MR. DARBY GRIFFITH said, he believed that, under ordinary circumstances, the House would be disposed cheerfully to vote any reasonable amount that might be requisite for the Volunteer force; but he thought it might be preferable to give them the clothing, and leave the Capitation Grant as it stood.

Vote agreed to.

(9.) 39,600, Enrolled Pensioners and Army Reserve Force.

SIR WILLIAM GALLWEY wished to know, when the instructions relative to the Army Reserve and to the Militia Reserve would be issued; as it was very important that they should be issued before the Militia were called out.

Grant, which had to be largely supple-year upon his regiment. He thought this mented by the subscriptions of the officers limitation was a very serious one, and one and men, and also, at the same time, to that ought to be abolished. express the strong feeling which they believed to pervade the Volunteer force that those who freely and without pay gave their services to the State should be relieved from the necessity of incurring such personal expenditure. His right hon. Friend said the original intention of the force was that every man was to bear his own expenses. That might have been the theory; but in practice it could not be carried out, and a Commission in 1862 recommended Parliament to give the Volunteer corps a Capitation Grant of £1. It was proved before that Commission that two-thirds of the force were composed of artizans and men of the labouring class. Therefore, if they wished to keep up that force, and to relieve the officers from the unfair expenditure to which they were now put, Parliament must, sooner or later, be prepared to increase the Grant. But he might state that the officers had made up their minds to do nothing further never to send another deputation to the War Office-never to make another appeal in that House; that having now finally laid their claims before the House and the country, they left it to the Government to say what steps they would take to recognize them. If it could be shown that the existence of the force depended npon whether 20s., 30s., or 40s. was sufficient, he believed, in opposition to his hon. Friend, that the country would deem that a sufficient ground for an inquiry. any rate, in 1862, it was deemed sufficient ground for an inquiry. But he did not propose that the inquiry should be limited to so small a point as that; but that it should be full and complete, embracing our whole system of military organization, with reference to its capabilities for expansion in time of war and for home defence. That was the question which he intended to bring before the House after Easter, and the incidental point now raised might fairly form part of the inquiry.

At

SIR T. F. BUXTON said, he thought it was desirable to have a wider range of selection for the commanders of Volunteer corps than they had at present. At present the class was extremely limited, because the commanding officer must not only have some knowledge of military matters, but he must be able from his own means to keep a horse, and to be prepared to spend from £300 to £600 a

THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON said, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would take this opportunity to tell them what had been done, up to the present time, with the Army Reserve; and, whether anything had been done, or was presumed to be done, with regard to the Militia Reserve. Last year the right hon. Gentleman took a Vote of £30,000 for Volunteers in the Militia engaging to serve in a Militia Reserve Force, and £20,000 for men volunteering by commutation of service for enrolment in the Army Reserve Force. They had heard a great deal last year of these Reserve forces; but he could not hear that anything had been done.

SIR JOHN PAKINGTON said, the noble Lord referred to this question on Monday last, and had charged him with having made no reference to this subject in his general Statement. The noble Lord was mistaken. He stated then-what he was prepared to repeat now-that one very important step had been taken, and that in accordance with the plan of the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (General Peel), the Government had decided that the entire corps of the Militia should be raised up to its increased quota-half the battalions in the present year and the other half next year. Last year, before the change was decided on, the Militia regiments were 5,000 below the strength of their reduced quota. But when the order was given to raise the regiments to their full quota recruiting commenced, and was so successfully carried on, that, instead of the force being 5,000 below the reduced quota, it was now only 2,300 below the

(10.) Motion made, and Question pro- upon the housing of married soldiers; and posed,

of. He remarked that while there was a decrease in one Department of the least paid officials from twenty-seven to twenty

paid from twenty-nine to thirty-two. He called attention to the increase, not only of the clerks, but of military foremen, and asked why it had taken place. He hoped the right hon. Baronet would, at his earliest convenience, give some explanation of the increase in the establishment to which he referred.

objected to, and say that, to some extent, an implied sanction has been given by the House to the total expenditure when the matter was originally broached in the Es-two, there was an increase of the higher timates. This year, however, items, which last year gave no indication of being parts of a great whole, were stated in the Estimates as forming part of a total estimated outlay of £1,416,000, of which part had been voted in previous years. This would throw anyone off his guard, and was a very improper way of stating the items. Again, with regard to the two items of £75,000 each, for alterations to works for a revised armament in the principal sea batteries at Gibraltar and Malta, he thought it should have been stated that these sums were in excess of the original Estimate of £470,000, whereas he found no reference to past expenditure under this head. As to the proposed expenditure for additional barrack accommodation at Chelsea, such accommodation was probably wanted; but an explanation should have been given on the subject. The expenditure at Woolwich of £70,000 for storehouses for miscellaneous stores from the Tower he held to be perfectly unnecessary; for abundant accommodation might be placed at the disposal of the War Office by the Admiralty, as the abandonment of Deptford dockyard was contemplated. He did not know whether the Vote of £3,000 now proposed would pledge the Committee to the expenditure of the remaining £67,000.

LORD ELCHO, calling attention to the charges attending the camp at Aldershot, urged the desirability of adopting the recommendation of the Royal Commission by dispensing with a permanent encampment. The buildings were liable to constant expenditure for repairs, and it gave great dissatisfaction, both to officers and men, to be kept in camp during the winter. It would be much better to keep the troops in barracks in different parts of the country, and march them to these places temporarily, keeping them under canvas there. It was also desirable that as many officers or generals as possible should have the opportunity of commanding large bodies of troops, and such appointments should therefore be made yearly, instead of only once in five years.

COLONEL SYKES called attention to the charge for the surveyor, deputy surveyors, &c., of the Royal Engineers. He objected to an increasing establishment as an insidious thing which they could not get rid

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CAPTAIN VIVIAN wished to say a few words about the camp at Aldershot. He had the honour of sitting in the House when the camp was first projected, and he then raised his voice against it. They had been told, with great truth, that one of the causes of the great losses which our troops suffered in the first Crimean campaign was that they did not know how to kill their meat, to forage, or to perform the other duties incident to the position in which they were placed; and the French troops had a great advantage over them because they had been instructed in routine field work. It was proposed, therefore, to form a camp at Aldershot to give a training to our soldiers, and that was all very well. But in a short time those large barracks were built at immense outlay. He would venture to say that it would have been infinitely better to have spent the money on improving the various barracks in London, some of which were a disgrace to the army. Aldershot, instead of being a camp, was now a large military town, and a military town of the worst description, and was extremely unpopular among the men. When a soldier came home from foreign service, instead of being allowed to go into country quarters or to see his friends, he was sent to Aldershot. He hoped that Aldershot would not be so much used as a winter quarter for the future. It might be available, however, in the summer months. He quite agreed with what had been said by his hon. Friend about the change made in the Estimates. It was a dangerous change. Close upon £40,000 had been spent, and spent wisely, on the establishment at Pimlico, and a large yearly rent was now paid for it. There was no doubt that there would be ample room for all the Woolwich stores in Pimlico.

MR. OTWAY said, that whenever he attempted to cut down a Vote for works he was always told that the works were in progress, and that it would be impossible to make any reduction. Last year, when

under the Engineer. The colonel of a regiment was intrusted with the happiness not alone of the 600 or 800 men whom he commanded, but of their wives and children, and yet he could not be intrusted with the ordering of a lock out of repair to be set right. They had all heard of the story about the bellows; but there was a similar story about a pump, concerning which a correspondence had been going on for years, and was, he believed, still going on. He had asked the commander of a foreign regiment if a pump was out of order what he would do, and he said he would of course direct that it should be mended. When asked by whom? he answered,

was put-"Suppose there were no soldiers that could do it, he seemed to think that an absurd supposition, because a regiment contained artificers of every class; but he replied he would order a proper workman to go and do it. Now what he wanted to impress upon the right hon. Gentleman was the necessity for a greater employment of military labour. If the right hon. Gentleman would consult the most distinguished Engineer officer this country had possessed for many years, Field-Marshal Sir John Burgoyne, he would find that a great economy might be effected by the employment of military labour. He was told that the experiment was now being tried in the Isle of Wight. All that was wanted was to develope the system, and he ventured to say that a very large reduction would soon be made under the head of barrack repairs.

a new item crept into those Estimates, he | and his Friends thought they should make an effort to reduce the Vote; but when they went to a division, they were, of course, beaten, the House being always in much the same condition when they were voting away millions, and there being always a number of Members ready to rush in from the gastronomical Department to support the Minister. In this Vote 14 there were some most objectionable items. The other evening they had a debate as to the military cost of the colonies; but the Vote taken on that occasion by no means represented the whole cost, because in this Vote would be found very large items with reference to those very colonies. For in-"By my soldiers." And when the case stance, it was proposed to spend £202,000 for the defence of the Mauritius. He doubted whether anyone was ever going to attack the Mauritius; but, in any case, the money would be only thrown away. It was utterly impossible to defend that island by any such expenditure, and by retaining in it two battalions of troops. Mauritius, if to be defended, must be defended by sea, and to spend so much money upon works there was to throw a great burden upon the taxpayers of this country. The whole of the columns of the Estimate book contained similar extravagant charges; and he could wish that some gentleman of military position, like his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Lichfield (Major Anson), would take the sense of the Committee upon it. That would be the only way to prevent such an outlay in future. He had no hesitation in saying that a great portion of the expenditure upon barracks and works was caused by the erroneous system that was pursued. There was no man in the House that had a greater respect for the Engineers than he (Mr. Otway) had; he looked upon them as an unsurpassed corps, but they were the most expensive and extravagant set of men in dealing with public works that could possibly be found. They were greedy, not of money, but of work; they tried to monopolize everything, and the consequence was that the country was put to vast expense for repairs which it would be spared under a different system. Let the Committee conceive the idea of an officer in a barrack who had the lock of his door out of repair. Before he got it repaired her COLONEL NORTH concurred with the had to apply to an Engineer officer, who hon. Baronet as to the effect of Aldershot had to speak to the contractor; and it could as winter quarters. He could not expect not be put to rights without the contractor's men returning from twelve or fifteen years permission, or by any man not employed of foreign service to like being sent to VOL. CXCI. [THIRD SERIES.]

MR. ALDERMAN LUSK said, that soldiers really required something to do. The other day a deserter was brought before him when sitting as a magistrate, and he said to the prisoner, "You are an intelligent young man-why did you leave the army?" The answer was, that he hated the army-that there was nothing but drill, drill, everlasting drill, day after day, and that it was perfectly intolerable.

SIR HARRY VERNEY was of opinion that nothing tended so much to make the army unpopular as Aldershot. It would be very well to send men to encamp there occasionally; but to condemn them to winter quarters in those vile huts had a very mischievous effect.

L