Page:Viscount Hardinge and the Advance of the British Dominions into the Punjab.djvu/38

34 enabled to confer lasting benefits on the rank and file of the army, by which he earned the title of the 'Soldier's Friend.' His authority as a statesman and a military man of long official experience was quoted as recently as last year (1890) during the enquiry of Lord Hartington's Commission on Army and Navy Organisation. In paragraph 79 of that Report it is stated that the principle that the Commander-in-Chief could claim no authority in matters of finance was strongly upheld by Lord Hardinge in 1837, He held that the exclusive control over public money voted for military purposes rested with the Secretary at War. It was also maintained by the Duke of Wellington, who asserted before the Finance Committee in 1828 that the Commander-in-Chief has no power of giving an allowance to anybody or of incurring any expense whatever. Again, in paragraph 80 of the same Report, it is mentioned that further powers were claimed for the Secretary at War by Lord Hardinge, who stated in 1832, 'I think that the Secretary at War is, in a constitutional point of view, the proper person to draw up the Mutiny Bill and Articles of War. He is bound to stand between the civil subject and the military; and it is his duty to take care that the civil part of the community are properly protected, and that those who enter the army are not treated in an unnecessarily strict manner. I must maintain that it is, in a constitutional point of view, the duty of a Secretary at War to be responsible for all military transactions to this House and the country.'