28 FEBRUARY 1863, Page 7

THE NAVAL GRIEVANCE.

Considered as a mere party move, the debate was cleverly ended; but that is not quite the whole question. Nobody can read Sir J. Hay's speech, or Lord Clarence Paget's reply, -without perceiving that the service suffers from a real griev- ance, and one important enough to demand official attention. It is very much underpaid, so much underpaid as to produce a tone of sour discontent decidedly opposed to efficiency. Of -course, Sir X. Hay talked a great deal of nonsense,— as when he remarked that the Navy did not regard the Admiralty as " their friends " — as if schoolboys ever liked the schoolmaster—and stated that an Admiral on the Indian station was about to return because he could not live on 2,1901. a year. He can live on it; or, if he cannot, there are fifty other Admirals only too willing to try. Service statements always contain these exaggerations, but, neverthe- less, the gallant Admiral's speech had only too much of truth. It is a fact that Generals are paid about twice as much as Admirals, i.e., that the prizes to be obtained by service at sea are worth about half the prizes to be obtained by service on land. It is true that the pension rules for the Navy are ex- -cessively and exceptionally hard. It is true that while the lowest pay of an English Captain is 3651. per annum, and the ;highest, 766/., the lowest French allowance is 5361., and the highest, 833/. ; and this, though the French military officer is much worse paid than the English ; an English lieutenant in command receives 2191., a French lieutenant 355/., an American, 631/. 5s., and the same difference extends to the half-pay system, a great point in England, where the officer serves half his life upon half-pay waiting for work. The con- -sequence of this state of affairs is that some excellent officers are compelled to avoid commands as ruinous to their pockets, that others remain at work long after they ought for the good of the State to have retired, and that all are infected with a spirit of captiousness, of sour -discontent and annoyance, which, if it does not diminish their fighting power, does diminish their zeal.

Lord Palmerston's answer seems weak. He says that every English service is underpaid—the Army, the Law, the Church, and the Civil Service ; but the argument, even if true,.can only be partly applied. The " Law," so far as it is a service, is not badly paid—the barrister, for example, getting a County 'Court and 1,2001. a year, just when the Captain obtains his highest command on 7661. The Church has very large prizes, .and is, all things considered, the easiest of the professions ; while, in the Army, arithmetically speaking, officers are not paid at all. Up to the grade of full Colonel the British officer keeps himself, his pay, except in cases of exceptional luck, amounting to no more than merchants' interest on the money invested in purchasing steps. Naval officers do not buy their 'commissions, nor is the service, in theory, one only for wealthy men. The wealthy join it, it is true, but in limited numbers and for a limited time, hard service, tropical life, and severe -examinations, not agreeing with men who are willing -enough to fight, but very unwilling to toil. The main -distinction, however, is this :—Whether the Church, the Law, and the Army are well-paid or under-paid, men who choose those professions, choose them with their eyes open, with their education complete, and with the power in two of the three cases of quitting them when they please. The officer of the Navy does not. He enters usually as a child, with his brain inflamed by Captain Marryat and Mr. Hannay, and after a few years' service is fit for nothing else. It is difficult to imagine a more unfortunate position than that of the Naval officer, who, entering the Navy at fifteen, finds at twenty-five that the road to promotion is barred, and that he must either starve or change his groove in life. He is fit for nothing else on earth except emigration or the mer- chant service, and to the second alternative most " Queen's men" have an explicable though not very sensible repugnance. They cannot endure the loss of social status, arising partly from old tradition, partly from the preposterous system which ranks the " master" of a fifteen-hundred ton ship, worth, with cargo, 250,0001., with the master of a Newcastle collier, worth, perhaps, half its insurance. He must stick to the service, and, if dependent on his profession, and seriously underpaid, he becomes discontented for life. Who has not met the old lieutenant, with half a score of wounds and double that number of grievances, eking out wretched pay by serving in the tropics at sixty-five in charge of "Her Majesty's Mails ?"

The thing is too bad, and ought to be remedied, and the real point for inquiry is only the point to which it is safe to go. Sir J. Hay's proposal will, we fear, never work. He wants to enforce retirements at sixty, or some other definite age ; but all the acts in the world will never compel the observance of such a rule. The country will have the best man, if he is as old as Radetsky, who saved his master a province when over eighty ; or the Duke, who outgeneralled the Chartists at the age of seventy-nine. The rule, however absolute, would be broken one day, and once violated, one of two things would be sure to occur. Either the Admiralty would be invested with a discretion, in which case they would job, and would be hated by all self-respecting Admirals rather more than they are now; or they would be compelled to intro- duce an annual bill exempting well known names, and so be compelled to quote confidential reports every year to the House. The whole of our pension system, a blundering sub- stitute for fair pay and a compulsory subscription to a deferred annuity fund, will one day be reformed ; so we will say nothing of the increase to the dead weight, except that it is not worth the while of the service to become the mark for every financial reformer. The true and the only remedy is to keep just as many men as are wanted, and increase their pay till it reaches the point at which it can fairly be held sufficient for decent livelihood. We would not increase the pay of the Admirals one shilling, for half their expenses arise from a natural, but still costly vanity, which it is not the business of the State to supply. They are compared with Generals; but Generals ought to be reduced till their highest pay shall, at least, not exceed that of a Minister of State. Nor would we increase the pay of any of the younger Lieutenants, however poor it may seem. Let them take their chance, like curates and Army subs, and the host of half-starved professional men. Nobody in England gets butter to his professional bread till he is nearly thirty, and why should the Navy be fostered beyond any other profession ? The increase should be made on the salaries of older Lieutenants, rising with every year after the fifth or eighth, and in the Captains' service pay. That needs considerable increase, and should be made the prize of the working service, being brought up to at least the clear 1,0001. a year. These changes would not, we believe, add 80,0001. a year to the Estimates—a sum which might be easily saved by reducing the useless number of Admirals and some trifling dockyard reforms. Any Committee which did its duty would probably demand twice the sum, and the outlay is far prefer- able to the chronic condition of discontent which is to the service what the dry rot is to its ships, and which, as wealth increases and education becomes more thorough, will throw commissions into the hands of a class with the least possible money or brains. Sir William Peels are a gain to the nation.