture to advise your Majesty to
fallow, to produce the gradual renovation we contem-
pte, would be to provide a continued outlet of retire-
ment, regulated as we have proposed in regard to the
Royal Artillery, rather by the positive demands of the
public service to have efficient officers in every class,
than by an establishment having any reference to the
numbers of each rank of the effective force, so that the
seniors, as they become inefficient, may be removed,
and younger and more competent men advanced to
their places.

The proposal we have to submit in this respect, and
which we consider to be calculated to give a fair pro-
portion of promotion to the officer in active employ-
ment, and a competent retirement to him who has
ceased to be efficient for duty, is the same we have sug-
gested in regard to the Artillery, limited only to such
an extent as will appear to meet the necessities of a
less numerous corps than the Royal Artillery.
We should recommend to your Majesty that a num-
ber ,not exceeding two Lieutenant-Colonels, and two
Captains of the Royal Engineers, be allowed to retire
annually upon full-pay, upon proof being afforded that,
from ill health or infirmity, they are no longer equal to
the duties that may be required of them.
And upon the same principles, and for the reasons
which we have fully explained in that part of our Re-
port referring to the Royal Artillery, we would further
recommend that this retirement upon full-pay should
not, in the case of the Field-Officers, debar them from
further advancement by brevet ; but that all those who
may hereafter retire on full-pay as regimental Field-
Officers, or those who have heretofore so retired, shall
have the advantage of such brevet promotion as would
apply to them under other circumstances. To mark
distinguished past service in the case of these retired
officers, we would suggest that the Master-General be
empowered to select from those upon the retired list,
who may attain the rank of Major-General, a number
not exceeding four, whise retired pay should be made
up to the unattached pay of a Major-General of the
line—viz., 4001. a year, and that the senior so promoted
and selected should have an addition of 501. a year, as
we have proposed for the Royal Artillery.
We also suggest that to facilitate promotio❑ to the
rank of Field-Officer, one Lieutenant-Colonel of the
Royal Engineers may be allowed annually to retire on
half•pay at his own request, a privilege which has been
already granted to captains and subalterns, but that he
should not be eligible to further promotion by brevet or
Otherwise.

As we have recognised the claim of the General-
Officers of Artillery to sonic proportion of the rewards
substituted for garrison appointments in 1833, by a re-
commendation that two unattached General-Officers
should have their pay made up to 6001. a year until
they shall succeed to battalions, we consider the unat-
tached General-Officers of Engineers to have a similar
claim on this account ; and we would; therefore, re-
commend that one unattached General of Engineers
should in like manner have his pay increased to 600/. a
year, until he shall be appointed Colonel of a battalion.
During the progress of our investigation into the
state of the Engineers, we received suggestions from
several of the officers that it would be expedient to de-
part from the course of seniority promotion to a certain
extent, and to afford an opening to selection in the case
of a highly meritorious officer. Some of the witnesses
limited this proposed selection to one in ten, others ex-
tended it to one in six ; but all desired to apply the
principle merely to the promotion from the subaltern
ranks.

We are not insensible to the advantages which would
result from the adoption of such a qualified system of
selection, if any test could be discovered of the respective
merits of the different candidates for promotion so
certain as not only to afford a safe guide to the Master-
General, by whom the choice must be made, but also to
satisfy the corps and the public that the preference would,
in all cases, be given to the person best entitled to it. If
such a mode of estimating the claims of officers could be
found, there can be no doubt that the adoption of the
principle of selection would have the double advantage of
advancing officers of distinguished talent, at a compara-
tively early period of life, to the higher ranks of the
service, and also of raising the general standard of pro-
ficiency in the corps, since the new motive to exertion
which would be created would have a tendency to improve
not only the successful, but the unsuccessful, candidates
for promotion. The practical difficulty, however, of as-
certaining the real merits of different officers, employed
each on different services and in distant parts of the world,
and the danger of creating discontent and jealousies in the
corps, by a selection which might not, in all cases, be
well made, and which, even when it really were judi.
cioug, might not always be so considered, have appeared
to us to present so great an obstacle to any change in
the long-established system of promoting Engineer
Officers strictly by seniority, that we cannot venture
to recommend any departure from the existing practice,
more especially during the continuance of peace. It is
also to be observed, that the same reasoning is appli-
cable to highly meritorious officers of the Royal Artillery,
and should the existing practice of promotion by seniority
be at any time departed from hereafter in the oae
Ordnance corps, it would be only justice to extend a
similar principle to the other.

We sum up our Report upon the Ordnance corps,
by recapitulating. the several conclusions at which we
have arrived in respect to them.
1. That it is expedient to relieve the two Ordnance
corps from the difficulties under which they labour at
present, owing to the great length of service of the Lieu-
tenant-Colonels and Captains. .

2. That in order to effect this, it is proposed, in ad-
dition to the present means afforded for retirement to
full-pay and half-pay, that the Master-General be autho-
rised to admit of the retirement to full-pay annually of
such as may be pronounced unequal to the discharge of
the duties required from them on account of age or in-
firmity, to an extent not exceeding four Lientenant-
Colonels and four Captains of the Royal Artillery, and
two Lieutenant-Colonels and two Captains of the Royal
Engineers.

3. That the regimental Field-Officers so retiring
and all those who have heretofore retired upon full•
pay as such, or on the half-pay of Field-Officer, should
be promoted in succession, by brevet, to the rank of
General Officer.

Of these a number not exceeding eight of the Royal
Artillery and four of the Royal Engineers should be
allowed to receive 4001. a year on becoming Major-
Generals, the selection to be with the Master-General ;
and the two seniors of the Royal Artillery, and the
senior of the Royal Engineers, that have been thus
promoted and selected should receive 501. par annum in
addition.

4. That of the General Officers removed from the
Royal Artillery and from the Royal Engineers on full-
pay to wait for battalions, two of the former and one
of the latter, whose services have entitled them to par-
ticular consideration, should be selected, and their pay
made up to 6001. a year, until they shall be appointed
Colonels-Commandant of Battalions.

5. That the Master-General be authorised to admit
of the permant retirement annually of two Lieutenant-
Colonels of the Royal Artillery, and one of the Royal
Engineers, to half-pay at their own request ; but these
officers should not be eligible for any further promotion
by brevet or otherwise,
(To BE CONTINUED.)

CITY OF WESTMINSTER LITE-
RARY. SCIENTIFIC, AND MECHANICS'
INSTITUTION.

The Twelfth Quarterly Meeting of this Institution
took place at the Infant School-room, Vincent•square.
on Wednesday evening. The Rev. Mr. Jennings,
M.A., (Vice-President), in the Chair.
The Committee's Report presented the most grati-
fying proof of the steady progress of the Institution ; it
pointed out most forcibly the utility of such institutions,
both in respect to the valuable information they impart
to the industrious classes, and the superior order of re-
creation they are capable of affording. The Committee
urged as the Society's claim on public attention arid
support, that three years since, no means of adult in-
struction, or of recreation of a national character ex-
isted in the neighbourhood ; although the majority of
the district (containing upwards of 50,000 inhabitants)
consisted of mechanics and artizans. That since the
Formation of the Institution it had presented at an in-
considerable cost lectures weekly on the most interest-
ing and useful branches of science, art, literature, and
history ; that it had opened to its members, reading-
rooms, supplied with newspapers, and the periodical lite-
rature of the day. a library (accessible for reference
and circulation) of upwards of 3,000 volumes ; and
also evening classes for instruction in various sub-
jects of the first utility. The Report explained
the arrangements that had been made for locating
the Institution in permanent premises, and announced
that the members would in a few weeks be
convened to witness the auspicious ceremony
of laying the first stone of the new lecture-room
in Great Smith-street. It appeared from the Report
that about 7501. was in hand toward the cost of the erec-
tion, and it was stated that additional donations were
being daily received.

Among the donors we observed the following :—The
Right Hon. C. Shaw Lefevre (Speaker of the House of
Commons,ls/. 15s. ; C. Barry, Esq.(arehiteet of the new
Houses of Parliament), 10/ ; the Marquis of Lans-
downe, 21/. ; Lord Bexley, 10/. ; the Earl of Liverpool,
10/. ; J. K. Brunet, Esq. F.R.S., 10/. 10s.; Mr.
Sheriff Evans, 10/. 103. ; Lord J. H. C. Stuart, M.P.,
5/. ; Sir C. Burrell, Bart.. M.P., .5/. ; C. Hindley,
Esq., M.P., 10/. ; J. Parkes, Esq., 10/. ; J. T. Hope
Esq., M.P., 5/. ; George Grote, Esq., M.P., Si. 53. ;
the Hon.. J. C. Talbot, 5/. ; Col. T. Wool, jun.,
M.P., 51. ss. ; Messrs. Scager and Co., 15/. 155., &c.

A short time since, the following conversation
took place at an Inquiry Meeting, not 100 miles distant from
the pleasant town of Kennebunk, in the State of Maine ; and
without further preface we shall only say, that the parties to it
were the minister of the place, and an artless country girl,
whose countenance indicated great simplicity of character and
unaffected piety. Minister—Well, Miss, I trust you are pre-
pared to forsake all the vanities of the world, and- lead hence-
forth a new life of duty and obedience to your Maker? Girl
—Yes, Sir. Minister—Are you willing to yield up everything
you hold dear on the face of the earth, for the sake of Christ?
Girl (after a long pause, during which a religious sense of duty,
and the natural affection of the heart, evidently struggled for
mastery in the bosom of the poor girl)—Yes, Sir,—all—all—
but Oliver Adams !

PLUNDER." AT TIIE DOCKS.-LAMBETII-
STREET.—On Wednesday Alfred List, a respectable-looking
young man, who has been for some years a foreman in the A
warehouse of the St. Katherine's Dock, was placed at the bar
on a charge of plundering the Dock Company of tea, sugar,
spices, and other property to a considerable amount. Mr.
Taylor, the Superintendent of the Company, stated some facts,
and at his.request the Magistrate remanded the prisoner, re-
fusing to admit him to bail.