The Sun.
London, England, 1856-06-25 00:00:00

(From the Daily News of this day; j, •
It is with extreme gratification that we are en-
abled'to announce the appointment of Sir,Williain
cif Kars t 1.3 commandant of Woolwich,—
General Whir ya,tes having resiltied:'-ititlflaocca
sionally been our disagreeable duty to speak se-
verely of the Gefierbd Commanding-in-Chief, not
that we undervalue the military career of Viscount
Harding°, but beCause his exercise of the enormous
amount of patronage •at his disposal has occasion-
ally been swayed by influences other than those of
a public character. In this prompt recognition of
General Williams's past services, however, and in
this just anxiety to bring to bear on Woolwich
garrison those military virtues which shone out so
conspicuously at Kars, Lord Harding() is, we are
bound to say, worthily following up that system of
improvement which Lord Paumure has com-
menced in our great arsenal.
It needs but cordial co-operation of this sort and
in this spirit between the Horse Guards and the
War Department—between the General Command-
in-Chief and the Secretary of State for War—to
render the British army the most effective military
force in allarms that the world ever saw. But unless
the Horse Guards furnish the War Department
with competent officers to carry out its plans, either
the staff will halt in that career of improvement
already begun, or the Horse Guards will be swept
away in its progress, and the political institutions
and public spirit of this country will be placed in
imminent jeopardy by the transfer of the whole mi-
litary patronage of this vast empire to the Govern-
ment of the day. We accept, however; Lord Hard-
ing's appointment of Gen. Williams to a responsible
working post at Woolwich as some recompence
for past errors and mistakes, and shall only be too
happy to be able to continue our record of similar
nominations. No doubt, Lord Hardinge's position
is ono of considerable difficulty. On the one side
,he has the -Court to gratify, on the other Parlia-
mentary solicitations to attend to. In front,- he
has all the influences of the aristocracy to beguile
him; behind, he has all the dead weight of old claims
and military prejudices to retard him. Ttius em-
barrassed, there is one way, and but one only, to
escape from such impediments, and that is, to dis-
regard everything and everybody but the public.
This may be a thorny path at first, but, once fairly
in it, it becomes amazingly smooth, pleasant, and
easy travelling. And sureave are that the honest
and hearty popular applause that will attend Gene-
ral Williams's appointment must prove far sweeter
to Lord •Hardinge—if he has the true spirit of a
soldier—than all the smiles and thanks that could
follow selections of a different description.
The present state and prospects Of the. British
army, so far as we canlearn, are these. A reduction
of, in round numbers, 100,000 men will plam it at a
nominal force of some 150,000 of all arms. Of that
force we may put the 'Artillery down at 20;000, the
Cavalry at 10,000, the Guards at 7,000, the Line at
05,00.0, and the various other corps and subsidiary
bodies will probably make up on paper at least the
-difference. In addition to the reduatior.-afr-It110;0004
mon the disembodiment of the Militia will return
60,000 well-trained labourers to their employment
in the United Kingdom. Already, too, the Turk-
ish Contingent, some 30,000 strong, has been re-
stored to the Sultan—thanks to its admirable and
gallant chief, General Mitchell—in a state of the
highest efficiency, and well deserving every atten-
tion and encouragement that the Porte can give it.
In the original estimates this body was set down
for 300,0001. ; but, owing to the exertions of Gen.
Mitchell and the willingness of the Turkish Govern-
ment to take it back again at once into its own pay,
the War Department will be able to economise
some two-thirds of that large sum. Practically,
then, the restoration of peace will (not, of course,
immediately) reduce the military forces in the re-
ceipt of British pay by about 180,000 soldiers.
The Guards will very properly, for reasons we
have before explained, be kept up to 7,000 rank
and file. In time of peace, the chief duty of this
force is to garrison London. But the barrack ac-
commodation of the metropolis is at present insuffi-
cient for the accommodation of more than 4,000 of
the Guards. A battalion, 1,000 strong, will there-
fore be sent to Dublin, and a new barrack for
another battalion of 1,000 will be provided in Lon-
don. Thus the garrison of London will hereafter,
as soon as the additional accommodation can be
furnished, consist of five battalions, or 5,000 of the
Guards—a force wonderfully small considering the
metropolis contains upwards of 2,500,000 inhabi-
tants.

It was at first intended to erect the new barracks
for the Guards iu Battersea-fields, at a cost of
some 30,0001. for the land, and 130,0001. for the
building ; but as the Board of Works have so laid
out the new park there as to render it unsuitable
for use as a military training ground, that plan ap-
pears tobe now abandoned. But a new arrangement
of an infinitely better and cheaper character has
been resolved on. The War Department has pur-
chased from the Committee of the Privy Council on
Education their old training college at Kneller's
Hall. Thither the Royal Military Asylum, or Duke
of York's School, will be transferred from Chelsea,
and the establishment at present occupied by it
will be converted into barracks for 1,000 of the
Guards, who will thus be quartered in a populous
but healthy district, instead of being sent to the
south side of the Thames. Moreover, the difference
of cost is all in favour of the present plan ; for,
while the estimate for barracks at Battersea was
180,0001., the expense of purchasing from another
department of the State a much more genial and
salubrious establishment for the military orphans
educated by the Government, and of transferring
their present accommodation into barracks for
1,000 soldiers, will not, it is calculated, exceed
50,0001.

Some day or other the spirit of military improve-
ment will, we are certain, have to go much further
in the neighbourhood of Chelsea than the Royal
Military Asylum, and, will have to disturb the re•
pose of the venerable Hospital itself. Both it and
the kindred establishment at Kilmainham, as at
present conducted, are, we believe, very great mis-
takes. They are unpopular to the last degree with
the creditable veteran pensioners, and, when filled
at all, are chiefly occupied with the discreditable
and the dissolute. This is a state of things that
must at some future cloy attract the attention of
the House of Commons, and, when it does, investi-
gation will end in dispelling great prejudices on
this subject, and in disturbing the
picturesque and
the historical at Chelsea Hospital.
In the Line, the reductions contemplated will of
course take place in the regiments returning from
the Crimea. Their nominal strength is 2,000. As
we have before stated, their sixteen companies will
I be reduced to twelve, and their strength made to
accord with that of the rest of the Line, viz., 1,000
rank and file. The regiments below that strength
will be raised to it as much as possible by transfer
of the men from Crimean regiments. No such re-
distribution of the officers of the reduced companies
is however possible, and between 700 and 800 will
have to go on half-pay. No doubt the difference
between full and half-pay is small, but, when a con-
temporary uses that fact as an argument for not
reducing the officers while reducing the regiments,
it altogether forgets that if the officers were re-
tained, each regiment so burthened would have a
surplus staff of officers to which it could give no
occupation, and that nothing so demoralises a regi-
ment as listless and unoccupied officers. The pro-
position is not, therefore, an admissible one. It
will, however, be the especial duty of the War
Department to see that the Horse Guards omits no
opportunity of using and absorbing, as vacancies
occur, the reduced officers, and of so keeping down
the dead weight of the army. And this duty, we
infer from the recent debates on the Army Esti-
mates, Lord Panmure is. resolutely bent on per-
..
f9rining, , ..
Of the Line, twenty-four regiments, at their
present strength, will be devoted to Indian service.
This deduction will leave about eighty-three in-