Page images
PDF
EPUB

the soldiers, we at once blurted out our indignation at the intention to keep back the increased pay from the soldier while serving in the field, and only to issue it when he might be discharged, or after his death to his relatives. Knowing as we well did that the object in giving double pay was solely to entice men to enlist, we pointed out how utterly the measure would fail, and that if men were wanted the enjoyment of the money must be immediate, and not merely prospective. We would ask anyone versed in actuary calculations, what is the value of a soldier's life on service in the Crimea? Is it worth a year's purchase? How then could it have been supposed that a remote and very doubtful enjoyment of accumulated pay could allure men, to whom the present was all in all, to enter the army? We at once stated, from our long intercourse with soldiers, that if 6d. a day were paid faithfully, without any of the humbug deductions in which War-office Warrants delight, there would be no lack of thousand, who would enter the Service. Soldiers now-a-days are not like mackerel, to be caught with red cloth only. The hook must be baited with some more enticing and substantial lure.

Now, we cannot of course say what plans after-thoughts may have devised in the War Department; but it struck us from the very first that a free ration would have been a good beginning, and possibly an augmented and better sort of ration, leaving the pay as heretofore. If the soldier had his shilling free of all deductions for messing, and if he were to be relieved from all hospital charges while serving in the field, we think he would be amply paid. The abolition of the very complicated stoppages for rations and for hospital charges would thus be accomplished, and one long step taken towards simplification of system. We have an aversion to meddle with the soldiers' actual pay, and we are, therefore, strong advocates for giving him a free and better ration, and not requiring him to pay for his support and cure in hospital by stoppages from it.

We would even go farther, if we could, and ask that the soldier should not be required to so largely clothe himself out of his pay, but that he should only be required to keep up shirts, socks, and the small articles of his kit. It has always seemed to us very hard that the soldier should be forced to pay for his knapsack, his forage cap, his boots, and his trousers; for it is notorious that the one pair of boots and the one pair of trousers issued free to him annually are not sufficient, and that he has to provide out of his pay those articles at least once in every twelve months. If it were generally known that the soldier would have his pay in cash, clear of these innumerable charges which now diminish it to about 2d. a-day in coin, we should soon find men in abundance, ready and willing to take the shilling, not as now in mere token of enlistment, but as the daily means of useful expenditure, agreeable recreation, or careful saving. There are men who would enlist with each of these objects, who now prefer the hardest and filthiest labours to the comparatively easy and certainly clean and wholesome life of the soldier. The days have passed when we might load the backs of our soldiers with the burdens of donkeys, deduct from their pay at our whim, rule them

with a rod of iron, deny them all education, and after making them brutes as far as brave men could be made such, then in the day of battle call upon them to be heroes! War has ever been in the hands of Providence a means of civilisation, let us hope that it may be to those engaged in it a means of amelioration."

The civilian reader may, if he take any interest whatever in our subject, feel a wish to be made aware of the nature of the deductions from a soldier's pay. The following statements will give him much of the information he desires: being literal copies from the "Company's Ledger" which every regimental officer commanding a troop in the cavalry or company in the infantry is obliged, with the assistance of his pay-serjeant, to keep; and to make up at the end of each month. We give two such accounts; one in which the soidier was found to have money owing to him at the termination of such period:-the other when he was found to be in debt. The first account further shews the charges which the recruit to his amazement and dismay finds to be upon him in the very first month of his soldiering-the other the charges that come upon him at a later period of his service.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[blocks in formation]

In the foregoing the state of the soldier's accounts is shewn at two different periods, viz. November, when he is supposed to have been enlisted, and May, when another instalment of his "bounty" has been paid to him. It will be seen how little he has enjoyed of the former large instalment, and how notwithstanding the tardy but most opportune arrival of another instalment, the charges he has been put to run him into debt.

There are other casual items to be taken into account, such as "hospital charges"-the larger and truly exorbitant "barrack damages" which are sure to be sent after a regiment when it has just changed quarters-stoppages of pay in punishment of misdemeanors, (or in military parlance "crimes), &c. &c.—which give variety to the face of the soldier's accounts, but all alike tend to diminish the modicum he is nominally allowed. The latter item named is of course one quite justifiable, and indeed quite indispensable too often; but the two first are often quite otherwise; especially the item of "barrack damages" on change of quarters. We have seen the charge under this head, namely, for damages to the scantily furnished, rough barrack-rooms of a regiment amount to as high as two shillings per head, and sometimes beyond that a sum which equals two days of a soldier's nominal pay, but really equal to six days of the payments he actually receives in cash.

;

If, however, the legal and established deductions from the soldier's pay, &c. appear hard, it must be allowed that he is well guarded and protected against any unlawful or fraudulent encroachment thereupon. The "Ledger" already quoted

from, is a large account book kept in each of the several "companies" of which a regiment is composed, by the captain commanding each, with the assistance of a non-commissioned officer, denominated the "pay-serjeant" of the company, and acting as the Captain's clerk in all matters of account concerning the company, and as his "covering-serjeant," or rere-rank man in the field. In this Ledger each soldier's accounts are, as we have seen, set down item by item, both as to "credit" or "debt," on a page especially appropriated to, and kept for himself; and at the end of each month, his Captain is bound to cause this account to be read over in his own presence to the private, and to ask the latter whether or no he is satisfied with it. If the soldier say no, the Captain must explain it to him, and although if it appear to the officer that the man's objection is frivolous and vexatious, he can punish him for not agreeing to the account, yet the man can appeal to their common commanding officer if he choose; and even beyond him to the general commanding in the District.

If the private acquiesce in the account, he signs, as we have seen, on the credit side of it, if he be in credit, and his officer on the other, and vice versa, if he be in debt. If he cannot write he makes his mark, and the name of a witness to his so doing, is written thereunder :-such witness not to be the officer, nor the pay-serjeant.

The "Ledger" then remains in the captain's hands (or those of his pay-serjeant for him-as his voucher for having duly paid and provisioned his men during the month just expired. But his responsibility by no means terminates with this, and the soldier has other protections even after he has signed. In the first place, the captain must submit his Ledger for inspection by the major of the wing of the regiment to which his company belongs within six days after the termination of the monthly account. The major inspects accordingly and requires and receives explanations of any item, or set of items that he considers it proper to enquire into; and if necessary reports the matter to the commanding officer, that he may call the parties before him in the orderly room and investigate it. In the next place, the "pay sheet" of the company, which contains a particular specification of every penny of disbursement for and to the soldier made by the officer of the company, personally or through his pay-serjeant, must be sent in to the paymaster of the regiment, to be by him compared with the

amount of the monies drawn by the captain during the month, and also with the estimate of what ought to have been paid, or in other words, what the cost of the company ought to have been during the month. Along with this there goes in also an "Acquittance Roll," or list of the names of every man ; with set opposite to them, the several sums in which they appear in credit or indebted in the company's ledger, and the name of each must be by himself either written or "marked" after each sum, in verification of it. The paymaster has thus a double check on the captain-first as regards the actual total sum given the latter to pay his company, during the month; and secondly as regards the state of each soldier's

account.

But the soldier has yet an additional protection. He is given and directed always to keep a "small book" of the nature of a pocket book, in which after some preliminary pages of print detailing the regulations of the army, as to length of service, pensions, &c., there are pages on which his name, birth place, age, parentage, &c. &c. are entered, and subsequently the state of his account at the end of each month, the column for each signed by himself if he be in debt, and by the captain if he be in credit, and the amount set down for him in these columns, must in every case correspond with the amounts set down and signed in the Ledger, and in the Acquittance Roll.

Finally, although every one of the requirements we have detailed may have been satisfactorily fulfilled, and even though months may have gone by, the captain is still liable to be called to account by the general officer of the District, if in one of his regular or extraordinary inspections of the Regiment in its domestic economy, as well as in its field-efficiency, he should on examining, as he always does to a greater or less. extent, the companies' books, he chance to light upon any statement which does not appear to him clear or accurately made out, or any discrepancy between the figures or sums in the Ledger set down for, or against a soldier, and the sums similarly set down for, or against him in his own "small book." These "small books," as they are usually denominated, are often called for during the progress of the "inspections," we have spoken of; and on the soldier producing them, the captain is on the spot required to show the corresponding amount in his "Ledger." Questions too are put in each mess to the privates themselves by the General, as to the qua

« PreviousContinue »