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Purchase of Commissions

The purchase of commissions is unknown in every other service except the British, and to foreigners, it was a mystery which they could not comprehend. There is a popular impression that, once upon a time, it was in the power of anyone with a long purse to buy, whenever he thought fit, whatever Army rank he might covet. Going back to the 1850s when purchase held good and when the lessons of the Crimea and of the Great Mutiny in India had hardly yet begun to bear fruit, the candidate for a direct commission by purchase had first of all to submit his name and antecedents for War Office consideration; and on being notified that he would be recommended for a commission, was directed to present himself at one of the qualifying examinations held periodically at Sandhurst, preparation for which not very severe test of general knowledge was included in every ordinary school curriculum.

This being successfully undergone, was shortly followed by a notification of appointment to an Ensigncy or Cornetcy in such and such a regiment, and a request that the sum of £450 (if infantry) be paid into the hands of the regimental agent, an amount which compared favorably with the cost of cramming for the competitive; especially as it was a paying investment and not as now a speculation, and five times out of six a loss.

For the Ensign to become a Lieutenant by purchase it was necessary there should be no Ensign senior to him desiring to purchase, and that the vacancy had not been caused either by death or promotion of a non-purchase officer, in which cases seniority held good. These rules applied to each successive step. The absolute power of purchase was therefore very limited and applicable only to a certain class of vacancies, and it was almost a misnomer so to style the system, as the same professional qualifications were required from all alike Anomalous as it may seem, not a few very poor officers owed their promotion and consequent increased half-pay to that very system which was supposed to press so heavily upon them.

Those who purchased their steps either secured a preference over others, or, at least, secured their steps in their seniority by the payment of a sum of money, upon the express condition that the money should be lost to them in the case of death, and should only be returned on the occasion of their quitting the Army. To the monied men it certainly was a benefit, for it gave them a status and rank in society which they might not otherwise hold, as it made them members of a most honorable profession, which they could throw up at any time, receiving the money they may have laid out in the purchase of their commissions, for which they have been drawing good interest, in the shape of pay; in fact, the purchase of a commission was a very capital investment. It brought a man into the best society, and he had opportunities of seeing different places at small expense; if he was ambitious of command, and had money, he may soon obtain it by purchasing his commissions.

Many who purchased, only intended to invest their money for a few years, never meaning to make the army their regular profession, but to retire from it when they may be ordered to a disagreeable station, or on actual service, to which last, if they were obliged to go in the first instance, they soon found that they had urgent private afihirs, which obliged them to go on leave, that leave generally ended in the sale of their commission, and they retired in disgust.

Under the system of purchase the army was the property not of the nation who paid it, but was the property of those gentlemen with long purses who were able to purchase promotion in it. Though many very superior oflicers purchased all their commissions, and nothing could be adduced against their zeal, activity or general knowledge of their profession, yet it was a heart-breaking matter for an officer for whom it may not be convenient to purchase, to find a junior in the service placed over his head, who perhaps had no other superior qualification than his money.

The system of purchase was of this peculiar and extraordinary character. It was regulated by law, and the law fixed certain amounts, comparatively small and moderate amounts, which might be paid for acceding to each of the grades in the service. A man might purchase, for instance, a captaincy for a few hundred pounds, and the office of major for perhaps a couple of hundreds more, and so on. That was the law, and the law strictly and absolutely forbade the giving of one single farthing beyond those sums.

Notwithstanding that, along with the regulation price, habitually and regularly and ordinarily, and as matter of course, there were paid other sums much larger than the regulation prices, which grievously aggravated the system of purchase, coming very often to three, four, or five times the regulation price, and in absolute breach of the law of the land. Over-regulation prices paid by rich subalterns for promotion had become an unendurable scandal.

Royal Commissions and Select Committees, and numberless political essayists, concurred in advocating the abolition of purchase, which would emancipate the army, it was said, from the aristocratic monopoly which had subsisted from the time of the Revolution, and hold out to the gallant and meritorious youth of all classes the competitive rewards of military ambition. William Ewart Gladstone of the Libearal Party became Prime Minister in 1868.

With public attention fixed upon the astounding events of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and Paris in the agonies of the winter siege by the German armies, it is not strange that the military condition of England should have become a prominent topic of discussion. A very natural though somewhat unreasonable »*mysympathy for France went hand in hand with an exaggerated dread of the power and ambition of its successful rival. To not a few it seemed only too probable that the conquest of France was but a stepping-stone to an assault on England. A serious doubt was felt, not without justification in the faulty system of British military administration, as to the efficiency of our means of defence.

The regular army, being in a great degree used abroad, was insufficient for purposes of defence; it was backed up by the auxiliary forces — the militia and the volunteers. The national force, as it may be called, the militia, the original army of England, was still under the authority of the Lords Lieutenant of the counties. But no complete and general organisation could be arrived at, nor any system by which the two branches of the service could be brought into close relation, unless this divided command was destroyed, and the Commander-in-Chief and the War Office recognised as the sole paramount authority. That all the forces should be brought under one uniform system and placed under one command, was therefore a second point pressed by the Government and willingly accepted. But even so, any real amalgamation remained impossible as long as commissions in the regular army were a matter of purchase, and in the militia a matter of gift.

Many other reasons seemed to point to the wisdom of the abolition of the purchase system. It had become fully recognised by all civilians that the excellence of an army depended chiefly on the excellence of its officers, and that no process except that of selection could prevent old and inefficient officers from holding high command. The growing feeling in favor of merit without regard to wealth, which was one of the best points in the democratic growth of the time, was shocked at the idea of meritorious soldiers of good capacity left in subordinate posts, and superseded, irrespective of their capacity, by rich men. Of this feeling Mr. George Trevelyan had made himself the spokesman, and again and again had excited popular indignation by narrating such cases as that of Havelock, who had declared that "three sots and two fools had purchased over him, and that but for his family he would not have served another hour."

It was plain to all men not themselves interested in the matter, that although England might be proud of its officers, and although it had on the whole avoided disaster, theoretically the system was absolutely untenable. To the reforming Government of the day it was a matter of prime necessity even irrespective of the army scheme that purchase should be abolished. To that scheme its abolition was the necessary threshold. Mr. Cardwell therefore suggested that on a certain day purchase should cease, but that vested interests should be carefully guarded; commissioners were to be appointed to represent the purchaser and pay to those officers who withdrew from the army the full price of their commission, not only the legal regulation price, but the extra price which though itself illegal had been sanctioned by custom.

But the destruction of purchase was regarded with the greatest hostility by the greater part of the army, and by Conservatives who desired to maintain what they considered the high social standard of the officers and the due influence of wealth. The existing system had also been regarded favourably by many eminent authorities, and opinions in its favour expressed by such men as Wellington and Raglan carried considerable weight. The stand made by the military men and their supporters was of so obstructive a nature that it threatened so entirely to preclude legislation upon other subjects.

The Government at length felt themselves compelled to remodel their Bill, and to confine it to the abolition of purchase and the transfer of the power over the militia and volunteers from the Lords-Lieutenant to the Crown. A very clear hint that further opposition would be followed by the refusal of the Government to pay more than the regulation prices by way of compensation had its effect upon the opponents of the Bill, and in its curtailed form it was passed without much further difficulty (July 3, 1871).

The Bill had still to pass the House of Lords, and was there met by a Conservative amendment moved by the Duke of Richmond, to the effect that the House should not pass the second reading of the Bill until it had the full plan of reorganisation before it. The speech of Lord Northbrook in introducing the Bill to the Upper House had in fact given all the information that was necessary, especially as the reorganisation, as apart from certain large principles and financial questions, was distinctly the business of the executive and not of the legislature. The amendment however had an air of plausibility about it, and at the same time relieved the Lords from undertaking what they felt to be an impossibility, the direct rejection of the abolition of purchase.

Mr. Gladstone announced in the Lower House that purchase had already been abolished. Pointing out that the Commons had assented to the principle, and were willing it must be supposed to pay the price, he had thought it right, to advise her Majesty to destroy by royal warrant a system which existed only by royal warrant, and to declare that by the 1st of November purchase should cease. A similar announcement was made in the Lords. The excitement in Parliament was considerable.

Every advantage which was gained by the purchased system was taken away; the inducement to retire, the rapidity of promotion, and the possibility of exchanging and making money by exchanging; all these advantages were taken.