Mr. Sturges Bourne said, that it was a very different thing to consider whether this rank ought to have been given originally, and to take it away when given. This was not a new thing. It existed when the right honourable gentleman was secretary at war. The highest rank at present was lieutenant-colonel, but then there were full colonels of volunteers, with the rank of regular colonels in the army. But suppose there should be a regular major in a volunteer corps, it might turn out, that, in case of actual service, the major might command his own colonel. Old officers in the volunteers might also be commanded by inferior officers in the army.

Lord Temple explained, that there was no danger of a major commanding his own colonel, as his rank was like brevet rank in the army, and not in the particular regiment.

General Tarleton contended that no evil whatever could result from allowing the volunteer officers to retain their rank. The guards enjoyed a different rank from the other parts of the army, yet though they had served in America, in Flanders, and in other places, no inconvenience had been felt-they had been brigade by themselves. The militia, the volunteers, and the army, might go on in the same manner without jealousy. He would mix them all without any apprehension. He would have no apprehension that the volunteers would turn their backs, but they might be too rash. How was this to be corrected?-By discipline. The country would have to regret the retarding of the discipline of the volunteers by the measures of the right honourable gentleman. If they had been per mitted to have gone on they would have been fit for any duty.

Sir Charles Price said, that in every step taken with regard to the volunteers, something was done to degrade them. He adverted to the manner in which the volunteers had at first come forward, and thought that they de served to be complimented instead of being degraded.

Lord De Blaquiere approved of the bill, and thought that serious mischief would arise in the moment of service, unless its provisions were adopted. It would not then be proper that the volunteers should be commanded by those who had never seen service. An honourable general had talked of the guards, but they had commanded up

to

to their rank in the army, and no inconvenience arose from this circumstance.

Mr. Windham could not imagine it to be seriously meant, that officers ranking as colonels of volunteers could take any offence at being, in case of actual service, obliged to act under the command of officers in the line of inferior rank. Field officers of volunteers might be very respectable men, and very worthy characters, but then they were not military men in the technical sense of the word, and of course could not be competent to take a superior command of troops in actual service, over the heads of men who had devoted their whole lives to the military profession, and were radically and experimentally instructed in the profession of arms. Would any gentleman who happened to be on board a man of war, or who held an employment of high rank in the civil department of the navy, take offence because he was not thought competent to take the command of a ship or a squadron, in preference to a sailor regularly bred to the profession? Would any gentleman of the highest academic attainments and political experience, take offence at being thought incompetent to assume the post of a law officer of the Crown? In a word, could any man not bred to a particular profession feel himself offended at being thought less competent to take a lead in that profession, than a man who had been regularly bred to it? And yet this was the kind of circumstance, at which, in every other case, it would be absurd and ridiculous to conceive offence, which was now termed an insult to the officers of volunteers, without considering that such an arrangement as that contended for, in case of actual danger, might be attended with the very worst consequences, even under the command of the most valiant fieldofficer of volunteers, that that branch of the service could possibly afford. Courage and zeal formed only one part of the qualification for command: experience and techni cal knowledge were to the full as necessary. The worthy alderman was ready to admit it was very right that the principle should be adopted with volunteer field-officers to be hereafter appointed; but that the alteration might not take place in respect to those already appointed. Why then, if it was right it should never be done hereafter sure ly it would have been equally right if the thing had never been done. In admitting the former principle, gentlemen acknowledged the latter; and therefore it was better even

late

late to correct an error, which was admitted to be one, be fore any mischief accrued from it. An honourable and learned gentleman opposite to him (Mr. Perceval) had assumed a good deal of merriment upon a former occasion, on the circumstance of his (Mr. Windham's) having pro cured himself a colonel's command of volunteers in a corps. without any other officers; but this, like many other of that gentleman's merry or serious arguments, was founded in gross misconception. It was true, he had been appointed to the office of a volunteer colonel in some corps in his neighbourhood, but it was an appointment not of his choice or seeking; besides, he never knew that the corps alluded to, the Felbrig volunteers, had not the same proportion of subaltern officers as other corps of the like description.

Mr. Perceval had only argued from the fact as it appeared by the papers on the table, and if there was a mistake, it was owing to his friends in office. The corps, however, was as good a corps as one without officers could be expected to be. He believed it had not even a constable, but it appeared that at the time the right honourable gentleman knew so little about his own corps, that it was not till now he was enabled to correct the mistake. But the right honourable gentleman did not adopt his own principle to its full extent, other wise itwould apply to the mili tia. He onght rather to have recalled the commissions of the volunteer colonels. He was now reducing them to the very thing which he described them to be. They were now really the painted cherries." Nothing could lower the officers more in the eyes of the country than allowing then the title of colonels without the effective rank.

Mr. Long said that if the right honourable gentleman favoured the volunteers, they were very ungrateful for they did not give him credit for it. He asked whether there were any regulations for doing away the allowances of pay and clothing, as it was understood to be the intention to suffer the volunteers to moulder away?

General Tarleton thought that if the volunteer officers had eagerly put themselves forward, there might be some grond for the measure; but a Lieutenant Bayley, who had served at the Havannah with great applause, and who now commanded a corps of 4000 volunteers, had modestly stood aside when they were inspected. Of this corps Cape taif-Gore, whose services in America would be well reVo. III. 1895-6. membered,

4 A

membered, was the major, and yet these men were to be degraded.

Mr. Charles Wynne admitted that these were officers of experience, but they were particular exceptions. It would be unpleasant in time of service for inexperienced volunteer officers to command regular field officers, and this feeling had been expressed by the colonel of the light horse volunteers, in whose favour an exception might be made if in any case.

Mr. Ryder wished that the right honourable gentleman had condescended to answer his honourable friend's question as to the pay and clothing, as it might be necessary to have a clear understanding on this point, with a view to the subject which was to come on the next day.

Mr. Windham said, that there was no occasion for his answering what he had stated over and over again, especially as the question was asked with a view to the motion of the next day, the nature of which had not been communicated to him nor to the House. This might be a stratagem of war against his Majesty's ministers, but it was not very candid to the House.

Mr. Long considered it hard that he should suffer for the fault of another.

Mr. Windham said, that he certainly had no inclination to answer merely on account of the motion for the next day; but he had before distinctly stated, that the pay and clothing was not to be allowed such volunteers as should enter in future.

The amendment was then negatived. Report the next day.

The report of the grain bill was brought up and agreed to, and the bill ordered to be read a third time the next day. As was also the auditors' bill.

Lord Henry Petty postponed the second reading of the bill for augmenting the allowances to the younger branches of the royal family till the next day.

INDIA BUDGET.

On the motion of Lord Morpeth, the East India annual accounts were referred to a commitice of the whole Ilouse. The House having gone into a committee on this subject,

Lord Morpeth rose. The present was a subject which, he conceived, must at all times involve considerations of

the

the highest importance, and at no time more so than at the present moment, when every thing connected with India. was, from peculiar circumstances, more than commonly interesting. The financial systeni, as the vital principle which animated the whole, was therefore at present entitled to particular attention. He should endeavour to make the House as fully acquainted on this subject as he could, by submitting to them the leading features of the accounts on the table, by which the situation of the company's affairs, both home and foreign, the revenue and expenditure, debts and assets for the last three years, might be compared with the three years preceding, and the general result might be easily drawn, and the debt of the company, at the latest period to which it could be made up, and the rates of interest payable on it, both at home and in India, would at once be seen. His lordship then went over the results of the different accounts.

BENGAL,

Revenues, No. 1.-Excluding the revenues of the ceded provinces in Oude on account of their intermixture with the arrears of subsidy in some of the years, and the variation in the mode of statement in the last year; and, taking the company's fixed ancient revenues alone, the average in the three years in this statement amounts to

£.6,166,581

which exceeds the average on the three years one year back

337,692

Add deficiency of revenue to excess of charge, the net revenue is less than estimated by

$71,339

And the net revenue for 1803-4 is

2,626,702

4A 2

ESTIMATES