Colonel Anson has again forwarded us a letter, which we
print as the best argument possible against Purchase. When officers talk about their property-right in their commissions in that tone, we are not far from the old evil of Rome, the hunger of her Army for donatives. The very notion that honourable poverty is the first condition of a good Army—as we see in the recent victories of Prussia—seems to have died away. We desire no injustice whatever to be done to the Officers, but we main- tain that to demand more money through a combination which, though not formal, was real, to reject the deci- sion of the Crown, and to appeal from the War Minister to " an independent tribunal," are acts subversive of the first principles of discipline. An officer might as well serve a writ on Mr. Cardwell for giving him an order which might tend to his being shot. The plain truth is, that if the British officer did not at the first sound of the cannon recover his sense of discipline, the Army would perish in time of peace, from the inability of the Horse Guards to insist that the Army exists not for its own advantage, but for that of the State. This very week the Duke of Cambridge has been compelled to order publicly that further discussion on the subject in mess-rooms or elsewhere shall cease.
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