The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-03-12 00:00:00

TIIE LONDON PRESS.

(PROM THE GUARDIAN AND PUBLIC LEDGER. )
There are, we believe, nearly 100,000 veteran soldiers
ifs England who have served their country when such
service was beyond all price; who have carried the fame
ci Great Britain far as her glorious navy could float
them; who have consolidated her empire in the east
over millions of distracted subjects; who have asserted
her supremacy in the west over ancient compatriots but
now formidable rivals; who have borne her untarnished
banner 'triumphantly aloft from the shores of the Tagus
to the ensanguined suburbs of Thoulouse ; who have
crowned their glorious career, for glory itself must have
a terns, by the immortal field of Waterloo, and consum-
mated its triumphs in the Tuilleries itself; these laurelled
veterans still exist amongst us, who, in the days of
Greece and Rome, would have been the choicest objects
of public veneration and public provision.
Sir John Cam Hobhouse, who once had a name for
classic recollections, thinks not thus—or at least he acts
not thus. In a misplaced zeal for economy, to please
we presume his constituents, he purposes a curtailment
of the retiring pensions of the military, after twenty-
five years' hard service, from tenpence to sixpence a
day; what is more hard still should they request their
discharge after fifteen years' (we believe) duty and with-
out completing the term of twenty-five years, they are
entitled to no allowance, not even a pittance sufficient to
carry them to their homes. In better times their claims
were considered good for something more, but this was
in the, days when the soldier had friends in the Govern-
ment who had shared his dangers and his glories, or a
grateful King and Parliament who regretted only that
they possessed not the power to reward them better.
The wrongs of the soldier do not, however, end here ;
but here they become more intimately blended with the
oppression of the country. Under the head of Non Ef-
fective Service, Ministers are anxious to make good
their boast of severe economy. An Act of Parliament
was passed in the year 1830 by which the Secretary at
War was authorizecl to commute the pensions of such
Soldiers as, from having entered early into the service,
and been disabled by casualties, were fit subjects for emi-
gration and settlement in the colonies, for a certain sum
in ready money. The necessary precautions were of
course taken against false representations ; so that the
soldier should not from the pressure of temporary neces-
sity be tempted to part with his life-rent, and thereafter
become burdensome to his parish on the one hand, nor
on the other should a class of persons be thrown upon
the colonies, who, unable to master the means of sub-
sistence by their own exertions, would eventually be
cast either upon a struggling new establishment or upon
the Government at home for support. The power thus
conceded by the legislature was exercised by the public
functionary with such care and discrimination that we
believe few instances occurred of its being called into
practice. There were at the head of affairs then those
who considered themselves not only the guardians of the
soldier, who would not allow him to become the victim of
his own improvidence or the artifices of designing peo-
ple, but the guardians of the public treasure, who would
not suffer it to be squandered with a view to relieve a
temporary pressure, at the risk of entailing a burden
upon parishes already over taxed.
Sir John Cam Hobhouse being of the new school of
philosophy, in which soldiers are neither admitted nor
considered, thinks and acts otherwise. Anxious to verify
to a reformed Parliament the dreams and the sayings of
his opposition life, he unceremoniously threw open the
market for adventurers. All the veteran soldiers were
Invited to partake of the boon, and, withont scruple of
any sort or inquiry, they w,4,,re allowed to barter their
pensions for the captivating certainty of a little ready
money. The pretence of emigration was sufficient, with-
out reference to wives, connections, or friends. The an-
cient regulation was, that no soldier above 45 years of
age should be permitted to commute his pension and em-
bark for the Canadas, New Holland, &c., because, above
that age, they could rarely be expected to make efficient
colonists, or be able to command the means of subsist-
ence in a new country. This cautious and humane po-
licy has been set at naught by the Secretary at War. All
conditions and ages have been welcomed to a Jew-like
bargain, for the sale of their miserable pittance to an of-
ficial buyer appointed to treat with them. The result
has been, that, according to a speech of Sir Henry Har-
dinge's, delivered on the 2d of last April, 700 had then
been admitted to commute their pensions, for the avowed
purpose of emigration, above 50 years of age, 100 above
60 years, 7 above 70 years, and 1 above 80 years. It
May fairly be inferred that the number has since consider-
ably increased under this favourite system. A cold-
blooded philosophy, seeking, if not to check, at least to
get rid of redundant population, might perhaps rest sa-
tisfied with these results, but humanity and common gra-
titude must shudder at them. For it remains to be ob-
ferved, that a vast proportion of those who have thus
been sedueed by their natural guardians to barter away
their premiums of servitude for three or four years' pur-
chase, have never migrated to the colonies at all. Usp.
wards of 400, after having paid for their passage, being
unable or unwilling from physical incapacity to take the
passages for which they have paid, are now pining i . n a
state of destitution—in Ireland and Scotland especially,
where there are no poor laws to appeal to, and in Eng-
land depending for a miserable pittance upon the par,;-
chial assessment, so that therishes are in reality bur-
dened that Sir John Cam obhouse may boast of his
savings in the War Department. For the parishes
which, under Mr. SturgeS Bourne's act, could have
claimed the pensions of those who became chargeable,
Are, under. the new regulations, deprived of that remedy.
The saving, therefore, to the War Office, resolves itself
into a pitiful fraud upon the parishes.
We ask,
. is this hollow and fraudulent system to be per-
severed ? If a reformed Parliament can sanction the
heartless and shallow device, the sooner they are returned
to their constituents the better.

(FROM VIE Taus imS,)
We are glad to find ourselves in au error respecting
Mr. Alderman Wood's support of the Irish Despotism
That gentleman, instead of opting in the majority, paired
oT against the atrocious measure.
Not so with Sir John Key. That honestandeonsis-
tent personae not only votes, but funies away in de-
fence of the Despotism with a cordiality worthy of Sir
John Hobhouse himself. The London Baronet promises
to deserve a niche beside the Westminster Baronet—
equal in shallowness, almost equal in a disposition for
shuffle and trickery.
Sir John said last night that " by voting for a measure
founded upon the principle of that before the House,