FURLOUGH REGULATIONS OF THE INDIAN ARMY.
Simla, 12th June 1852.
Sin—As one of your many Indian readers, I noted with pleasure about a year ago a remark appended by you to a letter received from a correspondent in this country, expressing your willingness to receive such communications. I am desirous to take advantage of this declaration in order to draw your at- tention, and that of your readers, to a subject than which none is more in- tensely interesting to Anglo-Indians and their friends at home, none more in need of energetic advocacy,—I mean the furlough regulations. This is just one of those matters which is not set right from sheer laziness only. The case lies in a nutshell. The evil of the old existing system is clear and universally admitted ; the good of the new proposed one is equally obvious and undisputed. No interests are hurt by the reform suggested ; no one dislikes, no one opposes it. Many hundreds—I might say thousands—would be deeply benefited by it ; the state also, it is confidently believed, would be a gainer : yet we are likely to let it slip through our fingers from mere inertness—from a lazy letting things go on as they are. The case is this. By the present furlough regulations, an officer (I am speaking now only of the Army, the civilians must plead their own cause) is entitled after ten years' actual service in India to a furlough of three years, on very reduced allowances. He forfeits any appointment he may hold by going to England, and the period of his furlough is deducted from the term of ser- vice which entitles him to a retiring pension. After he has once taken his furlough, there is no second open to him. By a strange anomaly, he is per- mitted to take his furlough to New South Wales, or any place East of the Cape of Good Hope, without incurring any of these penalties except the last. His allowances are not reduced, or in a very much slighter degree; he does not forfeit his appointment if he holds one ; and the time that he is absent "counts for service." The regulations are, in fact, as you may perceive, a very high protective duty on the East Indies and Oriental residence,—a duty which all honest Free-traders should desire to see abolished. Some of the above-mentioned restrictions are quite out of date, others altogether unreason- able and vexatious. Under the second head I put the term and duration of furlough. I mention this first because it is here that the most important change is proposed. Before the overland route was opened a journey to England from India was an awful affair. To take a trip from Calcutta to "Europe," as we in the large language that distance lends call England, and come back after a year's sojourn, would have been much the same as going by the waggon from Aberdeen to London for a day's holyday at the latter place. By the help of the London and North-western Railway, this latter proceeding would not now be anything very preposterous ; with a six weeks instead of as formerly a six months' voyage either way, the former begins to be regarded as a highly desirable possibility.
Out of this point springs another. While a furlough lasts three years, it is obvious that much inconvenience would be caused to the public service, and much jobbing might arise, from the retention of staff appointments by officers in England. But reduce the term to one year, and the objection ceases. Ap- pointments are now kept open for a year continually. There are probably at this moment some thirty appointments at least 111 this very Presidency held by "officiating " men, while the de jure possessors are absent on leave for six or twelve months, or even two years. So far from suffering, the state gains by this system. A class of " acting men" or apprentices to appointments is thus created, from which the staff is more readily and efficiently manned than it otherwise would be. Therefore if the period of furlough was reduced from three years to one year, the loss of appointment need not be insisted upon, and thus the severest tax upon going home would be removed. I may repeat, that officers in New Zealand, or Van Diemen's Land, or at the Cape, do not forfeit their appointments though they should be two years absent. This I think is wrong : but surely, if the fact of its being so does not create confu- sion, or do any palpable injury to the public service, it is most certain that an absence of one year in Digland need not be tantamount to forfeiture. Out of this point of shortening the time of furlough springs yet another— the repetition of furlough. A three-years absence from duty is a serious mat- ter; too serious, it is thought, to occur twice in a man's life. An officer re- turning from furlough at thirty-two years of age must abandon all hope of seeing home again, (except on medical certificate,) till he is entitled and able (which the great majority never are) to retire from the service, or till he becomes a full Colonel—an infinitely remote period. Alas! to how many is this practically a sentence of perpetual banishment. The old worn-out officer longs to see his friends once more ; but he has been unlucky in his promotion, he cannot afford to retire, he has had his furlough years ago, and he is chained to India for life. Does not that sound despairing? Believe me, it is really so to many. But let a man know that after every seven years' service he is entitled to one year's rest in England, and that too with- out being called upon to make sacrifices that put the boon out of his reach, and he will work, while he does work, with all the vigour of hope—will return from his septennial visitations like a giant refreshed, the European charm renewed within him ; and at the end of rune-and-twenty years the state will only have lost one year more of his services than they would have done by the old system,—a loss in quantity well made up by the fresher quality in- fused into his work during the twenty-five years of actual residence. There is one more point generally insisted upon, far less reasonably, in my opinion, than those enumerated,—namely, that an officer on furlough should draw full allowances. This is more, t think, than we have any right at all to expect. Perhaps the present rate (901. per annum, unless I mistake, for a subaltern) is too low ; but all over the world work-time is and should be paid for higher than holyday-time : if the state pays an officer well while at his post, permits him periodically to enjoy a rest, and during that rest allows him a fair subsistence-rate, that officer has, to my mind, no right whatever to complain. Itis ill to spoil a good cause with the least show of the cloven hoof of injustice, and to demand more than one's due is as unjust as to pay a man less than ith3 due. What- the Army wants, and what it would cost the State nothing—what it would greatly benefit the State—to give them, is this. To be permitted after every seven years' service to go to England on furlough for one year. If the furlough were made for fifteen months, so as to give the full year at home, so much the better. To be allowed to do this on reduced allowances, eut to be allowed to proceed to England on the same terms as a man may now to Japan, without incurring the loss of appointment—the loss, that is, of the work of his life ; a loss in many cases tantamount to positive prohibition to use the privilege supposed to be offered,—reform to this extent is, I really believe, would be grudged by none ; the desirableness of it admitted by all who are interested in the matter, the reasonableness by all who over hear the case plainly stated. The Army longs for this reform, the Government does not object to it. If we lose it at the coming season, it will be from mere indolence. But if we lose it, we of the present generation lose it for ever. For twenty more years we shall say how obvious it is • bow antiquated and absurd the present sys- tem is ; and nobody will contradict us : but we shall be bound by the old sys- tem notwithstanding. England will be tabooed to us, as it has been to our fathers,—a bitter loss. You can hardly tell, the English public can hardly tell, how great a blessing this reform—so ripe, so easy, so unobjected to, and yet so likely to be lost—would be to us. You hear of the fine field open to young men in India, and try and hope to get appointments for your sons and nephews, but seldom think that the price which is paid for this " fine field " is a high one—exile. There is more silent wretchedness swallowed down yearly by men in this country who long for home than is often taken ac- count of I do not wish to make a weak appeal ad misericordiam ; but I do maintain that anything that lightens this load of banishment, and yet strengthens rather than weakens our hold on British India, deserves to be thought of—and to be done. I maintain that any man or society, or newspaper, that helps to get that thing thought of and done, will lighten many hearts, and win silent gratitude from hundreds within whose reach such efforts will have placed the purest and greatest of all earthly enjoy- ments—home.
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