OSBORNE,
_July 19, 1857_.
The Queen is anxious to impress in the most earnest manner upon her
Government the necessity of our taking a comprehensive view of our
military position at the present momentous crisis, instead of going on
without a plan, living from hand to mouth, and taking small isolated
measures without reference to each other. Contrary to the Queen’s
hopes and expectations, immediately after the late war the army was
cut down to a state even _below_ the Peace Establishment recognised
by the Government and Parliament in their own estimates, to meet the
Parliamentary pressure for economy, and this in spite of the fearful
lesson just taught by the late war, and with two wars on hand--one with
Persia, and the other with China! Out of this miserably reduced Peace
Establishment, already drawn upon for the service in China, we are now
to meet the exigencies of the Indian crisis, and the Government, as it
always has done on such occasions, has up to this time contented itself
with sending out the few regiments left at home, putting off the day
for reorganising its forces. When the regiments ordered out shall have
gone, we shall be left with 18 battalions out of 105, of which the army
is composed, to meet all home duty, to protect our own shores, to act
as the reserves and reliefs for the regiments abroad, and to meet all
possible emergencies! The regiments in India are allowed one company,
raised by the last decision of the Cabinet, to 100 men as their depot
and reserve!
A serious contemplation of such a state of things must strike everybody
with the conviction, that some _comprehensive_ and _immediate_ measure
must be taken by the Government--its _principle_ settled by the
Cabinet, and its details left to the _unfettered_ execution of the
military authorities, instead of which the Cabinet have as yet agreed
only upon recruiting certain battalions up to a certain strength,
to get back some of the men recently discharged and have measured
the extent of their plans by a probable estimate of the amount of
recruits to be obtained in a given time, declaring at the same time
to Parliament that the militia will not be called out, which would
probably have given the force required.
The Commander-in-Chief has laid a plan before the Government which the
Queen thinks upon the whole very moderate, inexpensive, and efficient.
The principle which the Queen thinks ought to be adopted is this: That
the force which has been absorbed by the Indian demand be replaced to
its full extent and in the same kind, not whole battalions by a mere
handful of recruits added to the remaining ones. This will not only
cost the Government nothing because the East India Company will pay the
battalions transferred, and the money voted for them by Parliament will
be applicable to the new ones, but it will give a considerable saving,
as all the officers reduced from the War Establishment and receiving
half-pay will be thus absorbed and no longer be a burden upon the
Exchequer. Keeping these new battalions on a low establishment, which
will naturally be the case at first, the depots and reserves should
be raised in men, the Indian depots keeping at least two companies of
one hundred men each. [The Crimean battalions of eight companies had
eight others in reserve, which, with the aid of the militiamen, could
not keep up the strength of the Service companies. In India there are
_eleven_ to be kept up by _one_ in reserve!]
No possible objection can be urged against this plan except two:
1. That we shall not get the men. This is an hypothesis and not an
argument. Try and you will see. If you do not succeed and the measure
is necessary, you will have to adopt means to make it succeed. If you
conjure up the difficulties yourself, you cannot of course succeed.
2. That the East India Company will demur to keeping permanently
so large an addition to the Queen’s army in India. The Company is
empowered, it is true, to refuse to take any Queen’s troops whom it
has not asked for, and to send back any it may no longer want. But the
Company _has_ asked for the troops now sent at great inconvenience to
the Home Government, and the commonest foresight will show that for
at least three years to come this force cannot possibly be dispensed
with--if at all. Should the time, however, arrive, the Government will
simply have to reduce the additional battalions, and the officers will
return to the half-pay list from which they were taken, the country
having had the advantage of the saving in the meantime. But the Queen
thinks it next to impossible that the European force could again be
decreased in India. After the present fearful experience, the Company
could only send back Queen’s regiments, in order to raise new European
ones of their own. This they cannot do without the Queen’s sanction,
and she must at once make her most solemn protest against such a
measure. It would be dangerous and unconstitutional to allow private
individuals to raise an army of Queen’s subjects larger than her own
in any part of the British dominions. The force would be inferior to
one continually renewed from the Mother Country, and would form no
link in the general military system of England all over the globe of
which the largest force will always be in India. The raising of new
troops for the Company in England would most materially interfere with
the recruiting of the Queen’s army, which meets already with such
great difficulties. The Company could not complain that it was put to
expense by the Home Government in having to keep so many more Queen’s
regiments; for as it cannot be so insane as to wish to reform the old
Bengal army of Sepoys, for every two of these regiments now disbanded
and one of the Queen’s substituted it would save £4,000 (a regiment
of Sepoys costing £27,000, and a Queen’s regiment £50,000). The ten
battalions to be transferred to the Company for twenty Sepoy regiments
disbanded would therefore save £40,000, instead of costing anything;
but in reality the saving to the Company would be greater, because the
half-pay and superannuation of the officers, and therefore the whole
dead weight, would fall upon the Mother Country. The only motive,
therefore, which could actuate the Company would be a palpable love of
power and patronage to which the most sacred interests of the country
ought not to be sacrificed. The present position of the Queen’s army
is a pitiable one. The Queen has just seen, in the camp at Aldershot,
regiments, which, after eighteen years’ foreign service in most trying
climates, had come back to England to be sent out after seven months to
the Crimea. Having passed through this destructive campaign, they have
not been home for a year before they are to go to India for perhaps
twenty years! This is most cruel and unfair to the gallant men who
devote their services to the country, and the Government is in duty and
humanity bound to alleviate their position.
“The Queen wishes Lord Palmerston to communicate this memorandum to the
Cabinet.”