Page:The supersession of the colonels of the Royal Army.djvu/11

 the Royal Warrant of 1864, and the great hardship and injustice it inflicted on the superseded Colonels of the Royal Army, and asking for immediate consideration.

This letter of Lord Sandhurst did not meet with the attention which it deserved, chiefly through the delays arising in the India Office; and so the evil was allowed to grow, till at length Sir John Pakington, in August, 1868, appointed a Committee to meet at the War Office, to consider and report on the supersession of the Colonels of the British Army.

The Committee was presided over by Colonel Egerton, the Deputy Adjutant General at the Horse Guards, and now Military Secretary to H.R.H. the Commander-in-Chief Mr. Cochrane represented the India Office, and Major Marvin the War Office. The Committee, after careful consideration of all the circumstances of the case, recommended "as a partial amelioration of the present condition of the Colonels of the British Army," that "forty-five additional Major Generals be forthwith created." The expense of this arrangement would have amounted to £11,762 per annum for three years. The Committee also reported that:—

"'The last Indian General promoted (there are at the present time some vacancies unfilled) passed over and superseded no less than 230 Colonels of the British Service, the seniors of whom date as Colonels of 1854 and 1855, many of whom distinguished themselves at the head of Her Majesty's Regiments in the several actions in the Crimea, at Alma, Inkermann, and Balaklava, and were mentioned in despatches."