Page:Clyde and Strathnairn.djvu/175

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for civil employment, and yet to rise under the Staff Corps rules at fixed periods of years to the higher military ranks, without the slightest pretence of military service, and to retire eventually on 'Colonel's allowances,' which represented a pension even in excess of that given to any Civil servant. In fact the whole system of the Staff Corps was unsound. The event proved that the Royal Commissioners would have acted more wisely had they listened, in 1859, to the advice of the Duke of Cambridge, who, foreseeing the evils of the Staff Corps system, strongly urged the establishment of a general list for the promotion of officers.

Amid all these varied changes and complications the veteran Lord Clyde took a well-earned rest; and bending his steps homeward, handed over the chief military command in India, on June 4, 1860, to Sir Hugh Rose. There could not have been a better selection on the part of the Queen's Government for so difficult a post; and no one rejoiced in it more sincerely than Lord Clyde himself, although it did not altogether accord at the moment with his own personal views. One of the first duties which Sir Hugh Rose set before himself, after taking over the chief command, was to improve the discipline of the English Army in India, which, from the effects of the Mutiny and the long campaign consequent on it, was in a lax condition. This evil was especially apparent amongst the Company's old regiments known as 'European,' in contradistinction to the 'Royal' army. The prevailing discontent at length