The Sun.
London, England, 1856-03-05 00:00:00

u the Public; Joarnals:

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Mom the Times of this day.)
An Old proverb says, with more force than ele-
gance, than you cannot-make a silk purse out of a . •
sow's ear. No doubt, that is no easy task, but it
would be still more difficult, in our opinion, to
ina•ke a sow's ear out of a silk purse. We shall' not .
say which of the materials thus compared applies
most to the question before us, but it is evident •
the great difficulty that stares us reformers con,.
tinually in the face is the utter intractability of
,the
natural material. Whatever it is you have to make
in this country you always have certain articles put
into your hand to make up as well as you can. Mr.
Bull deals with his lawmakers much as his *emit,-
mica' spouse does with her dressmaker. She goes
to half-a-dozen shops, and buys a piece of silk and
the requisite quantities of trimming, lining, braid-
ing, sewing silk, buttons, and the rest, and takes
• them to her dressmaker, whom she expects to assi- •
milate the discordant elements into an effective
dress, in spite of her protest that there is not
enough of tbis, or of that, that the colours do not
match, or the whole will be a failure. The task js
much the same in the manufacture of any one of
our institutions. Passing by the rest, we will go
at once to the army. In this instance you have
your man of wealth, your man of rank, your conr-
tier, your favourite at the Horse Guards, and here
and there a man with a genius for his profession—
you have your clodhopper, your mechanic, your
anobb, all to be worked up into a good army. No-
thing is to be done but to make them all keep their
places as well as you can, to keep the ploughman
always worshipping the gentleman, to give the rich
man something for his money, to make the upstart
know his place, and to go.into action, if not a good
army, in the scientific sense of the word, at leapt
perfect specimen of the British community. Yes.
They were no vulgar hireling's, no mere professional
infantry and cavalry, that the Rietsiaas saw jn the
Crimea ; they were rather per ions of English
society—a piece of Norfolk, or Dorsetshire, or
Yorkshire, as it might be. Nor is it at all certain
that anything else could be made out of them than
is now made. It is a Chinese puzzle, in which the
parts remain respectively unchanged, though com-
bined into some sort of unity. How far the pre- •
Bence of discordant materials, their obstinate in-
congruity,
. the perpetual by-play of the parts, and
the episode which every class of the army expects
to perform during the drama of war, contribute to ~
the efficiency of the weapon, considered as a whole,
may reasonably be doubted ; but it is mot-every
combatant that has the choice of his•weapon, and
we certainly have not the choice of ours.
That, indeed,, eas the prevailing sentiment last
night. In the House of Commons all the materials
of the British commonweal are duly represented, •
and full justice was done to all. Even though the
speakers argued pro and con. in the old approved
fashion, yet they met one another half-way, in -the
spirit of mutual accommodation. They are all if
agreed in admiring a theoretical army, in. which • •
merit should be the rule of promotion ; but even, . •
the theorists only asked for inquiry, and the defen-
ders of things as they are prefaced their speeches
uniformly with the confession of Ovid's frail beauty -
—that they saw the better course and preferred it,
but actually followed the worse. There was always
the same reply—that, talk as men might of French
eqUality, Piessian science, and Austrian discipline, •:
you could not do 'it in this country, and there was
an end of it. In France everybody fancies himself
an embryizi Marshal, everybody is jealous of every-
body else, everybody lights his cigar from every-
body else's cigar, everybody flirts with the regi-
mental cantiniirei and takes his turn at her eau de
rie • so, of course, there it is no great shock to
anybody's feelings when • the private finds himself
the fellow-officer of his lieutenant. He was familiar
enough before the change, and ho is not much more
familiar now. They neither of them possess much
fortune, and if one of them has money and the
other has not, the capitalist is content to save,
and does 'not quarrel with a general rate of living
which permits him to do so. To be sure, promo-
tion is mighty slow. The officers of the Grand
Army hug their pay unto death, be it five francs
a-day or five-and-twenty; and their juniors, if
they chance to have money, cast an envious eye on .
the rapid promotion of theyoung British " milords."
Not but what this envy has its revenge when some
French colonel at 30 meets a British celebrity en.
an important service, and, to his surprise, finds him
a mere captain, or less, at 40 or more. On these •,
eccasions the explantion is that the officer is only
in the Engineers, or the Artillery, which, of course, •
is satisfactory to the intelligence and justice of a
.!
Frenchman. He.' sees the matter with' French
,eyes, and we with English eyes. Even among our-
selves there is some diversity of vision on the sub- •
ject. A man with neither money, nor friends, nor
anything, except a little professional knowledge, is
not always content to see his youngers leap over
his head, without the opportunity of taking his
turn over theirs. It is a perpetual game of leap-
frog, without its rotation. But, then, says that
most exemplary defender of all established institu-
tions, good, bad, and indifferent, Mr. F. Peel,
even the poor man gets his indirect benefit. The
wealthy ones buy and sell. As soon as they are ,
tired of the army, or want some ready money, they
sell out, and there is a general move upwards, i 4
which even the poor man may possibly get a step.
You have thus, too, a perpetual succession of young
officers. On a former Occasion we have observed
.that this recommendation unfortunately fails just
at the point where it would be most important. • •
There is no great harm in having your regimental
officers men of ma- ure years, or, at all events, a
little above the average age of ours. , Nay, it is
rather absurd to find in a whole mess not an officer
who has smelt powder, except at a review. It is •
in the higher ranks, in the command, that we occa-
sionally
want a little youthful energy, enterprise,
invention, and fire. But that is just the place
where purchase, with its rapid promotion, leaves
us in the lurch, and the leaden rule of seniority '
comes in. So there, at the very point, falls to the
ground the chief argument for the present system-
But it has occasionally happened that a jealous
rule of exclusion has lost all its force, not by as-
sault from without, but by the very number of its
defenders. In these days money is a test of con-
tinually decreasing severity. For one man who
could pay a round sum for his commission twenty
years ago three can do it now. Even twenty years
ago the sons of wealthy tradesmen found their way
into the army, and even into crack regiments.
Men whose fathers had trades of a rather grotesque •
character, and whom it was impossible to divest of
ri.,liculuus associations, if they had tolerable names,
and had gone through the ordeal of a public school
and college, were 'admitted into the Guards, and
by force of money jumped over the heads of needy
lords. This is an, increasing class, for there: s
scarcely a man with his 5,0001. a-year who would
not like to have at least one son in the army. What
is to be done, then, when the class becomes nu-
merous? The only course is that which Sir' De
Lacy Evans spoke of in his reply last night. We
want a competition among. the young millionaires
themselves. When the wealthy cotton-spinner,
and the wealthy tobacconist, and the wealthy rail-
way speculator, and the wealthy shipowner, and
the wealthy upholsterer have all asked for commis-
sions for their sons, with money in their bands, let
the preference tie given to the one who shows some , '
knowledge of the profession he professes to choose. -•
We have no objection to wealthy officers, still less
to young lords. But .of the class, ctsteris paribus,
as they say at the Universities, we prefer a wealthy
soldier to a wealthy fool. Cannot we have some
security that, even without the extinction of the
system of purchase, and without having to buy for
the nation every bought commission in the army,
the best man will still step into the vacancy, in
whateVer rank ? We will not do so great a dis-
honour to our country as• to suppose that this is
wholly out of tbe question.