The debate on the Army Regulation Bill was concluded on
Friday week with a curious anti-climax, after all the terrible predictions with which the abolition of Army Purchase had been greeted, by carrying the second reading without even a division. This was due to the speech of Mr. Disraeli, who, to the grief and dismay of his party, threw over the friends of Army Pur- chase completely, and in fact gave his followers one more of those educational lessons of which, as he said in 1867 at Edin- burgh, they stand in need, and to which their attention requires to be called " with some pressure." Mr. Disraeli virtually ad- mitted that the Government were quite right in doing away with Purchase, though he softened it down a little, and oddly enough hinted a preference for the bonus system and the plan of Mr. Muntz. Mr. Disraeli, having very little indeed of the English respect for the substantial, and a good deal of the literary adven- turer's respect for personal gifts, evidently dislikes from his heart wealth-tests for power of any kind, and has generally been pretty successful in his efforts to defeat them, though the ten-pound householder Reform Bill brought in by him in 1859 was not a case in point. Colonel Lloyd Lindsay was not allowed to withdraw his amendment, but it was negatived without a division, and the second reading of the Army Regulation Bill agreed to.
