Sovereign's favour and of their country's esteem; and yet, if there are any such, why are they not made partakers of honours which should alike be open to the competition of all?

It must, however, be kept in view how very different are the empty honours of the British service, even when bestowed, from the more substantial ones in the French service: the former not only conferring no emolument, but absolutely involving the poor veterans on whom they are bestowed in heavy expenses for the mere fees of office-the latter carrying with them an addition to the extent of at least one-half of an officer's pay, to enable him to support his newly-acquired rank.

Those who are best acquainted with a soldier's feelings will admit that it is scarcely fair to bring into comparison the mere pay of two services which, in this important respect, are so very dissimilar,—the one holding out the tempting and glittering array of military honours as a prize to the exertion even of the humblest of its grades; the other unblest by one ray of hope, that professional ability, however highly displayed, will ever lead to honorary distinctions, till the lapse of a long cycle of years has raised the candidate to that grade, in which, by the custom of our service, merit seems alone recognizable. The tardy honours of our profession only crown the labours of a lifetime; and those marks of distinction which, in earlier years, would have acted as the surest excitement to further exertion, only glitter on our breast when it no longer pants with the fond aspirings of youth, and when our energies, palsied by the icy torpor of age, can no longer guide us onward in the career of improvement.

But for one thus ultimately successful in attaining this reward, even in the sere and yellow autumn of life, how many, from the impossibility of gaining such subaltern honours as in the French service encourage and foster the first bud of professional merit, become tired of their hopeless, their thankless labours, abandon all thought of improvement, and content themselves with earning their pay at the least possible exertion and inconvenience to themselves? How many still pressing onwards in their career, with ardour undamped even by the lukewarmness of those to whom they look for approbation, sink under the fell influence of disease in the pestilential regions of some far-distant colony; and the grave consigns alike their aspiring hopes and unrequited toils to oblivion?

If professional zeal, talent, or application is to be expected in all ranks, in all ranks must it be encouraged and rewarded, nor must honorary distinctions, those proud marks of a sovereign's approbation, be confined to the higher grades of officers alone. Late regulations have conferred, even on the deserving private, a medal as an honourable badge of distinction; surely then, in the distribution of those rewards which are intended to act as incentives to professional merit, or professional exertion, the junior grades of officers should not be the only ones excluded from a participation in similar honours.

But too many of our countrymen are fonder of railing at the supineness of our military youth, in regard to improvement in the higher branches of their profession, than anxious to investigate the cause, or remedy the evils which have led to that feeling. Young officers are railed at as being idle, if not dissipated, in their habits, frivolous in their pursuits, eschewing every thing savouring of professional or general knowledge, and wasting the valuable portion of time at their disposal in

the pleasures of sense or the haunts of gaiety. If such were the case, though we are proud to deny its application in a general sense, what has made them so? What keeps them so but the absence of every stimulus which in other professions induce to exertion and improvement by the certainty of reward.

As the army is at present constituted, it is the only occupation in this gain-seeking, money-making isle which carries with it no reward proportioned to the attainment of professional knowledge. Does the meanest mechanic become expert in that description of labour to which he devotes himself, his gains are proportionally increased, and his labour carries his reward along with it. Does the merchant by application, by study, or by experience, attain a thorough knowledge of all the mysteries of trade, his well-filled coffers reward his past, and act as a spur to his future exertions. Does the lawyer or the physician, by a devotedness to their professions, succeed in attaining celebrity,-countless fees speedily await their acceptance. But where is the prize to stimulate to a similar course of application in the army? As well might a junior officer think to add a cubit to his stature as one farthing to his income, or one step to his promotion, by military acquirements however laudable in the attainment, however useful in the application. The professional science of a Marlborough might perhaps secure to him an adjutancy, or the numerical powers of a Newton be rewarded with a paymastership; but beyond that, unless blessed with wealth to purchase, they could attain nothing, for alas! there is nothing to give.

Let it not be thought for an instant that it is our intention to reflect on those with whom rests the distribution of military honours or military promotion. In the limited scale of rewards which it is in their power to bestow, we firmly believe that justice is done, so far as justice is possible; but what we uplift our voice against is that insane spirit of economy which so far blinds our nation to its true honour-to its best interests, as absolutely to withhold all excitement to exertion, at the very time when loudest in its regrets that the youth of our army should be so far behind those of other nations in the march of professional improvement.

During the period of active warfare the difficulty of rewarding merit in young and rising officers was little felt, for in the extensive promotion which casualties in the field, or augmentations in our forces, placed at the disposal of the Commander-in-Chief, there was enough to excite the ambition and keep alive the energies even of the most aspiring, without trenching in the slightest degree on that regimental promotion which should be the indefeasible right of the next senior, whenever his length of service is such as fairly to entitle him to it.

But in time of peace there is absolutely nothing to bestow. Appointments on the Staff of the army, once the certain reward of zeal and intelligence, are, by the economy of the present times, almost annihilated. The personal Staff of each General Officer is in most instances filled by his own relatives. Advancement out of the course of regimental promotion cannot be attained without blasting the prospects of the seniors passed over, who perhaps have already grown grey in the grade of subaltern. What then remains to encourage our junior officers to tread in the thorny paths of science, instead of contenting themselves with a mere knowledge of the details of regimental duty? Nothing-abso

lutely nothing. Of eighty officers who within the last ten years have passed their examinations with credit at the senior department of the Royal Military College, and obtained first-class certificates of their attainments in the highest branches of their profession, scarce one has obtained any appointment either of honour or profit as the reward of his successful exertions. Can it then be wondered at that a disinclination should be manifested to enter on a course in which the greater the fervour of application, the more bitter is the anguish of disappointment?

Do those who are most in the habit of extolling the professional acquirements of French officers at the expense of their own countrymen really wish to see similar pursuits prosecuted with like ardour, with equal success in the British service? The course by which an object so desirable is alone likely to be attained is obvious. Place the two armies on a footing of equality in regard to rewards for military merit. Let a thousand such prizes as are bestowed in the French service-let even five hundred-let even fifty be held up to our youth as the honourable object of their ambition; and we venture to assert that before a couple of years rolled over our head in military science, as in every thing else, the talent, the application, and the energy of Britons would bear away the palm from all competitors.

Should, however, the democratic spirit of the present times, ever anxious to diminish rather than increase the extent of honorary distinctions, militate against the introduction of some such means of rewarding military merit as that we have just suggested, another mode, unobjectionable in that respect, might be adopted, by placing at the disposal of the Commander-in-Chief a certain number of commissions of various unattached ranks, to be conferred as the special reward of military talent and acquirements, without any reference to service or standing. The expense of a few such prizes would be but trifling, and even if granted to the extent of a tenth part only of the annual cost of the Legion of Honour to the French nation, the advantage to our army would be incalculable.

These officers should be specially gazetted to this promotion as being "for distinguished merit." This would both confer an additional honour upon them, and prevent the possibility of the reward thus assigned by the nation to deserving officers being misapplied to serve the purposes of interest, which we stated as likely to be the case in a former Number when canvassing the propriety of regimental promotion being made dependent on superior talent or acquirements. However anxious a Commander-in-Chief might be to oblige an influential friend, he would hesitate ere he promoted any one destitute of merit to such rewards when the gazette required to specify the cause for which such promotion was specially granted. This promotion to unattached rank would injure the prospects of no one, and the officers could be brought on full pay so soon as opportunities offered.

A further and very material advantage is possessed by meritorious officers in the French service, but not in the British, in consequence of the privilege they enjoy of being removed into the Guards, which are not, as in our service, a genus per se, but composed, as they ever ought to be, of officers selected" for long service and exemplary conduct" from the various corps of the line. Two-thirds of the vacancies which occur among the sub-lieutenants in the Guards, and one-third of those among the lieutenants and captains are invariably given to

meritorious officers of the same grade in the Line who have served not less than four years. This appointment, besides various other privileges, confers an additional pay of about one-third; and as the proportion of Guards in the French army is at least double what it is in ours, the operation of this reward, in exciting a spirit of emulation among the junior ranks, must be felt very extensively indeed.

We regret that the limits of a single Number restrict us from carrying our comparison farther at present. We shall hereafter discuss the relative advantages of the two services in regard to retired or half-pay, pay when on leave of absence, widows' pensions, and compassionate allowances, and endeavour to suggest some means for improving the condition of our junior officers without material expense to the public. Before parting with the present subject, however, we wish to refresh the memory of our readers with the following brief abstract of our deduc

tions:

1. That without taking the expense of purchasing into calculation, the pay of our officers on home service only exceeds that of French officers similarly employed by a sum equal to the difference in the value of money in the two countries.

2. That at stations where no colonial allowance is granted in our service, the pay of French officers, taken in the average of all ranks, is much the same in nominal amount as the British, leaving entirely out of view the expense which the latter incurs in purchasing.

3. If, however, the expense of purchase were to be taken into consideration in either of the above deductions, the pay of the senior officers becomes reduced to a mere fractional part of what French officers of the same grade receive, and if we extend our comparison to the junior ranks, still it is considerably less even in nominal

amount.

4. As four-fifths, at least, of our officers purchase, it is consequently the remaining fifth only, who do not pay for their commissions, that can be considered on a footing of equality with French officers in regard to pay.

5. That even at those favoured stations where colonial allowances are granted, these, when analyzed, only form an actual increase of about 20 per cent. to a British officer's pay; while the increase to a French officer similarly situated varies from 50 to 100 per cent.

6. In the British service, the pay of the officer is his omnium, he has no contingent advantages to look forward to; while in the French Army admission into the Guards, or the Legion of Honour, with a considerable increase of pay, is sure to await the exertions of the meritorious.

7. The pay of a French officer is a reward for serving in his own country, he seldom if ever has to encounter the hardships of colonial duty; while the pay of a British officer is his sole reward for a life of exile from the land of his fathers, the home of his childhood, and the friends of his youth. It is the compensation awarded him for contending in pestilential climates, and under a tropical sun, with every species of disease "which flesh is heir to." It is the recompense for a broken constitution, disappointed hopes, premature old age, or but too probably an early and unhonoured grave.

* Gonvot, p. 79,

TRANSACTIONS AT TRIPOLI.

In a former paper* we endeavoured to give an account of the position of affairs in the regency of Tripoli, and of the policy pursued by the representatives of the European powers in that city, with regard to the Bashaw Ali and the British nation, to the close of the year 1834. We have now great pleasure in being able to state, that the civil war which, during the last three years, has desolated the regency has been happily terminated, and that perfect tranquillity reigns where, only a few days before, the Scourge of a cruel and unrelenting war raged with all the violence of savage lawlessness.

The new year was ushered in by the re-commencement of the bombardment, and one of the first houses that suffered was the Portuguese Consul's. Dr. Dickson, the acting Consul for that nation, was fortunately absent with his family at this time. He is an Englishman, and was for twenty years physician to the old Bashaw Jusuf, and considered by the Arabs, from his urbanity of manners and kind disposition, as the father of the people. All merchant-vessels that attempted to enter the harbour were fired at from the Mescia, and a Tuscan schooner, which had anchored outside with provisions for the garrison, was taken out during the night by some armed boats from the country, and the next morning was observed scuttled and sunk a few miles from the town.

Bashaw Ali in the meantime continued to throw shells against the date trees in the interior, and occasionally practised his Venetian 42 brass pounders at the English Consul's country-house, and one welldirected shot carried off the whole side of the principal bedroom, the Consul's son being at the very moment in the chamber adjoining. Colonel Warrington, from the summit of his town-residence, watched the long practice (his garden is one mile and three-quarters distant) with the eye of an old soldier; and though it may be supposed that he had considerable interest in the valuable target made use of, yet he contemplated this miserable system of annoyance with perfect sang froid and good humour.

It will be necessary here to state, that Bashaw Ali continued obstinate in maintaining a blockade, which he had not force to make efficient, rendering it, therefore, impossible for the British Admiral to acknowledge or sanction it. His Highness had lately hired a Greek cutter by the month to cruise off the coast, with the addition of two zebecs armed, for the purpose of interrupting the merchant-vessels bound to the ports of his revolted subjects. Still British vessels, being protected by the corvette the Favourite in their commerce beyond the range of the castle guns, were drawing a profitable business to the exclusion of every other flag; and, therefore, this blockade, a measure wholly and solely recommended and adopted at the desire of certain foreign Consuls for the purpose of annihilating British commerce, had really the contrary effect. Never was a mischievous combination more completely overthrown; and what was intended as a death-blow to the political and mercantile interests of the British, proved the regeneration of their half-ruined finances.

The English Consul, during these proceedings, resided constantly * Vide No, 77 for April, 1835.