4 FEBRUARY 1854, Page 16

, PENSIONERS IN COMMISSION.

OF all the defects which a long peace may have introduced into our military and naval system, none is more evident or more ne- cessary to get rid of than the superabundance of aged officers who burden the posts which should be filled by men in the full vigour of life-and activity. Lord Grey performed a meritorious service on the first night of the session by drawing attention to this necessity ; for it is one which demands something more of moral courage to deal with than our Governments have been wont to display. Lord Chatham may have broken through the rule of seniority, in order to hurry Wolfe to the head of the army by which he conquered Canada. It is to be hoped that the War Minister of the coming day may be able to emulate the energy of a Chatham ; but in or- der to do so, he must break through the settled habits of moral cowardice which have too generally occupied the long interval. We do not say this in reference to any individuals; though some military commanders of late years have particularly courted notice as living exemplars of the bad system. The claims of old servants we fully recognize ; we admit, nay, assert, that tutu. al . service ought to be rewarded with rank and emolument : but it 15 a very ill-conceived reward of services for the country by men nr the vigour of life, to place them, in the decline of life, where they prevent service to their country. Of all subjects, this is the one which it is the most difficult to handle upon what are, in common- place cant, called practical grounds. You never can give an in- stance but there is an answer. Mention any particular General or

Admiral, and there is at once a burst of indignant contradiction that he is any example of decline in body or mind. Say that a General Godwin is too old to follow up the victorious energy of his own subordinate on the Rangoon, and there is a shout of at- testation to the merits, the vigour, the youthful aspiration of a Godwin, if he were not restricted by orders. Show that a Fleet- wood Pellew is exhibiting martinet rigour against his own crew as a substitution for activity in service which has been denied le- gitimate opportunity ; say that he repeats that misplaced rigour after an interval of repose for thirty or forty years, and you have indignant proof that he has trodden a deck at some period or other in the interval, that he is an officer of gentlemanly feelings, and that he cannot be proved to have broken the articles of war. You may proceed thus through the whole list : name an Admiral or a General, and you will be smothered with medical certificates that he possesses full power of leg to run up the companion-ladder or to mount the saddle, with attestations from fellows in arms, that his spirit is as fiery as when he first received his commission in the days when George the Third was Lag. It is construed to be almost as much an act of personal malignity to question the youth of any great grandfather on the naval or military list, as it is to withhold congratulations from a bride whose triumphant suitor has perchance dandled her mother in his arms. Now these juvenile attestations may be true of an individual; there may be a Napier who can scour the plains of India after completing the allotted term of man ; there may be a Collingwood competent to precede Nelson into action ; but that which may be true of the exceptional individual cannot be true of the class. Take a host of names in the van of the naval and military lists, and you know that, whatever fiery youths may be found amongst them with snowy brows, each class is stamped with the charac- teristics of dimmed senses, stiffened limbs, and intellects waxing slow. An insurance-office could tell you the amount of life in these vanguards of our army and navy. When we want to send a young man to active service, he cannot penetrate to the post on account of this crowd of ancient pensioners that stand in the way. Daring the peace, this was merely the opprobrium of an indifferent system of promotion; but it is now becoming a practical question, whe- ther the conduct of our armies and navies in a war probably des- tined to be the most critical that has ever engaged this country, is to be intrusted to the care of superannuated pensioners?

Nay, it becomes a practical question, whether, in the next war, we shall continue a system which stores up pensioners to choke up the active paths of service. Rank and pay ac- tive servants ought to -have; but not rank when in action they have become inactive, nor pay as for present work when they are past work. The natural principle on which the rank and pay should be allotted almost suggests itself. Officers achieve their rank—that is the natural rule ; although our prac- tice treats officers as if, like Topsy, they " grow'd," by mere lapse of time. The object of promoting a man is to lift him to a level above those whom he is to coiumand,—for discipline requires that orders should pass from above downwards. It was for that reason, doubtless, that Wolfe was so rapidly elevated in rank, that he might command some of those previously his superiors. Promotion, properly considered, is not reward ; but as, when rightly given, it attests merit, it does serve the purpose of reward ; or special services—as acts of great gallantry, not necessarily indicating powers of com- mand—may be rewarded by other honorary distinctions. In either case, the advancement thus gained by actual service should be given at once, without waiting for him who deserves it to grow up to it ; as Eldred Pottinger was destined to do—if he had not died before he could live up to the reward he had earned. The honorary pay should be such as would support the rank thus given, in its social relations, and secured permanently, without reference to the chances of promotion or employment on other grounds. Such rewards for work done, being treated as faits ac- complis, promotion and posts in real service would be unburdened, and might then be given solely on the score of the superior efficiency of the candidate for the post to which he is newly appointed.