years, are drawing towards completion: £8,100 will be spent in 1866-67, and £10,000 in future years. The same may be said of the new barracks at Chelsea, on which £2,500 will be spent in addition to the £186,000 already invested. £23,000 are required for Infantry and Cavalry Barracks at Windsor. In the Portsmouth district a Lunatic Asylum is to be built at Netley, at a cost of £17,000, of which £5,000 will be absorbed during this year. For erecting stabling for Military Train, at Woolwich, and converting the Garrison Hospital into Barracks, £19,000 are still required, and £45,000 have yet to be paid towards the purchase of Warley Barracks. Abroad the principal expenditure will be as follows:-- These figures show at once what progress has been made in the works, and what proportion remains to be done. The government were urged last session to complete the immense works going on at Chatham and Portsmouth Dock Yards as speedily as possible, and an Act of Parliament was passed sanctioning the payment of certain sums annually, as it was unanimously agreed that, if new works were necessary or large alterations were required, they should be done forthwith. It would be well if a similar plan could be adopted at the War Office, and the buildings or forts already in hand rendered useful without delay. Some of the amounts in the second column of the preceding statement bear no comparison with those in the last column, especially Malta-where only £1,000 will be spent in 1866-67, out of a sum of £31,000 yet required to complete; at King William's Town also, only a fifth part of the total cost is to be expended this year. We commend this portion of the Estimates to the special attention of those would-be financial reformers who consider that a large reduction can be effected in the Naval and Military Departments by a mere stroke of the pen, and that if the Chancellor of the Exche quer were to decide on bringing the public expenditure within certain limits, he could at once do so by cutting down the Army and Navy Estimates. If they take the trouble to investigate the subject in the manner that those who pretend to legislate for their fellowcountrymen ought to do, they will find that this idea of sudden reduction of expenditure is impossible. They cannot, for instance, reduce this vote below a certain sum without allowing the works to remain incomplete; they cannot interfere with the pay of reduced and retired officers, with widows' pensions and compassionate allowances, with the pensions and allowances to wounded officers, nor with superannuation allowances; neither would they, we presume, abolish the auxiliary forces, such as the Militia, the Yeomanry, or the Volunteers, and they would not touch the votes for Divine service, military education, or surveys of the United Kingdom. But when we hear so much said about reducing the Army and the Navy, in order to relieve the burden of taxation which falls upon the working classes, we may be allowed to enquire what proportion does the expenditure in those professions bear to the general expenditure of the country, and what sum per head is contributed by the "working classes" towards that expenditure? We use the term "working classes" in the sense in which it is generally applied, although we believe that many, if not most, of what are termed the middle, and several of what are termed the upper class, really work much harder than those who are employed at manual labour. Of the total sum of £24,333,990 voted this year for Military and Naval purposes, at least twenty per cent, will be paid for labour or as wages to mechanics and artizans. This will leave about twenty millions on which a reduction could be effected without interfering with the employment of the "working class." Of this portion of the national expenditure about one-third is paid in the shape of taxes by that class, and the remainder by those of a higher grade. This leaves between six and seven millions to be contributed by those on whose behalf the cry for relief is so constantly raised, and who if the Army and Navy were done away to-inorrow, and no more money were spent on them, would perhaps fancy that they were going to live almost free of expense, so far as taxation is concerned. That we repeat is the idea of those who are always endeavouring to effect reductions in the Army and Navy, on the ground that the working-man is so heavily taxed in order to maintain them. Now, by the returns published under the authority of the RegistrarGeneral, it appears that of the entire population, as near as possible twenty-four millions belong to the working class; therefore the sum which each of that class now contributes towards our military expenditure is under five shillings and sixpence, a sum which many of them spend in the public-house in less than a week. Or let it be assumed that the demand which was made in some quarters last winter for a reduction in the cost of the Army and Navy to the extent of at least five millions had been complied with, and in stead of the Estimates being rather more than twenty-four millions they had been only nineteen millions, what would have been the advantage to the working-man? We must still deduct one-fifth from the total as the lowest proportion which would have to be paid as wages for labour, &c., which leaves about fifteen millions of the taxes, to meet which the working class would contribute about onethird, or five millions, so that in this case each of the twenty-four working millions would have to pay four shillings and twopence, the difference resulting to him from the reduction of five millions in the expenditure being as nearly as possible one shilling and four pence. We commend these facts to the careful consideration of the wouldbe economists, and their representatives in Parliament; and we turn to a subject which will perhaps be more satisfactory to them, but which must be one of some anxiety to those who have the interest of the Service and the welfare of their country at heart. The numbers of men given in the Estimates are of course only nominal, and it does not follow that they will all be really paid or maintained during the year; on the contrary, it seldom happens, either in the Navy or the Army, that the force sanctioned by Parliament is that actually employed; and with regard to the Army, the official returns show that ever since 1861 the numbers borne on the 31st of March in each year have been under the establishment. The exact figures While the numbers estimated to be, and actually recruited, and of desertions were as follows: These numbers are exclusive of men who have re-engaged, and which were 2,093 in 1861-62; 2,613 in 1862-63; and 2,745 in 1863-64, the latest date to which returns have been published. It is not our intention now to enquire into the cause of this deficiency in the numbers required to complete the establishment of the Army, whether greater inducements by way of pay, or bounty, &c. are necessary to induce recruits to join, or time-expired men to remain in the ranks; for it is a subject which deserves much greater consideration than we can at present devote to it. Nor is it re quisite that we should do so, as a Royal Commission is about to be appointed to enquire into the whole question, including our recruiting system, and the operation of the Ten years' Enlistment Act. At the same time, we should like to see appended to the annual Estimates for the Army, a statement showing the numbers voted and borne during every month of the preceding year, similar to that which has been given for a considerable period by the Admiralty on the vote for wages for the Navy. We will conclude these remarks on the expenditure of the Army by referring to one of the proofs which may be adduced of the provident habits of soldiers of the present day, and of the benefits which have accrued from the establishment of Military Savings banks. The figures speak for themselves, so we give them as they stand, in a return furnished by the War Office, and recently presented to the House of Commons by command of Her Majesty. The deposits in Military Savings banks, during the year ended on the 31st March, 1865, amounted to £140,309, the interest allowed on these deposits was £6,658, and on Army Charitable funds, was £1,498; and the number of accounts open at these Saving banks on the 31st March, 1865, was eighteen thousand one hundred and twenty-three. THE CAT CURTAILED-THE HECTOR'S EXPLOIT (SKETCHED BY TRISTRAM.) A feather, or a straw, thrown in the air, will show the direction of the wind. The quotation, of the second and third verses of the twenty-fifth chapter of Deuteronomy, published in the United Service Magazine, January last, in which the Divine Law did not authorise the judges to punish the wicked man, with more than "forty strip s," less "thy brother should seem vile unto thee," was the feather thrown up in the Whitehall air, which has blown it in the direction of leniency to the casual faults of our brothers, the honest, faithful, and loyal seamen of the British Fleet, who take no oath to be true to those noble characteristics-they are rooted in their hearts, and spring spontaneously in the performance of duties on all occasions, whether in emergency of battle or danger-disloyalty or rebellion. The Army and Navy Gazette has most opportunely observed that —"it will gladden the hearts of many individuals, both in and out of the service, to find that the Lords of the Admiralty, in keeping with the prevailing feelings of the age in which we live, have resolved that lads under eighteen years of age, shall not in future be subjected to the terrible punishment of flogging with the cat." On the first of February last, a circular to that effect has been promulgated, and that the maximum number of stripes, by birch rods, shall not exceed twenty-four, and all commanding officers have been urged not to inflict the greatest number, unless for extreme cases of gross misconduct. The paper concluded by stating that "we have heard that it is intended, if on mature reflection it is deemed advisable, to reduce the maximum punishment of four dozen lashes, to two dozen lashes, to the men in the fleet." Our mature consideration of the punishment with the cat, would be to give "forty stripes" to the "wicked man," and to the miscreant, reducing the number by Admiralty regulation, according to the degree of the minor offence. There is, however, a soreness existing against that "d-d black list,"* from which, it is nearly impossible to escape during a three years' service, whether at sea or in harbour, as an officer's eye is in all parts of the ship, alow and aloft, and catches every peccadillomomentary mess-rumpus, or an extra tot, after the routine drudgery of the week, when "Of those in spite, there are some joys Us jolly tars to bless, For Saturday night still comes, my boys, To drink to Poll and Bess." Soldiers on shore get off, in many instances, scot free, from their objectionable conduct remaining undiscovered, and the naval officers, were it not for the rigid instructions to enter every case of misbehaviour, in the Record of Conduct book, would be to Jack's faults a little blind. British horses are being no longer galled with the crupper under their sensitive tails-surely then the soreness which galls the British sailors' mind for years in their ships, can be relieved by the reduction of their "random fits of daffin" in the records of bad conduct. The zealous and active proccedings of Her Majesty's ship Hector, Captain Preedy, C.B., in being under speed in her course upon urgent service, from an unprepared state, are worthy of record. On the 17th of February, Saturday, 11.30 p.m. "This ship's engines were all to pieces, one cylinder cover being off, and the piston opened out for inspection, the main bearings taken to pieces, the mud hole doors off the boilers, in fact, screws loose here, there, and every where, ready for a general overhauling." There she lay an inanimated log, but an Admiralty telegram, for her to proceed from Lough Swilly, to garrison Fort Greencastle, circulated activity and energy through every vein and muscle of her fabric. The fires were laid, the boilers run up, and the engines put into working order as rapidly as her engineers and their crew could act in concert. The launch and other boats were hoisted in, and the sails bent. She was moored with full 80 fathoms of chain out on each cable. "All hands unmoor ship;" soon hove the 160 *The columns of misconduct, so called in the "Record of Conduct Book." |