24 FEBRUARY 1838, Page 12

ARMY REFORM.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR. February 1835.

Stn-ln my letter of last month, I gave, with a plan for the reformation of the Army, an approximative sketch of the results to the country as regarded

expense. Doubtless, in the hurry of writing, without any other data than your published statements and the Pay Table, aided by my own recollections, there are some errors which the candid critic will allow for, in a person who has not the means of consulting the records of the War-office. Two errors originated in haste, which I now correct ; and there were some misprints, which I leave to the hypercritics.

I took credit for 1442/. per annum for the " Reduction of 3 Majors already Vrected by the last Brevet in the three Regiments of Life Guards,"-which it is probable, from the very words, are already deducted in the Estimates of 1837-8; and 1_perceive there is about that difference in the charge for that corps, and one officer lees than before; or 4551. less for each of the two Regiments of Life Guards, and 4581. less for the Blues. But strike off the 14421., and we have 12,6431. of saving on the three Corps.

Next, in the calculation of saving on the Infantry, I took credit for a reduc- tion of 198 Captains and 198 Lieutenants, by reducing two Companies per Bat. talion of the 103 now existing, and adding a complete Battalion of Officers to complete the Fifty-second Regiment; thus, 103 X 2 = 206 - 8 = 198 for reduction in each rank : but I have afterwards, in the lest clause relating to Infantry, and in the figured abstract, allowed 31 Deptit Companies for the 31 complete Regi- ments on foreign service; which will leave the number of each for reduction 167, or Differeuce.

167 Captains, at I Is. 7d. per diem =2111. 7s. 1 Id. per ann., is £ e. d.

135,208/. 2s. Id. instead of 41,856/. 7s. 6d 6,648 5 5 167 Lieutenants, at 6s. 6d. per diem = 118/. 12s. 6d. per ann., is

19,810/. 7s. 6d. instead of 22,487/. 158. 2,677 7 6 And there being 12 Rifle and Light Battalions in- stead of eleven, as I assumed, the number of Corps allowed 2 Lieutenants in excess for the 21,589/. 15s. flank Companies instead of Ensigns, is only 91 instead of 237 5 0 instead of 92, and the Lieutenants for reduction 21,8271. Os. 182 instead of 184; which, at 1181. 12s. 6d. per ODD. is a further overcredit of With these c weer:rims, for the use of our very literal critics, I shall beg to keeast the result of saving- On the 3 Regiments of Life Guards 12,643 On the 3 Regiments of Foot Guards 37,461 On the Cavalry, reduced from 19 to 15 Regiments. 14,511 On the Infantry, reformed in 52 Regiments 151,300 fly abolishing the Agency $ 32,446 By abolishing the Clothing through Colonels $ 100,000 By abolishing the Royal Staff Corps 2,527 Total savi rg on the Regimental branch £350,888 $ Unknown in any other country.

But, having corrected thus as far as my means of documents permit, I have still no doubt that the actual saving would exceed 360,000/. per annum on these heads alone; for I have not taken credit for a single shilling of the large sum of 65,573/. of " Contingent or annual allowances to Field Officers, Captains, Ridingmasters," &c. which forms a separate charge in the Estimates, and which must inevitably be greatly diminished by the reduction of 167 Companies and so many Field Officers ; not to speak of the enormous allowances, extra to a very high rate of pay, made to the Field Officers and Captains of the Foot Guards. I have already given you the " allowances" made to the Field Offi- cets of the Guards ; by which it would appear that the 3 senior Majors receive mote per annum than the 3 Lieutenant•Colonels commanding those Regiments. The 58 Captains of Foot Guards (for by some hocus-pocus the First Regiment Lis 26 Companies, each of the others 16) receive a contingent allowance of 151/. 8s. Id. per annum beside their pay ; while the Captain of Foot has from ete/. 5s. at home to 36/. 10s. abroad, under the same head, according to the position of his corps. The Field Officers of Cavalry and Infantry of the Line have 20/. per annum each of contingent allowance for stationery, &e. ; of the

Life Guards, ; of the Foot Guards, from 1331. 16s. the lowest, to 252/. 16s. 2d. the highest The most absurd anomalies are thus presented at every step. The Captains of Horse Guards have only 401. per annum on- Cogent allowance. Of a surety the Horse Officers have not their just abate of the national spoils. They must be content with the manifest superiority- of their corps in good conduct and discipline in quarters.

Although I have included the 31 Sub-Lieutenants in the table for the 31 DepOt Companies of Regiments on foreign service, (and 4 more for the 4 Cavalry Regiments in India,) I have notaillowedfor them in the charges ; as, on reflection, Sub.Lieutenants must be quite:useless in a Depot which has but two objects-recruiting and drilling young soldiers ; purposes for which the younlisis just appointed must be quite unfit, and for which no experienced Colonel would ever employ them. This will reduce the column of Sub-Lieu- tenants 435 throughout, and give us a reduction of 768 instead of 753 officers. But another question of reform arises, which I submit to your readers. I have net proposed any reduction of the effective of our Cavalry on home service, rather the contrary; and the Battalion (or 10 Companies) taken from the First Foot Guards I have proposed to add to the Infantry of the Line, who perform nearly all the military duties of the nation at home and abroad. The Infantry will nut admit of any reduction so long as we have such a mass of colonies to garrison and relieve, until we form Colonial corps for them. But, except the 4 Regiments of Dragoons in India we have no Cavalry abroad, and we surely can- not require 15 Regiments of 8 troops each at home, beside the three Regiments of Life Guards. One at least might be reduced ; which would leave 18 Regiments of Cavalry of the Line (14 of which at home) and save us 22,000/. more per an- num in pay alone; for recollect, the Commissariat charges for rations, forage, price of horses and remount annually, barracks and stables, at least doubles the estimate for the Cavalry ; whose ply is, I suspect, the smallest half of the real cost to the State. Even in the Infantry, the Commissariat and Barracks aug- ment the apparent charge greatly.

In the fast Annual Estimates as published by you, the Ceylon Regiment, which has 16 Companies, is stated to have 100 officers ; but by the Army List it has only 74, vies 2 Lieutenant•Colonels, 1 Paymaster, 2 Majors, 1 Adjutant, 16 Captains, 1 Quartermaster, 32 Lieutenants, 1 Surgeon, 16 Sub Lieutenants, 2 Assistants.

If there be 100 Officers, a reduction is uniformly called for of at least 26 or 27 ; for if it be now in one Battalion it may remain so, with a Colonel, a Lieu, tenant•Colonel, and a Major. Here, you will observe, is a strong proof tlat. when no oiled is to be gained, we resort naturally to the square formation of Regiments in 8, 16, or 24 Companies, as the most useful, simple, cheap, ,ad convenient. Were this Regiment in 2 Battalions, it would only require 2 Maio' to and 1 Adjutant more to be complete ; for it would have 1 Colonel and 1 Lieu. tenant•Colonel, instead of 2 Lieutenant•Colonels. But all our arrangements, Civil and Military, are a heap of contradictions, discrepancies, absurdities, soli partialities. All the Guards are in Battalions of 8 Companies, except the First Battalion of the First Regiment, which has 10. Then all our Regimented Foot are of single Battalions of 10 Companies, excepting the Guards, (which have 3, 2, and 2 respectively,) the First, Sixtieth, and Rifle Corps, lose 2 Battalions each. The First Foot has but one Colonel to the 2 Battalions; bat the Sixtieth and Rifle Corps have 3 Colonels each !-12 Battalions, and those the elite of our Army ; the Light Infantry and Rifle Corps have a Captain, a Lieutenant, and a Sub•Lieutenant per Company, or 10 of each per Battalion • while all the rest have 12 Lieutenants and 8 Subs each, except indeed the Seventh Foot, which has 20 Lieutenants and no Sub-Lieutenants. All this is 4' the perfection of reason and of our time-honoured institutions."

The abolition of the rank of General would prove a saving of immense value to the State, and the rank itself is useless. Nine-tenths of those who, by good luck, live long enough to reach it, are decrepid and physically unfit for any service before they arrive there. WELLINGTON was barely a Major-General wheel* began his brilliant career, and he was only a Lieutenant. General when he sou Commander in Chief of the British Army in Spain and Generalissimo of the Spanish and Portuguese armies. Make the Marquis of ANGLESEA, Lord LTNIDOCH, Lord W. BENTINCK, Lord HILL, and some two or three °then Field-Marshals, as they deserve, and what remains of our list of full Generale may be characterized in one word-two at most. The absurdity of promoting officers by the score or the hundred to the rank of General in the way of roe. tine or by mere seniority, in which for one man of real merit and envied there may be nine or nineteen who have never seen a shot fired against the enemy, or are morally or physically incapable of any command, is self.evidest. Our system of Brevet promotion, from the rank of Major twenty years on half. pay upwards to be Generals at last, is to me incomprehensible, and justly rea- ders us the ridicule of all Europe. The Government or the Commanders Chief discriminates in all the lower grades. An idle or incapable Ensign who is unfavourably reported on by his Lieutenant-Colonel is passed over by role; but a man may make a very good General, it seems, who has served thirty years on half-pay, and of whom in fact they know nothing beyond that, sad that he bad the good luck to be a Major before the reductions took place on the peace ; for all the rest can never advance an inch, without money or interest. You have justly observed, Sir, in the Supplement to your paper of 3d November 183'2, by way of introduction to the subject of "Public Expendi. tore," that " economy is one of the chief duties of a state as well as of an indi. vidual. It is not only a great virtue in itself, but it is the parent a many others." And you afterwards quote from Alowresoureu, "Ce West point I ce (pie, le peuple peat donner, qu'il faut niAurer les revenue publics, man ii oe qu'il dolt donner." Nothing can be truer than both these doctrines. But has our present Government acted fully up to them ? Is it not lotteise, with so overwhelming a debt, that the expenses and trappings of Royalty should still appear so costly to the People? God knows that I do not believe there are many individuals in the Army overpaid, though there are some ; but the real complaint is, that the officers are too numerous for the men-that there is no just proportion, particularly in the superior ranks-that we have Generals awl Field-officers enough for all the armies of Europe, with less than 100,000 men; and that no serious steps have been taken since the peace to reduce the Half-pay List, by drafting the officers to full-pay as vacancies occurred, in a fair proportion ; which our system of purchase has prevented and will prevent as long as it exists. In fact, to see the exchanges daily made to half pay of younger offi- cers, the intention would seem to be to perpetuate an evil too naturally prose to augment of itself; and hence, as you have observed, though we have new bad twenty-two years of peace to economize and to do justice to the real claims and merits of the poor officers who were shelfed in 1814, 15, and 16, yet the Half.pay List, or Deadweight, is now 32,0001. greater than it was in 1817. For every one of them who exchanges to full-pay in order to sell out, a younger rife by twenty or thirty years is placed on half-pay. But so man of common sense will deny to all employed in the service of the State a fair and just remuneration for their labour. The only object should be to allow no more, and to circumscribe the number to the real wants of the country-, to curtail all redundancies, and to check abuses. In the Army, as la other branches of the public service, a more simple organization, for which we have so many models around us and even at home, may effect a great deal, with a firm resolve to be honest and impartial. But when we look at the abuses and discrepancies prevailing everywhere, in the Guards particularly, what can we think but that there are two measures of justice in use with tie Government. Should a Regiment of the Line, Horse or Foot, be dishauded or reduced, what compensation has ever been given to the officers? The half. pay of their actual rank. But reduce the establishment of the Horse or Foot Guards-the result, by an unworthy subterfuge, is full pay for life! Whet the Staff Corps was reduced, they did not like to go quite so far but they gave every officer a regimental step, which entitled him to the half-pay of the rank superior to that be really held in his corps for life ! Is this justice ? could it have happened in any country where there was a responsible Minister for the Army ? But the inequality 'which results from our system to those of the same claw, is the worst feature of all. When you promote one hundred Generals in a day, the uninitiated would naturally conclude that they were all equally deserves of that honour : no such thing. One of them has, by chance say, a Regiment of Dragoons stationed in India, of which he is the nominal Colonel, which be has never seen in his life, with pay and emoluments from clothing and equip- ments amounting to 2,5001. per annum, and a Government or a sinecure office worth 51'01. more. He has never seen any service ; but that is his misfortune. not his fault : if Ire had, no doubt he would have behaved as bravely as any trooper in his regiment. A dozen more will be found in the same list who have fought with distinction and success, and bled in every campaign for the last forty years. But regiments cannot be made or found for all our Generals; and they, poor fellows, have no interest! They therefore receive from the national gratitude the full suns of eleven shillings per diem, being the half-pay of the last regimental commission they held, according to the terms of the regulation• only very recently augmented to 400/. per annum ; though the proper half-pay of a alajor-General is 11. 5s. per diem, or 456/. 5s. per annum. From the discriminate manner in which Generals are made by the hundred, it is perhaps fortunate that their half-pay is small when without regiments ; else, instead d 113,0001. per annum, their half-pay would be three times as much. But reams prescribes that we should select Generals as we do Sergeants, fix a certain este- blishment, and pay them like gentlemen, or like the Admirals of the Navy.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, X.