stand firm, he was gruffly answered from the ranks, 'Ay, ay, sir, we know our duty.' It is after describing a scene of disastrous confusion at Albuera for want of a guiding mind in any quarter, that Napier exclaims: ' And then was seen with what a strength and majesty the British soldier fights.' And the same sight may have been seen over and over again during the present century under nearly similar circumstances-i.e. when the lack of generalship and professional skill had to be made good by hard fighting. Of what frequent application has been the criticism of the French General on the Balaclava charge: C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre.' How often have British officers merited the peculiar and qualified praise which the American awarded to the bull which he saw taking up a position to charge an express train advancing at full speed: I admire your courage, but d-n your discretion.' Except where the great Duke was present in command, things almost invariably went wrong: as in the Walcheren expedition, the Corunna campaign, and the repulse before New Orleans. To be present was not enough. He was obliged to be omnipresent. 'I certainly feel every day more and more the difficulty of the situation in which I am placed. I am obliged to be everywhere, and, if absent from any operation, something goes wrong.'-(Despatch, May 15, 1811.) The ignorance of their duty of the officers of the army who are every day arriving in this country, and the general inattention and disobedience to orders of many of those who have been long here, increase the details of the duty to such an extent as to render it almost impracticable to carry it on; and owing to this disobedience and neglect I can depend upon nothing, however well regulated and ordered.'-(Oct. 13, 1811.) When he said that the British army would go anywhere and do anything, he was speaking of the Peninsular army as he left it at the close of the war; and it would be strange if, at the end of several years' active service in the field, an army formed under his eye was not well seasoned for its work. To try the system, we must see what kind of officers it gave us after a long peace at the commencement of a war. Take the Crimean army as it landed at Eupatoria, or as it took up its cantonments for the winter on the heights before Sebastopol. A more gallant army never existed. The officers of all grades were distinguished by courage of the highest order, by patient endurance, by never-failing readiness to share, if they could not mitigate, the privations of the men. But (not to dwell on the darker shades of the picture) how happens it that no genius for high command, no military mind of the first order, emerged from the crowd of British officers before Sebastopol? There were opportunities enough in all conscience, but those who hope to profit by opportunities, must be prepared for them. Wolfe, who fell in the arms of victory at 34, owed his early distinction (I am not speaking merely of promotion) more to that ardent love of his profession and thorough knowledge of it in which he far surpassed his fellows, than to the bravery in which he could hardly do more than equal them. The modern spirit is unfavourable to the production of a Wolfe.2 Before the purchase system can promote bravery, military education, or military proficiency of any kind, the operation of all the ordinary motives which have 1 'Do you conceive that the army, when it left France for the Pyrenees, was in as efficient state for service as an army can well be brought to?' 'I always thought I could have gone anywhere and done anything with that army.'—Evidence on Military Punishments. 2 In the autumn of 1855, five or six officers of a regiment just returned from the Crimea and quartered in a neighbouring town, dined at a country house at which I was staying. The conversation happening to turn on military matters, they were asked the meaning of a 'traverse.' Neither of them could tell, and we were obliged to refer to a military dictionary. This certainly was eighteen years since. hitherto actuated mankind must be reversed. Ordinary men will not be eager to fight or work if they can get all they want without fighting or working. The soldier of Lucullus, who had been robbed of his prize money, fights like a hungry wolf till he has repaired his losses, but then, on being exhorted to attempt a new and desperate adventure, he replies, Ibit eo quo vis qui zonam perdidit.' Is Colonel Anson prepared to maintain that a soldier with a full purse will fight better than a soldier with an empty one?-that an officer who has lodged his money for the next step is as likely to volunteer on a forlorn hope, or a storming party, as one who (like Gurwood at Ciudad Rodrigo, or Campbell at St. Sebastian) must buy his promotion with his blood? Every French private in the army of the great Napoleon was metaphorically said to carry a marshal's bâton in his knapsack. Would he have perilled his life more fearlessly had he carried the price of a commission in his knapsack? I am not talking of duty, all British officers will do that. But would the fact of a man, with a wife and family dependent on him, having invested his fortune in his commission, excite or restrain any undue ardour? " Some men, with a horror of slaughter, Not long since a lieutenant-colonel in command of a regiment, the market value of whose commission exceeded 12,000l., sold out on the declared ground that, having a wife and children, he could not afford to stake so large a sum upon his life. He was an excellent officer, and the service confessedly suffered by the exchange, although no positive objection could be made to his successor; and unless some positive objection can be adduced, these transactions are sanctioned as matter of course by the authorities. With regard to military education of the higher order, it is not only discouraged by the reflection that promotion may be bought without it, but by the habits and modes of thinking introduced by the purchase system. Mr. W. H. Smiththought it an advantage rather than a loss that there should return from time to time into the ranks of English gentlemen officers who, by passing five, six, or ten years in the service of their country, had really qualified themselves more completely for civil life.' Assuming that the Guards' Club or the mess-room is a good preparatory school for the Quarter Sessions or the Union Board, does Mr. W. H. Smith think that the army is improved by a class of officers in a constantly transition state, who ex vi termini have no vocation for their calling and no motive for mastering it? Unluckily, being the salt of the service,' they give the tone and set the fashion to the rest, and what sort of tone they give may be inferred from the language of their coryphæus. Salt is good, but if salt has lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it?' In reference to a gentleman examined before the Royal Commission of 1857, Colonel Anson spoke thus: 'When Mr. Higgins was asked what he thought the feelings of a man would be if he were passed over by selection, he answered that it would lessen the dissatisfaction very much when a man could say to himself, "If I had been industrious and attended to my studies and exercises, I should have been as efficient as my successful brother officer." A man who could deserved to be kicked out of the regiment.' say that If this means anything, it means that, to think of getting on in the army by industry and study, should and would be deemed conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. In the same speech this representative colonel said: 'It is most necessary for good discipline that an officer should have some pecuniary interest in his com mission beyond the wretched pittance he received as pay. If he had not such interest, what control would his superiors have over him? If he chose to disobey an order he would do so and leave the service.' According to the same unimpeachable authority, the loyalty of the officers mainly rests on the same basis: it is guaranteed by the over-regulation prices paid by them this is their stake in the country; and let those who deprive them of it take the consequences of their inevitable discontent. On hearing this ominous threat, I bethought me of Curran's answer to Egan when he was boasting that he had a stake in the country- Yes, and a big pikehead to stick on the top of it.' Punch' has ironically suggested the expediency of a strike. It is something very like one when an organised agitation is set on foot: when officers threaten to leave the army unless their demands are conceded: when petitions or memorials are simultaneously got up by the thousand: when the bare existence of discontent is held in terrorem over the War Office. Nor is there any perceptible difference between the position taken up by the most active of these army agitators and that of the spokesman of the agricultural labourers, except that these have a greater show of reason on their side. That system can hardly be an elevating one which could bring a loyal, high-minded gentleman to talk like Colonel Anson. Consciously or unconsciously, he assimilates the Queen's army to one of the old feudal armies made up of baronial tenants by knight-service, who were as ready to fight against the Crown as for it, who took the field for a limited period and disbanded when they took offence. If there were no other reason for abolishing purchase, the necessity for rebuking this tone and giving the Queen, or her representatives, the complete uncontrolled disposition of her entire army, would be enough. I can recollect the day,' said Sir |