Nobody quite likes the new Royal Warrant relative to pro-
motion and retirement in the Army. But the House of Com- mons promptly put aside, by 139 to 77 votes, Mr. Trevelyan's proposal not to sanction, in the lees of the Session, a scheme which required careful examination, and which entailed heavy expenditure on the English and Indian Exchequers. We have -elsewhere discussed the merits of the new scheme, which satisfies altogether nobody, and ought to be provisional. The speech of the debate was that of Mr. Trevelyan, who says he did not bargain for this scheme when he fought against the Purchase system, and that no party would have saddled the country with 18,000,000 to abolish it, had they not thought the Army would be reorganised and the expenditure reduced. The only other speech of conse- quence was that of the Marquis of Hartington, who put with plain force the objections to acting on the recommendations of a civilian Commission which did not profess to have examined the whole subject, and to proceeding on the false principle that a certain number of officers must enter the higher ranks irre- spective of the wants of the Service. Mr. Hardy defended tho scheme in a half-hearted manner. If he did not feel the point of Mr. Trevelyan's criticisms, he was a little stung by the fact that "the Colonels" turned against the Warrant.
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