Malta and one brought from Bermuda; while at home we really do not see what you want with other troops in Dover, Sheerness, or Edinburgh Castle, after you shall have occupied each with the head-quarters of an artillery battalion. Now see what the effect of these changes will be. You have added to the artillery 10,000 men. You reduce of the infantry,

The entire addition to the numerical strength of the standing army would be under four hundred men. The extent of additional strength for defence, and the value of the preparation made for war, defy calculation. There must, however, be a balance still on the wrong side of the sheet, probably to the amount of 190,000l. For if we reckon the saving effected by our proposed reductions at 160,000l., we cannot take the increase of outlay in raising ten thousand eight hundred artillery to twenty thousand five hundred at much less than 350,000%. Are we without the means of reducing this 190,000l. to a much lower figure?

In meeting that question, we must crave our reader's indulgence for recurring to a hint in a previous page of this paper, The Board of Ordnance is, we believe, in the opinion of most experienced men, an unhappy incubus upon the energies of this country. Its existence as a separate department, implying as it does the severance of two important military corps from the management of the Commander-in-Chief, and the removal of all right from the Secretary-at-War to control an enormous expenditure on what are generally called the civil branches of the army, is an anomaly for which we have never heard a rational excuse offered. Undoubtedly the Ordnance in its present palmy state has an immense amount of public property intrusted to its management. All the cannon, small arms, ammunition, and other implements of war, which are or are likely to be required both by the army and the navy, abide in its keeping. So do military stores of every description. So do all barracks, fortifications, garrison, chapels, school-rooms, and canteens. Though it does not supply the troops of the line with their jackets, chakos, or trowsers, the care of providing them with great-coats is claimed. It issues or withholds at pleasure blankets, paliasses, straw, fuel, lights, every article necessary to render barrack-rooms habitable. All contracts for the supply of forage for the horses of the armyall arrangements for equipping the cavalry with saddles, bridles, surcingles, and rugs, are made at the office in Pall Mall. The

Board

Board of Ordnance appoints all store-keepers and barrackmasters with their clerks and assistants-and we need only write down the words barrack damages,' in order to sicken every military reader with the memory of abuses innumerable. In a word, the Board of Ordnance stands between the Secretary-atWar on the one hand, and the Commander-in-Chief on the other, and the military force of this country; having the power, and not unfrequently using it too, to fetter them in the arrangement of their plans, and so damage the efficiency of the army.

The Board of Ordnance is at once the most costly and the clumsiest working of our establishments, The charge for its two offices in Pall Mall and the Tower of London alone amounts to 91,1367. by estimate: but will generally be found to have exceeded this. Its manner of working is hy departments; and these being perfectly independent one of another, appear at times to enter into a competition as to which shall do the greatest amount of business, and therefore cost the country the largest amount of money. To give one specimen of the results of this rivalrywhenever the necessity of providing a site for a new barrack has been decided on, it is the province of the Surveyor-General of the Ordnance to look out for such site, and to bargain for the purchase thereof, when found, after which the Board gives its sanction to the arrangement. The Surveyor-General, a few years ago, set about this necessary operation for Glasgow; and without calling upon any competent person to examine the locality, or even to estimate the real value of the land, he completed his bargain, and prevailed, as a matter of course, upon the Board to confirm it. It was to no purpose that the General commanding in Scotland now interfered. Both his report and that of the Chief Engineer arrived too late, and the consequence is that the country has been saddled with a proprietary right in a parcel of land which, because of its proximity to a huge vitriol-work, can never, we hear, be used as a site even for a pig-stye. But marvels similar to this might be exposed by the dozen, were we so inclined; for there is hardly a single new barrack in the empire of which the regimental commandants do not complain on some ground or another-and as to the old barracks, with their beastly canteens, and nuisances of every sort choking them up, they are a sheer disgrace.

Again, it is an inevitable result of working by departments and boards, that the Ordnance Office shall invariably be behind hand with all that it undertakes. The Home Secretary informs the Commander-in-Chief that troops will be permanently needed in an increasing manufacturing district; the Commander-in-Chief or the Secretary of State makes a like announcement to the War-Office; and the Chancellor of the Exche

quer

quer agrees, on good cause shown, to provide a certain sum of money for the erection of barracks. Now comes the Board of Ordnance into play. Orders are given to prepare plans and estimates. These are examined and re-examined-not by military men, not by the Commander-in-Chief, his military Secretary, the Quartermaster-General, the Adjutant-General, or anybody else who really knows what troops need, and what they may do without -but by certain gentlemen in Pall Mall, who cut and carve at their own pleasure, and seem to pique themselves on going as much as possible counter to the wishes and the requirements of the military authorities. We have reason to believe that the new barracks now in progress at Sheerness have suffered much from this process; and we have no hope that the evil will ever be remedied either there or elsewhere, so long as the Pall Mall establishment shall be permitted to exist. Buildings of the first importance to the soldier's moral and physical comfort-ablution-rooms, cleaning-rooms, school-rooms, drill-sheds, are called for and granted. A whole year will probably elapse before the Board of Ordnance shall see fit to act on the Treasury minute; and when it does act, the chances are at least equal that the whole affair is spoiled. Moreover, they consider it necessary to build, not for a couple of centuries, but for eternity; and employing officers of the Royal Engineers to plan and execute whatever they undertake, the expense is on all occasions huge in proportion to the endless faults that may be discerned. We have great respect for the officers of the Royal Engineers, considered as members of a scientific military corps. We want no better men to plan redoubts, or fortify arsenals, or to attack those of our enemies: but not having been initiated into the mysteries of civil architecture, they make but indifferent house-builders. We are told, though we will not vouch for the truth of the story, that a handsome garrison-chapel just completed in the Royal Barracks at Dublin, is so ingeniously arranged that, except the band (in a gallery opposite to the pulpit) not a soul can hear one word of the

sermon.

The expenditure upon storekeepers, their deputies, and clerks, and here and there even upon barrack-masters, seems to be out of all proportion with the pay and allowances granted to officers of rank and standing in the army. Take the case of Chatham, where there seem to be employed one storekeeper, one deputy, and four clerks. The salaries of these gentlemen, with payments on account of rates and taxes, and sums to cover travelling expenses, printing, advertisements, stamps, and other small disbursements, come to 20497. per annum. Surely this is more than the nature of their duties and position would seem to

require.

require. You have in Chatham, a colonel commanding the garrison, a lieutenant-colonel of the Provisional Battalion, two chief officers of engineers, a lieutenant-colonel commanding artillery, a brigade-major, and the clerks and people who work for them, and the combined pay of the whole does not exceed the expense of these six civilians by more than a trifle. But we are quite contented with the one simple fact, that out of the whole sum required by the Board for the ensuing year, namely 3,115,218, only 716,2547. are to be laid out upon the pay, allowances, and contingencies of the military ordnance corps.

Whatever benefits may arise from a division of labour in the prosecution of mechanical operations--however adverse to public liberty may be the system of centralization when applied to the administration of justice on a small scale, and to the management of a national police-it is very certain that the executive government of a great country becomes both feeble and costly, in proportion as it distributes its functions over a larger number of separate departments than are absolutely required to carry on the public service. What is to prevent the military part of the business of the Ordnance Office being transferred to the Horse Guards, and its civil functions to the War Office? In neither case can it be necessary to do more than add some clerks and accountants to the pen-and-ink staff of our chiefs of departments, and these you have in abundance at Pall-Mall and in the Tower. So also with regard to deputy adjutant-generals, surveyors-general of fortifications, majors of brigade, and so forth: these should remain exactly as they are, only that they ought to report to the Commander-in-Chief instead of reporting to the Master-General; while over our barrack-masters, storekeepers, and the host of civil functionaries doing duty under them, the Secretary-at-War would exercise the same vigilant control which he now does over the governors, wardens, &c. of the military prisons. In like manner, we would hand over to the Admiralty the undivided charge of every article of armament, equipment, and ammunition, likely to be required for Her Majesty's fleet. Why should there not be an adequate magazine at every dockyard in the United Kingdom, of which a naval storekeeper should have the charge, and from which he might issue guns, shot, shell, powder, &c., ad libitum? We cannot see the smallest necessity for a series of storekeepers beyond the naval storekeepers. And as to the building department, our conviction is that-dealing separately, of course, with the erection and repair of fortifications-the work would be better done, and done at one half the cost, were a respectable builder, such as Mr. Cubitt, employed to perform it, subject to the superintendence of a really skilful engineer.

Only

Only think of the charge for the ensuing year under the head of works, buildings, and repairs, exceeding the sum that is required for the pay and subsistence of the ordnance corps by very nearly 22,0001.

It will be noticed, perhaps, that in this brief review of our defensive arrangements, no allusion has been made to the militia reserve, nor any suggestion offered as to the best means of raising and organising that most constitutional array. Our readers, however, need not fancy that we are among the wise amateurs who think themselves entitled to make light of any word coming from the Duke of Wellington. No great country can be safe while it lacks a regular and well-considered system for training its male population to the use of arms, and rendering their courage and numbers available in the hour of need. But there are under existing laws so many difficulties in the way of calling out the militia--of enrolling, drilling, and afterwards disposing of themthat we feel unable to consider the question at the tail of an article. One hint, however, we may venture to throw outnamely, that before anything is done with a view to a supplemental army of this kind, our authorities should examine carefully into the working of the plan on which the little kingdom of Holland acts. There every regiment of the line has so many dormant militia companies attached to it, for whom the government keeps in store a stock of clothing, arms, and appointments uniform with those worn by the regular troops; and who at intervals take their places in the same ranks with the old soldiers, and pick up in an incredibly short space of time both the spirit and the skill of such comrades. We do not see that there would be real prudence in more than this. We want no more permanent fortresses, either inland or on the sea-board: we desire to see no entrenched camp formed round London or near it. And as to a National Guard, the very term stinks in our nostrils. It is probable that if our political machine keeps the track into which it has of late years gotten, we may in the course of time find it impossible to avoid that portentous experiment; but let no Conservative suggest the anticipation of the evil day. As matters at present stand, give us what we ask-thirty thousand good infantry and cavalry, with fifty guns, and we shall have no sort of fear for the safety of London in case of any attempt in the line of invasion. Give us our artillery in fine order, and in half a year's time no fear but we should be in heart for repaying any visit of that sort.

The preceding paper was in type before the intelligence of the new French revolution reached us. We do not, however, see cause on that account to suppress it. It is true that some of

the