SIR CHARLES WOOD'S LAST DESPATCH.
IT is with the most sincere pleasure that we find ourselves for once able to praise heartily an act of the Indian Secretary of State. The great ability and conscientious laboriousness of Sir Charles Wood are usually marred in the House of Commons by a perky arrogance indescribably annoy- ing, and in office by an attorney-like captiousness which spoils large plans by petty criticism, but for this once, having Service witb the Indian have broken down, and he has ac- cepted his defeat and remedied its consequences in a despatch which re-invigorates and almost reconstitutes the ancient Indian Service. His first effort after the amalgamation of the two armies, the " Indian " and the "Queen's," was to effect a genuine and simple amalgamation of the medical services, to merge the Indian branch into the general arm. This attempt broke down. Surgeons who had been attending native and European regiments alike could of course attend Queen's regiments well enough, though they did not like either the pay, or the etiquette, or the loss of chances, and Queen's officers managed to get along very decently with Sepoys, and not unfrequently offered to pay for an exchange which at once brought higher salaries and lighter work. Indian surgeons have, however, to fill offices which are not military, to superin- tend jails, to practise in the capital towns, to look after civil sta- tions, to manage great colleges and hospitals, and to perform other duties to which knowledge of anatomy, physic, and hygiene does not very directly conduce. The War Office was indisposed very naturally to put its men to any tasks of the kind. Men so employed soon learned to dislike the monotonous duties of the regiment, to make friends, to look for careers, to get sulky if ordered to barracks, to become, as Earl de Grey says with customary-frankness of speech, a great deal "too independent." He was not going to have Her Majesty's soldiers neglected for either Sepoys, or convicts, or civilians, and so Sir Charles Wood tried, or endeavoured to try, a medium scheme. He could not quarrel with the War Office and the Duke with any kind of convenience, and the medical students, informed of certain disadvantageous pecuniary changes, were not thronging to be examined, showed a disposition to anathematize compe- tition in language quite intelligible but not so decidedly courteous. It was necessary to try another scheme, and the Indian Secretary hit upon that famous one of creating a Medical Staff Corps to be officered by volunteers from the Queen's Ser- vice. That service is not itself by any means too well supplied, and the new plan tempted everybody who among third-class men had no chance of getting on to betake himself to the Staff Corps, which thus became a refuge for the twice-distilled destitute. The House of Commons did not approve the sum- mary abolition of its favourite panacea—competition, did not wish to hand over India to incapable surgeons, and finally rejected the scheme, not with too much deference towards its promoter. Something else had to be done, and as the House is fortunately dreaded at the Horse Guards as well as at the India Office, Sir Charles Wood was enabled to do an exceed- ingly difficult thing—to acknowledge that the " amalgama- tion " had on one point visibly broken down. It was a difficult thing, because if special surgeons were required to cure sepoys why not special officers to command them ? was it not in fact possible that Her Majesty, and a Royal Highness, and Parliament, and the India House had acted a little too hastily and gone a little too far ? Still it had to be done, and Sir Charles Wood accepted the necessity in the frankest and most liberal spirit. In a despatch, dated November 7, he reconstitutes the separate Medical Service for India, throws over all the recent ideas, and offers terms splendidly liberal— terms which will most assuredly fulfil his expressed hope of securing "gentlemen of good social position, liberal education, and professional ability." Under the new regulations surgeons appointed to the Indian service will not be required to serve out of India except with their own consent, but will retain their full rank in any part of the world. This provision reconsti- tutes in fact the old service, with the additional privilege of receiving general instead of local commissions, in itself an acceptable grace, but Sir Charles has not stopped there. Formerly every Assistant-Surgeon had to wait for a death vacancy to become a full Surgeon, often a period of seven- teen years, his salary during that time might remain almost unaltered, there was no Surgeon-Major, and the few prizes in the strict line of the profession were always held for life. The new despatch orders that every Assistant shall, after twelve years' service, become a Surgeon, whether there is a vacancy or no, that the grade of Surgeon-Major shall be in- troduced, that separate Inspectors and Deputy Inspectors- General shall be appointed to the local service, and that they shall hold office only for tours of five years each, thus greatly accelerating promotion. Moreover, the pay is fixed on an entirely novel scale. The Assistant-Surgeon begins his career, s on a minimum pay of 350/. a year, as he did before, but it(ts to rise steadily with length of service till he receives unemployed or minimum pay per annum-
After 5 years 365 per annum.
After 6 years After 10 years After 12 years (Surgeon) After 15 years Alter 20 years (Surgeon-Major) 1,022 After 25 years 1,065
This, be it remembered, is when unemployed, i. e., the absolute minimum wage, the allowances for employ being, according to the rules laid down in the despatch at least 250/. a year more. As an Indian officer is never, except for ft:few months in a life-time, left out of employ, the trite minimum rates may be roughly stated at 350/. to begin with, 5601. after five years, 700/. after ten, 1,000/. after fifteen, and 1,200/. after twenty years' service—really good pay. These rates, more- over, are independent of prizes, of an inspectorship on 3,000/. a year, and at least three sub-inspeetorships on 2,200/. each, of a monopoly of stations with practice, of irregular cavalry regiments, and of various other exceedingly pleasant and pro- fitable incidents of the career. This, however, is not all. The rates of pension have also been revised, and amount for the future to—
After 17 years' service, say 41 years of age, 220
„ 21 12 45 292
„ 24 48 1) 365
„ 27 51 71 465 ,; 30 22 54 550 independently of the 3001. a year granted by the Medical Retiring Fund, which fund with all its liabilities, now very great, is henceforward to be managed and gaaranteed by the State. The pensions are in other words brought up within a third of those granted to the Civil Service, the best paid body of men who ever existed under a civilized govern- ment. And in addition to all this a Deputy or full In- spector will, after his five years' tour, be entitled to 250/. a year in excess of the pension of his grade. To put the matter in ordinary English, out of official formulas, a young surgeon who enters this service at twenty-four will receive 350/. a year, rise 50/. a year as a minimum for twenty years, and return home at fifty with a pension of 6501. a year for ever, enjoying meanwhile all manner of extra chances, depending on special ability, special services, or special in- terest made by himself in India. If those terms, do not bring good men into the service then competition must be abandoned for direct nomination, for no Government in its senses would or could offer higher ; but we have no fear of the result. Sir Charles Wood has broken through many rules and more precedents to settle the matter once for all, to give the view of the House of Commons a fair and honest trial, to grant the profession terms heavy enough to make good men willing to compete and to "diffuse through them, when ap- pointed, a spirit of satisfaction and contentment." If this despatch should fail there will be no remedy except to pro- pose once more to the House to abolish competition, and if it will not consent, to refuse all responsibility for the health of Her Majesty's subjects eastward of Alexandria.
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